Utah v. Strieff
Utah v. Strieff
Syllabus
NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is
being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued.
The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been
prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader.
See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.
UTAH v. STRIEFF
CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF UTAH
No. 141373. Argued February 22, 2016Decided June 20, 2016
Narcotics detective Douglas Fackrell conducted surveillance on a South
Salt Lake City residence based on an anonymous tip about drug activity. The number of people he observed making brief visits to the
house over the course of a week made him suspicious that the occupants were dealing drugs. After observing respondent Edward Strieff
leave the residence, Officer Fackrell detained Strieff at a nearby
parking lot, identifying himself and asking Strieff what he was doing
at the house. He then requested Strieffs identification and relayed
the information to a police dispatcher, who informed him that Strieff
had an outstanding arrest warrant for a traffic violation. Officer
Fackrell arrested Strieff, searched him, and found methamphetamine
and drug paraphernalia. Strieff moved to suppress the evidence, arguing that it was derived from an unlawful investigatory stop. The
trial court denied the motion, and the Utah Court of Appeals affirmed. The Utah Supreme Court reversed, however, and ordered the
evidence suppressed.
Held: The evidence Officer Fackrell seized incident to Strieffs arrest is
admissible based on an application of the attenuation factors from
Brown v. Illinois, 422 U. S. 590. In this case, there was no flagrant
police misconduct. Therefore, Officer Fackrells discovery of a valid,
pre-existing, and untainted arrest warrant attenuated the connection
between the unconstitutional investigatory stop and the evidence
seized incident to a lawful arrest. Pp. 410.
(a) As the primary judicial remedy for deterring Fourth Amendment violations, the exclusionary rule encompasses both the primary
evidence obtained as a direct result of an illegal search or seizure
and, relevant here, evidence later discovered and found to be derivative of an illegality. Segura v. United States, 468 U. S. 796, 804.
But to ensure that those deterrence benefits are not outweighed by
UTAH v. STRIEFF
Syllabus
the rules substantial social costs, there are several exceptions to the
rule. One exception is the attenuation doctrine, which provides for
admissibility when the connection between unconstitutional police
conduct and the evidence is sufficiently remote or has been interrupted by some intervening circumstance. See Hudson v. Michigan, 547
U. S. 586, 593. Pp. 45.
(b) As a threshold matter, the attenuation doctrine is not limited to
the defendants independent acts. The doctrine therefore applies
here, where the intervening circumstance is the discovery of a valid,
pre-existing, and untainted arrest warrant. Assuming, without deciding, that Officer Fackrell lacked reasonable suspicion to stop
Strieff initially, the discovery of that arrest warrant attenuated the
connection between the unlawful stop and the evidence seized from
Strieff incident to his arrest. Pp. 510.
(1) Three factors articulated in Brown v. Illinois, 422 U. S. 590,
lead to this conclusion. The first, temporal proximity between the
initially unlawful stop and the search, id., at 603, favors suppressing
the evidence. Officer Fackrell discovered drug contraband on Strieff
only minutes after the illegal stop. In contrast, the second factor,
the presence of intervening circumstances, id., at 603604, strongly
favors the State. The existence of a valid warrant, predating the investigation and entirely unconnected with the stop, favors finding
sufficient attenuation between the unlawful conduct and the discovery of evidence. That warrant authorized Officer Fackrell to arrest
Strieff, and once the arrest was authorized, his search of Strieff incident to that arrest was undisputedly lawful. The third factor, the
purpose and flagrancy of the official misconduct, id., at 604, also
strongly favors the State. Officer Fackrell was at most negligent, but
his errors in judgment hardly rise to a purposeful or flagrant violation of Strieffs Fourth Amendment rights. After the unlawful stop,
his conduct was lawful, and there is no indication that the stop was
part of any systemic or recurrent police misconduct. Pp. 69.
(2) Strieffs counterarguments are unpersuasive. First, neither
Officer Fackrells purpose nor the flagrancy of the violation rises to a
level of misconduct warranting suppression. Officer Fackrells purpose was not to conduct a suspicionless fishing expedition but was to
gather information about activity inside a house whose occupants
were legitimately suspected of dealing drugs. Strieff conflates the
standard for an illegal stop with the standard for flagrancy, which
requires more than the mere absence of proper cause. Second, it is
unlikely that the prevalence of outstanding warrants will lead to
dragnet searches by police. Such misconduct would expose police to
civil liability and, in any event, is already accounted for by Browns
purpose and flagrancy factor. Pp. 910.
Syllabus
2015 UT 2, 357 P. 3d 532, reversed.
THOMAS, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS,
C. J., and KENNEDY, BREYER, and ALITO, JJ., joined. SOTOMAYOR, J.,
filed a dissenting opinion, in which GINSBURG, J., joined as to Parts I,
II, and III. KAGAN, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which GINSBURG, J.,
joined.
No. 141373
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Opinion of the Court
evidence. The court found that the short time between the
illegal stop and the search weighed in favor of suppressing
the evidence, but that two countervailing considerations
made it admissible. First, the court considered the presence of a valid arrest warrant to be an extraordinary
intervening circumstance. App. to Pet. for Cert. 102
(quoting United States v. Simpson, 439 F. 3d 490, 496
(CA8 2006). Second, the court stressed the absence of
flagrant misconduct by Officer Fackrell, who was conducting a legitimate investigation of a suspected drug house.
Strieff conditionally pleaded guilty to reduced charges of
attempted possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia, but reserved his right to
appeal the trial courts denial of the suppression motion.
The Utah Court of Appeals affirmed. 2012 UT App 245,
286 P. 3d 317.
The Utah Supreme Court reversed. 2015 UT 2, 357
P. 3d 532. It held that the evidence was inadmissible
because only a voluntary act of a defendants free will (as
in a confession or consent to search) sufficiently breaks
the connection between an illegal search and the discovery
of evidence. Id., at 536. Because Officer Fackrells discovery of a valid arrest warrant did not fit this description,
the court ordered the evidence suppressed. Ibid.
We granted certiorari to resolve disagreement about
how the attenuation doctrine applies where an unconstitutional detention leads to the discovery of a valid arrest
warrant. 576 U. S. ___ (2015). Compare, e.g., United
States v. Green, 111 F. 3d 515, 522523 (CA7 1997) (holding that discovery of the warrant is a dispositive intervening circumstance where police misconduct was not flagrant), with, e.g., State v. Moralez, 297 Kan. 397, 415, 300
P. 3d 1090, 1102 (2013) (assigning little significance to the
discovery of the warrant). We now reverse.
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SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
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SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
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SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
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vey (Table 5a). Even these sources may not track the
staggering numbers of warrants, drawers and draw
ers full, that many cities issue for traffic violations and
ordinance infractions. Dept. of Justice, Civil Rights Div.,
Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department 47, 55
(2015) (Ferguson Report), online at https://www.justice.gov/
sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments / 2015 / 03/
04/ferguson_police_department_report.pdf. The county in
this case has had a backlog of such warrants. See supra,
at 4. The Department of Justice recently reported that in
the town of Ferguson, Missouri, with a population of
21,000, 16,000 people had outstanding warrants against
them. Ferguson Report, at 6, 55.
Justice Department investigations across the country
have illustrated how these astounding numbers of war
rants can be used by police to stop people without cause.
In a single year in New Orleans, officers made nearly
60,000 arrests, of which about 20,000 were of people with
outstanding traffic or misdemeanor warrants from neigh
boring parishes for such infractions as unpaid tickets.
Dept. of Justice, Civil Rights Div., Investigation of the
New Orleans Police Department 29 (2011), online at
https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2011/
03/17/nopd_report.pdf. In the St. Louis metropolitan area,
officers routinely stop peopleon the street, at bus
stops, or even in courtfor no reason other than an of
ficers desire to check whether the subject had a municipal
arrest warrant pending. Ferguson Report, at 49, 57. In
Newark, New Jersey, officers stopped 52,235 pedestrians
within a 4-year period and ran warrant checks on 39,308
of them. Dept. of Justice, Civil Rights Div., Investigation
of the Newark Police Department 8, 19, n. 15 (2014),
online at https: // www.justice.gov/ sites/default/files/ crt /
legacy/2014/07/22/newark_findings_7-22-14.pdf. The Jus
tice Department analyzed these warrant-checked stops
and reported that approximately 93% of the stops would
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SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
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KAGAN, J., dissenting
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KAGAN, J., dissenting
three.
The majoritys misapplication of Browns three-part
inquiry creates unfortunate incentives for the police
indeed, practically invites them to do what Fackrell did
here. Consider an officer who, like Fackrell, wishes to stop
someone for investigative reasons, but does not have what
a court would view as reasonable suspicion. If the officer
believes that any evidence he discovers will be inadmissi
ble, he is likely to think the unlawful stop not worth mak
ingprecisely the deterrence the exclusionary rule is
meant to achieve. But when he is told of todays decision?
Now the officer knows that the stop may well yield admis
sible evidence: So long as the target is one of the many
millions of people in this country with an outstanding
arrest warrant, anything the officer finds in a search is
fair game for use in a criminal prosecution. The officers
incentive to violate the Constitution thus increases: From
here on, he sees potential advantage in stopping individu
als without reasonable suspicionexactly the temptation
the exclusionary rule is supposed to remove. Because the
majority thus places Fourth Amendment protections at
risk, I respectfully dissent.