Maryland v. Garrison

Petitioner
State of Maryland
Respondent
Garrison
Petitioner's Claim
That evidence taken from Garrison's apartment should not be suppressed even though the police officers used an overbroad warrant.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner
Stephen H. Sacks, Attorney General of Maryland
Chief Lawyer for Respondent
Gerald A. Kroop
Justices for the Court
Sandra Day O'Connor, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., William H. Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, John Paul Stevens (writing for the Court), Byron R. White
Justices Dissenting
Harry A. Blackmun, William J. Brennan, Jr., Thurgood Marshall
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
24 February 1987
Decision
Reversed the Maryland Court of Appeals ruling and held that the search warrant was valid and the execution of the warrant did not violate Garrison's rights under the Fourth Amendment, since the mistake made by the officers was understandable and reasonable.
Significance
The ruling provided another good faith exception to the exclusionary rule. The use of an overly broad warrant did not justify the exclusion of evidence from trial because the officers made a reasonable effort to identify the placeintended for search.
On 21 May 1982 Baltimore police officers obtained a warrant to search Lawrence McWebb and a 2036 Park Avenue third floor apartment. Although there were actually two apartments, the police believed that only one apartment existed onthe third floor of that building. They concluded this through listening to an informant, examining the exterior of the building, and questioning the utility company. Six police officers executed the warrant. They encountered McWebb in front of the building and used his key to get into the building and ontothe third floor. As they entered the vestibule on the third floor, the officers encountered Garrison, clad in pajamas and wearing a half body cast. The doors to both apartments were open and police could see inside both areas. Theofficers entered Garrison's apartment, still thinking that only one apartment stood on that floor, and found heroin, cash, and drug paraphernalia. At that point, the officers realized that two apartments existed and they were in Garrison's. They discontinued the search.
Garrison was convicted of possession of a controlled substance. Although Garrison made a motion to suppress the evidence and make it inadmissible in court, the trial court denied this motion. The Maryland Court of Special Appeals agreed with this, indicating that the warrant was intended to authorize a search of the entire third floor of the building. The Maryland Court of Appeals reversed that decision because it felt that the warrant authorized the searchof McWebb's apartment only, and not the entire third floor. The court of appeals concluded that the police should not have entered Garrison's apartment without a warrant.
Latitude For Honest Mistakes Made By Officers
The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, noting that it involved two separate constitutional issues--the validity of the warrant and the reasonablenessof its execution. In his written opinion, Justice Stevens noted that the warrant clause of the Fourth Amendment prohibits the issuance of a general warrant. Instead, the warrant must describe the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. This is known as the particularity requirement. This requirement serves to carefully tailor the search to its justification andto prevent wide-ranging exploratory searches, which the framers of the Constitution wanted to prohibit. In the current case, the description of the placeto be searched was broader than appropriate because of the mistaken belief that only one apartment was on the third floor. The constitutionality of the officers' actions must be judged based on the information that they had at thetime. The discovery of facts showing that a valid warrant was unnecessarily broad does not make that warrant invalid.
Stevens next discussed whether the execution of the warrant violated Garrison's right to be secure in his home. If the officers had known that the third floor contained two apartments, they would have had to limit their search to McWebb's apartment. Once they realized they were in the wrong apartment they ended the search. Their conduct and the search limits were based on information that became available as the search proceeded. Although the purpose of a search strictly limits the extent of a search, "the Court has also recognized the need to allow some latitude for honest mistakes that are made by officersin the dangerous and difficult process of making arrests and executing searchwarrants."
Stevens quoted Hill v. California, a case in which the officers arrested the wrong man. "Sufficient probability, not certainty, is the touchstone of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment . . . the officers' mistake was understandable and the arrest a reasonable response to the situation . . . " Stevens felt the same principle applied in Maryland v. Garrison. The validity of the search of Garrison's apartment, using a warrant for the searchof the entire third floor, depends on whether the officers' failure to recognize the overbreadth of the warrant was understandable and reasonable. The objective facts show that the officers had never suggested two apartments existed. Thus, their belief that only one apartment existed and that they could search the whole third floor was reasonable. The Supreme Court reversed the court of appeals' decision that the warrant did not authorize the search and thatthe police were not justified in entering Garrison's apartment.
Evidence Against the Victim of Police Error Should Not Be Used
Justice Blackmun wrote the dissent. Blackmun believed that the search violated the Fourth Amendment and that the evidence should have been suppressed. Regarding the search of apartments in multi-unit buildings, courts have found invalid those warrants that do not describe the targeted unit with enough specificity to prevent a search of all the units in the building. Blackmun and thecourt of appeals both felt that the warrant specified only the search of McWebb's apartment, not Garrison's. Therefore the search was warrantless and unreasonable and the evidence gathered in the search should have been excluded.
Blackmun noted that it might make sense to excuse a mistake that produced evidence against a person being investigated based on probable cause, but it does not follow that a mistake should be excused when evidence is collected on someone not singled out and who was the victim of an error.
Detective Marcus, who obtained the search warrant, did not make reasonable efforts to verify the layout of the third floor. He should have noted that thebuilding had seven mailboxes, and he should have asked his informant if McWebb's was the only apartment on the third floor. Blackmun expressed doubt aboutwhether the warrant was executed with reasonableness. Only when they were well into their search and had discovered incriminating evidence, did the police realize their "mistake." They should have realized they were in a separateapartment well before they discovered the evidence. When they first encountered Garrison, they asked him who he was, but not where he lived. The officersshould have realized their error when they made their security sweep since each apartment had a bathroom, a kitchen, a living room, and a bedroom. "Even if a reasonable error on the part of police officers prevents a Fourth Amendment violation, the mistakes here, both with respect to obtaining and executingthe warrant, are not reasonable and could easily have been avoided."
The decision in this case was an example of the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule. The exclusionary rule states that evidence gathered unlawfully should be excluded from a trial. Since the 1980s, the Supreme Court has established many exceptions to this rule. The majority of the Court felt thatthe exclusionary rule was not a personal right, but was created to deter police misconduct. Excluding evidence that the police gathered through an honestmistake would not deter misconduct and would allow a guilty person to go free. Justices Brennan and Marshall maintained that if a search warrant is faulty, the evidence should be excluded from trial, even if the problem with the warrant was due to an honest mistake. This would preserve the integrity of theFourth Amendment.
Related Cases

• Steele v. United States, 267 U.S. 498 (1925).
  
• Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160 (1949).
  
• Hill v. California, 401 U.S. 797 (1971).
  
• Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443 (1971).

The Good Faith Exception
The exclusionary rule was developed to enforce Fourth Amendment search and seizure requirements in its exclusion from the criminal courtroom of evidence obtained by other than legal means. The good faith exception to the exclusionary rule, on the other hand, offers law-enforcement officers an area of leeway--opponents would call it a loophole--within the legal confines of the exclusionary rule. Thus when a search turns out to be illegal, but while conductingit the police officers believed in good faith that they were operating within the law, the evidence obtained in such a search is deemed admissible.
Such was the situation in United States v. Leon (1984), in which Justice Byron White articulated the good faith exception as a modification of theexclusionary rule to uphold the admissibility of "evidence seized on a searchwarrant issued by a detached and neutral magistrate but ultimately found tobe unsupported by probable cause."
Views on the good faith exception that, like the exclusionary rule, applies to criminal proceedings, vary depending on whether the commentator is a civillibertarian or someone whose primary emphasis is on law and order.
Sources
Levy, Leonard W., ed. Encyclopedia of the American Constitution. New York: Macmillan, 1986.