Thursday, August 20, 2015

Abandoning Thirty Years of Jurisprudence Court Adopts A "Good Faith Exception" to Exclusionary Rule

State v. Lindquist, Minn.S.Ct., 8/19/2015.  In an unusual judicial alignment, Justice G. Barry Anderson ends Minnesota's long, long resistance to adoption of a "good faith exception" to the Fourth Amendment's exclusionary rule.  Justices Dietzen, Wright and Stras join in the majority opinion while Chief Justice Gildea, Justices Page and Lillehaug dissent, although for different reasons.  Strange bedfellows indeed.  

Just two years ago in State v. Brooks, only Justice Stras wanted to adopt a "good faith" exception.  He got no votes then (although Justice Wright did not participate).  Here's what Justice Stras wrote in Brooks:
I would affirm the decision to admit the blood-alcohol evidence from each of the searches in this case based on the rule from Davis v. United States, ___ U.S. ___, 131 S. Ct. 2419 (2011). Under Davis, “searches conducted in objectively reasonable reliance on binding appellate precedent are not subject to the exclusionary rule.” Id. at ___, 131 S. Ct. at 2423-24. Davis builds upon the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule first articulated in United States v. Leon, which held that the Fourth Amendment does not require suppression of “evidence seized by officers reasonably relying on a warrant issued by a detached and neutral magistrate,” even if the warrant is later found to be defective. 468 U.S. 897, 913 (1984). 
After only five years on the court, and just barely two years after Brooks, Justice Stras wipes out thirty years of judicial refusal to adopt such an exception.

Ms. Lindquist was convicted of third degree driving while impaired.  The trial court admitted test results of her alcohol concentration that were based on a warrantless blood draw.  While her conviction was on direct appeal the U.S. Supreme Court decided McNeely, which rejected the single factor exigency rationale of State v. Netland, 762 N.W.2d 202 (Minn. 2009). Justice Anderson abandons the court's thirty year refusal to adopt any form of a "good faith exception" to the exclusionary rule.

The court consoles the dissenters by saying that its holding is limited to searches "conducted in objectively reasonable reliance on binding [Minnesota] appellate precedent."  
We note the narrowness of our holding, however. The Davis goodfaith exception represents a small fragment of federal good-faith jurisprudence. The State has not asked us here to consider any other good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule, and nothing in our opinion should be construed as authorizing the application of exceptions we have not explicitly adopted. Further, the good-faith exception adopted here applies only when law enforcement officers act pursuant to binding appellate precedent, not persuasive precedent from other jurisdictions. In addition, the binding precedent must specifically authorize the behavior. Law enforcement cannot “extend the law” to areas in which no precedent exists or the law is unsettled.
The majority seeks to assuage the dissenters by saying that adoption of Leon's good faith exception for evidence seized by officers in reasonable reliance on a facially valid warrant is left to another day.  Also, the court leaves for another day whether a good faith exception should apply to evidence obtained due to police negligence.  Herring v. United States, 555 U.S. 135 (2009).

Chief Justice Gildea said that the court should not adopt the exception under the Minnesota Constitution:
In my view, our court’s repeated refusal to recognize the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule, together with Minn. Stat. § 626.21 (2014), establish a Minnesota “tradition” that is not consistent with the application of the good-faith exception in this case.
The Chief also agreed with Justice Page that the majority's decision was inconsistent with that history, and she agreed with Justice Lillehaug's view that Minn.Stat. 626.21 is a statutory codification of the exclusionary rule that prevents application of a good faith exception in Minnesota.  Justice Page, who was not assuaged in the least, was more emphatic, predicting that this decision opens the floodgates to the inevitable adoption of the other federally adopted exceptions to the exclusionary rule:
It is apparent that the court is willing to go to any length— including ignoring Minn. Const. art. I, § 8,1 and art. I, § 102—to protect its erroneous decision in State v. Shriner, 751 N.W.2d 538, 545 (Minn. 2008) (establishing that the evanescent nature of alcohol in the bloodstream is a single-factor exigency), abrogated by Missouri v. McNeely, ___ U.S. ___, 133 S. Ct. 1552, 1568 (2013) (holding that, contrary to this court’s decision in Shriner, the dissipation of alcohol in the blood does not create a per se exigency), and its progeny. In State v. Bernard, we “fundamentally depart[ed] from longstanding Fourth Amendment principles” to justify a warrantless breath test as a valid search incident to arrest—“creating a novel bright-line rule” that “simply readopts a per se exigency under a different name.” 859 N.W.2d 762, 774, 779 (Minn. 2015) (Page, J., & Stras, J., dissenting jointly). Now, adopting the good-faith exception, the court cavalierly ignores Minn. Const. art. I, § 8, and would have us believe, contrary to federal precedent and its own reasoning, that its decision is a “narrow” one. The court acts as though “we live[] in a world without Missouri v. McNeely,” Bernard, 859 N.W.2d at 774 (Page, J., & Stras, J., dissenting jointly), and without Minn. Const. art. I, § 8. “But we do not live in such a world.” Id. McNeely is decided, and the court can avoid Minn. Const. art. I, § 8, only by mischaracterizing the right at issue in this case and taking away the only available remedy for the violation of a constitutional right. The court accomplishes this by equating violations of Minn. Const. art. I, § 10, to causes of action not recognized at the common law—a concept not contemplated by the drafters of Article I, Section 8.

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