When D.C. police officers searched and found cocaine in Lorenzo Ali Debruhl's car after arresting him in January 2009, they thought they were standing on solid legal ground in light of the Supreme Court's 1981 decision in New York v. Belton.
But following the Supreme Court’s April 2009 ruling in Arizona v. Gant, the ground shifted.
On Thursday, the D.C. Court of Appeals dismissed the cocaine charges because the evidence was obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment: The search had proceeded without a warrant, and Debruhl, who was handcuffed, was not a threat to police safety or to the preservation of evidence.
The D.C. Court of Appeals rejected the police department’s request for a good faith exception on the ground that the officer was following the law at the time of the arrest.
In a 41-page opinion, Senior Judge John Ferren wrote that good faith exceptions should be narrowed only to cases where settled law was clearly overturned.
Citing the Supreme Court’s 2004 decision in Thornton v. United States, Ferren stated that the Belton precedent already stood on shaky ground pre-Gant. In the Thornton case, a 7-2 ruling in favor of the police in similar circumstances, two of the justices concurred in the judgment only under an alternative theory and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor concurred dubitante, writing that she "expressed dissatisfaction with the state of the law in this area."
"In short, by 2004 five sitting justices had strongly advocated either revision or abandonment of Belton, with some pointing out the very flaws stressed five years later in the Court’s corrective decision in Gant," Ferren wrote.
The opinion, which was joined by Judges Inez Smith Reid and Noel Anketell Kramer, upheld the decision at the D.C. Superior Court.
The government argued the Belton precedent was settled law at the time of the search, citing two instances where the D.C. Court of Appeals had used the Belton precedent to find no Fourth Amendment violation.
However, Ferren said neither of the cases cited would have been affected by the Gant opinion because in both instances, all the vehicle’s passengers hadn't yet been removed from the car and secured with handcuffs.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Roy McLeese III argued the case for the government. Private practitioner Thomas Farquhar and Chris Kemmitt from the D.C. Public Defender Service argued the case on behalf of Debruhl.
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