Posted on 07/02/2014 9:06:14 AM PDT by right-wing agnostic
The Supreme Court gave a big victory to criminal defendants last week when it held in Riley v. California that the police need a warrant to search a cell phone incident to arrest. But now lower courts are turning to the remedy question: Who actually gets to benefit from the new case? For many defendants who had their phones illegally searched, the victory in Riley will be a symbolic one. They won’t get the benefit of the new case. And that may include Riley himself.
The culprit is the continued expansion of the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule. In Davis v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that the exclusionary rule is not available if a search is ruled unconstitutional but it was authorized by “binding appellate precedent” at the time the search occurred. As I explained in this post, some lower courts have interpreted Davis to apply broadly even when no binding appellate precedent authorized the search. Under these cases, relatively few defendants will get the benefit of the Riley rule. Even Riley himself may not get the benefit of his own decision.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
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