State v. McElrath
State v. McElrath
Concurring in Part
I write separately in this case because I concur with part of the majority's analysis and disagree with other parts of it.
I am pleased to concur in the majority's adoption of the Herring good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule.
Unfortunately, I must respectfully dissent from the majority's conclusion that neither arrest in this case comes within the good-faith exception. After ostensibly adopting Herring , the majority analyzes the facts in this case in a manner that is inconsistent with the analysis in Herring . As explained below, the very facts in Herring counsel an outcome different than that reached by the majority. I am concerned that the majority's analysis will leave trial courts uncertain as to whether this Court actually adopted Herring and unclear on how to apply the good faith exception in future cases.
In Herring v. United States ,
Minutes later, the Dale County sheriff's employee compared their computer record with their physical warrants file and discovered that, five months earlier, the warrant listed in the computer records had been recalled.
The record in Herring showed that the Dale County Sheriff's Department maintained physical files containing arrest warrants as well as computer records of those warrants. "For whatever reason," the Court said, those two files did not accurately correspond.
In Herring , the fact that the recordkeeping system of the Dale County Sherriff's Department was internally inconsistent was not deemed by the Court to be reckless or deliberate; it amounted to negligence.
The facts in this case are eerily similar to those in Herring . In Herring , records of warrants were kept in two places; a physical file and a computer file, and those records were inconsistent. Herring ,
As in Herring , Lieutenant Dowell's unrebutted testimony shows that the error on the police department list was in fact a "simple, isolated oversight or inadvertence," State v. Lowe ,
The pivotal question in Herring was whether flawed recordkeeping within a police department triggered the exclusionary rule when inaccurate information from that flawed system was communicated to and relied upon by the officer who arrested the defendant. The same question is presented in the instant case. Herring concluded that the arresting officer was without fault, and that the conduct of the Dale County Sheriff's Department amounted to mere negligence. The majority in the instant case also finds the arresting officer was without fault. Nevertheless, despite the similarity in the facts, the majority in this case concludes that the conduct of the Union City Police Department was "sufficiently deliberate" to trigger the exclusionary rule, "the kind of 'systemic error or reckless disregard of constitutional requirements' against which Herring cautioned." (quoting Herring ,
What raises the inaccurate police recordkeeping in this case to that level? Instead of a fulsome explanation, the majority in this case engages in overstatement, leveraging an isolated error into a "systematic" one by describing an omission on a list as "a system inherently flawed by the maintenance of separate lists and the lack of any regular process by which to reconcile the two."
The pertinent facts in this case are indistinguishable from those in Herring . Herring involved two files on warrants; the error in the computer records was not caught until the physical file was checked. In the instant case, the error on the barred list was not caught until the other list was checked. As in Herring , nothing in this record would support a conclusion that the omission was "recurring," nor did the trial court make any finding to that effect.
The majority points to the fact that almost five years elapsed in this case before the error was caught, as opposed to five months in Herring , as further indication that this was "systematic" error. Quite the *589opposite; coupled with Lieutenant Dowell's testimony that the lists were correct 99% of the time, the longer length of time before discovery of the error in this case shows even more emphatically that the error was "isolated negligence attenuated from the arrest." See Herring ,
Moreover, the majority appears to say that Herring is not applicable in this case because here, unlike Herring , the inaccurate information was maintained within the same police department to which it was later communicated. That is a distinction without a difference.
To be sure, Herring is clear that not "all recordkeeping errors by the police are immune from the exclusionary rule.... If the police have been shown to be reckless in maintaining a warrant system, or to have knowingly made false entries to lay the groundwork for future false arrests, exclusion would certainly be justified under our cases should such misconduct cause a Fourth Amendment violation."
The majority's application of the collective knowledge doctrine muddles the picture even more. The "collective knowledge" or "fellow officer" doctrine is generally understood to allow the corporate or collective knowledge of an officer, obtained from other reliable sources, to establish reasonable suspicion or probable cause for a stop or arrest. The United States Supreme Court first discussed this doctrine in the context of probable cause to support an arrest. See Whiteley v. Warden ,
Relying on People v. Ramirez ,
Importantly, the majority quotes with approval language from Ramirez that automatically imputes to the arresting officer knowledge of the law enforcement agency's clerical error, regardless of whether the error is isolated and inadvertent: "[W]e cannot permit the arresting officer to rely with impunity on his fellow officers' errors of omission, but must impute their accurate knowledge to him."
Ramirez was decided long before Herring . The Court in Herring expressly considered the actions of all of the officers involved, in both Coffee County and Dale County, but its analysis on this issue does not resemble the approach now adopted by the majority in this case. Herring explicitly determined that the investigator from Coffee County did not act improperly by relying on the inaccurate information and that the employees from the Dale County Sherriff's Office were merely negligent-not reckless or deliberate-in failing to update the computer with accurate arrest warrant information. Herring ,
At least one California appeals court has recognized that the approach in Ramirez , adopted by the majority herein, is not consistent with Herring :
In Ramirez , the court suppressed evidence from a booking search after it was determined that the warrant in the computer system providing the basis for the defendant's arrest had been recalled months earlier. Not only does [ People v. ] Troyer , supra , 51 Cal.4th [599] at page 613,120 Cal.Rptr.3d 770 ,246 P.3d 901 [ (2011) ], instruct that we must look to what the officers knew at the time of the search, but it would appear subsequent United States Supreme Court precedent has entirely undermined Ramirez's efficacy. (See Herring v. United States (2009)555 U.S. 135 , 146-148,129 S.Ct. 695 ,172 L.Ed.2d 496 [holding that exclusionary rule suppression should not apply where law enforcement personnel were negligent in failing to expunge from their computer system a warrant that led to the defendant's arrest and a search incident thereto].)
People v. Pou ,
In the face of Ramirez 's inconsistency with Herring , the majority nevertheless approves the language in Ramirez that automatically imputes to the arresting officer knowledge of a law enforcement clerical error, even when the error is isolated and inadvertent. Does the majority expect trial courts applying its ruling to do the same?
As the Supreme Court reiterated in Herring , evidence should be suppressed "only if it can be said that the law enforcement officer had knowledge, or may properly be charged with knowledge, that the search was unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment." Herring ,
Since the majority's analysis of the facts in this case is at odds with Herring 's analysis of strikingly similar facts, I do not know how trial courts are to apply this Court's ruling going forward. Did the majority actually adopt Herring , or did it adopt something else? We must all wait and see.
Accordingly, I concur in the majority's adoption of the Herring good faith exception, but I respectfully dissent from the majority's retreat from Herring in its conclusion that neither arrest in this case comes within the good-faith exception.
The obvious question arises, what if there had been only one list, and it contained an inadvertent omission? Under the majority's analysis, would that too have constituted a "system inherently flawed" amounting to "reckless" or "deliberate" misconduct?
The fact that Justice Lee approves of the majority's analysis of the facts in her separate opinion proves the point. In her separate opinion, Justice Lee asserts that this Court should apply the exclusionary rule to police errors that are merely negligent and "reject the Herring exception." It is unsurprising, then, that she would praise the majority's analysis as "a good roadmap for trial courts," since the majority applies the exclusionary rule to a police error that was merely negligent, consistent with rejection of the Herring exception.
The majority refers to "ease of access to information within the same department" as the reason why this distinction in the facts is significant. This is slightly puzzling. In Herring , as in this case, both of the lists in question were housed within the same department. In Herring , unlike this case, the arresting officer was in a neighboring county police department. However, in neither case was the error caught by the arresting officer . Consequently, whether or not the arresting officer is in the same police department as the erroneous records would appear to make no difference.
Two years later, the Court reaffirmed Herring in Davis v. U.S. ,
Similarly, the majority quotes with approval an assertion in Defendant McElrath's brief that also would invoke the exclusionary rule when an arrest is based on flawed law enforcement information, regardless of the level of fault: "[T]o allow a police officer to arrest an individual based upon a list that the police officer's own agency creates, maintains and has exclusive control over and then claim good faith based upon negligently created information from the list would create a dangerous precedent." (Emphasis added).
Opinion of the Court
*567We granted the State's permission to appeal in this case to determine whether to adopt, as a matter of state law, the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule set forth by the United States Supreme Court in Herring v. United States ,
As a result of the defendant's arrests as described in detail infra , the defendant was charged by separate indictments with simple possession of marijuana, a Class A misdemeanor, in the first count of each indictment and with simple possession of marijuana for the fourth time, a Class E felony, in the second count of each indictment because the defendant had been convicted of simple possession on January 16, 2015; October 7, 2004; and April 19, 2001. See
I. Facts
On April 8, 2015, Union City Police Officer Chris Cummings was patrolling an area of Union City and passed the Union City Housing Authority property. Officer Cummings observed the defendant standing outside of the community center. Acting upon his belief that the defendant was barred from the housing authority property, Officer Cummings radioed dispatch to check the "barred" list. The dispatcher advised Officer Cummings that the defendant was, indeed, on the "barred" list. Officer Cummings called for another unit to assist, then drove back to the housing authority property. The defendant and another individual walked inside the community center as Officer Cummings approached in his vehicle. As Officer Cummings began to follow the defendant, the defendant "took off" through the building toward the rear of the structure, where Officer Cummings stopped the defendant *568and asked him to accompany Officer Cummings outside. Officer Cummings then placed the defendant under arrest for criminal trespass and performed a search incident to arrest. The search yielded approximately ten grams of marijuana from the defendant's pocket.
On April 27, 2015, Officer Cummings was again patrolling the area that encompassed the Union City Housing Authority property when he observed an apparent altercation on the property. He approached to break up the fight and observed several people present, including the defendant. Officer Cummings warned the defendant that he was barred from the property and that he should leave the property or be escorted to jail. The defendant continued to make disparaging comments toward Officer Cummings, which prompted him to arrest the defendant for criminal trespass a second time. During this incident, the defendant was uncooperative and did not cease his combative behavior until Officer Cummings threatened to use a taser. Officer Cummings required the assistance of additional officers to be able to perform a search of the defendant, which yielded approximately four grams of marijuana.
Union City Police Department Lieutenant Melvin Dowell was responsible for maintaining a list of people barred from housing authority properties and kept a copy of the list in the dispatch office. When an individual is barred from a housing authority property, Lieutenant Dowell sends the individual a criminal trespass letter containing all of the relevant information about the barring. Being barred is not permanent; when an individual completes the application to request to be removed from the list and all of the necessary parties have approved the request, Lieutenant Dowell notifies the individual that his name has been removed from the list, and he then gives a copy of the notice to the office secretary to have the person removed from the barred list. Officers call in for information when they have a question about the list.
Officer Cummings brought with him to the suppression hearing two printouts of the "barred" list. The first list was printed on March 23, 2015, and the second list was printed on May 11, 2015, subsequent to the defendant's arrests. The March list indicated that the defendant was barred from the Union City Housing Authority property on October 19, 2007, because of illegal drug offenses. The May list also named the defendant as being barred from the property.
Following a third incident that is not subject to this appeal, Officer Cummings learned that the defendant had actually been removed from the barred list prior to the two offenses involved in this case. The defendant had apparently completed the requisite procedure to be removed from the list, and his request had been approved and was effective as of August 16, 2010. The defendant's name appeared on an April 11, 2014 list of people who had been removed from the barred list, but his name also remained on the actual list of barred people. Essentially, a clerical error had occurred. As a result of the arrests in these two instances, the defendant was re-barred on May 15, 2015.
At the conclusion of the suppression hearing, the trial court granted the defendant's motion to suppress, stating:
This matter is here on a motion to suppress a warrantless arrest of the defendant. Therefore, the burden is on the state to prove that ... it is an exception to the warrant requirement.
I think we're clear here that the question now is do we want to have a good-faith exception to that requirement in *569order to get around the exclusionary rule.
The Court finds that, as I had earlier asked, but for the mistaken inclusion of the defendant, Mr. McElrath, on the barred list, he would not have been arrested. The Court finds that Officer Cummings testified that on April 8th, he saw the defendant standing outside the housing authority's location; he thought that the defendant was on the barred list. I believe he even testified that he keeps a copy of the barred list. So he called dispatch to verify, and dispatch showed that he was on the barred list. I think it's pretty much stipulated to, and if one looks through the documents that that was a mistake. I'm not a hundred percent sure whose mistake it was. [Lieutenant] Dowell testified that he maintains the list and that Mr. McElrath had been barred in 2007 but had requested in 2010 to be removed, and that there is a form to be filled out to be removed from the criminal trespass list, which Mr. McElrath did fill out and was approved by the chief of police for the Union City Police Department, Ms. Burden for the housing authority and a manager from East Gate Village. So it was approved that he be removed from the barred list. And that's also reflected in Exhibit 4 that shows the revised list dated 4/11/14 that he should have been removed - 4/11/14 - but for whatever reason, the dispatcher or whoever gets the running list didn't remove it; although we do have Ms. Burden testifying that somehow the defendant ended up on both lists. He was on the ... unbarred list and the barred list.
So but for the dispatcher picking up the barred list, she could have easily - he or she easily could have picked up the unbarred list, I guess, in light of the fact that they keep two lists. I don't know why you would keep two lists. One would think that you would only go with the barred list and not have an unbarred list. You're either on the barred list or you're not on the barred list.
The [S]tate has moved the Court to find that Officer Cummings had a good-faith exception here and that he did nothing wrong, and I find that Officer Cummings didn't do anything wrong. However, so far, the Supreme Court case[s] in Tennessee and the criminal court case[s] in Tennessee hold that we don't have a good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule. It's my understanding of the law that we can be more restrictive than the federal government in the exclusionary rule. If this were a federal case in U.S. Federal Court, I don't think there'd be any doubt that the officer would have been entitled to bring this evidence up and to keep Mr. McElrath in court. However, I'm not inclined to make that decision based upon the cases that have been cited and the holdings that are currently in place in the state of Tennessee. Right now, we don't have a good-faith exception, and, therefore, I am going to suppress the evidence.
The State appealed the trial court's decisions to the Court of Criminal Appeals, which affirmed suppression of the evidence. State v. McElrath , W2015-01794-CCA-R3-CD,
*570II. Standard of Review
The facts in this matter are not in dispute. Rather, our review is limited to whether the Court of Criminal Appeals properly declined to apply the good-faith exception espoused in Herring v. United States ,
III. Analysis
A. The Fourth Amendment
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees that " '[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause....' " State v. Christensen ,
Similarly, article I, section 7 of the Tennessee Constitution provides that " 'the people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and possessions, from unreasonable searches and seizures.' " Christensen ,
"These exceptions include searches and seizures conducted incident to a lawful arrest, those yielding contraband in plain view, those in the hot pursuit of a fleeing criminal, those limited to a stop and frisk based on reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, those based on probable cause in the presence of exigent circumstances, and those based on consent."
*571(citing State v. Nicholson ,
B. The Exclusionary Rule
Despite its protections, the Fourth Amendment " 'contains no provision expressly precluding the use of evidence obtained in violation of its commands,' Arizona v. Evans ,
The purpose of the exclusionary rule under the Fourth Amendment is to deter police misconduct, id. at 141,
C. The Good-Faith Exception
In this case, the State urges this Court to adopt the good-faith exception set forth by the United States Supreme Court in Herring. This Court has not previously had an opportunity to consider whether to apply Herring in Tennessee, but the facts of this case squarely present the question of whether it is prudent for us to do so at this time.
1. Evolution of the Federal Good-Faith Exception
The landmark decision establishing the federal good-faith exception was issued by the United States Supreme Court in United States v. Leon ,
The United States Supreme Court granted the State's petition for writ of certiorari. The Leon Court noted that the exclusionary rule "operates as 'a judicially created remedy designed to safeguard Fourth Amendment rights generally through its deterrent effect....' "
The Court, emphasizing that the purpose behind the exclusionary rule is the deterrent effect on police misconduct, stated, "[W]here the officer's conduct is objectively reasonable, 'excluding the evidence will not further the ends of the exclusionary rule in any appreciable way; ... [e]xcluding the evidence can in no way affect his future conduct unless it is to make him less willing to do his duty.' " Id. at 919-20,
The Supreme Court has expanded the good-faith exception in other cases. In Massachusetts v. Sheppard ,
In Davis , the Supreme Court expanded the good-faith exception and held that evidence obtained during a search conducted in reasonable reliance on binding precedent is not subject to the exclusionary rule.
2. Herring v. United States
Although this case was decided before Davis , because of its factual similarity to the instant case and the State's urging this Court to adopt its rationale, we discuss it separately rather than as part of the evolution of the United States Supreme Court's development of the federal exclusionary rule.
In Herring , the defendant traveled to the Coffee County, Alabama Sheriff's department to retrieve something from his impounded truck. Herring ,
However, the Dale County warrant clerk had mistakenly reported an arrest warrant that had been recalled five months earlier.
In the District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, Herring moved to *574suppress the evidence against him on the ground that his initial arrest had been illegal because the warrant had been rescinded.
The Herring Court began by reviewing and emphasizing the rationales and holdings of the prior Supreme Court precedent embodying the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule.
The Supreme Court explained that "error that arises from nonrecurring and attenuated negligence is thus far removed from the core concerns that led us to adopt the rule in the first place." Id. at 144,
3. Other Jurisdictions
In searching for guidance on this issue, we note the lack of a similar fact pattern-a *575person arrested without a warrant based on a specific condition such as being barred from property-in any other jurisdiction. However, because Tennessee law permits a warrantless misdemeanor arrest for criminal trespass when an officer has knowledge of the defendant's status of being barred from the housing authority property, for the purpose of our analysis, we find instructive a comparison of cases in which law enforcement officers acted upon an arrest warrant that was later determined to be invalid,
Some jurisdictions have rejected a good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule on the basis of state law. See State v. Koivu ,
Other states have applied the good-faith exception in a variety of circumstances. See Shotts v. State ,
Still other jurisdictions have recognized the good-faith exception but concluded it was inapplicable under the facts of the case. People v. Arnold ,
4. Tennessee's Good-Faith Exception
Despite having opportunities to do so, Tennessee did not adopt a good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule until 2016. See State v. Keith ,
In 2016, this Court was squarely presented with an opportunity to decide whether to apply the Davis good-faith exception in Tennessee. State v. Reynolds ,
The State successfully appealed to the Court of Criminal Appeals, which stated that even if the implied consent law were found to be unconstitutional, Tennessee should adopt the good-faith exception set forth in the United States Supreme Court's decision in Davis v. United States , which held that "[e]vidence obtained during a search conducted in reasonable reliance on binding precedent is not subject to the exclusionary rule." Davis ,
This Court next considered, in three separate cases, the good-faith exception as it pertained to technical flaws in otherwise valid search warrants. In State v. Davidson ,
Next, in Lowe , we held that "a good-faith clerical error that results in an inconsequential variation between the three copies of a search warrant required pursuant to Rule 41, in and of itself, does not entitle the moving party to suppression of the evidence collected pursuant to the warrant."
5. Application
We have reviewed cases from other jurisdictions that support both the State's *578and the defendant's positions in this case, as well as the development of the federal good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule and our own. In our view, having the issue squarely presented, it is appropriate at this point to adopt the good-faith exception set forth in Herring and to hold, as the United States Supreme Court did, "that when police mistakes are the result of negligence ... rather than systemic error or reckless disregard of constitutional requirements, any marginal deterrence does not 'pay its' way.' " Herring ,
Having concluded that the good-faith exception can hereinafter be considered in Tennessee, we next consider the nature of the police error in the instant case.
In the instant case, Officer Cummings, upon seeing the defendant on property from which the officer thought he had been barred, contacted dispatch to confirm the defendant's status and received confirmation that the defendant had been barred. Acting on the erroneous confirmation, Officer Cummings arrested the defendant for criminal trespass and seized marijuana from the defendant's pocket. Nearly three weeks later, a similar situation ensued, and Officer Cummings again arrested the defendant for trespass and seized additional marijuana at that time.
With regard to the information provided to Officer Cummings associated with the first arrest, we must question, as did the trial court, the propriety of the police department's practice of maintaining two lists-one for names of barred individuals and one for the names of individuals who had been removed from the list. It clearly did not provide for a system of checks and balances to prevent errors such as this from occurring. Whatever the reason might have been, it clearly fell short of its intended purpose. The mistake existed for approximately five years before being brought to light.
With regard to the second arrest, we note that the transcript indicates that at some point, the defendant and his aunt visited Lieutenant Dowell at the police department *579and complained that the defendant was not barred from the housing authority property at the time of at least one of his arrests. At that time, Lieutenant Dowell consulted both the barred list and the list of unbarred individuals and noticed the discrepancy but said, "[A] mistake was made that he was still on this list...." The testimony is unclear as to exactly when the department was put on notice about the mistake-whether this occurred after the defendant's first arrest or the second-and there are no exhibits to clarify this point.
As stated supra , we begin with the proposition that warrantless searches and seizures are presumptively unreasonable, and any evidence that is discovered as a result thereof is subject to suppression. Turner ,
In this case, aside from a brief comment by Lieutenant Dowell that the list is correct "99%" of the time, the record is devoid of any evidence that the error in this case was a result of a good-faith mistake. Lieutenant Dowell did not provide a factual basis for this statistic. For example, Lieutenant Dowell did not testify that he, or anyone in his department, reconciled the two lists on a regular basis.
By contrast, the proof in Herring included a description of Dale County's standard procedure, which involved the court clerk's office or the judge's chambers calling the warrant clerk when the warrant had been recalled. Herring ,
In Herring , the error in the Dale County warrant database at issue remained undiscovered for five months; in this case, the error remained undetected for almost five years. The constitutional violation here resulted not from "nonrecurring and attenuated negligence" but rather from a system inherently flawed by the maintenance of separate lists and the lack of any regular process by which to reconcile the two.
Moreover, in opining that the facts of Herring and this case are "indistinguishable," Justice Kirby's separate opinion highlights the fact that in both cases, the errors were not discovered until the second source (in Herring , the physical warrant file; in this case, the "remove from barred list") was consulted. A key and insurmountable difference is that the Herring error was caught within minutes; the error in this case was not caught until the defendant himself, together with his aunt, met with Lieutenant Dowell to point out the error. By that time, he had been arrested not once but twice on the faulty *580information. We conclude that the State failed to carry its burden of proving that the evidence seized pursuant to the defendant's warrantless arrests should be exempted from exclusion by the good-faith doctrine. We hold that the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule does not apply to the facts of this case.
Sound policy reasons support this conclusion. The Herring Court reiterated, "[T]he benefits of deterrence must outweigh the costs." Herring ,
In Leon , the Supreme Court stated, "If exclusion of evidence ... is to have any deterrent effect, therefore, it must alter the behavior of individual law enforcement officers or the policies of their departments." Leon , 468 U.S. at 918,
In the defendant's/appellee's brief, he argued:
In the case at hand, to allow a police officer to arrest an individual based upon a list that the police officer's own agency creates, maintains and has exclusive control over and then claim good faith based upon negligently created information from the list would create a dangerous precedent. The risk of potential abuse is very palpable and the exclusionary rule serves as a deterrent to future abuses. In the Herring case, the police officer's information was garnered from another police agency's database and had not been maintained by the arresting officer's county. That scenario is distinguishable from the case at hand.
We agree. This Court has recognized the doctrine of "collective knowledge" of police officers. State v. Clayton ,
*581Bishop ,
In light of our adherence to the principles of collective knowledge when determining probable cause, we find it applicable here. "[I]f we impute to the arresting officer the collective knowledge of law enforcement agencies for the purpose of establishing probable cause, we must also charge him with knowledge of information exonerating a suspect formerly wanted in connection with a crime." People v. Ramirez ,
The point is not that probable cause is lacking because it turned out that the "facts" upon which the officer acted were actually not true ... Rather, the point is that the police may not rely upon incorrect or incomplete information when they ... are at fault in permitting the records to remain uncorrected.
5 Wayne R. LaFave, Search and Seizure: A Treatise on the Fourth Amendment § 3.5(d), at 359-60 (5th ed. 2012). "The notion may be that when the law enforcement system elects to construct an elaborate recordkeeping system it must be charged with the responsibility of keeping that system reasonably up to date." Id. at 362-63 (explaining that while courts are "understandably not inclined to infer police misconduct" when the records are outdated by a few days but that "to tolerate much longer delays on the bizarre notion that police 'forgot' " to update the system is clearly wrong).
In Leon , the United States Supreme Court enunciated the same concept, stating:
References to "officer" throughout this opinion should not be read too narrowly. It is necessary to consider the objective reasonableness, not only of the officers who eventually executed a warrant, but also of the officers who originally obtained it or who provided information material to the probable-cause determination. Nothing in our opinion suggests, for example, that an officer could obtain a warrant on the basis of a "bare bones" affidavit and then rely on colleagues who are ignorant of the circumstances under which the warrant was obtained to conduct the search.
Leon , 468 U.S. at 925 n.24,
Had the information regarding the defendant's removal from the barred list been entered appropriately into the database by Lieutenant Dowell or his staff, Officer Cummings would have received an accurate response to his inquiry, i.e., he would have been informed there was no basis for detaining the defendant for criminal trespass. Because the reinstatement of the defendant was or should have been within the "collective knowledge" of the police, "we cannot permit the arresting officer to rely with impunity on his fellow *582officers' errors of omission, but must impute their accurate knowledge to him." Ramirez ,
Justice Kirby's separate opinion makes much of the majority's reasoning that the knowledge of Lieutenant Dowell and his staff should be imputed to Officer Cummings because they work within the same police department. We agree that Herring does not turn on whether the information is disseminated to the same department that collected it or to a sister agency. However, in this case, the Union City dispatcher could have easily indicated that McElrath was on the barred list and then quickly consulted the "remove from barred" list to confirm it. The ease of access to information within the same department is much greater than that of a different department. While Herring could still apply to intradepartmental information, it does not apply in this case, and it is, indeed, a distinction with a difference.
This error cannot be saved by application of the Herring good-faith doctrine. Applying these fundamental concepts to the instant case, we conclude that the conduct at issue was so objectively culpable as to require exclusion and that the deterrence obtained by excluding the evidence outweighs the societal costs. The arrests arose not from "nonrecurring and attenuated negligence" but rather from a system that was so fraught with problems that a mistake remained undetected for several years. This case presents a factual scenario that falls outside of the realm of "good faith" and is more closely akin to the "reckless[ ] or grossly negligent" category of errors proscribed by Lowe, 552 S.W.3d at 860. The trial court properly suppressed the evidence in both cases, and the judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeals is affirmed.
CONCLUSION
Therefore, we adopt the good-faith exception as set forth in Herring v. United States . However, we conclude that the facts of this case do not support application of the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule. We affirm the judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeals. Costs are taxed to the State.
Sharon G. Lee, J., filed a separate opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part. Holly Kirby, J., filed a separate opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part.
Sharon G. Lee, J., concurring in the suppression of evidence; dissenting from the adoption of an exclusionary rule exception for constitutional violations caused by careless police recordkeeping.
A Union City Police Department officer twice arrested and searched Jerome Antonio McElrath because of systemic and long-standing errors in the police department's records. By stopping and searching McElrath without probable cause based on these errors, the police violated McElrath's constitutional right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. I disagree with the majority's adoption of an exception to the exclusionary rule to excuse negligent police recordkeeping. That *583said, I agree with the majority's conclusion that the negligence exception does not apply here because of the police department's systemically flawed recordkeeping process. The majority provides a good roadmap for trial courts to make the fact-intensive determination of whether isolated or systemic negligence caused the police error and, thus, whether the negligence exception applies.
On April 8, 2015, McElrath was standing outside the Union City Housing Authority's community center-a place he had a right to be. A police officer saw McElrath and believed he was barred from the Housing Authority's property. The officer checked with the police department's dispatcher, who confirmed that McElrath was on the police department's barred list for the Housing Authority. The officer then arrested McElrath for criminal trespass and searched him, finding marijuana. A couple of weeks later, the officer again saw McElrath on the property of the Housing Authority, arrested him a second time for criminal trespass and searched him, finding marijuana.
But the police department's records were wrong and had been wrong for nearly five years. For some unexplained reason, the police department kept two lists: a list of people barred from the Housing Authority's property and another list of people removed from the barred list. In 2007, the police department placed McElrath on the barred list. In 2010, the police department approved McElrath's request for removal from the barred list. The police department added McElrath's name to the removed list but failed to take his name off the barred list. The police department did not merge or reconcile the two lists, resulting in McElrath's name remaining on the barred list for almost five years. To make things worse, the dispatcher only checked the barred list, not the list of people who had been removed from the barred list. McElrath brought the error to the attention of the police department after he had been twice wrongfully arrested because of the faulty recordkeeping.
This haphazard recordkeeping system was bound to result in errors. Although a police department lieutenant testified that the barred list was correct 99% of the time, he offered no basis or explanation for his conclusion. And no basis for this self-serving statistic appears in the record. What we do know is that for almost five years, the police department did not update its barred list to remove McElrath's name, and in 2015, police arrested McElrath two times because of police department errors.
Today, a majority of the Tennessee Supreme Court adopts an exception to the exclusionary rule to excuse negligent police recordkeeping based on Herring v. United States ,
In Herring , a majority of the United States Supreme Court, in a 5-4 opinion, ruled that the contraband found in the search was admissible even though the deputy had violated Herring's Fourth Amendment rights.
I agree with the four dissenting justices in Herring , who concluded that "[n]egligent recordkeeping errors by law enforcement threaten individual liberty, are susceptible to deterrence by the exclusionary rule, and cannot be remedied effectively through other means."
The exclusionary rule safeguards these constitutional rights by providing a remedy for the violation of the Fourth Amendment and Article I, section 7. This remedy is the suppression of evidence obtained through an illegal search or seizure. State v. Reynolds ,
Under the exclusionary rule, police gain no benefit from an illegal search and, thus, have a strong incentive to comply with the constitutional prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures. See Reynolds ,
Many legal commentators have appropriately criticized the Herring exception for negligent police recordkeeping. See 1 Steve C. Posner, Modern Privacy & Surveillance Law § 2.08 (Matthew Bender & Co. 2018) (asserting that the Herring exception is tantamount to a policy decision that "convicting criminals is more important than preventing citizen victimization due to police negligence in record keeping"); Thomas K. Clancy, The Irrelevancy of the Fourth Amendment in the Roberts Court , 85 CHI.-KENT L. REV. 191, 207 (2010) (predicting that a broad reading of the "mere negligence" standard under Herring might "make many-if not most-Fourth Amendment violations inappropriate candidates for suppression"); George M. Dery, III, Good Enough for Government Work: The Court's Dangerous Decision, in Herring v. United States, to Limit the Exclusionary Rule to Only the Most Culpable Police Behavior , 20 GEO. MASON U. C.R. L.J. 1, 27 (2009) (contending that Herring signals to the police that negligence by individual agents need not be avoided); Alex R. Hess, Herring v. United States: Are Errors in Government Databases Preventing Defendants from Receiving Fair Trials? , 11 J. HIGH TECH. L. 129, 131 (2010) (pointing out the unfairness in admitting illegally seized evidence while giving the government a pass for keeping incorrect records); Matthew Allan Josephson, To Exclude or Not Exclude: The Future of the Exclusionary Rule After Herring v. United States , 43 CREIGHTON L. REV. 175, 196 (2009) (noting that if Herring allows the admission of illegally seized evidence, as long as the police did not act culpably, then the warrant requirement would eventually not be much of a requirement at all); Candace C. Kilpinen, Comment, Herring v. United States: A Threat to Fourth Amendment Rights? , 44 VAL. U. L. REV. 747, 756 (2010) (warning that Herring may result not only in the loss of the exclusionary rule but also in the demise of the Fourth Amendment itself); Wayne R. Lafave, The Smell of Herring: A Critique of the Supreme Court's Latest Assault on the Exclusionary Rule , 99 J. CRIM. L. & CRIMINOLOGY 757, 782 (2009) (concluding that police are better positioned to remedy their own errors and might do so "if the exclusionary rule were there to remove the incentive to do otherwise"); Jennifer E. Laurin, Trawling for Herring: Lessons in Doctrinal Borrowing and Convergence , 111 COLUM. L. REV. 670, 744 (2011) (concluding that Herring "may well represent a sweeping rollback of the exclusionary rule that will effectively preclude any remedy for entire categories of Fourth Amendment violations-in particular, those resulting from negligent police conduct"); Claire Angelique Nolasco et al., What Herring Hath Wrought: An Analysis of Post-Herring Cases in the Federal Courts , 38 AM. J. CR. L. 221, 231 (2011) (quoting United States v. Jones ,
Against this backdrop, a majority of the Tennessee Supreme Court in State v. Reynolds ,
*586The exception was based on Davis v. United States ,
We have interpreted Article I, section 7 of the Tennessee Constitution to be "identical in intent and purpose with the Fourth Amendment," Reynolds ,
In sum, declining to hold the police accountable when their negligence results in a constitutional violation erodes public trust in the judicial system, makes courts participants in "official lawlessness," and signals that the government may indeed profit sometimes "from its lawless behavior." Herring ,
Although I dissent from the adoption of the Herring exception for negligence, I concur in the majority's decision that *587McElrath's arrests were the result of long-standing mistakes in the police department's records caused by an inherently flawed recordkeeping system.
The offense dates in this case occurred in 2015; at that time, the 2014 version of the Tennessee Code made simple possession of marijuana, third or subsequent conviction, a Class E felony.
To be clear, in this context "invalid" refers to a warrant that officers believed at the time to be valid but is later determined to have been recalled or otherwise found to be without force and effect. We do not intend to include in this discussion warrants that were challenged because of clerical problems, as that situation has already been addressed by this Court. See Lowe,
Our adoption of Herring' s good-faith exception is consistent with the recent amendment to Rule 41 of the Tennessee Rules of Criminal Procedure. Tenn. R. Crim. P. 41 (as amended July 1, 2018). Effective July 1, 2018, Rule 41 has been amended to provide trial courts the discretion to determine whether to exclude evidence that was seized pursuant to a search warrant that meets constitutional requirements but is noncompliant with Rule 41 's technical requirements. Lowe , 552 S.W.3d at 854 n.9. The amendment also aligns Rule 41 with recent statutory changes and developments in case law. Id. (citing State v. Tuttle ,
Reference
- Full Case Name
- STATE of Tennessee v. Jerome Antonio MCELRATH
- Cited By
- 6 cases
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- Published