154 Wash. App. 433 | Wash. Ct. App. | 2010
Lead Opinion
¶1 Relying on the prevailing interpretation of a United States Supreme Court case, a police officer searched Eugene Riley’s car incident to his arrest under circumstances later declared unconstitutional in Arizona v. Gant.
FACTS
¶2 On January 7,2007, at about 12:30 a.m., King County Deputy Sheriff Josh Fowler stopped Eugene Riley for running a red light. After reviewing Riley’s license, registration, and insurance, Fowler arrested Riley on an outstanding warrant, handcuffed him, and placed him in the back seat of his patrol car.
¶3 Fowler advised Riley of his Miranda:
DECISION
I. Federal Constitution
¶4 Riley argues that the recently-decided United States Supreme Court case of Gant requires suppression of the evidence found in his car following his arrest.
¶5 Because that broad reading of Belton untethered the rule from the justifications underlying the Chimel exception to the warrant requirement, 28 years later the United States Supreme Court rejected that reading in Gant to hold that “Belton does not authorize a vehicle search incident to a recent occupant’s arrest after the arrestee has been secured and cannot access the interior of the vehicle.”
Arizona v. Gant and the Good Faith Exception to the Exclusionary Rule
¶6 Riley argues that the rule announced and applied in Gant should apply to his case because his conviction was not yet final when the United States Su
¶7 In United States v. Gonzalez, the Ninth Circuit held that United States v. Johnson
¶8 We agree that the rule announced in Gant must be applied retroactively in accordance with the constitutional principles stated in Griffith. We therefore hold that Thompson violated Riley’s Fourth Amendment rights when he conducted the postarrest search of Riley’s car with Riley secure in the back of a patrol car.
¶9 Having established a Fourth Amendment violation, we must next determine what remedy applies.
¶10 In United States v. McCane, an officer conducted a pre-Gant search of the arrestee’s vehicle consistent with Tenth Circuit precedent adopting the widely-understood, but now erroneous, interpretation of Belton.
¶11 Like Tenth Circuit case law, Washington case law before Gant authorized searches that would now be unconstitutional. For example, in State v. Johnson, an officer searched the arrestee’s vehicle following a warrant-based arrest while holding the defendant in the back of a patrol car.
¶12 Gonzalez recognizes that the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule has not previously been applied to “a search conducted under a then-prevailing interpretation of a Supreme Court ruling, but rendered unconstitutional by a subsequent Supreme Court ruling announced while the
¶13 Like the district court judge in Leon, judges in Washington and the Ninth Circuit have apparently erred in interpreting Belton as authorizing searches like the one conducted here. And, as in Leon, police reliance on those errors was reasonable.
¶14 In State v. McCormick, Division Two recently held that the federal good faith exception does not apply to a defendant illegally searched before the Supreme Court announced Gant
¶15 After rethinking retroactivity in 1982, the United States Supreme Court concluded that “subject to [certain exceptions], a decision of this Court construing the Fourth Amendment is to be applied retroactively to all convictions that were not yet final at the time the decision was rendered.”
¶16 Because the United States Supreme Court determined that Payton had not overturned a “long-standing practice approved by a near-unanimous body of lower court authority,” it did not decide in Johnson whether retro-activity should also apply in cases signaling a clear break with lower court authority.
¶17 After the parties briefed this case, the State Supreme Court held in State v. Patton that Gant applied retroactively to render unconstitutional under article I, section 7 of the Washington Constitution a pr e-Gant search.
¶18 Here, the State makes two arguments supporting its position that we should apply the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule to cases decided under article I, section 7 of the Washington Constitution. First, it posits that the Washington Supreme Court has followed federal law on exceptions to the exclusionary rule and has applied the good faith exception to police reliance on a presumptively-valid statute. It then contends that the same rule should apply to presumptively-valid judicial decisions. Riley counters, asserting that this State applied the exclusionary rule for reasons other than deterring police misconduct. Those reasons include protecting individual privacy and preserving the dignity of the judicial system. These additional underpinnings of the rule, he argues, preclude applying a good faith exception.
¶19 The law in Washington on the question of the status of the good faith exception is not clear. We begin
¶20 More recently, the court decided State v. Brockob
¶21 In both cases, the court refused to suppress the evidence even though the basis for the arrests was unconstitutional.
White held that police officers may rely on the presumptive validity of statutes in determining whether there is probable cause to make an arrest unless the law is “so grossly and flagrantly unconstitutional by virtue of the prior dispositive judicial holding that it may not serve as the basis for a valid arrest.”
¶22 We take from these cases two principles relevant to this case: (1) an arrest based on an obviously-unconstitutional statute is illegal, and the evidence seized in a search incident to arrest based on that statute will be suppressed and (2) where the statute is presumptively valid, the police may rely on it to make an arrest and search, and that evidence will not be suppressed. While the court has not explicitly said so, it would appear that the rationales for the exclusionary rule articulated in White that do not involve deterring illegal police behavior are not actually implicated where the statute on which the police rely to make an arrest is presumptively valid. That is, an arrest based on a statute that appears valid does not offend either privacy rights or the integrity of the judicial process.
¶23 The court’s reliance in both Brockob and Potter on the decision in DeFillippo
¶24 In DeFillippo, the Court stated,
At [the] time [of the underlying arrest], of course, there was no controlling precedent that this ordinance was or was not constitutional, and hence the conduct observed violated a presumptively valid ordinance. A prudent officer, in the course of determining whether respondent had committed an offense*450 under all the circumstances shown by this record, should not have been required to anticipate that a court would later hold the ordinance unconstitutional.
Police are charged to enforce laws until and unless they are declared unconstitutional. The enactment of a law forecloses speculation by enforcement officers concerning its constitutionality — with the possible exception of a law so grossly and flagrantly unconstitutional that any person of reasonable prudence would be bound to see its flaws. Society would be ill-served if its police officers took it upon themselves to determine which laws are and which are not constitutionally entitled to enforcement.[70]
The Court further noted,
The purpose of the exclusionary rule is to deter unlawful police action. No conceivable purpose of deterrence would be served by suppressing evidence which, at the time it was found on the person of the respondent, was the product of a lawful arrest and a lawful search. To deter police from enforcing a presumptively valid statute was never remotely in the contemplation of even the most zealous advocate of the exclusionary rule.[71]
The Court recognized a “narrow exception” when the law is “so grossly and flagrantly unconstitutional that any person of reasonable prudence would be bound to see its flaws.”
¶25 So where does that leave us in this case under the Washington Constitution? The recent decision in Patton does not address the issue of whether the same rationale applies to presumptively-valid case law.
¶26 Finally, even if the decisions in Brockob and Potter preserve intact the other two prongs of the rationale for the exclusionary rule articulated in White, they are not offended here. Where police officers rely on a presumptively valid law, they are not unreasonably intruding on constitutionally-protected privacy rights. Indeed, drivers did not know that there was a right to avoid a vehicle search after a valid arrest until the decision in Gant. Nor is judicial integrity being impugned by admitting the evidence seized here. In fact, the opposite is true. Applying the good faith exception recognizes that officers must comply with judicial decisions dictating their rights and responsibilities in the field. To rule otherwise would raise the spectre of police officers reaching their own conclusions about the wisdom and validity of judicial rulings.
Judge Susan R. Agid was a member of the Court of Appeals at the time oral argument was heard on this matter. She is now serving as a judge pro tern of the court pursuant to CAR 21(c).
_U.S._, 129 S. Ct. 1710, 173 L. Ed. 2d 485 (2009).
The jury heard only that Fowler arrested Riley and that the arrest was lawful. The warrant was related to a domestic violence no-contact order violation.
The Washington State Patrol Crime Lab confirmed that the substance found was methamphetamine and that methamphetamine residue was on the glass pipes.
Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S. Ct. 1602, 16 L. Ed. 2d 694 (1966).
At the CrR 3.5 evidentiary hearing, Riley argued these statements were inadmissible because Fowler did not expressly ask Riley if he waived his Miranda rights after reading those rights to Riley and before questioning him. The trial
Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 357, 88 S. Ct. 507, 19 L. Ed. 2d 576 (1967) (footnote omitted).
Gant, 129 S. Ct. at 1716 (citation omitted).
395 U.S. 752, 763, 89 S. Ct. 2034, 23 L. Ed. 2d 685 (1969).
453 U.S. 454, 460, 101 S. Ct. 2860, 69 L. Ed. 2d 768 (1981).
Gant, 129 S. Ct. at 1718.
Id. at 1714.
Id. at 1719. Additionally, “circumstances unique to the vehicle context justify a Search incident to a lawful arrest when it is ‘reasonable to believe evidence relevant to the crime of the arrest might be found in the vehicle.’ ” Id. (quoting Thornton v. United States, 541 U.S. 615, 632, 124 S. Ct. 2127, 158 L. Ed. 2d 905 (2004) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment)).
Id. at 1714.
The State does not argue that Riley waived his right to appeal on this issue by withdrawing his motion to suppress the evidence obtained in the vehicle search. Accordingly, we need not discuss the issue here.
By “final,” the Supreme Court means a case in which “a judgment of conviction has been rendered, the availability of appeal exhausted, and the time for a petition for certiorari elapsed or a petition for certiorari finally denied.” Griffith v. Kentucky, 479 U.S. 314, 321 n.6, 107 S. Ct. 708, 93 L. Ed. 2d 649 (1987).
United States v. Johnson, 457 U.S. 537, 562, 102 S. Ct. 2579, 73 L. Ed. 2d 202 (1982); see also Griffith, 479 U.S. at 328.
457 U.S. 537, 102 S. Ct. 2579, 73 L. Ed. 2d 202 (1982).
479 U.S. 314, 107 S. Ct. 708, 93 L. Ed. 2d 649 (1987).
5 78 F.3d 1130, 1132 (9th Cir. 2009) (quoting Griffith, 479 U.S. at 322).
Neither party disputes that the rule announced in Gant represents a clean break from the general understanding of Belton. See, e.g., State v. Johnson, 128 Wn.2d 431, 450-56, 909 P.2d 293 (1996) (applying Belton to uphold postarrest search of a tractor-trailer truck’s sleeping compartment where driver had been arrested on outstanding warrant and was in the back of a patrol car during the search).
Griffith, 479 U.S. at 322-23 (“ ‘If we do not resolve all cases before us on direct review in light of our best understanding of governing constitutional principles, it is difficult to see why we should so adjudicate any case at all.’ ” (quoting Mackey
Id. at 323 (“[T]lie problem with not applying new rules to cases pending on direct review is ‘the actual inequity that results when the Court chooses which of many similarly situated defendants should be the chance beneficiary’ of a new rule.” (quoting Johnson, 457 U.S. at 556 n.16)).
See Herring v. United States, 555 U.S. 135, 129 S. Ct. 695, 700, 172 L. Ed. 2d 496 (2009) (The United States Supreme Court has “repeatedly rejected the argument that exclusion is a necessary consequence of a Fourth Amendment violation.”).
Id. at 699 (quoting Arizona v. Evans, 514 U.S. 1, 10, 115 S. Ct. 1185, 131 L. Ed. 2d 34 (1995)).
Id. (citing Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 398, 34 S. Ct. 341, 58 L. Ed. 652(1914)).
Id. (quoting United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 348, 94 S. Ct. 613, 38 L. Ed. 2d 561 (1974)).
Id. at 700 (alteration in original) (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting United State v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 909, 104 S. Ct. 3405, 82 L. Ed. 2d 677 (1984)).
Leon, 468 U.S. at 919.
Herring, 129 S. Ct. at 704 (extending good faith exception to nonsystemic police reliance on the negligent mistake of a fellow law enforcement officer); Evans, 514 U.S. at 14-16 (applying the good faith exception to police reliance on mistaken information in a court’s database); Illinois v. Krull, 480 U.S. 340, 349-53, 107 S. Ct. 1160, 94 L. Ed. 2d 364 (1987) (applying good faith exception to warrantless administrative searches performed in reliance upon a statute later declared unconstitutional); Leon, 468 U.S. at 922 (establishing the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule when police reasonably and in good faith relied on a warrant later declared invalid).
573 F.3d 1037, 1045 (10th Cir. 2009). Of the other courts that have reached this issue, some agree with Gonzalez and some with McCane. Compare United States v. Buford, 623 F. Supp. 2d 923, 925 (M.D. Tenn. 2009) (granting motion to suppress evidence found after a pr e-Gant arrest) and People v. Arnold, 394 Ill. App. 3d 63, 81, 914 N.E.2d 1143, 331 Ill. Dec. 331 (2009) (affirming trial court suppression of evidence obtained following a pr e-Gant arrest because the court could not “discern a proper legal foundation for the State’s requested extension of the good-faith exception”), with United States v. Grote, 2009 WL 2068023, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 60893 (E.D. Wash. July 15, 2009) (holding that good faith exception applies as an alternative basis to deny defendant’s motion for reconsideration of trial court ruling that evidence found following a pre-Gcmi arrest remains admissible after Gant) and United States v. Allison, 637 F. Supp. 2d 657, 666 (S.D. Iowa 2009) (holding that the exclusionary rule does not apply where deputy relied on pr e-Gant case law) and United States v. Owens, 2009 WL 2584570, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 81378 (N.D. Fla. Aug. 20, 2009) (denying motion to suppress based on good faith exception to the exclusionary rule) and United States v. Lopez, 655 F. Supp. 2d 720 (2009) (E.D. Ky. Sept 1, 2009) (agreeing with McCane’s analysis).
McCane, 573 F.3d at 1042 (quoting Leon, 468 U.S. at 919).
Id. at 1044-45 (“[A] police officer who undertakes a search in reasonable reliance upon the settled case law of a United States Court of Appeals, even though the search is later deemed invalid by Supreme Court decision, has not engaged in misconduct.”).
128 Wn.2d 431, 435, 909 P.2d 293 (1996).
Id. at 450-56.
United States v. McLaughlin, 170 F.3d 889, 891 (9th Cir. 1999) (relying on Belton to uphold a search conducted after officers arrested driver on an outstanding warrant and secured him in the back seat of the patrol car).
Herring, 129 S. Ct. at 700-03.
578 F.3d at 1132.
468 U.S. 897, 902, 104 S. Ct. 3405, 82 L. Ed. 2d 677 (1984).
Leon, 468 U.S. at 902.
Id. at 903-04.
Id. at 921.
In neither Leon nor this case were the judicial errors so flagrant that a reasonably well-trained officer would have known that the search was unconstitutional. Id. at 922 n.23 (“[0]ur good-faith inquiry is confined to the objectively ascertainable question whether a reasonably well trained officer would have known that the search was illegal.”); see also Herring, 129 S. Ct. at 701 (“The extent to which the exclusionary rule is justified by these deterrence principles varies with the culpability of the law enforcement conduct.” (citing Leon, 468 U.S. at 911; Krull, 480 U.S. at 348-49)).
152 Wn. App. 536, 216 P.3d 475 (2009).
Id. at 543 (quoting Gonzalez, 578 F.3d at 1133).
Johnson, 457 U.S. at 562.
445 U.S. 573, 100 S. Ct. 1371, 63 L. Ed. 2d 639 (1980) (prohibiting the police from making a warrantless and nonconsensual entry into a suspect’s home to make a routine felony arrest).
Leon, 468 U.S. at 913.
468 U.S. at 912 n.9.
Johnson, 457 U.S. at 552-53.
Griffith, 479 U.S. at 327.
As a case applying the new Fourteenth Amendment rule announced in Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S. Ct. 1712, 90 L. Ed. 2d 69 (1986), Griffith did not reach whether applying Fourth Amendment rules retroactively precludes applying the good faith exception.
Griffith, 479 U.S. at 323.
167 Wn.2d 379, 395-96, 219 P.3d 651 (2009).
Noted at 152 Wn. App. 1060 (2009).
While the parties in this case addressed these issues, they did not do an analysis under State v. Gunwall, 106 Wn.2d 54, 720 P.2d 808 (1986).
Riley also argues that the cases on which the State relies, State v. Brockob, 159 Wn.2d 311, 150 P.3d 59 (2006), and State v. Potter, 156 Wn.2d 835, 132 P.3d 1089 (2006), are not persuasive because they analyze probable cause to search, not privacy rights. But analysis of that issue is the basis for determining that there was a constitutional violation, not whether the evidence should ultimately be suppressed. See Leon, 468 U.S. at 922 (warrant invalid for lack of probable cause).
97 Wn.2d 92, 640 P.2d 1061 (1982).
White, 97 Wn.2d at 109-12.
98 Wn.2d 1, 12, 653 P.2d 1024 (1982), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 831 (1983).
159 Wn.2d 311, 150 P3d 59 (2006).
156 Wn.2d 835, 132 P.3d 1089 (2006).
151 Wn.2d 664, 91 P.3d 875 (2004).
Id. at 677.
Brockob, 159 Wn.2d at 341; Potter, 156 Wn.2d at 843.
Potter, 156 Wn.2d at 843 (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting White, 97 Wn.2d at 103). The law at issue in White was a “stop-and-identify” statute.
68 Brockob, 159 Wn.2d at 342 n.19 (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting White, 97 Wn.2d at 103).
Michigan v. DeFillippo, 443 U.S. 31, 99 S. Ct. 2627, 61 L. Ed. 2d 343 (1979).
70 Id. at 37-38 (emphasis added).
71 Id. at 38 n.3 (emphasis added).
Id. at 38.
443 U.S. at 37-38.
See, e.g., State v. Vrieling, 144 Wn.2d 489, 496, 28 P.3d 762 (2001); State v. Stroud, 106 Wn.2d 144, 153, 720 P.2d 436 (1986), overruled by State v. Valdez, 167 Wn.2d 761, 224 P.3d 751 (2009).
The Gant Court acknowledged as much. 129 S. Ct. at 1718, 1722-24. It also recognized that the officers were acting in good faith reliance on established law. Id. at 1723 n.11.
DeFillippo, 443 U.S. at 37.
Concurrence in Part
¶28 (concurring and dissenting) — As to the issues discussed in the unpublished sections of the majority opinion, I agree with the majority’s analysis and concur therewith.
¶29 As to the issue addressed in the published section of the majority opinion, I do not join in the majority’s conclusion that there exists a good faith exception to the article I, section 7 exclusionary rule. I do not consider our Supreme Court to have recognized the existence of such an exception, nor do I foresee it doing so.
¶30 The majority discerns the existence of a good faith exception in large part based on its analysis of the Supreme Court’s decisions in State v. Brockob, 159 Wn.2d 311, 150 P.3d 59 (2006), and State v. Potter, 156 Wn.2d 835, 132 P.3d 1089 (2006). I do not reach the same conclusion from these cases. To the contrary, I read the most recent of the cases, Brockob, as specifically disclaiming the implication that the court was recognizing the existence of a good faith exception to the exclusionary rule under state constitutional law:
[Appellant] also claims that by arguing that a police officer can arrest a person based on a statute later declared invalid, the State is effectively urging the court to adopt a good faith exception to the exclusionary rule in violation of the privacy rights granted under article I, section 7 of the state constitution. This argument is without merit.
¶31 Furthermore, I do not predict that the Supreme Court will recognize such an exception in the future. Our Supreme Court has “long declined to create ‘good faith’ exceptions to the exclusionary rule in cases in which warrantless searches were based on a reasonable belief by law enforcement officers that they were acting in conformity with one of the recognized exceptions to the warrant requirement.” State v. Morse, 156 Wn.2d 1, 9-10, 123 P.3d 832 (2005). Searches conducted incident to arrest, of course, constitute one such “recognized exception.” State v. Jones, 146 Wn.2d 328, 335, 45 P.3d 1062 (2002).
¶32 Our Supreme Court recently refused to recognize the existence of the inevitable discovery doctrine as an exception to “the nearly categorical exclusionary rule under article I, section 7.” State v. Winterstein, 167 Wn.2d 620, 636, 220 P.3d 1226 (2009). In so holding, the court stressed that article I, section 7
differs from its federal counterpart in that article I, section 7 “clearly recognizes an individual’s right to privacy with no express limitations.” State v. White, 97 Wn.2d 92, 110, 640 P.2d 1061 (1982). Based on the intent of the framers of the Washington Constitution, we have held that the choice of their language “mandate [s] that the right of privacy shall not be diminished by the judicial gloss of a selectively applied exclusionary remedy.” Id. Because the intent was to protect personal rights rather than curb government actions, we recognized that “whenever the right is unreasonably violated, the remedy must follow.” Id.
Winterstein, 167 Wn.2d at 631. These same concerns militate against recognizing the existence of a good faith exception.
¶33 Accordingly, I believe this case to be controlled by our Supreme Court’s recent decisions in State v. Patton, 167 Wn.2d 379, 219 P.3d 651 (2009), and State v. Valdez, 167 Wn.2d 761, 224 P.3d 751 (2009), which collectively mandate reversal of the judgment herein and suppression of the challenged evidence.
Review granted and case remanded at 170 Wn.2d 1001 (2010).
Similarly, I do not perceive the Supreme Court’s decision in State v. Bonds, 98 Wn.2d 1, 653 P.2d 1024 (1982), as supporting the recognition of such an exception. As recently noted by the Supreme Court, Bonds involved a motion to “exclude evidence obtained through illegal but not unconstitutional means that did not violate Washington law.” State v. Winterstein, 167 Wn.2d 620, 632, 220 P.3d 1226 (2009). The result in Bonds was reached, in part, “[bjecause there were no constitutional implications” to the decision. Winterstein, 167 Wn.2d at 632. Bonds does not apply to cases involving constitutional claims. Winterstein, 167 Wn.2d at 632.