General Rule. When police officers are complying in good faith with the law as it existed at the time, there is no reason to apply the exclusionary rule. (People v. Youn (2014) 229 Cal.App.4th 571, 579.)
The good-faith inquiry is confined to the objectively ascertainable question of whether a reasonably well trained officer would have known that the search was illegal in light of all of the circumstances. (Herring v. United States (2009) 555 U.S. 135, 141.)
When a search is found to be invalid “a Fourth Amendment violation is shown and the question … becomes whether such constitutional violation is appropriately remedied by the application of the judicially created exclusionary rule which prohibits the admission at trial of the evidence obtained during the unlawful search.” (People v. Downing (1995) 33 Cal.App.4th 1641, 1650-1651.)
Deliberate vs. Negligent Misconduct. “To trigger the exclusionary rule, police conduct must be sufficiently deliberate that exclusion can meaningfully deter it, and sufficiently culpable that such deterrence is worth the price paid by the justice system … [T]he exclusionary rules serves to deter deliberate, reckless, or grossly negligent conduct, or in some circumstances recurring or systematic negligence.” (Herring v. United States (2009) 555 U.S. 135, 141.)
“[W]hen police mistakes are the result of negligence … rather than systemic errors or reckless disregard of constitutional requirements, any marginal deterrence does not ‘pay its way.’ In such a case, the criminal should not ‘go free because the constable has blundered.’” (Herring v. United States (2009) 555 U.S. 135, 147-148.)
Ofc reliance on court-maintained data that D on probation. Held, good faith exception applied, even assuming D’s probation had been terminated due to AB1950. (People v. Pritchett (2024) 102 Cal.App.5th 355.)
Supporting docs contain PC apart from illegal conduct & officers not prompted to obtain SW by what they observed during illegal conduct -> no exclusion. (People v. Weiss (1999) 20 Cal.4th 1073, 1082.)
The inevitable discovery doctrine acts as an exception to the exclusionary rule and permits the admission of otherwise excluded evidence if the prosecution can establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the information would have been inevitably discovered by lawful means, such as routine police procedures. (People v. Banks (2023) 97 Cal.App.5th 376, 383.)
Officer suspected stolen vehicle, D w/o valid license, police agency had standardized policy re: inventory searches. Held, evidence found inside vehicle would have been inevitably discovered pursuant to lawful inventory search. (People v. Banks (2023) 97 Cal.App.5th 376, 383.)
Attenuation Doctrine
General Rule: “Evidence is admissible when the connection between unconstitutional police conduct and the evidence is remote or has been interrupted by some intervening circumstances, so that the interest protected by the constitutional guarantee that has been violated would not be served by suppression of the evidence obtained.” (Utah v. Strieff (2016) 136 S. Ct. 2056, 2061.)
Temporal proximity between the unconstitutional conduct and the discovery of evidence to determine how closely the discovery of evidence followed the unconstitutional search
Favors attenuation if “substantial time” elapses between an unlawful act and when the evidence is obtained