United States v. Leon
- Decided
- September 18, 1984
- Docket
- 82-1771
- Status
- Published
- Jurisdiction
- Federal
Cited 9,230 timesNo negative treatment found in this library
What later courts said
- holding that evidence seized in reasonable good-faith reliance on a search warrant, which is later found defective, may be admitted at trial — United States v. Owens (1999)
- holding that reasonable, good faith reliance on a search warrant precludes application of the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule — United States v. William P. Trainor (2004)
- concluding that evidence from a search conducted in good faith that is based on a facially valid warrant should not be suppressed — United States v. Tomas Chavez-Miranda (2002)
Each line is a later court’s own words about this case, not a summary. Read the opinion before relying on it.
How the opinion begins
[*900] Justice White delivered the opinion of the Court.
This ease presents the question whether the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule should be modified so as not to bar the use in the prosecution’s case in chief of evidence obtained by officers acting in reasonable reliance on a search warrant issued by a detached and neutral magistrate but ultimately found to be unsupported by probable cause. To resolve this question, we must consider once again the tension between the sometimes competing goals of, on the one hand, deterring official misconduct and removing inducements to unreasonable invasions of privacy and, on the other, establishing procedures under which criminal defendants are “ac [*901] quitted or convicted on the basis of all the evidence which exposes the truth.” Alderman v. United States, 394 U. S. 165, 175 (1969).
I
Statutes cited
Cite this
United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897 (1984)Read the full opinion
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