NCJ Number
92965
Journal
William and Mary Law Review Volume: 24 Issue: 3 Dated: (Spring 1983) Pages: 335-384
Date Published
1983
Length
50 pages
Annotation
This article demonstrates that bright-line rules describing a routine police practice or standardized procedure with precise boundaries cannot solve the problems inherent in the good faith notion and that bright-line rules operating with a good faith exception to the exclusionary rule are unlikely to provide relief from the Supreme Court's inclination to interpret narrowly the fourth amendment.
Abstract
The major, persistent drawback to the injection of any good faith notion into fourth amendment law has been the lack of administerability. The suggestion that bright-line rules can resolve this problem is both optimistic and misleading, as actual rules which can be applied easily to varying factual situations are difficult to draft. Two cases decided at the end of the Supreme Court's 1980 term -- New York v. Belton and Robbins v. California -- provide excellent illustrations of this point. Even if clear-cut rules could be formulated in some areas, litigation would simply be diverted from rule violation, which would presumptively establish bad faith, to other areas of uncertainty not foreclosed by a good faith analysis. If a good faith notion is accepted into fourth amendment law, there is reason to believe that the needed development of categorical rules would be impeded. Principally, courts are more likely to focus on the reasonableness of police behavior under the circumstances rather than constitutional questions or delineating standards for future cases. United States v. Williams and Richmond v. Commonwealth highlight the accuracy of this projection. Finally, any symbiosis between clear rules and good faith is unlikely to illuminate the law of search and seizure. As long as a sphere of exclusion remains, the area of evidentiary inadmissibility -- bad faith -- is likely to be narrowly circumscribed. With the Court narrowly interpreting the fourth amendment to minimize the exclusion of evidence, bright-line rules probably will be drafted broadly in favor of law enforcement. The article includes 222 footnotes.