The Reality of the Good Faith Exception
†
The Georgetown Law Journal has not independently reviewed the empirical data and analyses
described herein. This Article’s dataset is publicly available at: dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.24129069.
MATTHEW TOKSON * & MICHAEL GENTITHES**
The Fourth Amendment’s primary remedy is the exclusion of unlaw-
fully obtained evidence at trial. But not every defendant whose rights are
violated gets a remedy. The most substantial obstacle for defendants is
the good faith exception, which directs courts to admit unlawfully col-
lected evidence if the police can show they relied in good faith on exist-
ing authority. If the police rely on a statute that turns out to be
unconstitutional or on a warrant or precedent that turns out to be in-
valid, the evidence they obtain will nonetheless be admitted under the
good faith exception. The Supreme Court has justified this doctrine on
the grounds that excluding evidence is only worthwhile if it deters mis-
conduct by police officers. When officers rely in good faith on existing
authority, the Court has found that there is no misconduct to deter, and
exclusion is unjustified.
We challenge this conventional account of the good faith exception in
several ways. First, we conduct the first large-scale empirical study of
the good faith exception. We reveal how often courts use the exception,
demonstrate that courts frequently employ it to avoid substantive consti-
tutional rulings, and identify the sources police most frequently rely on
when they make good faith exception claims. We then examine the impact
of the exception following a major Supreme Court decision expanding
Fourth Amendment rights.
Second, we demonstrate that the Supreme Court has badly miscon-
ceived the incentives its good faith exception rulings create for police
officers. Current law incentivizes police and prosecutors to aggressively
interpret old legal authorities to permit the collection of new forms of
data and to collect as much data as possible before courts impose a war-
rant requirement. We identify these incentives and propose reforms to
align them with meaningful constitutional protections for personal data.
Finally, we examine how the good faith exception destabilizes the
Fourth Amendment as a source of constitutional rights. While certain
†
* Professor of Law, University of Utah, S.J. Quinney College of Law. © 2025, Matthew Tokson &
Michael Gentithes.
** Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor of Law, University of Akron School of Law.
Thanks to Nadia Banteka, Teneille Brown, Kevin Cole, Stephanie Didwania, Donald Dripps, Adam
Hirsch, Kay Levine, Mike Mannheimer, Richard Re, and all participants in the Virtual Crim Workshop
and the CrimFest Conference for helpful comments and advice. Special thanks to our research, coding,
and administrative team of Patti Beekhuizen, Nathan Gardner, Alexa Horn, Chelsea Smith, Shauna
Smith, Andrew Stein, Shelby Stender, Morgan Tingey, and Angela Turnbow for their invaluable
assistance.
551
applications of the exception are compatible with a robustly enforced
Fourth Amendment, others strike at the heart of the Amendment’s protec-
tions. The current good faith exception blocks any meaningful remedy for
several core violations of the Fourth Amendment, including those tar-
geted by the Framers of the Constitution. It motivates judges to avoid
addressing substantive Fourth Amendment questions and contributes to
the stagnation of constitutional law. It introduces arbitrariness and
inequity into constitutional remedies, insulating discretionary police
behavior from review in a manner likely to harm groups disproportion-
ately targeted by the police. And it implicates separation of powers val-
ues, preventing the judiciary from acting as an effective structural check
on executive or legislative overreach. The Article’s analysis, both empiri-
cal and theoretical, aims to spur a comprehensive reexamination of the
good faith exception.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 553
I. THE LAW AND THEORY OF THE GOOD FAITH EXCEPTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . 556
A. GOOD FAITH EXCEPTION DOCTRINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 556
B. EXISTING SCHOLARSHIP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 559
II. THE GOOD FAITH EXCEPTION’S IMPACT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 561
A. AN EMPIRICAL OVERVIEW OF THE GOOD FAITH EXCEPTION . . . . . . . 562
1. Methods .......................................... 562
2. Selection Effects ................................... 563
3. Results and Analysis ............ ................... . 565
a. Federal and State Decisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567
b. Types of Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 568
c. Avoidance of Substantive Rulings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 569
d. Court of Appeals and District Court Decisions . . . . 570
B. THE GOOD FAITH EXCEPTION FOLLOWING A TRANSFORMATIVE
DOCTRINAL CHANGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 571
III. LAW ENFORCEMENT INCENTIVES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 573
A. PROBLEMATIC RELIANCE ON STATUTORY LAW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 574
552 THE GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 113:551
1. Surveillance Incentives ............................. 574
2. General-Purpose Statutes ........................... . 579
B. PROBLEMATIC RELIANCE ON PRECEDENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 581
C. POTENTIAL REFORMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 584
IV. BEYOND INCENTIVES: A RE-EXAMINATION OF THE GOOD FAITH
EXCEPTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 586
A. FOURTH AMENDMENT PRINCIPLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 586
B. DELAY AND STAGNATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 588
C. EQUITY AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF REMEDIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 589
D. THE STRUCTURAL JUSTIFICATION FOR EXCLUSION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 590
E. REEVALUATING GOOD FAITH CASES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 593
CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 597
INTRODUCTION
Imagine that government investigators obtain a new technology that allows
them to monitor the private behavior of citizens in ways unimaginable just deca-
des earlier. This technology is unprecedented; no court has squarely addressed its
use, and no legislature has considered its repercussions. We might hope that
investigators would be cautious in using this novel technology, given that coordi-
nate branches of government have not had the opportunity to consider it and the
public at large is unaware of its capabilities.
Yet current law actively encourages investigators to use novel, potentially
unlawful surveillance technologies as much as possible. Under the “good faith
exception” in Fourth Amendment law, such practices are protected whenever
investigators can claim reliance on tangentially related statutes or court decisions.
This doctrine incentivizes investigators to employ novel surveillance tactics
aggressively before courts can declare them unconstitutional. At the same time, it
permits judges to avoid substantive constitutional rulings on new technologies,
impeding the development of Fourth Amendment law and permitting police to
engage in unlawful surveillance practices indefinitely.
The good faith exception provides that evidence obtained in good faith reliance
on a statute, warrant, or other authority will not be excluded, even if the authority
was incorrect and the search for evidence was unconstitutional.
1
For example, if
the police conduct a search under an existing statute, the evidence they collect
will be admitted at trial even if the statute turns out to violate the Fourth
2025] THE REALITY OF THE GOOD FAITH EXCEPTION 553
