Herring V. United States Case Study

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Herring v. United States
129 S. Ct. 695
Search & Seizure
(2009)

Facts: On July 7, 2004 the defendant, Bennie Dean Herring, went to the Coffee County Sheriff’s Department to recover something from his impounded truck. Herring was a familiar face to the law enforcement. While Herring was at the Department, Investigator Mark Anderson asked his warrant clerk, Sandy Pope to check for outstanding warrants for Herring. When Sandy found nothing, Anderson asked Pope to check with Sharon Morgan, she works for the jail county. After checking the database, Morgan had then found a warrant for Herring, based on failure to appear on a felony charge. Pope then informed Anderson about the warrant, and asked Morgan to fax over a copy to confirm the warrant. Anderson and a deputy then followed Herring to the lot for his impounded truck, they then pulled him over and arrested him. When they searched him they found methamphetamine in
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Sheppard, previously did not allow the exclusionary rule when a warrant was invalid. In Arizona v. Evans, 514 U.S. 1 , previously allowed the good-faith rule. The court noted that “police who reasonably rely on mistaken information on warrants in the court’s database which says a person’s warrant is outstanding” could not be given the rise to the exclusionary rule for three reasons. First, the rule was “only crafted to curb police rather than judicial misconduct”. Secondly, “court employees were unlikely to try to subvert the Fourth Amendment”. Lastly, “most importantly, there is no basis for believing that application of the exclusionary rule in those circumstances”. Also, in the case of Weeks v. United States, was a case that police broken into the defendant’s home without a search warrant. This case about Weeks v. United States is similar to Herring because there was no warrant in Weeks and as for Herring his warrant was basically no longer