Brief filed: 12/11/2023
Documents
United States v. Streett
10th Circuit Court of Appeals; Case No. 22-2056
Argument(s)
Following a report that Bentley Streett unsuccessfully asked a 15-year-old for a nude photo, a detective obtained a warrant to search a home in Albuquerque. The warrant failed to establish probable cause to search the home, however, because the warrant affidavit did not establish a nexus between Streett and the home. Rather than suppress the fruits of the unconstitutional warrant, the district court applied both the good-faith exception and the inevitable-discovery exception to save the fruits from suppression. On appeal, this Court declined to address the good-faith exception and instead affirmed under the inevitable-discovery exception. Id. This Court held that “a revised affidavit and warrant would have been issued promptly if the initial warrant application had been denied. As a result, it was inevitable that the evidence of Mr. Streett’s illegal behavior would have promptly been discovered.” The panel’s opinion raises an important doctrinal question about the exclusionary rule and its exceptions (attenuation, independent source, good faith, inevitable discovery): can those exceptions apply interchangeably in any case, or has the Supreme Court created the exceptions to apply to different Fourth Amendment violations?
Author(s)
Randall Hodgkinson and Norman Mueller, NACDL, Washington, DC; Scott Graham, Federal Public Defender Eastern District Of Oklahoma, Muskogee, OK; Julia O’Connell, Federal Public Defender Northern District Of Oklahoma, Tulsa, OK; Melody Brannon, Kansas Federal Public Defender, Kansas City, KS; Margaret Katze, New Mexico Federal Public Defender, Albuquerque, NM; Scott Wilson, Utah Federal Public Defender, Salt Lake City, UT; Jeffrey M. Byers, Federal Public Defender Western District Of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, OK
