by Douglas Ankney

The Supreme Court of Minnesota declined to extend the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule, as adopted under the Minnesota Constitution, to a search and arrest based on a quashed warrant that appears active to law enforcement because of a clerical error by court administration.

In November 2020, the Rice County District Court issued a bench warrant for Rebecca Julie Malecha for failure to appear. On December 14, 2020, the District Court granted Malecha’s motion to quash the warrant. But due to a clerical error by the court’s administration, the order quashing the warrant wasn’t transmitted to either the Rice County Sheriff’s Office (“RCSO”) or to the National Crime Information Center (“NCIC”).

On March 7, 2021, a Faribault police officer arrested Malecha on the belief that the bench warrant was still active. Pursuant to established law enforcement procedure, the officer contacted his dispatcher to confirm the validity of the warrant. An officer with the Rice County Jail confirmed that the warrant was active per the NCIC and the RCSO files. During the search incident to arrest, the officer discovered methamphetamine.

On March 8, 2021, the Rice County Court Administration issued a “notice of judicial determination” to the police providing “verification that ... [the District Court] did grant the request to recall the warrant on December 14, 2020 ... and the warrant was recalled on December 15, 2020.”

On March 9, 2021, the State charged Malecha with four controlled substance crimes. Malecha moved to suppress the evidence and dismiss the charges on the ground that the officer subjected her to an unlawful arrest and search under the Minnesota Constitution because the warrant had been quashed. At a hearing on the motion, the District Court concluded that it “is clear from the facts that the warrant was quashed by the District Court and thus was no longer active, regardless of what information was provided to law enforcement.” Consequently, the arrest violated Minnesota’s Constitution, and the exclusionary rule, if applied, prevented the State from using evidence obtained from the arrest and search.

The court further determined that even though officers believed the warrant was active, the good-faith exception did not apply because, under Minnesota Supreme Court precedent, the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies only when police obtained evidence in reasonable reliance on binding appellate precedent. In the present case, police did not rely on binding precedent but on information not correctly updated by court administration. Therefore, the District Court ruled that the exclusionary rule applied and granted the suppression motion. The State timely appealed.

The Court of Appeals (“COA”) determined that “the police did nothing wrong” because the warrant was still active in the NCIC database and they have a duty to “execute, not question, judicial orders.” The COA reversed the District Court, concluding that because there wasn’t any police misconduct to deter, the exclusionary rule did not apply. The Minnesota Supreme Court granted Malecha’s request for further review.

The Court observed the “Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Article I, Section 10, of the Minnesota Constitution each protect the right to be free from ‘unreasonable searches and seizures.’”

“Warrantless searches and seizures are per se unreasonable.” Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967). However, one of the many exceptions to the warrant requirement is a search incident to a lawful arrest that allows police “to conduct a full search of the person who has been lawfully arrested.” State v. Bernard, 859 N.W.2d 762 (Minn. 2015) (quoting United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218 (1973)).

But neither the U.S. nor the Minnesota Constitution provides a “remedy available in the event of an unreasonable search or seizure by law enforcement.” Therefore, to “compel respect for the constitutional guaranty” of the Fourth Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court “has recognized the exclusionary rule as a ‘prudential’ doctrine that requires the suppression of illegally obtained evidence.” Davis v. United States, 564 U.S. 229 (2011). First recognized in Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383 (1914), and applied to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961), the exclusionary rule was initially a remedy available for any Fourth Amendment violation. But the U.S. Supreme Court slowly whittled away the exclusionary rule’s application to include only those cases “where its remedial objectives are thought most efficaciously served.” United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338 (1974).

Originally, the U.S. Supreme Court identified “the deterrence of police misconduct and the preservation of judicial integrity as purposes of the exclusionary rule, but has subsequently identified deterrence as the sole purpose served by exclusion in federal jurisprudence.” Compare Elkins v. United States, 364 U.S. 206 (1960), with Davis.

Beginning in United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897 (1984), the U.S. Supreme Court limited the exclusionary remedy via numerous “good-faith” exceptions. The Leon Court considered whether the exclusionary rule applies where the evidence was obtained based on a warrant that was later declared invalid for lack of probable cause. That court “concluded that if police act ‘in objective good-faith or their transgressions have been minor,’ the ‘substantial social costs’ of excluding relevant evidence outweigh the exclusionary rule’s benefits, and observed that ‘the exclusionary rule is designed to deter police misconduct rather than to punish the errors of judges and magistrates.’” In sum, “Leon counsels that the exclusionary rule applies only if suppressing the disputed evidence would have an appreciable deterrent effect on unlawful police conduct.”

The U.S. Supreme Court expanded the good-faith exception to other instances where exclusion would not appreciably deter unlawful police conduct. (See opinion for complete list of supporting citations.) In Arizona v. Evans, 514 U.S. 1 (1995), the U.S. Supreme Court applied the good-faith exception to circumstances nearly identical to the present case. The Court explained: “In Evans, Phoenix police arrested the defendant on a quashed warrant that appeared active to law enforcement because of a court administration clerical error.”

Nevertheless, the Minnesota Supreme Court is the final interpreter of the Minnesota Constitution, City of Golden Valley v. Wiebesick, 899 N.W.2d 152 (Minn. 2017); therefore, Evans does not control as to the remedy for a violation of the Minnesota Constitution, the Court declared. It observed “[w]e have adopted the good-faith exception under the Minnesota Constitution in only one limited circumstance: when law enforcement officers obtain evidence in reasonable reliance on binding appellate precedent that specifically authorizes the police conduct at issue.” State v. Lindquist, 869 N.W.2d 863 (Minn. 2015). But the Minnesota Supreme Court has since declined to extend the good-faith exception. State v. Leonard, 943 N.W.2d 149 (Minn. 2020).

In Lindquist, police performed a warrantless blood draw from a suspect who fled the scene of an automobile accident and refused a breath test. The police did so in reliance on State v. Netland, 762 N.W.2d 202 (Minn. 2009). But while Lundquist’s appeal was pending, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Missouri v. McNeely, 569 U.S. 141 (2013), overturning the “single-factor exigency analysis that authorized police to conduct the warrantless blood draw at issue in Lindquist.” The Lindquist Court looked to Davis for guidance in recognizing that “the deterrence benefits of suppression must outweigh its heavy costs” and “concluded that excluding such evidence obtained in such circumstances would not deter police misconduct,” the Court stated.

But in the present case, the Court stated that “the facts here show that court administration made clerical errors that resulted in an unlawful search, for which they can properly be held responsible.” While Lindquist held that the central purpose of the exclusionary rule is to deter police misconduct, that does not mean that it is the sole purpose, according to the Court. Further, because the facts in the present case are materially distinguishable, the Court stated that Lindquist is not controlling.

The Court announced: “we hold that under the Minnesota Constitution, the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule does not extend to a search and arrest based on a quashed warrant that appears active to law enforcement because of a clerical error of court administration. We decline here, however, as we did in Lindquist to announce a broad rule rejecting the use of the good-faith exception under any other circumstances.” The Court explained that by applying the exclusionary rule to this case, it “establishes that court employees, not only law enforcement officers, are held to account for errors that result in constitutional violations.”

Accordingly, the Court reversed the COA and reinstated the District Court’s order dismissing the charges. See: State v. Malecha, 3 N.W.3d 566 (Minn. 2024).

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