Herring v. United States

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Herring v. United States
Seal of the United States Supreme Court.svg
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued October 7, 2008
Decided January 14, 2009
Full case nameBennie Dean Herring, Plaintiff, v. United States of America
Docket no. 07-513
Citations555 U.S. 135 ( more )
129 S. Ct. 695; 172 L. Ed. 2d 496; 2009 U.S. LEXIS 581
Case history
PriorMotion to suppress evidence denied, United States v. Herring, 451 F. Supp. 2d 1290 (M.D. Ala. 2005); defendant convicted; affirmed, 492 F.3d 1212 (11th Cir. 2007); cert. granted, 552 U.S. 1178(2008).
SubsequentRehearing denied, 556 U.S. 1161(2009).
Holding
Evidence obtained after illegal searches or arrests based on simple police mistakes that are not the result of repeated patterns or flagrant misconduct cannot have the exclusionary rule used to suppress evidence. Convictions upheld.
Court membership
Chief Justice
John Roberts
Associate Justices
John P. Stevens  · Antonin Scalia
Anthony Kennedy  · David Souter
Clarence Thomas  · Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Stephen Breyer  · Samuel Alito
Case opinions
MajorityRoberts, joined by Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito
DissentGinsburg, joined by Stevens, Souter, Breyer
DissentBreyer, joined by Souter
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. IV

Herring v. United States, 555 U.S. 135 (2009), was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States on January 14, 2009. The court decided that the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies when a police officer makes an arrest based on an outstanding warrant in another jurisdiction, but the information regarding that warrant is later found to be incorrect because of a negligent error by that agency. [1] [2]

Contents

Background

The evolution of the exclusionary rule

"The Fourth Amendment contains no provision expressly precluding the use of evidence obtained in violation of its commands," [3] but in Weeks v. United States (1914) and Mapp v. Ohio (1961), the Supreme Court created the exclusionary rule, which generally operates to suppress – i.e. prevent the introduction at trial of – evidence obtained in violation of Constitutional rights. "Suppression of evidence, however, has always been [the court's] last resort, not [its] first impulse. The exclusionary rule generates substantial social costs, which sometimes include setting the guilty free and the dangerous at large." [4] In United States v. Leon , the Supreme Court clarified that the exclusionary rule "operates as a judicially created remedy designed to safeguard Fourth Amendment rights generally through its deterrent effect, rather than a personal constitutional right of the party aggrieved." [5] Application of the rule should be sensitive to this purpose, the court said: If suppression "does not result in appreciable deterrence," the court had said, "its use ... is unwarranted." [6]

Thus, for example, in Leon itself, the court concluded that the fruits of a search based on a search warrant later found defective should not be excluded because the rule's deterrent purpose "will only rarely be served by applying it in such circumstances," [7] and in Arizona v. Evans , the court concluded that the fruits of a search based on an arrest warrant that was no longer valid, but that was still listed in the police system because of an error by the issuing court's clerk, should not be excluded because such exclusion would have no deterrent effect. [8]

The beginnings of the Herring case

Bennie Herring drove to the Coffee County, Alabama, sheriff's department to check on a pickup truck that had been impounded. Mark Anderson, an investigator with the Coffee County Sheriff's Department, asked the department's warrant clerk to check for any outstanding warrants; the warrant clerk in the neighboring Dale County Sheriff's Department was contacted, and advised that there was an outstanding warrant. Within fifteen minutes, the Dale County clerk called back to warn the Coffee County sheriff's department that there had been a clerical mistake: the warrant had been recalled five months prior. [9] But it was too late; Anderson had already arrested Herring and searched his vehicle, discovering firearms and methamphetamine. [10]

Herring was indicted in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama for violations of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) (felon in possession of a firearm) and 21 U.S.C. § 844(a) (possession of a controlled substance, viz. methamphetamine) and invoked the exclusionary rule to have both the firearm and drug evidence suppressed. He claimed that the arrest was unlawful as a result of an invalid/recalled warrant ("failure to appear", issued by neighboring Dale County, Alabama), a motion denied by the trial court. [11] [9] [10] He was convicted, and sentenced to 27 months in federal prison. [10] The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed, ruling—based on Leon—that the evidence was admissible because the mistake was made by the Dale County officials, not the Coffee County police. [12] [9] Because the error was corrected in a very short time, there was no evidence that the Dale County Sheriff's Department had problems disposing of recalled warrants, and thus no negligence could be claimed because of the lack of a pattern of disposal problems.

The Supreme Court of the United States granted certiorari on February 19, 2008. The case was argued before the Court on October 7, 2008.

Result

In a 5–4 decision hewing to Leon and Evans, the Court, speaking through Chief Justice Roberts, affirmed the trial court and the Eleventh Circuit. While noting that there had not necessarily been a constitutional violation in the case, the Court accepted for the sake of argument Herring's contention that there had been. On that stipulation, the court held that the exclusionary rule did not apply to a search that resulted from isolated and attenuated police negligence, holding that "[t]o trigger the exclusionary rule, police conduct must be sufficiently deliberate that exclusion can meaningfully deter it, and sufficiently culpable that such deterrence is worth the price paid by the justice system." Suppression was unwarranted because an error in recordkeeping—not flagrant or deliberate misconduct—led to Herring's arrest. [1] The Court also warned that it was not "suggest[ing] that all recordkeeping errors by the police are immune from the exclusionary rule. ... If the police have been shown to be reckless in maintaining a warrant system, or to have knowingly made false entries to lay the groundwork for future false arrests, exclusion would certainly be justified under our cases should such misconduct cause a Fourth Amendment violation." Nevertheless, in the case at bar, "the [police] conduct at issue was not so objectively culpable as to require exclusion." "[W]hen police mistakes are the result of negligence such as that described here, rather than systemic error or reckless disregard of constitutional requirements," the Chief Justice wrote, "any marginal deterrence does not 'pay its way.'"

Justice Ginsburg dissented, joined by Justices Stevens, Souter, and Breyer. She wrote that "the exclusionary rule provides redress for Fourth Amendment violations by placing the government in the position it would have been in had there been no unconstitutional arrest and search. The rule thus strongly encourages police compliance with the Fourth Amendment in the future." The prosecution had contested the unlawful case in court because of contraband found on Herring's person and in his vehicle, but, Ginsburg wrote, narrowing the scope of the exclusionary rule would most typically hurt innocent persons who are wrongfully arrested. [1]

Reaction

Writing shortly after the decision, SCOTUSblog author Tom Goldstein stated that the decision was of "surpassing significance"; [13] but law professor and Fourth Amendment expert Orin Kerr suggested Goldstein was reading too much into the case, writing that Herring was best seen as "a narrow and interstitial decision, not one that is rocking the boat. ... I don't see it as suggesting a general good faith exception for police conduct ... [which is] why the dissenters didn't sound the alarm...." [14] Around two weeks later, The New York Times' Adam Liptak expressed concern that the decision was a step towards overruling Mapp. [15]

Eight years later, a 2017 paper in the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology concluded that "Herring invited evidence laundering by police and laid the groundwork for judicial approval of this practice", based on a case law examination of how state courts and lower federal courts had applied the Supreme Court decision since 2009. [16]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution</span> 1791 amendment prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures

The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. It prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. In addition, it sets requirements for issuing warrants: warrants must be issued by a judge or magistrate, justified by probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and must particularly describe the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.

Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the exclusionary rule, which prevents prosecutors from using evidence in court that was obtained by violating the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, applies not only to the federal government but also to the U.S. state governments. The Supreme Court accomplished this by use of a principle known as selective incorporation; in Mapp this involved the incorporation of the provisions, as interpreted by the Court, of the Fourth Amendment which is applicable only to actions of the federal government into the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause which is applicable to actions of the states.

Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the court ruled that it is constitutional for American police to "stop and frisk" a person they reasonably suspect to be armed and involved in a crime. Specifically, the decision held that a police officer does not violate the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution's prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures when questioning someone even though the officer lacks probable cause to arrest the person, so long as the police officer has a reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime. The court also ruled that the police officer may perform a quick surface search of the person's outer clothing for weapons if they have reasonable suspicion that the person stopped is "armed and presently dangerous." This reasonable suspicion must be based on "specific and articulable facts," and not merely upon an officer's hunch.

In the United States, the exclusionary rule is a legal rule, based on constitutional law, that prevents evidence collected or analyzed in violation of the defendant's constitutional rights from being used in a court of law. This may be considered an example of a prophylactic rule formulated by the judiciary in order to protect a constitutional right. The exclusionary rule may also, in some circumstances at least, be considered to follow directly from the constitutional language, such as the Fifth Amendment's command that no person "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself" and that no person "shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law."

Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25 (1949), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held 6—3 that, while the Fourth Amendment was applicable to the states, the exclusionary rule was not a necessary ingredient of the Fourth Amendment's right against warrantless and unreasonable searches and seizures. In Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383 (1914), the Court held that as a matter of judicial implication the exclusionary rule was enforceable in federal courts but not derived from the explicit requirements of the Fourth Amendment. The Wolf Court decided not to incorporate the exclusionary rule as part of the Fourteenth Amendment in large part because the states which had rejected the Weeks Doctrine had not left the right to privacy without other means of protection. However, because most of the states' rules proved to be ineffective in deterrence, the Court overruled Wolf in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961). That landmark case made history as the exclusionary rule enforceable against the states through the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the same extent that it applied against the federal government.

Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383 (1914) was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court unanimously held that the warrantless seizure of items from a private residence constitutes a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It also prevented local officers from securing evidence by means prohibited under the federal exclusionary rule and giving it to their federal colleagues. It was not until the case of Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961), that the exclusionary rule was deemed to apply to state courts as well.

In United States constitutional law, the good-faith exception is a legal doctrine providing an exemption to the exclusionary rule.

California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35 (1988), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the warrantless search and seizure of garbage left for collection outside the curtilage of a home.

United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897 (1984), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court established the "good faith" exception to the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule.

Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U.S. 586 (2006), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that a violation of the Fourth Amendment requirement that police officers knock, announce their presence, and wait a reasonable amount of time before entering a private residence does not require suppression of the evidence obtained in the ensuing search.

Arizona v. Evans, 514 U.S. 1 (1995), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court instituted an exclusionary rule exception allowing evidence obtained through a warrantless search to be valid when a police record erroneously indicates the existence of an outstanding warrant due to negligent conduct of a Clerk of Court.

Suppression of evidence is a term used in the United States legal system to describe the lawful or unlawful act of preventing evidence from being shown in a trial. This could happen for several reasons. For example, if a judge believes that the evidence in question was obtained illegally, the judge can rule that it not be shown in court. It could also refer to a prosecutor improperly or intentionally hiding evidence that does not go with their case and could suggest or prove to the judge or jury that the defendant is not guilty or that (s)he is legally obligated to show the defense. In the latter case, this would be a violation of the 5th amendment to the United States Constitution. Also Rule 3.8 of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct requires prosecutors to "make timely disclosure to the defense of all evidence or information that tends to negate the guilt of the accused or mitigates the offense." This can result in a mistrial in the latter case and/or the dismissal of the prosecutor.

Inevitable discovery is a doctrine in United States criminal procedure that permits admission of evidence that was obtained through illegal means if it would "inevitably" have been obtained regardless of the illegality. It is one of several exceptions to the exclusionary rule, or the related fruit-of-the-poisonous tree doctrine, which prevent evidence collected in violation of a defendant's constitutional rights from being admitted in court.

Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757 (1966), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court clarified the application of the Fourth Amendment's protection against warrantless searches and the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination for searches that intrude into the human body. Until Schmerber, the Supreme Court had not yet clarified whether state police officers must procure a search warrant before taking blood samples from criminal suspects. Likewise, the Court had not yet clarified whether blood evidence taken against the wishes of a criminal suspect may be used against that suspect in the course of a criminal prosecution.

United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that installing a Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking device on a vehicle and using the device to monitor the vehicle's movements constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment.

United States v. Janis, 428 U.S. 433 (1976), was a Supreme Court Case that found Max Janis and Morris Levine guilty of illegal bookmaking activities in Los Angeles in a 5-3 ruling. The two were arrested for the crime in November 1968. Appealing on the grounds of unconstitutionally seized evidence, Janis and Levine were heard by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in 1973. The case was ultimately heard by the Supreme Court in 1975, and the two were found guilty in 1976. More importantly, the case established that the exclusionary rule does not apply to civil cases where evidence is unconstitutionally seized by a state officer but used by a federal institution.

Utah v. Strieff, 579 U.S. 232, 136 S. Ct. 2056 (2016), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States limited the scope of the Fourth Amendment's exclusionary rule.

Dollree Mapp was the appellant in the Supreme Court case Mapp v. Ohio (1961). She argued that her right to privacy in her home, the Fourth Amendment, was violated by police officers who entered her house with what she thought to be a fake search warrant. Mapp also argued that the Exclusionary Rule was violated due to the collection of the evidence that was found after the police had entered her house without a convincing search warrant according to Mapp's experience. In the Supreme Court case, Mapp v. Ohio, the decision was made in favor of Mapp, in a 6–3 ruling. As a result of the ruling in Mapp v. Ohio, Mapp's conviction was voided. A few years after Mapp v. Ohio was ruled upon, Mapp was convicted again, but this time for the possession of narcotics. After her prison sentence had ended, she began working "for a non-profit that provided legal assistance to inmates."

Lange v. California, 594 U.S. ___ (2021), was a United States Supreme Court case involving the exigent circumstances requirement related to the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Court ruled unanimously that the warrantless entry into a home by police in pursuit of a misdemeanant is not unequivocally justified.

Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465 (1976), was decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that limited which claims of Fourth Amendment violations could be made by state prisoners in habeas corpus petitions in federal courts. Specifically, a claim that the exclusionary rule had been broken would be barred if state courts had already given it a full and fair hearing. The decision combined two cases that were argued before the Supreme Court on the same day with similar issues, one filed by Lloyd Powell and the other, titled Wolff v. Rice, filed by David Rice.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Herring v. United States, 555 U.S. 135 (2009).
  2. ↑ Leslie Schulman (2008-02-19). "US Supreme Court to hear evidence suppression, state water rights cases". JURIST, University of Pittsburgh. Archived from the original on 2009-02-21. Retrieved 2008-02-29.
  3. ↑ United States v. Leon , 468 U.S. 897, 906 (1984).
  4. ↑ Hudson v. Michigan , 547 U.S. 586 (2006) (quoting Leon, 468 U.S. at 907) (internal quotation marks omitted).
  5. ↑ Leon, 468 U.S. at 906 (quoting United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 348 (1974) (internal quotation marks omitted)).
  6. ↑ Leon, 468 U.S. at 909 (quoting Stone v. Powell , 428 U.S. 433, 454 (1976) (internal quotation mark omitted)).
  7. ↑ Leon, 468 U.S. at 926.
  8. ↑ See Arizona v. Evans , 514 U.S. 1, 15–16 (1995).
  9. 1 2 3 David G. Savage (2008-08-20). "Supreme Court to review 'exclusionary rule' on evidence". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 2008-02-28. Retrieved 2008-02-29.
  10. 1 2 3 "No. 07-503, Herring v. United States; United States Department of Justice". Archived from the original on 2008-09-10. Retrieved 2008-02-29.
  11. ↑ United States v. Herring, 451F. Supp. 2d1290 ( M.D. Ala. 2005).
  12. ↑ United States v. Herring, 492F.3d1212 ( 11th Cir. 2007).
  13. ↑ Goldstein, Tom (2009-01-14). "The Surpassing Significance of Herring". SCOTUSblog. Retrieved 2018-09-22.
  14. ↑ Kerr, Orin (2009-01-14). "Responding to Tom Goldstein on Herring". The Volokh Conspiracy . Retrieved 2018-09-22.
  15. ↑ Liptak, Adam (2009-01-30). "Justices Step Closer to Repeal of Evidence Ruling". New York Times. Retrieved 2018-09-22.
  16. ↑ Levine, Kay L.; Iontcheva Turner, Jenia; Wright, Ronald F. (17 May 2017). "Evidence Laundering: How Herring Made Ignorance the Best Detergent". Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. 106 (4). doi:10.2139/ssrn.2558737. ISSN   1556-5068.
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