A Constitutional Violation Is Not Always Suppressed

The circuit decisions in Smith and Chatrie show why a constitutional search and the remedy for that search must be analyzed separately. This chapter follows the cases after the warrant was challenged: why courts could find serious Fourth Amendment defects yet admit the evidence under the good-faith exception, why other judges rejected that result, and how investigative value, error risk, and changing platform architecture affect the institutional stakes without deciding legality on their own.

How a constitutional defect can survive a suppression motion

The exclusionary rule is a remedy, not the definition of a search. It generally prevents the government from using evidence obtained through an unconstitutional search, but the Supreme Court has limited the remedy when suppression would not provide enough deterrence to justify its costs. The good-faith exception from United States v. Leon is one such limit. When officers reasonably rely on a warrant issued by a neutral magistrate, the evidence may be admitted even if a court later concludes that the warrant lacked probable cause or particularity.

That distinction produces a result that can sound contradictory until the two questions are kept apart. A court may say that the government conducted a search and that the warrant did not satisfy the Fourth Amendment. It may then ask whether excluding the evidence would meaningfully deter deliberate or culpable police conduct. If the officers acted reasonably under the law as it existed at the time, the remedy may be admission rather than suppression. Admission does not turn the search into a lawful one. It reflects a judgment about the function and cost of the exclusionary rule.

The Fifth Circuit made the separation explicit in Smith. It held that the geofence warrants described in that case were modern general warrants and unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment. It nevertheless affirmed the defendants’ convictions because the investigators had acted in good faith. The technique was new, the officers had little personal experience with it, and they consulted other law-enforcement agencies and the United States Attorney’s Office before seeking the warrant. A magistrate issued the warrant, and the court concluded that the officers’ reliance was not so unreasonable that suppression would serve the deterrent purpose of the exclusionary rule.

The court applied the familiar limits on Leon. Good faith does not apply when an affiant knowingly or recklessly misleads the magistrate, when the magistrate abandons a neutral judicial role, when the affidavit is so lacking in probable cause that official reliance is unreasonable, or when the warrant is so facially deficient in particularity that officers cannot reasonably presume it valid. The Fifth Circuit rejected the arguments that those exceptions applied on the facts before it. The result was a direct two-part holding: unconstitutional warrant, no suppression.

The Fourth Circuit’s en banc decision in Chatrie was more fragmented but reached the same practical outcome. The court affirmed the district court’s denial of suppression in a one-sentence per curiam judgment. Its accompanying opinions divided evenly on whether police had conducted a search. Several judges who believed that a search had occurred also believed the warrant was defective, yet concluded that good faith applied.