HERRING v. UNITED STATES
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HERRING v. UNITED STATES
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the eleventh circuit
Officers in Coffee County arrested petitioner Herring based on a warrant listed in neighboring Dale Countys database. A search incident to that arrest yielded drugs and a gun. It was then revealed that the warrant had been recalled months earlier, though this information had never been entered into the database. Herring was indicted on federal gun and drug possession charges and moved to suppress the evidence on the ground that his initial arrest had been illegal. Assuming that there was a Fourth Amendment violation, the District Court concluded that the exclusionary rule did not apply and denied the motion to suppress. The Eleventh Circuit affirmed, finding that the arresting officers were innocent of any wrongdoing, and that Dale Countys failure to update the records was merely negligent. The court therefore concluded that the benefit of suppression would be marginal or nonexistent and that the evidence was admissible under the good-faith rule of United States v. Leon, 468 U. S. 897.
Held: When police mistakes leading to an unlawful search are the result of isolated negligence attenuated from the search, rather than systemic error or reckless disregard of constitutional requirements, the exclusionary rule does not apply. Pp. 413.
(a) The fact that a search or arrest was unreasonable does not necessarily mean that the exclusionary rule applies. Illinois v. Gates, 462 U. S. 213. The rule is not an individual right and applies only where its deterrent effect outweighs the substantial cost of letting guilty and possibly dangerous defendants go free. Leon, 468 U. S., at 908909. For example, it does not apply if police acted in objectively reasonable reliance on an invalid warrant. Id., at 922. In applying Leons good-faith rule to police who reasonably relied on mistaken information in a courts database that an arrest warrant was outstanding, Arizona v. Evans, 514 U. S. 1, the Court left unresolved the issue confronted here: whether evidence should be suppressed if the police committed the error, id., at 16, n. 5. Pp. 47.
(b) The extent to which the exclusionary rule is justified by its deterrent effect varies with the degree of law enforcement culpability. See, e.g., Leon, supra, at 911. Indeed, the abuses that gave rise to the rule featured intentional conduct that was patently unconstitutional. See, e.g., Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S 383. An error arising from nonrecurring and attenuated negligence is far removed from the core concerns that led to the rules adoption. Pp. 79.
(c) To 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. The pertinent analysis is objective, not an inquiry into the arresting officers subjective awareness. See, e.g., Leon, supra, at 922, n. 23. Pp. 911.
(d) The conduct here was not so objectively culpable as to require exclusion. The marginal benefits that might follow from suppressing evidence obtained in these circumstances cannot justify the substantial costs of exclusion. Leon, supra, at 922. Pp. 1113.
492 F. 3d 1212, affirmed.
Roberts, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito, JJ., joined. Ginsburg, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Stevens, Souter, and Breyer, JJ., joined. Breyer, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Souter, J., joined.
TOP
Dissent
BENNIE DEAN HERRING, PETITIONER v. UNITED
STATES
on writ of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the eleventh circuit
Justice Ginsburg, with whom Justice Stevens, Justice Souter, and Justice Breyer join, dissenting.
Petitioner Bennie Dean Herring was arrested, and subjected to a search incident to his arrest, although no warrant was outstanding against him, and the police lacked probable cause to believe he was engaged in criminal activity. The arrest and ensuing search therefore violated Herrings Fourth Amendment right to be secure … against unreasonable searches and seizures. The Court of Appeals so determined, and the Government does not contend otherwise. 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 Court, however, holds the rule inapplicable because careless recordkeeping by the policenot flagrant or deliberate misconductaccounts for Herrings arrest.
I would not so constrict the domain of the exclusionary rule and would hold the rule dispositive of this case: [I]f courts are to have any power to discourage [police] error of [the kind here at issue], it must be through the application of the exclusionary rule. Arizona v. Evans, 514 U. S. 1, 2223 (1995) (Stevens, J., dissenting). The unlawful search in this case was contested in court because the police found methamphetamine in Herrings pocket and a pistol in his truck. But the most serious impact of the Courts holding will be on innocent persons wrongfully arrested based on erroneous information [carelessly maintained] in a computer data base. Id., at 22.
I
A warrant for Herrings arrest was recalled in February 2004, apparently because it had been issued in error. See Brief for Petitioner 3, n. 1 (citing App. 63). The warrant database for the Dale County Sheriffs Department, however, does not automatically update to reflect such changes. App. 3940, 43, 45.A member of the Dale County Sheriffs Departmentwhom the parties have not identifiedreturned the hard copy of the warrant to the County Circuit Clerks office, but did not correct the Departments database to show that the warrant had been recalled. Id., at 60. The erroneous entry for the warrant remained in the database, undetected, for five months.
On a July afternoon in 2004, Herring came to the Coffee County Sheriffs Department to retrieve his belongings from a vehicle impounded in the Departments lot. Id., at 17. Investigator Mark Anderson, who was at the Department that day, knew Herring from prior interactions: Herring had told the district attorney, among others, of his suspicion that Anderson had been involved in the killing of a local teenager, and Anderson had pursued Herring to get him to drop the accusations. Id., at6364. Informed that Herring was in the impoundment lot, Anderson asked the Coffee County warrant clerk whether there was an outstanding warrant for Herrings arrest. Id., at 18. The clerk, Sandy Pope, found no warrant. Id., at 19.
Anderson then asked Pope to call the neighboring Dale County Sheriffs Department to inquire whether a warrant to arrest Herring was outstanding there. Upon receiving Popes phone call, Sharon Morgan, the warrant clerk for the Dale County Department, checked her computer database. As just recounted, that Departments database preserved an error. Morgans check therefore showedincorrectlyan active warrant for Herrings arrest. Id., at41. Morgan gave the misinformation to Pope, ibid.,who relayed it to Investigator Anderson, id., at 35. Armed with the report that a warrant existed, Anderson promptly arrested Herring and performed an incident search minutes before detection of the error.
The Court of Appeals concluded, and the Government does not contest, that the failure to bring the [Dale County Sheriffs Department] records up to date [was] at the very least negligent. 492 F. 3d 1212, 1217 (CA11 2007) (quoting Michigan v. Tucker, 417 U. S. 433, 447 (1974) ). And it is uncontested here that Herrings arrest violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The sole question presented, therefore, is whether evidence the police obtained through the unlawful search should have been suppressed.1 The Court holds that suppression was unwarranted because the exclusionary rules core concerns are not raised by an isolated, negligent recordkeeping error attenuated from the arrest. Ante, at 9, 12.2In my view, the Courts opinion underestimates the need for a forceful exclusionary rule and the gravity of recordkeeping errors in law enforcement.
II
A
The Court states that the exclusionary rule is not a defendants right, ante, at 5; rather, it is simply a remedy applicable only when suppression would result in appreciable deterrence that outweighs the cost to the justice system, ante, at 12. See also ante, at 9 ([T]he exclusionary rule serves to deter deliberate, reckless, or grossly negligent conduct, or in some circumstances recurring or systemic negligence.).
The Courts discussion invokes a view of the exclusionary rule famously held by renowned jurists Henry J. Friendly and Benjamin Nathan Cardozo. Over 80 years ago, Cardozo, then seated on the New York Court of Appeals, commented critically on the federal exclusionary rule, which had not yet been applied to the States. He suggested that in at least some cases the rule exacted too high a price from the criminal justice system. See People v. Defore, 242 N. Y. 13, 2425, 150 N. E. 585, 588589 (1926). In words often quoted, Cardozo questioned whether the criminal should go free because the constable has blundered. Id., at 21, 150 N. E., at 587.
Judge Friendly later elaborated on Cardozos query. The sole reason for exclusion, Friendly wrote, is that experience has demonstrated this to be the only effective method for deterring the police from violating the Constitution. The Bill of Rights as a Code of Criminal Procedure, 53 Calif. L. Rev. 929, 951 (1965). He thought it excessive, in light of the rules aim to deter police conduct, to require exclusion when the constable had merely blunderedwhen a police officer committed a technical error in an on-the-spot judgment, id., at 952, or made a slight and unintentional miscalculation, id., at 953. As the Court recounts, Judge Friendly suggested that deterrence of police improprieties could be sufficiently accomplished by confining the rule to evidence obtained by flagrant or deliberate violation of rights. Ibid.;ante, at 8.
B
Others have described a more majestic conception of the Fourth Amendment and its adjunct, the exclusionary rule. Evans, 514 U. S., at 18 (Stevens, J., dissenting). Protective of the fundamental right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, the Amendment is a constraint on the power of the sovereign, not merely on some of its agents. Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted); see Stewart, The Road to Mapp v. Ohio and Beyond: The Origins, Development and Future of the Exclusionary Rule in Search-and-Seizure Cases, 83 Colum. L. Rev. 1365 (1983). I share that vision of the Amendment.
The exclusionary rule is a remedy necessary to ensure that the Fourth Amendments prohibitions are observed in fact. Id., at 1389; see Kamisar, Does (Did) (Should) The Exclusionary Rule Rest On A Principled Basis Rather Than An Empirical Proposition? 16 Creighton L. Rev. 565, 600 (1983). The rules service as an essential auxiliary to the Amendment earlier inclined the Court to hold the two inseparable. See Whiteley v. Warden, Wyo. State Penitentiary, 401 U. S. 560, 568569 (1971) . Cf. Olmstead v. United States, 277 U. S. 438, 469471 (1928) (Holmes, J., dissenting); id.,at 477479, 483485 (Brandeis, J., dissenting).
Beyond doubt, a main objective of the rule is to deterto compel respect for the constitutional guaranty in the only effectively available wayby removing the incentive to disregard it. Elkins v. United States, 364 U. S. 206, 217 (1960) . But the rule also serves other important purposes: It enabl[es] the judiciary to avoid the taint of partnership in official lawlessness, and it assur[es] the peopleall potential victims of unlawful government conductthat the government would not profit from its lawless behavior, thus minimizing the risk of seriously undermining popular trust in government. United States v. Calandra, 414 U. S. 338, 357 (1974) (Brennan, J., dissenting). See also Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 13 (1968) (A rule admitting evidence in a criminal trial, we recognize, has the necessary effect of legitimizing the conduct which produced the evidence, while an application of the exclusionary rule withholds the constitutional imprimatur.); Kamisar, supra, at 604 (a principal reason for the exclusionary rule is that the Courts aid should be denied in order to maintain respect for law [and] to preserve the judicial process from contamination (quoting Olmstead, 277 U. S., at 484 (Brandeis, J., dissenting)).
The exclusionary rule, it bears emphasis, is often the only remedy effective to redress a Fourth Amendment violation.See Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643, 652 (1961) (noting the obvious futility of relegating the Fourth Amendment to the protection of other remedies); Amsterdam, Perspectives on the Fourth Amendment, 58 Minn. L. Rev. 349, 360 (1974) (describing the exclusionary rule as the primary instrument for enforcing the [F]ourth [A]mendment). Civil liability will not lie forthe vast majority of [F]ourth [A]mendment violationsthe frequent infringements motivated by commendable zeal, not condemnable malice. Stewart, 83 Colum. L. Rev., at 1389. Criminal prosecutions or administrative sanctions against the offending officers and injunctive relief against widespread violations are an even farther cry. See id., at 13861388.
III
The Court maintains that Herrings case is one in which the exclusionary rule could have scant deterrent effect and therefore would not pay its way. Ante, at 13 (internal quotation marks omitted). I disagree.
A
The exclusionary rule, the Court suggests, is capable of only marginal deterrence when the misconduct at issue is merely careless, not intentional or reckless. See ante, at 9, 11. The suggestion runs counter to a foundational premise of tort lawthat liability for negligence, i.e., lack of due care, creates an incentive to act with greater care. The Government so acknowledges. See Brief for United States 21; cf. Reply Brief 12.
That the mistake here involved the failure to make a computer entry hardly means that application of the exclusionary rule would have minimal value. Just as the risk of respondeat superior liability encourages employers to supervise … their employees conduct [more carefully], so the risk of exclusion of evidence encourages policymakers and systems managers to monitor the performance of the systems they install and the personnel employed to operate those systems. Evans, 514 U. S., at 29, n. 5 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting).
Consider the potential impact of a decision applying the exclusionary rule in this case. As earlier observed, see supra, at 2,the record indicates that there is no electronic connection between the warrant database of the Dale County Sheriffs Department and that of the County Circuit Clerks office, which is located in the basement of the same building. App. 3940, 43, 45. When a warrant is recalled, one of the many different people that have access to th[e] warrants, id., at 60, must find the hard copy of the warrant in the two or three different places where the department houses warrants, id., at41, return it to the Clerks office, and manually update the Departments database, see id., at 60. The record reflects no routine practice of checking the database for accuracy, and the failure to remove the entry for Herrings warrant was not discovered until Investigator Anderson sought to pursue Herring five months later. Is it not altogether obvious that the Department could take further precautions to ensure the integrity of its database? The Sheriffs Department is in a position to remedy the situation and might well do so if the exclusionary rule is there to remove the incentive to do otherwise. 1 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure §1.8(e), p. 313 (4th ed. 2004). See also Evans, 514 U. S., at 21 (Stevens, J., dissenting).
B
Is the potential deterrence here worth the costs it imposes? See ante, at 9. In light of the paramount importance of accurate recordkeeping in law enforcement, I would answer yes, and next explain why, as I see it,Herrings motion presents a particularly strong case for suppression.
Electronic databases form the nervous system of contemporary criminal justice operations. In recent years, their breadth and influence have dramatically expanded. Police today can access databases that include not only the updated National Crime Information Center (NCIC), but also terrorist watchlists, the Federal Governments employee eligibility system, and various commercial databases. Brief for Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) et al. as Amicus Curiae 6. Moreover, States are actively expanding information sharing between jurisdictions. Id., at 813.As a result, law enforcement has an increasing supply of information within its easy electronic reach. See Brief for Petitioner 3637.
The risk of error stemming from these databases is not slim. Herrings amici warn that law enforcement databases are insufficiently monitored and often out of date. Brief for Amicus EPIC1328. Government reports describe, for example, flaws in NCIC databases,3 terrorist watchlist databases,4 and databases associated with the Federal Governments employment eligibility verification system.5
Inaccuracies in expansive, interconnected collections of electronic information raise grave concerns for individual liberty. The offense to the dignity of the citizen who is arrested, handcuffed, and searched on a public street simply because some bureaucrat has failed to maintainan accurate computer data base is evocative of the useof general warrants that so outraged the authors of our Bill of Rights. Evans, 514 U. S., at 23 (Stevens, J.,dissenting).
C
The Court assures that exclusion would certainly be justified if the police have been shown to be reckless in maintaining a warrant system, or to have knowinglymade false entries to lay the groundwork for future false arrests. Ante, at 11. This concession provides littlecomfort.
First, by restricting suppression to bookkeeping errors that are deliberate or reckless, the majority leaves Herring, and others like him, with no remedy for violations of their constitutional rights. See supra, at 6.There can be no serious assertion that relief is available under 42 U. S. C. §1983. The arresting officer would be sheltered by qualified immunity, see Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S. 800 (1982) , and the police department itself is not liable for the negligent acts of its employees, see Monell v. New York City Dept. of Social Servs., 436 U. S. 658 (1978) . Moreover, identifying the department employee who committed the error may be impossible.
Second, I doubt that police forces already possess sufficient incentives to maintain up-to-date records. The Government argues that police have no desire to send officers out on arrests unnecessarily, because arrests consume resources and place officers in danger. The facts of this case do not fit that description of police motivation. Here the officer wanted to arrest Herring and consulted the Departments records to legitimate his predisposition. See App. 1719.6
Third, even when deliberate or reckless conduct is afoot, the Courts assurance will often be an empty promise: How is an impecunious defendant to make the required showing? If the answer is that a defendant is entitled to discovery (and if necessary, an audit of police databases), see Tr. of Oral Arg. 5758, then the Court has imposed a considerable administrative burden on courts and law enforcement.7
IV
Negligent recordkeeping errors by law enforcement threaten individual liberty, are susceptible to deterrence by the exclusionary rule, and cannot be remedied effectively through other means. Such errors present no occasion to further erode the exclusionary rule. The rule is needed to make the Fourth Amendment something real; a guarantee that does not carry with it the exclusion of evidence obtained by its violation is a chimera. Calandra, 414 U. S., at 361 (Brennan, J., dissenting). In keeping with the rules core concerns, ante, at 9,suppression should have attended the unconstitutional search in this case.
***
For the reasons stated, I would reverse the judgment of the Eleventh Circuit.
Notes
1 That the recordkeeping error occurred in Dale County rather than Coffee County is inconsequential in the suppression analysis. As the Court notes, we must consider the actions of all the police officers involved. Ante, at 4. See also United States v. Leon, 468 U. S. 897, 923, n. 24 (1984) .
2 It is not altogether clear how isolated the error was in this case. When the Dale County Sheriffs Department warrant clerk was first asked: [H]ow many times have you had or has Dale County had problems, any problems with communicating about warrants, she responded: Several times. App. to Pet. for Cert. 17a (internal quotation marks omitted).
3 See Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, P. Brien, Improving Access to and Integrity of Criminal History Records, NCJ 200581 (July 2005), available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/iaichr.pdf (All Internet materials as visited Jan. 12, 2009, and included in Clerk of Courts case file.).
4 See Dept. of Justice, Office of Inspector General, Audit of the U. S. Department of Justice Terrorist Watchlist Nomination Processes, Audit Rep. 0816 (Mar. 2008), http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/reports/plus/a0816/final.pdf.
5 See Social Security Admin., Office of Inspector General, Congressional Response Report: Accuracy of the Social Security Administrations Numident File, A080626100 (Dec. 2006), http://www.ssa.gov/oig/ADOBEPDF/A080626100.pdf.
6 It has been asserted that police departments have become sufficiently professional that they do not need external deterrence to avoid Fourth Amendment violations. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 2425; cf. Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U. S. 586, 598599 (2006) . But professionalism is a sign of the exclusionary rules efficacynot of its superfluity.
7 It is not clear how the Court squares its focus on deliberate conduct with its recognition that application of the exclusionary rule does not require inquiry into the mental state of the police. See ante, at 10; Whren v. United States, 517 U. S. 806, 812813 (1996) .