Lead Opinion
¶1 We here consider whether the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies, in a prosecution for driving under the influence ("DUI"), to admit blood evidence unconstitutionally obtained after
State v. Butler
,
I.
¶2 In February 2015, an Oro Valley police officer arrested Courtney Weakland for DUI. The officer handcuffed her, put her in the back seat of his patrol car, and read her an "admin per se" form pursuant to A.R.S. § 28-1321. The form provided that Arizona law "require[d]" her to complete certain tests to determine her blood-alcohol concentration ("BAC"). She submitted to a blood draw, which revealed a BAC of .218, nearly three times the legal limit. Weakland was indicted on one count of aggravated DUI while impaired to the slightest degree and one count of aggravated DUI with a BAC of .08 or more.
¶3 Before trial, Weakland moved to suppress all evidence obtained through the warrantless search and seizure of her blood sample, arguing that the "requirement" language in the admin per se admonition coerced her consent. The trial court summarily denied her motion. Weakland was convicted on both counts.
¶4 On appeal, Weakland argued that, pursuant to
Valenzuela II
, her blood was obtained
without a warrant and without valid consent, and that the good-faith exception recognized in
Valenzuela II
did not apply. The State implicitly conceded on appeal that Weakland's consent to the blood draw was involuntary and, thus, invalid pursuant to
Valenzuela II
, but argued that the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule obviated the need to suppress the blood evidence. In a divided opinion, the court of appeals affirmed.
State v. Weakland
,
II.
¶5 "We review the denial of a motion to suppress evidence for abuse of discretion, considering the facts in the light most favorable to sustaining the ruling."
Valenzuela II
,
¶6 "The exclusionary rule, which allows suppression of evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment, is a prudential doctrine invoked [solely] to deter future violations."
Valenzuela II
,
¶7 "Real deterrent value is a 'necessary condition for exclusion,' but it is not 'a sufficient' one."
Davis
,
III.
¶8 This case turns on whether police objectively, reasonably relied on "binding appellate
precedent" in using the admin per se admonition at the time of Weakland's arrest after
Butler
but before
Valenzuela II
.
See
Havatone
,
¶9 Mindful of tension between
Havatone
and
Jean
, we clarify the standard for the good-faith exception. We noted in
Havatone
that "
Davis
instructs that law enforcement acts in good faith if 'binding appellate precedent specifically
authorizes
a particular police practice.' "
¶10 Weakland contends that the good-faith exception does not apply in her case because
Butler
"unsettled" the law. We are unpersuaded. Although in
Havatone
we embraced the somewhat opaque concept (at least in its application) that the good-faith exception should not apply when the law is "unsettled" as to the constitutionality of a police practice,
¶11 The gravamen of Weakland's argument is that the good-faith exception should not apply to her case because, after Butler , the police should have known that administering the admin per se admonition, pursuant to § 28-1321, would be insufficient as an exception to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement or would be insufficient, by itself, to establish voluntary consent to the test. In other words, if Butler did not expressly invalidate use of the admonition, it at least "unsettled" the law. Either way, Weakland contends, Butler put police on notice that use of the form was constitutionally dubious. We disagree.
¶12 The issue in
Butler
was "whether the Fourth Amendment ... requires that a juvenile arrestee's consent be voluntary to allow a warrantless blood draw."
¶13 In sum,
Butler
did not address whether use of the admonition was inherently coercive, did not clearly address its effect, and did not expressly question its validity. In fact,
Butler
failed to meaningfully acknowledge the two binding appellate cases authorizing use of the language on the admin per se admonition-
Campbell v. Superior Court
,
¶14 Although Weakland strives to expand
Butler
's holding beyond its plain terms,
Valenzuela II
settles the issue and forecloses Weakland's claim that
Butler
"unsettled" the law concerning use of the admin per se admonition. In
Valenzuela II
, this Court held that
Campbell
and
Brito
constituted binding appellate precedent, sanctioning the language used on the admin per se admonition, and affirmed that "[w]e neither suggested that the admonition ... misstated the law or was coercive, nor ha[d] this Court ever questioned or overruled
Campbell
or
Brito
."
Valenzuela II
,
¶15 That the defendant's arrest in
Valenzuela II
preceded
Butler
, whereas Weakland's arrest followed it, is immaterial to our analysis and conclusion that Arizona's appellate courts continued to authorize use of the admonition at the time of Weakland's arrest. In fact,
Valenzuela II
cited
State v. Oliver
, No. 2 CA-CR 2014-0359,
¶16 Indeed,
Oliver
was only one of several post-
Butler
appellate decisions sanctioning police use of the admonition.
See
State v. Valenzuela
(
Valenzuela I
),
¶17 Justice Bolick assails the reasoning and result in
Valenzuela II
concerning the good-faith exception even as he purports to rely upon it. Specifically, he contends that
Valenzuela II
's analysis of
Bumper v. North Carolina
,
¶18
Havatone
offers Weakland no safe harbor. In
Havatone
, this Court declined to apply the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule when police directed a warrantless blood draw, based on alleged exigent circumstances (dissipation of alcohol in the blood), on an unconscious driver suspected of DUI who had been transported out of Arizona for medical treatment.
¶19 Here, police operated in a distinctly different legal landscape from that in
Havatone
. Unlike there, where courts had discredited the police practice for over fifty years and no binding precedents specifically authorized it, Arizona appellate courts
had
authorized police reliance on the language used in the statutory admin per se admonition for over forty years at the time of Weakland's arrest. And even if
Butler
presaged future court disavowal of the admonition, it did not foreclose its use.
Cf.
Leon
,
IV.
¶20 We reaffirm our conclusion in
Valenzuela II
that, until that decision, our courts had continued to authorize use of the admonition
.
It is unreasonable to require the police to predict a shift in the law when our trial and appellate courts failed to do so. The deterrent purpose of the exclusionary rule does not apply here because the police followed binding appellate precedent that persisted in
Butler
's wake. We should not endeavor to divine "unsettled" law where none exists merely to constrain application of the good-faith exception. Such an approach turns the purpose of the exclusionary rule on its head. It is the exclusionary rule, not the good-faith exception to it, that we turn to as a "last resort."
See, e.g.
,
Leon
,
¶21 We vacate the court of appeals' opinion and affirm Weakland's convictions and sentences.
Justice Bolick asserts that our notice of these unpublished decisions does not support our position because they cannot constitute binding appellate authority pursuant to Arizona Supreme Court Rule 111(c). Infra ¶ 49 n.4. We do not cite these unpublished decisions as authority, but rather as proof of a factual point - that appellate courts continued to approve the admonition after Butler .
Dissenting Opinion
¶22 I respectfully disagree with the majority's conclusion that the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies to this case.
¶23 Weakland's consent to a blood draw directly followed the arresting officer's telling her twice, pursuant to an "admin per se" form, that "Arizona law requires you to submit to and successfully complete" the blood test. In
State v. Valenzuela
(
Valenzuela II
),
¶24 The next year, in
State v. Havatone
,
¶25 More recently, addressing facts predating
United States v. Jones
,
¶26 One could argue, as the amicus curiae Arizona Attorneys for Criminal Justice does, that some tension exists between
Havatone
and
Jean
.
Havatone
interpreted and applied the good-faith exception narrowly, finding "recurring or systemic negligence" that precluded application of the exception,
¶27 Importantly, contrary to Justice Bolick's suggestion,
infra
¶ 48,
Davis
does not resolve this dispute. The outcome in
Davis
is consistent with either approach, and language in
Davis
supports both views. In
Davis
, police officers engaged in the precise conduct specifically authorized by Eleventh Circuit precedent.
¶28 In my view,
Jean
's formulation and application of the good-faith exception is correct and better serves the values supporting the exclusionary rule and this exception to it.
See
Davis
,
Jean
,
¶29 Any disparity between Havatone and Jean , however, is inconsequential and neither affects nor changes the outcome here. Under either approach to the good-faith exception, Butler sufficiently unsettled the aggregate of relevant Arizona case law relating to police officers' use of this "admin per se" form to preclude application of the exception in this case. Applying Havatone , Justice Bolick's dissent explains why, at the time of Weakland's post- Butler arrest in 2015, "a blanket policy to read the admonition but not to otherwise establish consent could not have been made in good faith, and therefore the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule should not apply." Infra ¶ 53. But in reaching that conclusion, Justice Bolick's dissent implicitly questions the reasoning and result in Valenzuela II and disregards Jean , while neither the majority nor I do. See supra ¶¶ 9, 17.
¶30 Nonetheless, the same conclusion obtains under Jean . The rationale, principles, and reasoning underlying this Court's analysis in Butler undermine the State's claim that the aggregate of relevant Arizona case law at the time of Weakland's arrest could reasonably be understood as authorizing the practice of obtaining constitutionally adequate consent to blood testing by reading an "admin per se" form to an arrestee that instructs the arrestee that he or she is "require[d]" to submit to testing. Three reasons support this conclusion.
¶31 First,
Butler
expressly rejected the notion that Arizona's implied consent statute "requires" a person to submit to blood testing, which directly contradicts the language in the "admin per se" form later used when Weakland was arrested. This Court stated that the "consent" under that statute "does not always authorize warrantless testing of arrestees."
Butler
,
¶32 Second, Butler held that "independent" of the implied consent statute, "the Fourth Amendment requires an arrestee's consent to be voluntary to justify a warrantless blood draw." Id. ¶ 18. That statement cannot reasonably be understood in good faith as authorizing an officer to assume or infer that an arrestee's consent for Fourth Amendment purposes is voluntary based solely on (i.e., entirely dependent upon) the fact that the arrestee submitted to testing pursuant to an admonition that, for the reasons discussed above, Butler concluded erroneously misstates the implied consent statute.
¶33 Third, in support of the
Butler
trial court's finding that voluntary consent was lacking in that case, we noted that the officer (pursuant to the admin per se form) had twice told the suspect that he was "required to submit" to blood testing.
Id.
at 89 ¶ 20,
¶34 The majority contends, however, that "
Butler
did not 'unsettle' the law."
Supra
¶ 13. According to the majority, "the sufficiency of consent given in response to the admin per se form alone" was not at issue in
Butler
,
supra
¶ 12, and that case "failed to meaningfully acknowledge the two binding appellate cases authorizing use of the language on the admin per se form-
Campbell v. Superior Court
,
¶35
Butler
did address the sufficiency of consent after the admonition-indeed, we expressly rejected the State's arguments that "the 'consent' in § 28-1321(A) either constitutes an exception to the warrant requirement or satisfies the Fourth Amendment's requirement that consent be voluntary."
¶36 Application of the good-faith exception in this case requires the Court to take an even broader view of that exception than set forth in
Jean
. In
Jean
, we applied the good-faith exception because "the rationale underpinning" prior Supreme Court precedent could be logically and reasonably extended from beepers to GPS monitoring.
¶37 But that is not the situation here. If we assume (and absent any facts in the record, we can only assume) that the police officer in this case relied on this Court's interpretation of the implied consent statute in
Campbell
(a 1971 decision) and the court of appeals' decision in
Brito
(a 1995 decision), the officer did
so while ignoring this Court's contrary interpretation of the implied consent statute and analysis of constitutionally adequate consent in a subsequent, and much more recent, case.
Butler
(our 2013 decision) plainly cast doubt on whether the "admin per se" form accurately stated the law and whether a person's submission to testing after merely being read those admonitions could constitute voluntary consent for purposes of the Fourth Amendment, obviating the need for a search warrant.
¶38 Therefore, under these circumstances, unlike in
Jean
and
Davis
, there is deterrent value in suppressing the blood draw evidence. Although
Havatone
, in my view and the majority's, interpreted the good-faith exception too narrowly, this Court correctly stated there that in " 'close' cases" police officers should err on the side of protecting citizens' constitutional rights.
See
¶39 Finally, in determining for Fourth Amendment purposes whether a DUI arrestee's consent was voluntary, we consider the totality of circumstances, which might include but are not necessarily limited to the arrestee submitting to blood testing after being given the (now invalid) "required by law" admonition.
See
Valenzuela II
,
BOLICK, J., joined by BALES, C.J., dissenting.
¶40 The sole question before the Court is whether, following our decision in
State v. Butler
,
¶41 In
Davis v. United States
, the U.S. Supreme Court held that evidence resulting from an unconstitutional search would be suppressed unless the police were acting in good faith on "binding appellate precedent [that] specifically
authorizes
a particular police practice."
¶42 The use of the admonition alone to establish voluntary consent was questionable long before
Butler
. The U.S. Supreme Court held in
Bumper v. North Carolina
that "[w]hen a prosecutor seeks to rely upon consent to justify the lawfulness of a search, he has the burden of proving that the consent was, in fact, freely and voluntarily given. This burden cannot be discharged by showing no more than acquiescence to a claim of lawful authority."
¶43 Indeed, when we ruled the practice unconstitutional in
State v. Valenzuela
(
Valenzuela II
), the Court acknowledged that it was applying well-settled law when it stated that "[t]he
Bumper
line of cases survives to invalidate any consent given only in acquiescence to an assertion of a lawful authority to search."
¶44 After our ruling in
Butler
, reliance solely on acquiescence to an admonition asserting legal authority to establish voluntariness was even more untenable. At the very least, the law was at best unsettled, which is an insufficient basis for the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule.
See
Havatone
,
¶45 The majority does not dispute that the police should not rely on unsettled doctrine. Instead, it asserts that the term "unsettled" is "opaque,"
supra
¶ 10, which it is not.
See Unsettled
, Webster's Third New International Dictionary (3d ed. 2002) (defining "unsettled" as "not decided or determined" or "not resolved or worked out"). The majority contends that
Butler
did not leave the law unsettled because
Butler
"did not address whether use of the admonition was inherently coercive, did not clearly address its effect, and did not expressly question its validity."
Supra
¶ 13. The majority is conflating two distinct issues: (1) whether acquiescence in a search after the admonition establishes that it was voluntary for Fourth Amendment purposes without regard to other circumstances, a proposition
Butler
clearly rejects; and (2) whether the use of the admonition is inherently coercive and any consent given in response is therefore involuntary, the issue later addressed in
Valenzuela II
. The holding in
Butler
on the first issue was sufficient to cast doubt on resolution of the second issue. The Court noted that even under § 28-1321(A), "the officer is directed to ask the arrestee to submit to the test, and the arrestee may then refuse by declining to expressly agree to take the test.... We hold now that, independent of § 28-1321, the Fourth Amendment requires an arrestee's consent to be voluntary to justify a warrantless blood draw."
Butler
,
¶46 The majority then says that "even if
Butler
presaged future court disavowal of the admonition, it did not foreclose its use."
Supra
¶ 19. That depiction states the constitutional equation backward: we do not determine good faith based on whether the police have engaged in a practice the courts have clearly foreclosed, but rather on whether the courts have expressly authorized the practice.
Davis
,
¶47 The majority counters that "Arizona appellate courts had authorized police reliance on the language used in the statutory admin per se admonition for over forty years at the time of Weakland's arrest." Supra ¶ 19. Indeed, courts frequently focused on the admonition's language, especially in the context of suspending a driver's license for failure to consent. But what our courts have never done, and what is at issue here, is to authorize the use of the admonition, standing alone, to establish voluntary consent under the Fourth Amendment, precisely the issue presented in Butler . Absent such authority, or in light of an unsettled state of law, we should not find the good-faith exception applicable.
¶48 The majority contends we were wrong in
Havatone
to require binding appellate authority specifically authorizing the practice in question, instead preferring the more flexible good-faith standard articulated in
State v. Jean
,
¶49 The majority contends,
supra
¶ 13, that the requisite binding appellate authorization is supplied by
Campbell v. Superior Court
,
¶50 In
Campbell
, the Court considered various challenges to the implied consent law in the context of a DUI suspect's refusal to take a breath test, which resulted in a suspended license.
¶51 In
Brito
, the court of appeals dealt with a criminal defendant who also refused to take a breath test-again presenting no issues involving consent or warrants.
¶52 Our subsequent discussions of
Butler
demonstrate that the decision, at the least, unsettled the law. In
Havatone
, we emphasized that
Butler
held that § 28-1321"does not relieve the state of establishing voluntary consent ... to justify warrantless blood draws from DUI suspects."
¶53 By the time of Weakland's 2015 arrest, our decisions clearly established that the implied consent statute "generally does not authorize law enforcement officers to administer the test without a warrant unless the arrestee expressly agrees to the test,"
Carrillo v. Houser
,
¶54 The majority's opinion significantly expands the good-faith exception. Instead of requiring binding appellate precedent that expressly authorizes the practice, it finds good faith where there is a smidgeon of authority and an abundance of doubt. As Justice Pelander aptly characterizes it, instead of erring on the side of constitutional behavior, the police "proceeded in the face of 'unsettled' law." Supra ¶ 37. For those reasons, with great respect to my colleagues, I dissent.
The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly debated the purported costs and benefits of the judicially created exclusionary rule in its Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.
See, e.g.
,
Utah v. Strieff
, --- U.S. ----,
Indeed, given this Court's ruling in
Butler
, I warned that "the safest course of action for law enforcement might simply be to obtain search warrants, when reasonably feasible, for obtaining blood samples in DUI investigations."
The majority also cites unpublished court of appeals decisions that ostensibly support its position that appellate decisions sanctioned police use of the admonition. Supra ¶ 16. But they cannot constitute the requisite binding appellate authority required to trigger the application of the good-faith exception. See Ariz. R. Sup. Ct. 111(c).
