Herring v. United States

The Exclusionary Rule

The Fourth Amendment preserves “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” The exclusionary rule is designed to exclude evidence obtained in violation of a criminal defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights. The rule is a “judicially created remedy designed to safeguard against future violations of the Fourth Amendment through its deterrent effect.” The exclusionary rule applies in both state and federal proceedings.

The application of the exclusionary rule is a separate issue from whether police violated the Fourth Amendment rights of the party seeking to invoke the rule. “Whether the exclusionary sanction is appropriately imposed in a particular case…must be resolved by weighing the costs and benefits of preventing the use in the prosecution's case in chief of inherently trustworthy tangible evidence.”

The Good Faith Exception to the Exclusionary Rule

In United States v. Leon, the Supreme Courtcreated a “good faith exception” to the exclusionary rule. In Leon, the Court held that the exclusionary rule does not apply when there is objectively reasonable, good faith reliance by police officers on warrants that are issued by neutral judicial magistrates and later determined to be invalid. The Court found that where a police officer’s conduct is objectively reasonable, the marginal or nonexistent benefits resulting from excluding such evidence would not outweigh the substantial costs of the exclusion. In Arizona v. Evans, the Courtextended the good faith exception to an officer’s reliance on mistakes by court employees. However, it reserved for another day the question of whether or not evidence illegally obtained due to clerical errors made by law enforcement personnel should be subject to the exclusionary rule.

Should the Exclusionary Rule Apply to Errors Made by Law Enforcement Personnel?

Herring argues that the evidence used against him should be excluded under the exclusionary rule because it was obtained in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. He notes that exclusion is consistent with the remedial purposes of the rule, because it prevents the police from benefiting from their own misconduct, returns the parties to their positions prior to the illegal conduct. Herring differentiates his case from the situations presented in Leon and Evans by noting that in those cases, the inaccurate information was the results of mistakes by judicial officers and employees, whereas here, the inaccurate information was provide by law enforcement personnel. He argues that where the mistake is attributable entirely to law enforcement, the exclusionary rule should apply, even when the false information came from a different department. Herring points out that it is the practice of Alabama sheriffs’ departments to collaborate in a unified law enforcement enterprise, and it would be illogical to allow one department to use the mistakes of another to avoid the Fourth Amendment.

Herring argues that failure to apply the exclusionary rule in his situation would create “perverse and dangerous incentives” for police departments to engage in negligent record keeping. Technological developments allow law enforcement agencies to easily access information across jurisdictions, and as the number of inquiries increase, so does the risk that an individual will be detained or arrested if the record system contains inaccurate warrant information. He further argues that allowing introduction of evidence based on an officer’s good faith reliance could create the incentive to inaccurately maintain databases in order to exploit such a loophole.

In contrast, the United States argues that application of the exclusionary rule in this case is counter to the rule's purposes. It argues that courts should apply the exclusionary rule when its application will prevent future Fourth Amendment violations, not to correct a past violation. It further notes that the exclusionary rule’s deterrent effect must be more than marginal; it is an extreme sanction, because it undermines the truth-finding function of the courts by excluding relevant evidence. Here, the officers’ reliance on the warrant information was objectively reasonable, and the exclusionary rule is not intended to deter such law enforcement activity. Because the officers in this circumstance would be derelict if they did not arrest Herring, exclusion would have no deterrent effect unless police officers became unwilling to do their jobs.

The United States also contends that the exclusion of evidence would not deter future errors by other police employees to an extent sufficient to justify the severity of the sanction. The negligence in this case is the result of an isolated mistake, not the result of a system-wide failure to maintain databases. The use of exclusion as a sanction is also less effective in deterring negligent Fourth Amendment violations than it is deliberate violations. Similarly, the deterrence value of applying the exclusionary rule to negligent errors by clerical personnel, who view their role as record keepers rather than investigators of crime, will be negligible. The United States also points out that if a police department purposely maintained false records, it would soon face difficulties plausibly denying knowledge of the inaccuracies when making arrests, and it would undermine its credibility and inflame the public. It also notes that reliance on negligent records wastes police resources, and is just as likely to result in mistakes that hurt a department rather than help it.

Are Civil Liability and Internal Discipline Sufficient to Deter Fourth Amendment Violations?

Herring’s final contention is that no alternatives to exclusion produce incentives sufficient to prevent future violations. Police departments have no incentive to use internal discipline to punish negligence when it leads to discovery of otherwise unavailable evidence. This case illustrates the practical problem of even identifying the individual responsible, because Dale County was unable to identify the employee responsible for the error. Civil liability also fails as an incentive. Because of their role as government officials, qualified immunity will shield individual officers from lawsuits. Alabama state law also shields sheriffs' departments and their employees from civil liability. Because chances of recovery are virtually nonexistent, few defendants will choose to sue, and few attorneys will be willing to represent them.

The United States argues that Herring underestimates the effectiveness of internal discipline, and that “[t]here is no reason to assume…that police department employees are somehow uniquely immune from consequences for slipshod recordkeeping.”The United States similarly contests Herring’s claim that civil liability is not an effective deterrent, noting that a court is unlikely to find that qualified immunity protects a law enforcement agent who knowingly allows others to act on false information.It further notes that unlike individuals, “local governments cannot assert qualified immunity.”The United States dismisses Herring’s claims that few attorneys are willing to pursue civil rights lawsuits, noting that “the number of reported decisions suggests otherwise.”Lastly, the United States contends that the costs of applying the exclusionary rule in this case outweigh any marginal deterrence.To exclude the evidence found because of an honest mistake by a police department that was corrected within fifteen minutes, would have little deterrent effect, while conferring an extraordinary windfall on Herring.