In United States v. Taylor, No. 17-14915 (Aug. 28,
2019) (Newsom, Tjoflat, Antoon), the Court upheld the denial of a
suppression motion based on the good-faith exception.
At issue was a warrant authorizing the government's use of
the Network Investigative Technique ("NIT"), a technique that allowed
the government to unmask the IP addresses of those who visited a child
pornography site on the dark web. The
warrant was issued in the Eastern District of Virginia, but the government used
the NIT with respect to the defendant, whose computer was located in
Alabama. As a result, and joining
several other circuits, the Court agreed that the NIT warrant violated Rule
41(b) (NIT did not fall into an exception for extraterritorial "tracking
device" warrants), the scope of the magistrate's authority under the
Federal Magistrates Act, and ultimately the Fourth Amendment.
However, and joining every circuit to address
the question, the Court found that the good-faith exception applied, because
the exclusionary rule applied to a warrant that was void ab initio just as
it did to other defective warrants. From
the perspective of deterring officer misconduct, relying on a facially valid
warrant that later turns out to have been void is no different than relying on
a facially valid warrant that later turns to have been based on a dubious
probable-cause determination. Finally, as
to the facts of this case, the Court rejected the defendant's argument that the
good-faith exception should not apply because the warrant application misled
the magistrate that the property to be search was located in the Eastern District
of Virginia. The Court found that, on
the facts here, the officers sufficiently disclosed the scope of their intended
search.
Judge Tjoflat dissented solely on the last point, arguing
that, on the facts of this case, the officers knew or should have known that
there was an issue with jurisdiction and that their search would occur outside
the district, yet they repeatedly told the magistrate that the search would
take place in the district. A few quotes
from his lengthy dissent: "If the law condones this conduct, it makes a
mockery of the warrant process." "[W]e should demand the utmost
candor in warrant applications. Before
today, I thought we did. . . I'm not
advocating to change the law—the law already requires candor in warrant
applications. I'm asking courts to take
this requirement seriously."
"I recognize that my decision would have an unfortunate result. . . . Such a result is the price we pay to protect the Fourth Amendment rights of the
public. Therefore, we must follow the
law even when faced with unpleasant outcomes."
