Davis v. United States and the Future of the Exclusionary Rule

Virtually all courts interpreted Belton v. New York, 453 U.S. 454 (1981), to authorize a law enforcement officer to search the passenger compartment of a motor vehicle incident to the arrest of any recent occupant of the vehicle. Then the Supreme Court decided Arizona v. Gant, 556 U.S. __ (2009), discussed here, among other places. In Gant, the Court dramatically curtailed the Belton rule, holding that an officer may not search the passenger compartment of a motor vehicle incident to the arrest of a recent occupant unless the arrestee is unsecured and could reach into the vehicle to access weapons or destroy evidence or there is reason to believe that evidence of the crime of arrest may be found in the vehicle. This shift in the law meant that, in a number of cases across the country, officers conducted vehicle searches under Belton, found incriminating evidence, and charged defendants accordingly, only to see Gant come down while the cases were pending. The exultant defendants argued that Gant applied retroactively to pending cases, while officers bemoaned the possible exclusion of evidence that they had seized in compliance with established law. Last week, in Davis v. United States, the Supreme Court addressed this set of cases and held that “searches conducted in objectively reasonable reliance on binding appellate precedent are not subject to the exclusionary rule.” In essence, the Court reasoned, officers acting under established precedent are doing nothing wrong. Since the point of the exclusionary rule is to deter police misconduct, and [...]