ON SECOND REMAND
i. OVERVIEW
This case is before this Court for the third time for reconsideration in light of Davis v United States.
Initially, the circuit court suppressed the evidence: a gun for which defendant Michael Mungo did not hold a
But in Mungo II, we were required by the Michigan Supreme Court
Mungo II, however, was not to be the end of the story. The Michigan Supreme Court granted
So, the question before us, in the simplest possible terms, is this: in light of Davis, did the police search Mungo’s car in objectively reasonable reliance on binding appellate precedent, namely the precedent that Belton established? We hold that the police did conduct the search in objectively reasonable reliance on binding appellate precedent. We therefore reverse the circuit court’s exclusion of the gun evidence and remand for further proceedings.
II. FACTS
A. MUNGO I
This Court set forth the facts of Mungo’s June 23, 2005 arrest in our first opinion, Mungo I, as follows:
Washtenaw County Sheriffs Deputy Ryan Stuck lawfully initiated a traffic stop of a car driven by defendant. Mark Dixon was the sole passenger in the car. Upon request, defendant produced the vehicle registration and proof of insurance. Deputy Stuck also requested the occupants’ driv*542 er’s licenses and ran Law Enforcement Information Network (LEIN) checks on both Dixon and defendant. Deputy Stuck found that Dixon had two outstanding warrants issued for failing to appear in court to answer traffic-violation charges. Deputy Stuck arrested Dixon, asked his dispatcher to send another officer to assist him, and secured Dixon in the backseat of his squad car. Deputy Stuck directed defendant to step out of his car and conducted a pat-down search. Thereafter, Deputy Stuck searched defendant’s car and found an unloaded gun in a case underneath the driver’s seat and ammunition in the glove compartment. Deputy Stuck asked defendant to produce a permit to carry a concealed weapon. However, defendant produced only a permit to purchase a firearm. Defendant’s LEIN check did not reveal that he had been issued a concealed-weapons permit. Deputy Stuck arrested defendant for unlawfully carrying a concealed weapon.
In the circuit court, defendant moved to quash the information and suppress evidence of the gun. The prosecutor relied on New York v Belton,453 US 454 ;101 S Ct 2860 ;69 L Ed 2d 768 (1981), to argue that the arrest of any person in a car justifies a search of the passenger compartment of that car. The prosecutors argued that the search that led to the discovery of the gun was constitutionally permissible because Dixon, a passenger in defendant’s car, was lawfully arrested. Defendant relied on State v Bradshaw,99 SW3d 73 (Mo App, 2003), a case in which a divided panel of the Missouri Court of Appeals distinguished Belton and held that police officers cannot lawfully search a driver’s vehicle following the arrest of a passenger where the passenger was safely arrested and there was no reasonable suspicion that the driver possessed unlawful items.
The circuit court distinguished Belton and followed Bradshaw. The circuit court concluded that defendant was not under arrest at the time Deputy Stuck searched his car. The circuit court further concluded that defendant had a protected privacy interest in his car. The circuit court held that there was no probable cause to arrest defendant and, therefore, the search of his car was not constitutionally permissible.[16 ]
B. MUNGO 11
Mungo then sought leave to appeal in the Michigan Supreme Court. After holding the application in abeyance, the Michigan Supreme Court, in lieu of granting leave to appeal, vacated this Court’s decision in Mungo I and remanded for this Court’s reconsideration in light of Gant. In Gant, the vehicle’s occupant was handcuffed and locked in a patrol car when the police searched the vehicle.
Deputy Stuck placed Dixon under arrest after discovering that Dixon had two outstanding warrants for traffic violations. The officer secured Dixon in the backseat of the police vehicle. The officer searched the vehicle only after an additional police unit had arrived and defendant had been secured in the backseat of that police vehicle. Defendant was not under arrest at the time the search occurred, and Deputy Stuck searched defendant’s vehicle incident to Dixon’s arrest. Neither defendant nor Dixon would have been able to reach into the passenger compartment of defendant’s vehicle when the search occurred; thus, concern for officer safety was not at issue. See Gant, 556 US at [337-338];129 S Ct at 1716 . Further, because Dixon was placed under arrest for traffic violations, there would have been no reasonable basis for the officer to conclude that evidence of those offenses could be found in a search of defendant’s vehicle. See id. at [343-344];129 S Ct at 1719 ; Thornton [v United States,541 US 615 , 632;124 S Ct 2127 ;158 L Ed 2d 905 (2004)] (Scalia, J., concurring in the judgment). Thus, we conclude that Deputy Stuck’s warrantless search of defendant’s car was unreasonable and in violation of the Fourth Amendment. See Gant, 556 US at [350-351];129 S Ct at 1723-1724 .[24 ]
C. MUNGO III
The prosecution sought leave to appeal in the Michigan Supreme Court. After granting leave and then holding the case in abeyance, the Court vacated its previous order that granted leave to appeal, vacated
III. STANDARD OF REVIEW
This Court “review[s] de novo whether the Fourth Amendment was violated and whether an exclusionary rule applies.”
IV THE PARTIES’ POSITIONS
A. THE PROSECUTION’S POSITION
The prosecution argues that Deputy Stuck’s search of Mungo’s vehicle was permissible under Belton and that Davis held that the exclusionary rule need not apply to evidence obtained by the police who in good faith relied on existing caselaw. The prosecution notes that the Michigan Supreme Court initially granted leave to appeal in Mungo II only on the issue
The prosecution also argues that Mungo I did not announce a new rule or create an exception to Belton-, it merely interpreted and applied Belton to the facts of the case and recognized that the bright-line rule of Belton was not limited to an arrest of the driver. The prosecution further argues that Mungo II assumed, without deciding, that a good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule can be based on Michigan caselaw, which Davis expressly permits. The prosecution disagrees with Mungo II’s characterization of Mungo I as announcing a new rule of law by extending Belton or applying it in a new context of a vehicle search incident to a passenger’s arrest.
According to the prosecution, therefore, this Court concluded in Mungo I that the facts of this case fit “precisely” within Belton and that the application of Belton was not limited only to searches incident to an arrest of the driver. The prosecution maintains that, as in Davis, the exclusionary rule should not apply to evidence seized in an unconstitutional search before Gant was decided because suppression would not further the purpose of the exclusionary rule to deter police misconduct. The prosecution argues that the police searched Mungo’s car in objectively reasonable reliance on Belton, which allowed a search incident to an arrest of an occupant of the vehicle.
Mungo argues that Davis does not undermine this Court’s analysis in Mungo II because, unlike the situation in Davis, Deputy Stuck did not reasonably rely on binding, settled precedent in conducting the search of Mungo’s car. Mungo relies on then Judge ZAHRA’s statement in Mungo II that the facts of this case present an issue of first impression and therefore the good-faith exception does not apply.
In making this argument, Mungo acknowledges Davis’s holding that the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies when the police act in reasonable reliance on settled precedent that the United States Supreme Court later overrules. But Mungo maintains that Davis did not address whether the exclusionary rule applies when the police act in reliance on precedent that is not clear or settled at the time of the challenged search, circumstances that Mungo argues existed in this case.
Mungo contends that Belton was not settled law because no Michigan decision had applied Belton to a vehicle search incident to a passenger’s arrest. Mungo argues that Mungo II correctly held that the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule does not apply in this case and that Davis does not compel a different result.
V ANALYSIS
A. DAVIS
This case turns on Davis, and so we consider it first. Davis arose in the context of the new rule announced in Gant regarding the constitutionality of vehicle searches incident to arrests of recent occupants. The issue in Davis was whether the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies “when the police conduct a
The vehicle search at issue in Davis occurred two years before the United States Supreme Court decided Gant.
While the defendant’s appeal was pending in the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Cir
On appeal, the United States Supreme Court clarified that Gant applied retroactively to Davis’s case because the direct appeal of his conviction was still pending when Gant was decided.
When this Court announced its decision in Gant, Davis’s conviction had not yet become final on direct review. Gant therefore applies retroactively to this case. Davis may invoke its newly announced rule of substantive Fourth Amendment law as a basis for seeking relief. The question, then, becomes one of remedy, and on that issue Davis seeks application of the exclusionary rule. But exclusion of evidence does not automatically follow from the fact that a Fourth Amendment violation occurred. The remedy is subject to exceptions and applies only where its “purpose is effectively advanced. ”[44 ]
The United States Supreme Court noted that it was not disputed that the police search in Davis was valid under the Eleventh Circuit’s accepted interpretation
The United States Supreme Court then proceeded to consider application of the exclusionary rule in light of the officers’ compliance with then existing caselaw:
The question in this case is whether to apply the exclusionary rule when the police conduct a search in objectively reasonable reliance on binding judicial precedent. At the time of the search at issue here, we had not yet decided [Gant] .... Although the search turned out to be unconstitutional under Gant, all agree that the officers’ conduct was in strict compliance with then-binding Circuit law and was not culpable in any way.[47 ]
The Court determined that the exclusionary rule does not apply in situations in which the police followed established precedent:
Under our exclusionary-rule precedents, this acknowledged absence of police culpability dooms Davis’s claim. Police practices trigger the harsh sanction of exclusion only when they are deliberate enough to yield “meaningful!]” deterrence, and culpable enough to be “worth the price paid by the justice system.” The conduct of the officers here was neither of these things. The officers who conducted the search did not violate Davis’s Fourth Amendment rights*551 deliberately, recklessly, or with gross negligence. Nor does this case involve any “recurring or systemic negligence” on the part of law enforcement. The police acted in strict compliance with binding precedent, and their behavior was not wrongful. Unless the exclusionary rule is to become a strict-liability regime, it can have no application in this case.[48 ]
The Court reasoned that excluding the evidence in the case before it would yield no “meaningful” deterrence:
About all that exclusion would deter in this case is conscientious police work. Responsible law-enforcement officers will take care to learn “what is required of them” under Fourth Amendment precedent and will conform their conduct to these rules. But by the same token, when binding appellate precedent specifically authorizes a particular police practice, well-trained officers will and should use that tool to fulfill their crime-detection and public-safety responsibilities. An officer who conducts a search in reliance on binding appellate precedent does no more than “ ‘ac[t] as a reasonable officer would and should act’ ” under the circumstances. The deterrent effect of exclusion in such a case can only be to discourage the officer from “ ‘doting] his duty.’ ”[49 ]
The Davis Court concluded:
That is not the kind of deterrence the exclusionary rule seeks to foster. We have stated before, and we reaffirm today, that the harsh sanction of exclusion “should not be applied to deter objectively reasonable law enforcement activity.” Evidence obtained during a search conducted in reasonable reliance on binding precedent is not subject to the exclusionary rule.[50 ]
The United States Supreme Court reviewed the history of the exclusionary rule and its parameters and
Davis did not secure a decision overturning a Supreme Court precedent; the police in his case reasonably relied on binding Circuit precedent. See United States v. Gonzalez,71 F.3d 819 [(CA 11, 1996)]. That sort of blameless police conduct, we hold, comes within the good-faith exception and is not properly subject to the exclusionary rule.
It is one thing for the criminal “to go free because the constable has blundered.” People v. Defore,242 N.Y. 13 , 21,150 N.E. 585 , 587 (1926) (Cardozo, J.). It is quite another to set the criminal free because the constable has scrupulously adhered to governing law. Excluding evidence in such cases deters no police misconduct and imposes substantial social costs. We therefore hold that when the police conduct a search in objectively reasonable reliance on binding appellate precedent, the exclusionary rule does not apply.[52 ]
B. APPLYING DAVIS
In Michigan, even before the United States Supreme Court decided Davis, this Court recognized that the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies to pre-Gant searches that were conducted in reasonable reliance on Belton. In People v Short,
[A]t the time [the officer] conducted the search, our courts adhered to the nearly universally accepted reading of Belton that an officer may search a vehicle incident to a lawful arrest. Law enforcement officers are entitled to, and indeed must, rely on court decisions that define appropriate police conduct, and it is illogical to impose “the extreme sanction of exclusion” when a clear rule of conduct is later abrogated by the Supreme Court. Accordingly, though the well-settled interpretation of Belton was changed by Gant, because it was objectively reasonable for [the officer] to have relied on that precedent, the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies and the trial court correctly denied [the] defendant’s motion to suppress.
Here, it cannot be disputed that the search of Mun-go’s car was unconstitutional under Gant. The police had arrested Mungo’s passenger, Dixon, and secured him in the back of a squad car before Deputy Stuck searched Mungo’s vehicle. Again, the question is whether Deputy Stuck reasonably relied on the established rule in Belton, so that the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies, as in Davis.
Mungo argues that the search of his vehicle was not permissible under Belton because Michigan courts had never before applied Belton to permit a vehicle search incident to an arrest when the arrestee was apassenger, rather than the driver. He relies on statements in Mungo II that this is an issue of first impression because Mungo I was “the first published case in Michigan to address the applicability and extension of Belton to a vehicle search solely incident to a passenger’s arrest.”
Second, at the time of the search in this case, Belton was binding precedent, and, therefore, reliance on Belton by the police to authorize the search of defendant’s car was objectively reasonable. Michigan had followed the Belton rule since 1983, when this Court first applied Belton in People v Miller (On Remand).
Third, there is no basis for Mungo’s implicit suggestion that Belton was limited to vehicle searches incident to an arrest of the driver of a vehicle. To the contrary, the defendant in Belton was a passenger in the car that the police searched.
Notably, in Mungo I, this Court considered the scope of Belton. We rejected Mungo’s attempt to distinguish Belton from this case on the basis that it was the passenger, not the driver, who was arrested and incident to whose arrest the search was conducted:
We find no merit in defendant’s argument that Belton is distinguishable from the present case and ought not be applied under these circumstances.... [A]s noted by Justice Rehnquist in Belton, supra at 463 (Rehnquist, J., concurring), the majority did not rest its decision on the automobile exception [to the warrant requirement]. Instead, the Supreme Court elected to premise its decision in Belton on the search-ineident-to-an-arrest exception. In doing so, the Supreme Court carefully crafted its opinion. In its statement of facts, the Supreme Court indicated that “[t]here were four men in the car, one of whom was Roger Belton, the respondent in this case.” Belton, supra at 455. Significantly, the Supreme Court did not premise its holding in Belton on the arrest of the driver of the car, Belton, or any other passenger. Rather, the Supreme Court set forth the concisely worded rule: “[W]hen a policeman has made a lawful custodial arrest of the occupant of an automobile, he may, as a contemporaneous incident of that arrest, search the passenger compartment of that automobile.” Belton, supra at 460.59
This is precisely what occurred in this case. Deputy Stuck made an arrest of Dixon, an occupant of the vehicle owned and operated by defendant. Conse
VI. CONCLUSION
There is no dispute that Dixon was a recent occupant of Mungo’s vehicle. Therefore, at the time of the search, his arrest allowed the police to search the car under Belton, and Deputy Stuck had a good-faith basis to rely on Belton. There is no evidence of police misconduct or an intentional violation of Mungo’s Fourth Amendment rights. Because the well-established bright-line rule in Belton authorized a search incident to an arrest of a recent occupant of a vehicle, without regard to whether the occupant was the driver or a passenger, Deputy Stuck’s search of Mungo’s car after Dixon’s arrest was permissible under Belton. Davis holds that under such circumstances, the exclusionary rule need not apply. Because the search was constitutional under existing law at the time of the search, Davis compels the same result here. We therefore conclude that the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies and that the circuit court should not have suppressed the evidence pertaining to the gun that Deputy Stuck discovered in his search of Mungo’s car and quashed the information.
We reverse and remand. We do not retain jurisdiction.
Notes
Davis v United States,
People v Mungo,
People v Mungo (On Remand),
People v Mungo,
See Mungo I,
New York v Belton,
Mungo I,
People v Mungo,
Arizona v Gant,
Mungo II,
Id.
People v Mungo,
People v Mungo,
Davis,
Mungo III,
Mungo I,
Belton,
Mungo I,
Gant,
Id. at 344; see Belton,
Gant,
Mungo II,
Id. at 182-183.
Id. at 175.
Mungo III,
Davis,
Id. at _;
People v Hyde,
People v Attebury,
Davis,
Id. at _;
Id. at _;
Id.
Id.
Id.
Id.
Id. at _;
Davis,
Id.
Id.
Id.
Id.
Id. at_;
Id. (citations omitted).
Id. at ;
Id. at _;
Davis,
Id. at_;
Id. at_;
Id. (citation omitted).
Id. at _;
Davis,
People v Short,
Mungo II,
People v Giovannini,
People v Miller (On Remand),
See Belton,
Id. at 460 (emphasis added). See also Short,
Mungo I,
id.