COURT OKS USING EVIDENCE FROM SEARCH ARISING FROM ERROR

WASHINGTON -- A divided Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that drug
evidence found during an unlawful arrest arising from a computer error
about a warrant could be used at trial against the defendant.

When police mistakes that lead to an unlawful search arise from
"negligence ... rather than systematic error or reckless disregard of
constitutional requirements," evidence need not be kept from trial,
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the 5-4 majority in the case from
Alabama.

He was joined by the four other conservative justices: Antonin Scalia,
Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

The four liberal justices -- Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Paul Stevens,
David Souter and Stephen Breyer -- dissented. They said that because
the search violated the Fourth Amendment's protection against
unreasonable searches and seizures, the evidence should have been
excluded. "The most serious impact of the court's holding will be on
innocent persons wrongfully arrested based on erroneous information
carelessly maintained in a computer database," Ginsburg wrote for the
dissenters.

She cited findings from the Electronic Privacy Information Center that
government databases are rife with errors.

The Roberts majority focused on the societal costs of excluding drugs
and other evidence seized. The court enhanced officers' ability to use
evidence by arguing that an unlawful arrest was not reckless or deliberate.

A warrant clerk in Coffee County, Ala., mistakenly told a police
investigator that a warrant from a nearby county was out for Bennie
Dean Herring, who had driven to the Coffee County Sheriff's Department
to get something from his impounded truck. The Dale County computer
error was quickly discovered, but by the time the warrant clerk
alerted the police investigator, Herring had been arrested and found
with an illegal pistol and with methamphetamine in his pocket.

After Herring was indicted on federal gun and drug possession charges,
he argued the evidence could not be used against him because the
arrest was illegal. The Fourth Amendment requires police to have a
warrant or probable cause to make an arrest.

Lower U.S. courts rejected his claim, and the Supreme Court affirmed.
Like the lower courts, the Roberts majority said the mistake arose
from negligence rather than a deliberate effort to deprive Herring of
his rights.

A "friend of the court" brief from the Electronic Privacy Information
Center said, "Increasingly, law enforcement officials and other
government employees are relying on government and commercial
databases full of mistakes that are well-documented but rarely corrected."

Stanford University law professor Jeffrey Fisher, who represented
Herring, said the court's test is difficult because a defendant would
be unlikely to show negligence in computerized records without doing
an audit.