Improperly Issued Arrest Warrant and Search Incident to Arrest

The Douglas County Sheriff's Department sends out two deputies every Monday afternoon to execute arrest warrants. This Monday, the "arrest detail" was assigned to Deputies Limbaugh and Ru Paul, who were primarily concerned with arresting Sal "the toucan" Sams on several charges of burglary and receiving stolen property. The officers arrived at Sams' house and made the arrest. Deputy Ru Paul handcuffed Sams in the living room of the house, gave a flawless Miranda warning, obtained a "text-book" waiver, and began to question Sams. The deputy mainly wanted to offer Sams the opportunity to confess and to direct the deputies to any stolen property on the premises.

Deputy Limbaugh went out to the patrol car during the interrogation. While he was completing some paperwork related to the arrest, the department contacted Limbaugh over the radio with an urgent message. Apparently, the clerk's office believed that it may have issued the wrong arrest warrants i.e., the clerk's office believed that the warrant for Sam's arrest actually had been denied by the magistrate for lack of probable cause! The department instructed Deputy Limbaugh to refrain from executing the warrant until the clerk's office double-checked with the magistrate.

Deputy Limbaugh went back into the house to tell Deputy Ru Paul about the mix-up. When he walked into the living room, he found that Ru Paul had pushed Sams to the breaking point.

"Okay, okay, man. . . I'm ready to talk," Sams said, a nervous sweat trickling down his forehead.

Deputy Ru Paul looked over at Deputy Limbaugh: "What's up Limbaugh?"

Limbaugh said, "I'll tell you in a minute. Go ahead and let him finish what he was saying."

In the 10 minutes that followed, Sams gave a statement detailing his involvement in several burglaries. Additionally, he led Ru Paul and Limbaugh to a storage shed in the backyard where Sams had stashed thousands of dollars of stolen property.

As it turns out, the arrest warrant was improperly issued by the clerk's office. Still, despite this defect in the warrant, the deputies decided to arrest Sams based on the confession and the stash of stolen property. At trial, Sams seeks exclusion of the confession and other evidence, arguing that it is the fruit of an illegal arrest. Citing Leon and Arizona v. Evans, The State argues that the exclusionary rule should not apply. What should the result be?

Nathan Bowden

Emory Law

Answer

Generally, a warrant is not required for an arrest so long as probable cause exists.  However, under Payton, a warrant is required to enter private premises to arrest a suspect.  If there are no exigent circumstances, the defendant may still be brought to trial but any evidence seized as a result of a search incident to the arrest will be excluded.

However, the exclusionary rule will not bar evidence obtained by officers acting in reasonable reliance on a search warrant issued by a proper magistrate but found to be unsupported by probable cause under Leon.  Unfortunately for the state in this case, the warrant was never issued by a magistrate and the police knew that the arrest warrant they had was invalid.  Therefore, the police were not acting in good faith.  Due to the violation of Payton, the evidence acquired through the search conducted incident to the arrest of Sams should be suppressed.