State v. Dibble

• Decision Date: 20 February 2020
• Docket Number: No. 2018-0552,2018-0552
• Citation: 159 Ohio St.3d 322,150 N.E.3d 912,2020 Ohio 546
• Parties: The STATE of Ohio, Appellant, v. DIBBLE, Appellee.
• Court: Ohio Supreme Court

159 Ohio St.3d 322

150 N.E.3d 912

2020 Ohio 546

The STATE of Ohio, Appellant,

v.DIBBLE, Appellee.

No. 2018-0552

Supreme Court of Ohio.

Submitted May 21, 2019

Decided February 20, 2020

Ron O'Brien, Franklin County Prosecuting Attorney, and Steven L. Taylor, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, for appellant.

Carpenter, Lipps & Leland, L.L.P., Kort Gatterdam, and Erik P. Henry, Columbus, for appellee.

DeWine, J. {¶ 1} This case deals with the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule. Specifically, we are asked whether a court may consider evidence beyond the four corners of a search-warrant affidavit in determining whether an officer reasonably and in good faith relied on that warrant. We conclude that a court may do so.

I. Nine Years of Litigation on a Motion to Suppress

{¶ 2} Laurence Dibble was a high-school teacher at the Wellington School in Columbus. He is accused of groping one student and secretly videotaping numerous other students in a school locker room while they were undressing.

{¶ 3} The police began investigating Dibble after two former students complained about improper sexual behavior. One of the former students told police that Dibble had touched her inappropriately while at school. Subsequently, the police obtained a warrant authorizing the search of Dibble's home. During the search, police seized videotapes of female students undressing. The recordings appeared to have been filmed by a camera that Dibble had hidden in the school locker room.

{¶ 4} In 2010, a grand jury indicted Dibble for one count of sexual imposition and 20 counts of voyeurism. The sexual-imposition charge related to the school-groping incident, while the voyeurism counts were based on the filming of the students while undressing.

{¶ 5} Dibble filed a motion to suppress seeking to invalidate the search warrant on the basis that the warrant affidavit contained materially false statements. The affidavit described incidents involving "Victim #1" and "Victim #2." Victim #1—the subject of the sexual-imposition offense—was the 18-year-old student whom Dibble was alleged to have groped at school. Victim #2 was the other woman who contacted the police. Dibble engaged in sexual contact with and took naked photographs of her. During the motion hearing, the detective acknowledged that the conduct involving Victim #2 did not allege a crime because she was an adult and no longer a student of Dibble's at the time and because she said that she had consented to the interaction with Dibble. The detective further conceded that because the allegation of inappropriate physical contact with respect to Victim #1 occurred only at school, it did not by itself provide a basis for searching Dibble's home.

{¶ 6} But the detective also testified about other sworn statements that he had made before the judge at the time the warrant was issued. Specifically, he told the judge that the women had discussed occasions during which Dibble had taken photos of them and other underage students at school wearing nearly see-through unitards, purportedly for a theater project. The detective said he expressed his concern to the judge about the nature and location of those photographs. While that information was provided to the judge under oath, it was not recorded or transcribed. The affidavit itself contained no information about the photographs that Dibble took of the children at school.

{¶ 7} The trial court initially granted the motion to suppress. It held that by referring to the woman who engaged in sexual conduct with Dibble in his home as a "victim," despite her own statements that she was a consenting adult at the time, the detective had made false statements in the affidavit with the intent of misleading the judge. On appeal, this court reversed that judgment, concluding that the detective had simply used the identifier "victim" to protect the woman's identity and not in an attempt to intentionally mislead the judge who issued the warrant. State v. Dibble , 133 Ohio St.3d 451, 2012-Ohio-4630, 979 N.E.2d 247 (" Dibble I ").

{¶ 8} On remand, the trial court determined that the affidavit filed in support of the warrant did not establish probable cause to search the home. But the court further found that the detective had acted in good faith in relying on the warrant, and the court therefore denied Dibble's motion to suppress. After pleading no contest to all the charges, Dibble appealed the denial of the motion to suppress to the Tenth District Court of Appeals.

{¶ 9} The arguments on appeal centered on the good-faith exception that was set forth by the United States Supreme Court in United States v. Leon , 468 U.S. 897, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984). We adopted the Leon analysis in State v. Wilmoth , 22 Ohio St.3d 251, 490 N.E.2d 1236 (1986). Under the good-faith exception, evidence obtained during a search conducted pursuant to a warrant that is unsupported by probable cause will not be excluded if the officers who obtained the evidence acted reasonably in relying on the warrant. Leon at 924-925; Wilmoth at paragraph one of the syllabus. The Leon court explained, however, that suppression would still be appropriate in circumstances when (1) the supporting affidavit contained information the affiant knew to be false or would have known to be false but for reckless disregard of the truth, (2) the issuing magistrate wholly abandoned his judicial role, (3) the warrant was based on an affidavit " ‘so lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render official belief in its existence entirely unreasonable,’ " or (4) the warrant is so facially deficient in terms of particularity that the executing officers could not reasonably presume it to be valid. Leon at 923, 104 S.Ct. 3405, quoting Brown v. Illinois , 422 U.S. 590, 610-611, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 45 L.Ed.2d 416 (1975) (Powell, J., concurring in part); State v. George , 45 Ohio St.3d 325, 331, 544 N.E.2d 640 (1989).

{¶ 10} The Tenth District determined that the trial court had failed to consider the third situation discussed in Leon —whether the warrant was based on an affidavit "so lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render official belief in its existence entirely unreasonable." State v. Dibble , 10th Dist. Franklin No. 13AP-798, 2014-Ohio-5754, 2014 WL 7462904 ("Dibble II "), ¶ 24. The Tenth District therefore remanded the case to the trial court to consider the third Leon factor. Id.

{¶ 11} On the third go-around, the trial court considered the remaining Leon factor and concluded that the affidavit was not so lacking in probable cause as to render the detective's reliance on the warrant unreasonable. Thus, the court denied the motion to suppress and Dibble appealed again.

{¶ 12} This time, the Tenth District concluded that under Crim.R. 41(C)(2), the detective's testimony regarding his unrecorded conversation with the judge was not admissible at the suppression hearing. State v. Dibble , 2017-Ohio-9321, 92 N.E.3d 893, ¶ 26 (10th Dist.) (" Dibble III "). Then, considering only the information in the affidavit, the Tenth District decided that it was not reasonable for the detective to have relied on the warrant because it was " ‘based on an affidavit so lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render official belief in its existence entirely unreasonable.’ " Id. at ¶ 39, quoting Leon , 468 U.S. at 923, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 82 L.Ed.2d 677. Having determined that the good-faith exception did not apply, the court of appeals reversed the trial court's judgment and ordered that judgment be entered in favor of Dibble. Id. at ¶ 40.

{¶ 13} The state appealed, and we accepted the cause on the following proposition of law:

In deciding whether the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies to a search conducted under a search warrant, a court can consider sworn but unrecorded oral information that the police gave to the judge at the time of the approval of the warrant.

See 153 Ohio St.3d 1432, 2018-Ohio-2639, 101 N.E.3d 464. We answer that question in the affirmative.

II. The Good-Faith Exception to the Exclusionary Rule

A. The objective of the exclusionary rule is to deter police misconduct

{¶ 14} The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution¹ provides:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

While the text of the Fourth Amendment says nothing about suppressing evidence obtained in violation of the rights enunciated therein, the United States Supreme Court has created an "exclusionary rule"—"a deterrent sanction that bars the prosecution from introducing evidence obtained by way of a Fourth Amendment violation." Davis v. United States , 564 U.S. 229, 231-232, 131 S.Ct. 2419, 180 L.Ed.2d 285 (2011).

{¶ 15} Exclusion is not meant to serve as a remedy for the injury caused by an unconstitutional search or seizure but rather as a deterrent against future violations. Id. at 236-237, 131 S.Ct. 2419. Thus, the question whether the exclusionary sanction should be imposed is " ‘an issue separate from the question whether the Fourth Amendment rights of the party seeking to invoke the rule were violated by police conduct.’ " Leon , 468 U.S. at 906, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 82 L.Ed.2d 677, quoting Illinois v. Gates , 462 U.S. 213, 223, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983).

{¶ 16} "[T]he deterrence benefits of exclusion ‘vary with the culpability of the law enforcement conduct’ at issue." Davis at 239, 131 S.Ct. 2419, quoting Herring v. United States , 555 U.S. 135, 143, 129 S.Ct. 695, 172 L.Ed.2d 496 (2009) (cleaned up). When a Fourth Amendment violation is occasioned by "deliberate," "reckless," or "grossly negligent" police conduct, the deterrent benefits of exclusion are said to outweigh its costs. Id. at 238, 131 S.Ct. 2419 ; see also Herri...