United States v. Leon (1984) – PLSC 337-01: The American Legal System

In 1981 in Burbank, California, the police received an anonymous tip naming Patsy Steward and Armando Sanchez as drub dealers. Following this tip, the police began surveillance of several residences in connection with the two, and along with information obtained from a second informant, a senior level police officer, they were issued a warrant to search these residences.

The search of the home revealed large quantities of drugs and four suspected drug dealers were arrested. In trial, defense attorneys for these drug dealers argued that the search warrant was invalid due to the lack of verified credibility of the original informant as well as the fact most of the information used in the affidavit was collected 5 months prior to the issuance of the warrant.

In response, the government did not disagree with the defense attorney’s claim that the warrant was invalid, however, they argued the entire case should not be thrown out due to a defective warrant, citing that the police had acted in “good faith” and believed they had a legitimate warrant.

The legal question put forward by this case asks whether the Fourth Amendment’s exclusionary rule, which prohibits evidence collected in violation of the defendant’s constitutional rights to be admissible in a criminal prosecution, be modified so as to not to prohibit the use of evidence if the evidence was obtained by officers acting in a “reasonable reliance on a warrant issued by a detached and neutral magistrate but ultimately found to be unsupported by probable cause.”

Justice White delivered the majority opinion on this case. He argued that the exclusionary rule was meant to “deter police misconduct rather than to punish magistrates and judges for their errors.” He then explained that there is no evidence that this ruling would prevent judges and magistrates from ignoring Fourth Amendment rights, and that judges and magistrates are neutral and have no stake in the outcome of criminal prosecutions. Justice White maintains that the suppression of evidence should be ordered in a case-by-case basis and where exclusion would promote the true purposes of the exclusionary rule, and it is the responsibility of the magistrate to determine if the warrant is substantiated by evidence to support probable cause.

Justice Brennan, joined by Justice Marshall, filed a dissenting opinion stating that with this decision the Court “sanctions the use in the prosecution’s case-in-chief of illegally obtained evidence against an individual whose rights have been violated.” He explained the “cost and benefit” analysis that created the justification for the “good faith” exception have created “an illusion of technical precision and ineluctability,” and that in the government’s efforts to fight crime they have conformed to expedient solutions instead of examining the price society will pay in the long term.

While I understand Justice Brennan’s concern in his dissenting opinion that with the Court’s decision to adopt the “good faith” exception to the exclusionary clause they have chosen the “easy” solution to fight crime instead of the just one, I am inclined to agree with the majority opinion. As mentioned in class today, the law is not a constant. It’s interpretation is ever-changing, and the “good faith” exception is just another example of this. The “good faith” exception allows independent judges and magistrates to uphold the values of the Fourth Amendment, while not impeding the efforts of law-abiding law enforcement officials. It is at the root of responsibility of judges and magistrates to protect citizens rights, and this exception does nothing to deter this responsibility, rather it allows for the courts to look at each case as an individual situation, and use the Fourth Amendment, exclusionary clause, and good faith clause to determine the rights of the defendant.

Alicia Jiggetts says:

March 27, 2017 at 3:21 pm

I agree with Benjamin’s statement that the “good faith” exception does help magistrates uphold the values of the the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement for searches and seizures. In the U.S. v. Leon case in particular, the magistrate who issued the warrant to law enforcement did indeed reasonably believe that the police acted in good faith. However, I do think that there is some cause for caution when using the good faith exception. Law enforcement officers could claim to be acting in good faith in order to get a magistrate to issue a warrant, even if the officer As mentioned in class, an officer could essentially create an anonymous tip for him or herself, given that the stringent requirements of the Aguilar- Spinelli test are no longer applicable to anonymous tips. Because magistrates are neutral actors in this process, law enforcement may be able to find ways to manipulate them to get their way.

Another issue with the “good faith” exception is that one magistrate’s perception of good faith may not coincide with another magistrate’s perception of good faith. Magistrate A may believe that officers with an unconfirmed anonymous tip are acting in good faith and issue a warrant, but Magistrate B may want a more detailed tip from a reliable source. The discretionary aspect of the good faith requirement could be problematic, which I think is what the dissenting Justices were concerned about. The police officers in Leon did jump the gun on surveilling the defendants based on an anonymous tip of questionable reliability. The magistrate as a neutral actor would not have known that the police had done such things. Hence, there is a lot the police can set up prior to getting the search warrant in order to establish the “good faith” and probable cause that the magistrates need prior to issuing the warrant for searching and seizing.