Officers had a warrant for 3171, and found two 3170s, on opposite sides of the street. They picked the 3170 that was occupied and told the occupants they had a warrant, but it was not 3171. The entry found a bunch of cocaine, and it had to be suppressed. This was not in any sense in good faith [my words]. The government argued that the exclusionary rule did not apply. “But so long as there is an exclusionary rule, it seems safe to say that it will apply to officers who enter and remain in a house based on false pretenses.” United States v. Shaw, 707 F.3d 666 (6th Cir. 2013) (2-1):
But that is not the key problem. No custom of law-enforcement training of which we are aware, and certainly no custom of Fourth Amendment law, allows an officer to give a false answer to the question "What right do you have to be here?" as a basis for staying put. Just as a lie about an address cannot supply the basis for entering a house, it cannot supply the basis for staying in a home once an occupant asks the officers what right they have to be there. Otherwise, an officer, when challenged over his right to enter a house, could say he had an arrest warrant when he did not. Or these officers, when asked to show the arrest warrant, could have produced a false arrest warrant, one with the wrong address. No one plausibly thinks that is permissible. See Bumper, 391 U.S. at 549-50. Why was this law-enforcement encounter any different? The government offers no good reason, and we cannot think of one on our own.
The officers, in short and in truth, had no right to enter the house based on a falsity and no right to stay there based on a falsity. That is all there is to it, or at least almost all. One other thing: There may be good candidates for taking a stand on the exclusionary rule, but this is not one of them. The government urges us not to exclude this evidence even if the officers violated the Fourth Amendment in obtaining it. Herring v. United States, 555 U.S. 135, 129 S. Ct. 695, 172 L. Ed. 2d 496 (2009), it is true, recognized that the exclusionary rule often is over-inclusive, requiring courts to suppress evidence even when officers have obtained it in good faith and even when suppression does not further the central premise of the rule: deterrence. Id. at 141. But so long as there is an exclusionary rule, it seems safe to say that it will apply to officers who enter and remain in a house based on false pretenses—one step removed from the "isolated negligence" at issue in Herring and another step removed from the "attenuated" link between the officer misconduct in Herring and the arrest there. Id. at 137. Shaw's case is not Herring's case.
The surprising part is that the trial judge and one dissenter bought into the exclusionary rule not even applying to raiding the wrong house.
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by John Wesley Hall
Criminal Defense Lawyer
Little Rock, Arkansas
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Online since Feb. 24, 2003
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2012-13 Term: 2010-11 Term: General (many free): Congressional Research Service: "If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't." "A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays
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or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence." Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment. "There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that
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police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater
than it is today." "The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their
property." "It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have
frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And
so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his
case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth
Amendment." "The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated
here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth." "A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the
bottom of a turntable." "For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly
exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth
Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in
an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected." “Experience should teach us to be most on guard to
protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born
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Maryland v. King, granted Nov. 9, argued Feb. 26
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Missouri
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Florida
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19) (ScotusBlog)
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2011-12 Term:
Ryburn
v. Huff, 132 S.Ct. 987, 181 L.Ed.2d 966 (Jan. 23,
2012) (other
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Florence
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2012) (ScotusBlog)
United
States v. Jones, 132 S.Ct. 945, 181 L.Ed.2d 911 (Jan. 23, 2012) (ScotusBlog)
Messerschmidt
v. Millender, 132 S.Ct. 1235, 182 L.Ed.2d 47 (Feb. 22, 2012) (ScotusBlog)
Kentucky
v. King, 131 S.Ct. 1849, 179 L.Ed.2d 865 (May 16, 2011) (ScotusBlog)
Camreta
v. Greene, 131 S.Ct. 2020, 179 L.Ed.2d 1118 (May 26, 2011) (ScotusBlog)
Ashcroft
v. al-Kidd, 131 S.Ct. 2074, 179 L.Ed.2d 1149 (May 31, 2011) (ScotusBlog)
Davis
v. United States, 131 S.Ct. 2419, 180 L.Ed.2d 285 (June 16, 2011) (ScotusBlog)
2009-10 Term:
Michigan
v. Fisher, 558 U.S. 45, 130 S.Ct. 546, 175 L.Ed.2d 410 (Dec. 7, 2009) (per
curiam) (ScotusBlog)
City
of Ontario v. Quon, 130 S.Ct. 2619, 177 L.Ed.2d 216 (June 17, 2010) (ScotusBlog)
2008-09 Term:
Herring
v. United States, 555 U.S. 135, 129 S.Ct. 695, 172 L.Ed.2d 496 (Jan. 13,
2009) (ScotusBlog)
Pearson
v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 129 S.Ct. 808, 172 L.Ed.2d 565 (Jan. 21, 2009)
(ScotusBlog)
Arizona
v. Johnson, 555 U.S. 323, 129 S.Ct. 781, 172 L.Ed.2d 694 (Jan. 26, 2009)
(ScotusBlog)
Arizona
v. Gant, 556 U.S. 332, 129 S.Ct. 1710, 173 L.Ed.2d 485 (April 21, 2009)
(ScotusBlog)
Safford
Unified School District #1 v. Redding, 557 U.S. 364, 129 S.Ct. 2633, 174
L.Ed.2d 354 (June 25, 2009) (ScotusBlog)
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Appeal (post-conviction) (9th Cir.)
Section 1983 Blog
—Me
—Williams
v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold,
J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984).
—Mapp
v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961).
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987).
— Terry
v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting).
—Entick
v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765)
—United
States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting)
—Chapman
v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).
—Arizona
v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987)
—Katz
v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967)
—United
States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)
—United
States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989)
—Mick Jagger & Keith Richards
—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration
camp]
—Pepé Le Pew
—Malcolm Forbes
"The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers,
is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which
reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that
those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being
judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting
out crime."
—Johnson
v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948)