People v. Lucynski

1

PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF MICHIGAN, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. DAVID ALLAN LUCYNSKI, Defendant-Appellant.

No. SC 165806

COA 353646

Supreme Court of Michigan

July 26, 2024

Tuscola CC: 20-015154-AR

Elizabeth T. Clement, Chief Justice Brian K. Zahra David F Viviano Richard H. Bernstein Megan K. Cavanagh Elizabeth M Welch Kyra H. Bolden, Justices

ORDER

On April 17, 2024, the Court heard oral argument on the application for leave to appeal the April 27, 2023 judgment of the Court of Appeals. On order of the Court, the application is again considered. MCR 7.305(H)(1). In lieu of granting leave to appeal, we REVERSE the judgment of the Court of Appeals and REMAND this case to the Tuscola Circuit Court for further proceedings consistent with this order.

This case appears before this Court for a second time. The pertinent facts are unchanged. We previously ordered oral argument on the application, after which this Court issued an opinion. We held that: (1) defendant was seized by Deputy Ryan Robinson when Deputy Robinson parked behind defendant and blocked defendant's egress, People v Lucynski, 509 Mich. 618, 657 (2022); (2) defendant did not violate MCL 257.676b(1) because defendant did not interrupt the natural flow of traffic, id. at 649-650; (3) Deputy Robinson's interpretation of MCL 257.676b(1) was an unreasonable mistake of law, id. at 656, and therefore; (4) because Deputy Robinson lacked reasonable suspicion, defendant was seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment, id.

Having determined that a Fourth Amendment violation in fact occurred, we remanded this case to the Court of Appeals to consider whether the exclusionary rule applied. Id. at 657-658. On remand, the Court of Appeals concluded that application of the exclusionary rule was not appropriate in this case. People v Lucynski, unpublished per curiam opinion of the Court of Appeals, issued April 27, 2023 (Docket No. 353646). The Court of Appeals, relying on Herring v United States, 555 U.S. 135 (2009), concluded that, although this Court held that Deputy Robinson's mistake of law was objectively unreasonable, it was "also true that Deputy Robinson did not demonstrate any deliberate, reckless, or grossly negligent conduct." Lucynski, unpub op at 5. Further, the panel found no record evidence that "Deputy Robinson acted in bad faith when he effectuated a traffic stop of [defendant]. Nor was there any evidence this stop was part of a systemic effort to subvert [defendant's] constitutional rights." Id.

We disagree with the Court of Appeals and hold that the exclusionary rule applies in this case. "Application of the exclusionary rule to a constitutional violation is a question of law that is reviewed de novo." People v Frazier, 478 Mich. 231, 240 (2007). "Generally, evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment is inadmissible as substantive evidence in criminal proceedings." In re Forfeiture of $176,598, 443 Mich. 261, 265 (1993); see also Mapp v Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961). The exclusionary rule does not automatically apply once a court finds a Fourth Amendment violation. Instead, "[t]he suppression of evidence should be used only as a last resort." Frazier, 478 Mich. at 247, citing Hudson v Michigan, 547 U.S. 586 (2006). This is because" '[t]he exclusionary rule is "a harsh remedy designed to sanction and deter police misconduct where it has resulted in a violation of constitutional rights . . . ." '" Frazier, 478 Mich. at 247 (citations omitted). More specifically, the exclusionary rule "is calculated to prevent, not to repair. Its purpose is to deter-to compel respect for the constitutional guaranty in the only effectively available way-by removing the incentive to disregard it." Id. at 247-248 (quotation marks and citations omitted)." '[T]he proper focus is on the deterrent effect on law enforcement officers, if any.'" Id. at 248, quoting People v Goldston, 470 Mich. 523, 539 (2004) (alteration in original).

Here, Deputy Robinson provided two reasons for the traffic stop: (1) the factually unsupported suspicion that a drug deal took place, which he communicated to defendant during the traffic stop; and (2) a suspected violation of MCL 257.676b(1), which he did not mention until the preliminary examination in this case. The former reason unquestionably weighs in favor of application of the exclusionary rule. An officer who seizes a person based only on an unsupported, inchoate hunch has acted in clear violation of a defendant's Fourth Amendment rights and, thus, has committed misconduct. Exclusion is warranted in such a circumstance. See People v Soulliere, 509 Mich. 950, 951 (2022) (explaining that a trial court did not err by granting the defendant's motion to suppress evidence where a deputy's observation that gave rise to a traffic stop amounted "to nothing more than an inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or hunch") (quotation marks and citations removed).

Similarly, Deputy Robinson's objectively unreasonable belief that defendant violated MCL 257.676b(1) also weighs in favor of exclusion. Although the Court of Appeals here relied on Herring, in which a police error was not found to warrant application of the exclusionary rule, that decision is distinguishable from this case. In Herring, an officer unknowingly relied on an invalid arrest warrant when arresting the defendant, due to a "bookkeeping" error beyond the arresting officer's knowledge or control. 555 U.S. at 137-138. Under these facts, the United States Supreme Court explained that suppressing evidence "obtained in objectively reasonable reliance on a subsequently recalled warrant" produces a marginal or nonexistent deterrent effect on police misconduct. Id. at 146. It is easy to follow the logic of this decision. Suppression "turns on the culpability of the police and the potential of exclusion to deter wrongful police conduct." Id. at 137. Therefore, excluding evidence that was obtained as a result of reasonable reliance on a mistake made by a third-party would not necessarily deter police misconduct because there is no culpable or wrongful police conduct to deter.^[1] In other words, where the police error "was the result of isolated negligence attenuated from the arrest," the exclusionary rule should not apply. Id. at 137.^[2]

Such is not the case here. Instead, we conclude that a seizure based on an officer's unreasonable interpretation of the law warrants application of the exclusionary rule. This Court has already held that Deputy Robinson's interpretation of MCL 257.676b(1) was an unreasonable mistake of law. We now conclude that the Fourth Amendment cannot excuse an unreasonable mistake of law. See Heien v North Carolina, 574 U.S. 54, 66-67 (2014) ("The Fourth Amendment tolerates only reasonable mistakes, and those mistakes- whether of fact or of law-must be objectively reasonable. . . . [A]n officer can gain no Fourth Amendment advantage through a sloppy study of the laws he is dutybound to enforce."). Under these circumstances, application of the exclusionary rule is appropriate.^[3]

In the dissent's view, exclusion is not appropriate in this case because, though Deputy Robinson may have made an unreasonable mistake of law, "there was no egregious law enforcement misconduct." The dissent relies heavily on People v Salters, unpublished per curiam opinion of the Court of Appeals, issued January 26, 2001 (Docket No. 215396), to suggest that Deputy Robinson's understanding of the statute was reasonable, as Salters was the only case to have previously interpreted MCL 257.676b(1). Indeed, the dissent "would not blame Robinson for having been trained to understand that impeding traffic does not require an actual impediment to traffic." The flaw in the dissent's reliance on Salters and references to officer training, however, is that at no point in the proceedings did Deputy Robinson assert knowledge of the Salters opinion, nor did Deputy Robinson allege that he was trained in accordance with the reasoning in Salters. The prosecution also has not introduced any evidence that Salters or other officer training was the basis of Deputy Robinson's seizure.^[4] In short, to the extent that the dissent posits that Deputy Robinson's unreasonable mistake of law could have still been conducted in good-faith reliance on unpublished authority from the Court of Appeals, no factual support of any such reliance has been offered throughout the pendency of this extensive litigation.

We reiterate today that a touchstone principle of the exclusionary rule is the deterrence of future police misconduct. We believe that application of the exclusionary rule here properly achieves this deterrent effect. As we previously held, Deputy Robinson's unreasonably expansive interpretation of MCL 257.676b(1) conflicted with its unambiguous meaning. Using an unreasonable reading of the law to justify a traffic stop is the sort of misconduct that the exclusionary rule is designed to deter. Our decision therefore, stands for the proposition that evidence gathered in clear violation of unambiguous law will not be admissible on the basis of explanations justified entirely by a subjective and erroneous misreading of the applicable law. See Hooks v United States, 208 A.3d 741, 750 (DC, 2019) (explaining that, unlike in Herring, "here we have a patently unlawful seizure by officers unaware of the letter of the law they were trying to enforce. The circumstances of this case are precisely those we want to deter and amply justify the application of the exclusionary rule"). We believe that any holding to the contrary would actually incentivize police misconduct. If even unreasonable and unjustifiable errors do not warrant exclusion of illegally obtained evidence, the Fourth Amendment would be stripped of its...