United States v. Leon (1984)
United States v. Leon (1984)
468 U.S. 897
Acting on information supplied by a confidential informant, officers of the Burbank, California, police department initiated a drug-trafficking investigation involving the surveillance of Alberto Leon’s activities. Based on an affidavit summarizing these officers’ observations, the police prepared an application for a warrant to search the respondent’s residences and automobiles for an extensive list of items. The application was reviewed by several deputy district attorneys, and a facially valid search warrant was issued by a state court judge. The ensuing searches produced large quantities of drugs and other evidence. Leon and his fellow defendants were indicted for federal drug offenses, and they filed motions to suppress the evidence seized pursuant to the warrant, contending that the affidavit was insufficient to establish probable cause. The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California granted the motions; it recognized that the police had acted in good faith, but rejected the federal government’s suggestion that the exclusionary rule should not apply where evidence was seized on the basis of a reasonable, good-faith reliance on a search warrant. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed, also refusing to recognize a good-faith exception to the rule. The federal government petitioned for a writ of certiorari, presenting only the question of whether a good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule should be recognized.
Opinion of the Court: White, Burger, Blackmun, O’Connor, Powell, Rehnquist.
Concurring opinion: Blackmun.
Dissenting opinions: Brennan, Marshall; Stevens.
JUSTICE WHITE delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case presents the question whether the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule should be modified so as not to bar the use in the prosecution’s case-in-chief of evidence obtained by officers acting in reasonable reliance on a search warrant issued by a detached and neutral magistrate but ultimately found to be unsupported by probable cause. To resolve this question, we must consider once again the tension between the sometimes competing goals of, on the one hand, deterring official misconduct and removing inducements to unreasonable invasions of privacy and, on the other, establishing procedures under which criminal defendants are “acquitted or convicted on the basis of all the evidence which exposes the truth.” …
We have concluded that, in the Fourth Amendment context, the exclusionary rule can be modified somewhat without jeopardizing its ability to perform its intended functions. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
Language in opinions of this Court and of individual Justices has sometimes implied that the exclusionary rule is a necessary corollary of the Fourth Amendment, … or that the rule is required by the conjunction of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.… These implications need not detain us long. The Fifth Amendment theory has not withstood critical analysis or the test of time, … and the Fourth Amendment “has never been interpreted to proscribe the introduction of illegally seized evidence in all proceedings or against all persons.” …
The Fourth Amendment contains no provision expressly precluding the use of evidence obtained in violation of its commands, and an examination of its origin and purposes makes clear that the use of fruits of a past unlawful search or seizure “work[s] no new Fourth Amendment wrong.” … The wrong condemned by the Amendment is “fully accomplished” by the unlawful search or seizure itself, … and the exclusionary rule is neither intended nor able to “cure the invasion of the defendant’s rights which he has already suffered.” … The rule thus 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 person aggrieved.” …
The substantial social costs exacted by the exclusionary rule for the vindication of Fourth Amendment rights have long been a source of concern. “Our cases have consistently recognized that unbending application of the exclusionary sanction to enforce ideals of governmental rectitude would impede unacceptably the truth-finding functions of judge and jury.” … An objectionable collateral consequence of this interference with the criminal justice system’s truth-finding function is that some guilty defendants may go free or receive reduced sentences as a result of favorable plea bargains. Particularly when law enforcement officers have acted in objective good faith or their transgressions have been minor, the magnitude of the benefit conferred on such guilty defendants offends basic concepts of the criminal justice system. Indiscriminate application of the exclusionary rule, therefore, may well “generat[e] disrespect for the law and the administration of justice.” … Accordingly, “[a]s with any remedial device; the application of the rule has been restricted to those areas where its remedial objectives are thought most efficaciously served.” …
As yet, we have not recognized any form of good-faith exception to the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule. But the balancing approach that has evolved during the years of experience with the rule provides strong support for the modification currently urged upon us. As we discuss below, our evaluation of the costs and benefits of suppressing reliable physical evidence seized by officers reasonably relying on a warrant issued by a detached and neutral magistrate leads to the conclusion that such evidence should be admissible in the prosecution’s case-in-chief.
Because a search warrant “provides the detached scrutiny of a neutral magistrate, which is a more reliable safeguard against improper searches than the hurried judgment of a law enforcement officer ‘engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime,’” … we have expressed a strong preference for warrants and declared that “in a doubtful or marginal case a search under a warrant may be sustainable where without one it would fail.” … Reasonable minds frequently may differ on the question whether a particular affidavit establishes probable cause, and we have thus concluded that the preference for warrants is most appropriately effectuated by according “great deference” to a magistrate’s determination.…
Deference to the magistrate, however, is not boundless. It is clear, first, that the deference accorded to a magistrate’s finding of probable cause does not preclude inquiry into the knowing or reckless falsity of the affidavit on which that determination was based. Second, the courts must also insist that the magistrate purport to “perform his ‘neutral and detached’ function and not serve merely as a rubber stamp for the police.” … A magistrate failing to “manifest that neutrality and detachment demanded of a judicial officer when presented with a warrant application” and who acts instead as “an adjunct law enforcement officer” cannot provide valid authorization for an otherwise unconstitutional search.…
… Third, reviewing courts will not defer to a warrant based on an affidavit that does not “provide the magistrate with a substantial basis for determining the existence of probable cause.” … “Sufficient information must be presented to the magistrate to allow that official to determine probable cause; his action cannot be a mere ratification of the bare conclusions of others.” … Even if the warrant application was supported by more than a “bare bones” affidavit, a reviewing court may properly conclude that, notwithstanding the deference that magistrates deserve, the warrant was invalid because the magistrate’s probable-cause determination reflected an improper analysis of the totality of the circumstances, … or because the form of the warrant was improper in some respect.
Only in the first of these three situations, however, has the Court set forth a rationale for suppressing evidence obtained pursuant to a search warrant; in the other areas, it has simply excluded such evidence without considering whether Fourth Amendment interests will be advanced. To the extent that proponents of exclusion rely on its behavioral effects on judges and magistrates in these areas, their reliance is misplaced. First, the exclusionary rule is designed to deter police misconduct rather than to punish the errors of judges and magistrates. Second, there exists no evidence suggesting that judges and magistrates are inclined to ignore or subvert the Fourth Amendment or that lawlessness among these actors requires application of the extreme sanction of exclusion.
Third, and most important, we discern no basis, and are offered none, for believing that exclusion of evidence seized pursuant to a warrant will have a significant deterrent effect on the issuing judge or magistrate. Many of the factors that indicate that the exclusionary rule cannot provide an effective “special” or “general” deterrent for individual offending law enforcement officers apply as well to judges or magistrates. And, to the extent that the rule is thought to operate as a “systemic” deterrent on a wider audience, it clearly can have no such effect on individuals empowered to issue search warrants. Judges and magistrates are not adjuncts to the law enforcement team; as neutral judicial officers, they have no stake in the outcome of particular criminal prosecutions. The threat of exclusion thus cannot be expected significantly to deter them. Imposition of the exclusionary sanction is not necessary meaningfully to inform judicial officers of their errors, and we cannot conclude that admitting evidence obtained pursuant to a warrant while at the same time declaring that the warrant was somehow defective will in any way reduce judicial officers’ professional incentives to comply with the Fourth Amendment, encourage them to repeat their mistakes, or lead to the granting of all colorable warrant requests.
If exclusion of evidence obtained pursuant to a subsequently invalidated warrant is to have any deterrent effect, therefore, it must alter the behavior of individual law enforcement officers or the policies of their departments.
We have frequently questioned whether the exclusionary rule can have any deterrent effect when the offending officers acted in the objectively reasonable belief that their conduct did not violate the Fourth Amendment. “No empirical researcher, proponent or opponent of the rule, has yet been able to establish with any assurance whether the rule has a deterrent effect.… ” … But even assuming that the rule effectively deters some police misconduct and provides incentives for the law enforcement profession as a whole to conduct itself in accord with the Fourth Amendment, it cannot be expected, and should not be applied, to deter objectively reasonable law enforcement activity.
This is particularly true, we believe, when an officer acting with objective good faith has obtained a search warrant from a judge or magistrate and acted within its scope. In most such cases, there is no police illegality and thus nothing to deter. It is the magistrate’s responsibility to determine whether the officer’s allegations establish probable cause and, if so, to issue a warrant comporting in form with the requirements of the Fourth Amendment. In the ordinary case, an officer cannot be expected to question the magistrate’s probable-cause determination or his judgment that the form of the warrant is technically sufficient. “[O]nce the warrant issues, there is literally nothing more the policeman can do in seeking to comply with the law.” … Penalizing the officer for the magistrate’s error, rather than his own, cannot logically contribute to the deterrence of Fourth Amendment violations.
We conclude that the marginal or nonexistent benefits produced by suppressing evidence obtained in objectively reasonable reliance on a subsequently invalidated search warrant cannot justify the substantial costs of exclusion. We do not suggest, however, that exclusion is always inappropriate in cases where an officer has obtained a warrant and abided by its terms.…
Suppression … remains an appropriate remedy if the magistrate or judge in issuing a warrant was misled by information in an affidavit that the affiant knew was false or would have known was false except for his reckless disregard of the truth.… Nor would an officer manifest objective good faith in relying on a warrant based on an affidavit “so lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render official belief in its existence entirely unreasonable.” … Finally, depending on the circumstances of the particular case, a warrant may be so facially deficient—i.e., in failing to particularize the place to be searched or the things to be seized—that the executing officers cannot reasonably presume it to be valid.…
When the principles we have enunciated today are applied to the facts of this case, it is apparent that the judgment of the Court of Appeals cannot stand.… Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Reversed.
JUSTICE BRENNAN, with whom JUSTICE MARSHALL joins, dissenting.
At bottom, the Court’s decision turns on the proposition that the exclusionary rule is merely a ” ‘judicially created remedy designed to safeguard Fourth Amendment rights generally through its deterrent effect, rather than a personal constitutional right.’” … Although I had thought that such a narrow conception of the rule had been forever put to rest by our decision in Mapp v. Ohio … (1961), it has been revived by the present Court and reaches full flower with today’s decision. The essence of this view is that the sole “purpose of the Fourth Amendment is to prevent unreasonable governmental intrusions into the privacy of one’s person, house, papers, or effects. The wrong condemned is the unjustified governmental invasion of these areas of an individual’s life. That wrong … is fully accomplished by the original search without probable cause.… This reading of the Amendment implies that its proscriptions are directed solely at those government agents who may actually invade an individual’s constitutionally protected privacy. The courts are not subject to any direct constitutional duty to exclude illegally obtained evidence, because the question of the admissibility of such evidence is not addressed by the Amendment, This view of the scope of the Amendment relegates the judiciary to the periphery, Because the only constitutionally cognizable injury has already been “fully accomplished” by the police by the time a case comes before the courts, the Constitution is not itself violated if the judge decides to admit the tainted evidence. Indeed, the most the judge can do is wring his hands and hope that perhaps by excluding such evidence he can deter future transgressions by the police.
Such a reading appears plausible, because, as critics of the exclusionary rule never tire of repeating, the Fourth Amendment makes no express provision for the exclusion of evidence secured in violation of its commands. A short answer to this claim, of course, is that many of the Constitution’s most vital imperatives are stated in general terms and the task of giving meaning to these precepts is therefore left to subsequent judicial decision-making in the context of concrete cases.…
A more direct answer may be supplied by recognizing that the Amendment, like other provisions of the Bill of Rights, restrains the power of the government as a whole; it does not specify only a particular agency and exempt all others. The judiciary is responsible, no less than the executive, for ensuring that constitutional rights are respected.
When that fact is kept in mind, the role of the courts and their possible involvement in the concerns of the Fourth Amendment comes into sharper focus. Because seizures are executed principally to secure evidence, and because such evidence generally has utility in our legal system only in the context of a trial supervised by a judge, it is apparent that the admission of illegally obtained evidence implicates the same constitutional concerns as the initial seizure of that evidence. Indeed, by admitting unlawfully seized evidence, the judiciary becomes a part of what is in fact a single governmental action prohibited by the terms of the Amendment. Once that connection between the evidence-gathering role of the police and the evidence-admitting function of the courts is acknowledged, the plausibility of the Court’s interpretation becomes more suspect. Certainly nothing in the language or history of the Fourth Amendment suggests that a recognition of this evidentiary link between the police and the courts was meant to be foreclosed. It is difficult to give any meaning at all to the limitations imposed by the Amendment if they are read to proscribe only certain conduct by the police but to allow other agents of the same government to take advantage of evidence secured by the police in violation of its requirements. Th Amendment therefore must be read to condemn not only the initial unconstitutional invasion of privacy—which is done, after all, for the purpose of securing evidence—but also the subsequent use of any evidence so obtained.
Even if I were to accept the Court’s general approach to the exclusionary rule, I could not agree with today’s result.
What the Court overlooks is that the deterrence rationale for the rule is not designed to be, nor should it be thought of as, a form of “punishment” of individual police officers for their failures to obey the restraints imposed by the Fourth Amendment.… Instead, the chief deterrent function of the rule is its tendency to promote institutional compliance with Fourth Amendment requirements on the part of law enforcement agencies generally. Thus, as the Court has previously recognized, “over the long term, [the] demonstration [provided by the exclusionary rule] that our society attaches serious consequences to violation of constitutional rights is thought to encourage those who formulate law enforcement policies, and the officers who implement them, to incorporate Fourth Amendment ideals into their value system.” … It is only through such an institution wide mechanism that information concerning Fourth Amendment standards can be effectively communicated to rank and file officers.
After today’s decision, however, that institutional incentive will be lost. Indeed, the Court’s “reasonable mistake” exception to the exclusionary rule will tend to put a premium on police ignorance of the law. Armed with the assurance provided by today’s decision that evidence will always be admissible whenever an officer has “reasonably” relied upon a warrant, police departments will be encouraged to train officers that if a warrant has simply been signed, it is reasonable, without more, to rely on it. Since in close cases there will no longer be any incentive to err on the side of constitutional behavior, police would have every reason to adopt a “let’s-wait-until-it’s-decided” approach in situations in which there is a question about a warrant’s validity or the basis for its issuance.…