{"id":3274,"date":"2009-12-23T17:06:53","date_gmt":"2009-07-26T10:37:43","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-26T10:37:43","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=3274","title":{"rendered":"E.D.Va.: GFE applied to violation of Speech and Debate Clause in former-Rep. Jefferson’s case"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the case of former U.S. Rep. Jefferson (D-LA), the violation of the Speech and Debate Clause is subject to the good faith exception. The D.C. Circuit had already held part of the search invalid under the Speech and Debate clause (United States v. Rayburn House Office Bldg Room 2113<\/a>, 378 U.S. App. D.C. 139, 497 F.3d 654 (2007), posted here<\/a>), and comity and judicial economy counseled against relitigating it the search. United States v. Jefferson, 615 F. Supp. 2d 448 (E.D. Va. 2009):<\/p>\n

More persuasive is the government’s reliance on United States v. Leon<\/a>, 468 U.S. 897, 104 S. Ct. 3405, 82 L. Ed. 2d 677 (1984). In Leon<\/a>, the Supreme Court made pellucidly clear that “the exclusionary rule is neither intended nor able to cure the invasion of the defendant’s rights which he has already suffered.” 468 U.S. at 906 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). Instead, the rule represents “a judicially created remedy designed to safeguard … [constitutional] rights generally through its deterrent effect, rather than a personal constitutional right of the party aggrieved.” Id. (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). Based on these principles, the Supreme Court held that evidence obtained in objectively reasonable reliance on a warrant is admissible even if the warrant is determined subsequently to be invalid. Id. at 922.<\/p>\n

Although Leon<\/a> created a good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule in the Fourth Amendment context, Leon<\/a>‘s rationale is nonetheless applicable and persuasive here. In this case, as the D.C. Circuit noted, “[t]here is no indication that the Executive did not act based on a good faith interpretation of the law, as reflected in the district court’s prior approval and later defense of the special procedures set forth in the warrant affidavit.” Id. at 664. Clearly, the agents’ reliance on the warrant issued by the district court was objectively reasonable. Moreover, the district court, confronted with an unprecedented question, meticulously and sensitively sought to craft search procedures that would accommodate Speech or Debate Clause concerns. Given this, there is no good reason to believe that the blanket suppression in this case of evidence not covered by the Speech or Debate Clause would have any deterrent effect and hence suppression of the unprivileged documents is unwarranted.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3274\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}