Update: On December 22, 2021 the Supreme Court of Ohio handed down a merit decision in this case. In an opinion written by Justice Donnelly, joined in full by Chief Justice O’Connor and Justice Fischer, the Court held that the arrest warrant at issue sufficiently complied with Crim R. 4 even with the absence of a court official’s signature on the warrant and there was no Fourth Amendment violation in the case. Justice Stewart concurred in judgment only.  Justice Brunner concurred in judgment only with an opinion. Justice DeWine dissented and would dismiss the case as improvidently allowed. Justice Kennedy joined DeWine’s opinion.

“Did there need to be an arrest warrant at all in this case?”

Justice DeWine, to counsel for Harrison

“Was there anything about this procedure that was in place in this courthouse that confirmed that the judge actually reviewed the affidavit of probable cause before stamping it and sending it to the clerk’s office?”

Justice Donnelly, to the prosecuting attorney

On June 29, 2021, the Supreme Court of Ohio heard oral argument in State of Ohio v. Kandale L. Harrison, 2020-1117. At issue is whether an unsigned arrest warrant is defective and, if so, whether an officer’s good faith reliance on it saves it from a motion to suppress evidence.

Case Background

Kandale L. Harrison allegedly sold about four grams of cocaine to a police informant in a controlled drug buy in early February 2018. To further their investigation, on February 13, the detectives working the case obtained a warrant to place a GPS tracking device on Harrison’s vehicle. On February 27, Detective Brent Joseph of the Logan County Sheriff’s Office then sought an arrest warrant for Harrison.  Bellefontaine Municipal Court clerks, however, had developed a practice of not entering warrants into the public computer system to prevent suspects from discovering open warrants against them and fleeing.  At the time, it was also the practice of the court not to sign the warrant until after it was served, for the protection of the officers.

After requesting an arrest warrant, Detective Joseph received two pages from the court: an unsigned, blank arrest warrant and the complaint, which was stamped and initialed by a municipal court judge. Detective Joseph testified that he believed the stamp and initials rendered the warrant valid.

At Detective Joseph’s request, a road deputy stopped Harrison’s vehicle in early March 2018, with the arrest warrant as the sole basis for the stop. Harrison allegedly possessed more than seven grams of cocaine, a loaded weapon, and about $6,200 in cash in his vehicle. Detective Joseph then arrived and arrested Harrison pursuant to the warrant. A clerk signed the arrest warrant one day after the stop.

Harrison pled not guilty after a grand jury returned a nine-count indictment. He moved to suppress the evidence from the stop. Harrison argued the arrest warrant was defective under Crim. R. 4(A) because it lacked an authority’s signature. Criminal Rule 4 governs the issuance and contents of arrest warrants.

The trial court found that the warrant was defective because it was not signed by any person authorized to issue the warrant, and that the good faith exception did not apply because it was not objectively reasonable for an experienced officer to rely on the legitimacy of this unsigned warrant.  The court granted Harrison’s motion and suppressed all evidence recovered during the vehicle stop. The court found that common sense and experience show that without an authorized person’s signature, no warrant exists. Therefore, at the time of Harrison’s arrest, no valid arrest warrant existed, and therefore there could be no lawful search incident to arrest. 

The state appealed.

The Appeal

The  Third District Court of Appeals reversed the trial court’s judgment. The appeals court did not decide whether the unsigned arrest warrant was defective, as it found Detective Joseph reasonably relied on the municipal court judge’s stamp and initials, and reasonably believed he had a valid warrant. The appeals court found this met the good faith exception, even if the warrant did not properly comply with Crim.R. 4. Since there was no police misconduct to deter, the exclusionary rule did not apply. One judge on the panel concurred in judgment only.

Read the oral argument preview of the case here.

Key Precedent

*U.S. Constitution, Amendment IV (“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.”)

Ohio Constitution, Article I, Section 14 (“The right of the people to be secure in their persons … against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated; and no warrant shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, particularly describing … the person … to be seized.”)

*R.C. 2935.03(B)(1) (a peace officer may arrest and detain a person before a warrant is obtained if the officer has reasonable cause to believe the person is guilty of various offenses, including a felony drug offense.)

R.C. 2935.18 (“A warrant shall be directed to a specific officer or to a department designated by its chief, and shall command such officer or member of department to take the accused and bring the accused forthwith before the magistrate or court issuing such warrant…”)

*Crim. Rule 4(A)(1) (if probable cause appears to exist, a judge, magistrate or other official shall issue an arrest warrant.)

 Crim. Rule 4(C)(1) (a warrant shall contain the defendant’s name or defendant’s description, a description of the offense, the applicable statute or ordinance, and whether the warrant is being issued before the defendant has appeared or was scheduled to appear.)

*State v. Heston, 29 Ohio St.2d 152 (1972) (“[a]n arrest without a warrant is valid where the arresting officer has probable cause to believe that a felony was committed by defendant and the circumstances are such as to make it impracticable to secure a warrant.”)

Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103 (1975) (probable cause determination necessary for an arrest warrant can be made after arrest.)

United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897 (1984) (“when police act in an objectively reasonable manner in executing a search believed in good faith to be legal, there is no bad conduct to deter” under the exclusionary rule.)

State v. Spaw, 18 Ohio App.3d 77 (3d Dist. 1984) (a search warrant is void ab initio if it lacks any signature at all and officers could not have reasonably presumed its validity. Officers cannot exercise such a facially defective warrant in good faith.)

State v. Williams, 57 Ohio St.3d 24 (1991) (“A search warrant is void ab initio if not signed by a judge prior to the search,” and in such cases, the evidence seized must be suppressed.)

State v. Williams, 2001-Ohio-1388 (2d Dist.) (“an unsigned warrant, being void ab initio, cannot be executed in good faith.”)

*State v. Brown, 2007-Ohio-4837 (arrest based on probable cause and executed in a public place does not violate the Fourth Amendment.)

Davis v. United States, 564 U.S. 229 (2011) (the exclusionary rule is a deterrent sanction barring prosecutors from introducing evidence obtained via a Fourth Amendment violation.)

State v. Hoffman, 2014-Ohio-4795 (suppression of the evidence not appropriate for a warrant lacking probable cause finding because officers relied on the warrant and acted in good faith.)

*State v. Hovatter, 2018-Ohio-2254 (5^th Dist.) (trial court did not err in denying a defendant’s motion to suppress because the warrantless arrest of defendant was valid pursuant to R.C. §2935.04)

State v. Trout, 2019-Ohio-124 (good faith exception does not apply when officer held an unreasonable interpretation of the law.)

*Cited by counsel at argument

Harrison’s Propositions of Law Accepted for Review

Proposition of Law 1

An arrest warrant that is not signed by a judge, magistrate, clerk of court, or officer designated by the judge, does not comply with Criminal Rule 4.

Proposition of Law 2

A law enforcement officer’s reliance on an arrest warrant that is not signed pursuant [to] Criminal Rule 4 does not qualify for the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule.

At Oral Argument

Arguing Counsel

Tina M. McFall, Triplett McFall Wolfe Law, LLC, Bellefontaine, for Appellant Kandale Harrison

Eric C. Stewart, Logan County Prosecutor, for Appellee State of Ohio

Harrison’s Argument

The 4^th Amendment specifically requires a warrant to protect us from unreasonable searches and seizures. The document that purports to be an arrest warrant in this case did not contain the signature of the issuing judge or any other court official prior to Mr. Harrison’s arrest. Mr. Harrison was not just randomly in public when he was arrested. Law enforcement was tracking him with a GPS warrant that was issued prior to the stop. As for the argument that no arrest warrant was needed in this case, the state never argued that below.

The trial court found there was no valid arrest warrant in this case and no other probable cause to stop the vehicle Harrison was in. While admittedly, law enforcement had a warrant for the GPS on the car, a warrant was needed in this situation because of the passage of time. Without the GPS warrant Detective Joseph would not have been able to make the public arrest.  He would not have known where Mr. Harrison was. Mr. Harrison argues that the warrant had lapsed on the GPS once the investigation stopped. If the state had raised the issue at the trial level that no warrant was needed, Mr. Harrison could have then had the opportunity to argue that the GPS warrant was infirm and that had made a difference in this case. 

As to the validity of the arrest warrant, Detective Joseph said he took a 4-page document in to be signed-the complaint, the warrant, and two pages of affidavit.  What he picked up was two pages–the warrant and the complaint. The probable cause stamp indicated there was a hearing, but Detective Joseph knew he hadn’t participated in a hearing. No reasonably objective officer could have thought he or she had a valid warrant when it wasn’t signed and lacked a command to arrest anyone on it. It wasn’t until March 6 that the affidavit showed back up and there was no time stamp on it, no signature from the judge, no indication on either document at any point that the judge ever saw the affidavit. While Crim.R. 4 differs from the equivalent federal rule, in order for a warrant to be issued, it must be signed. Without a signature, “issued” would have no meaning.

There is simply no way to tell what the judge relied on in this case. There is no way to determine whether the judge ever saw the affidavit that was purportedly attached. It wasn’t attached when Detective Joseph picked it up. There is no way of knowing at what point it was attached or if it was ever attached. The motion to suppress was properly granted by the trial court.

State’s Argument 

The purpose of the exclusionary rule is to deter police misconduct.  It operates as a deterrence against deliberate, reckless or grossly negligent conduct. But here there was no misconduct by the police. The defense relies on a missing signature on a warrant. That would be conduct by the court, not by law enforcement. And the problematic procedures at issue are no longer followed by the Bellefontaine Municipal Court.

Law enforcement in the case thought the paperwork was being signed. They certainly did not request that the court not sign it. Detective Joseph thought he had a valid arrest warrant when he was called and told that the judge had approved the warrant and to come and get it. When he picked it up, he thought he had a good arrest warrant.

The state’s position has always been there was probable cause for the arrest whether there was an arrest warrant or not.  While the state did not cite to R.C. 2935.03 at the trial court level, the state’s argument in this case has always been that there was probable cause, just as the defense argument has always been the missing signature.  The defense also raised the issue of how much time could pass for an arrest to be made in a public place based on probable cause. In Hovatter, the Fifth District found five months between criminal activity and an arrest was reasonable. Here, we are only looking at about 4 weeks.

In this case the clerk testified that the judge did review the affidavit and the complaint, approved it, stamped it probable cause and initialed it. The detective had a good faith belief that he had a valid arrest warrant in this case. The detective testified that when he picked up the packet, the first page was the complaint and he saw the stamp “probable cause found” signed by the judge. At that point he thought he was good to go. It was reasonable for him to assume that a warrant had been issued because he saw the judge’s initials, saw the probable cause finding, the clerk told him a judge had initialed the warrant, and he certainly wasn’t reckless or grossly negligent.

Finally, as for the signature requirement, that’s not a constitutional mandate.  The Constitution requires probable cause, and both lower courts found there was probable cause for this arrest.  If there is some defect in the warrant because of the missing signature, that would be a statutory or criminal rule violation, not a constitutional violation.  And only constitutional violations require exclusion or suppression of the state’s evidence.

What Was On Their Minds

The Need for a Warrant/Probable Cause

Did there need to be an arrest warrant at all in this case, asked Justice DeWine? Wasn’t the defendant arrested in a public place for probable cause? A highway is a public place, isn’t it? Wasn’t this court pretty clear in State v. Brown that no warrant was needed? Is that the end of the matter?  Don’t we follow the common law rule that you don’t need an arrest warrant to arrest someone in a public place? So why does it matter whether this warrant was invalid or not? Why didn’t the state just argue below that it doesn’t matter if there was a warrant because the arrest was valid?

If we go back to February 2, 2018, when Detective Joseph used a confidential informant to make a controlled buy of cocaine from Harrison, wasn’t that enough for probable cause regardless of what transpired after that point, asked Justice Brunner? Wasn’t there probable cause for a public arrest without a warrant? Because of this February 2 buy, do we even need to get to the other issues, including good faith belief?

If probable cause is established, how does that go stale, asked Chief Justice O’Connor? How does that not become legitimate when the warrant was sought? Doesn’t the probable cause from the controlled buy start everything in motion, and then Mr. Harrison is arrested in a public place? How much time passed between the controlled buy and the GPS warrant? Isn’t that a natural progression during which time law enforcement is working the case? Was the argument about no warrant needed made below?

Was the argument that probable cause already existed so there was no need for a warrant argued at the trial level, asked Justice Fischer?

Criminal Rule 4

Federal Criminal Rule 4 requires a signature, but the Ohio Criminal Rule does not, does it, asked Justice Fischer? The state rule uses the word “issued” which is different than “signed,” he added.

The Procedure Used in the Bellefontaine court

Was the procedure that apparently is being done in this court system that as soon as a judge signs a warrant, it is put on a public docket and that was the motivation for only having the court initial the complaint with the assurance that probable cause was present and then once a warrant is executed, the judge signs it and then the clerk can put it on the public docket, asked Chief Justice O’Connor?  Was this just a misguided protocol?

The Paperwork in this Case

Can’t the judge sign the warrant and not deliver it to the clerk to put on the public docket, asked Chief Justice O’Connor? She added that it wasn’t the police who insisted the warrant not be signed. Is there a place for a judge to sign the officer’s affidavit? What do we make of the fact that the warrant was signed subsequently and there is the probable cause stamp and the initials of the judge? Is the fact that there was no signature from the judge on the warrant a constitutional violation?

Was there anything about the procedure that was in place in this courthouse that confirmed that the judge actually reviewed the affidavit of probable cause before stamping it and sending it to the clerk’s office, asked Justice Donnelly?  Was there any check in the procedure that confirmed that? As I understand the procedure the judge made the policy that she wouldn’t sign it until after the arrest, so the name didn’t go into the system. I’m just trying to figure out if there was any check within this procedure to confirm that the judge actually read the affidavit. The judge is meant to read the affidavit and there might be instances where there wasn’t probable cause established, he commented.  The judge applied the stamp and then sent it to the clerk?

The Good Faith Exception

Is the state relying on the good faith exception overarching this whole thing no matter what happened, whether the initials and the stamp are good or whether the issuance of the warrant requires a signature, asked Chief Justice O’Connor? Putting all that aside, the detective had a good faith belief that he had a valid warrant when he stopped and arrested the defendant. Whether it was in public or whether it was any place else, he thought he had a valid warrant and that was based on good faith. Since the police officer didn’t precipitate the confusion about the validity of the warrant within the court that bolsters his good faith argument, she added. If the Court goes with good faith the irregularities of the court and the clerk are irrelevant here because the officer knew there was probable cause, he had gotten a legitimate GPS warrant, and to effectuate the arrest he had a document in his hand that he believed was a valid warrant.

Good faith is based on an objective, not a subjective belief, noted Justice Brunner. The second page of this warrant is not even dated or signed by a deputy clerk where it says “you are hereby commanded to arrest the defendant.”  How could that objectively be good faith when it is blank, and anybody could look at it and see that?

If we apply an objective standard, which means the officer should know what the law is, wouldn’t a reasonable police officer have known they didn’t even need a warrant, asked Justice DeWine? So, it didn’t matter for this arrest?

How it Looks from the Bleachers

To Professor Emerita Bettman

Like a win for the state, on one of two bases—either that no warrant was needed to arrest Harrison in a public place based on probable cause or on the basis of the good faith exception to the warrant requirement. Justice DeWine led the charge for the no-warrant, probable cause arrest, and I’m sure he’ll have some takers. As for the good faith exception, Justice Brunner expressed skepticism that an experienced officer would rely on an unsigned warrant.  And Justice Donnelly questioned whether the judge actually reviewed the affidavit of probable cause before stamping it and sending it to the clerk’s office. But the state came back strongly on that, arguing that it was reasonable for the officer to rely on the probable cause stamp and the judge’s initials. Chief Justice O’Connor seemed to favor the state on both its arguments. Justice Fischer also raised the point that the Ohio Criminal Rules, unlike their federal counterpart, only require the arrest warrant be issued, rather than signed, so he is also likely to go with the state.

Finally, there is exclusionary rule 101, made forcefully by Mr. Stewart for the state at the beginning of his argument.  The purpose of the exclusionary rule is to deter police misconduct, and there wasn’t any here.

Not to be overlooked is the fact that the Bellefontaine Municipal Court apparently doesn’t use this procedure anymore. This case reminded me of the decision in State v. Hoffman, 2014-Ohio-4795, in which the Court held that the arrest warrants in the case were invalid because they were issued without a determination of probable cause, but suppression of the evidence was not required in the case because the police officers relied in good faith on longstanding appellate precedent from that district. (You can read the analysis of Hoffman here.)

To Student Contributor Max Londberg

An argument initially overlooked by the state may ultimately decide this case. Justice DeWine posed the first question, asking if police even needed a warrant considering Harrison was arrested for probable cause, which arose from the controlled drug buy. Though Tina McFall, representing Harrison, said the state failed to make that argument in the trial court, the justices nonetheless kept returning to it. Justice Brunner indicated she was not convinced the Court needed to decide whether an unsigned warrant is valid or whether police had a good faith exception to the exclusionary rule, as police had probable cause. Though McFall argued the passage of several weeks from the controlled buy to the arrest necessitated a warrant, Eric Stewart for the state cited precedent that found five months between criminal activity and a warrantless arrest was reasonable. Stewart acknowledged the state failed to raise the warrantless arrest argument in the trial court, despite its validity. But he said the state has consistently argued probable cause existed for the arrest, though he also acknowledged the state failed to previously cite relevant statutory authority for a warrantless arrest.

Chief Justice O’Connor recounted in detail the state’s argument, possibly indicating her support: whether or not a signature is required to validate an arrest warrant, police qualified for a good-faith exception. O’Connor added that as the municipal court, and not police, caused the confusion with its (now retired) warrant procedure, the good-faith exception deserves even more merit. Though Justice Brunner expressed skepticism that an arrest based on a blank warrant could be objectively reasonable, as the good-faith exception requires, Stewart said police relied on the judge’s initials and stamp on a separate but attached page, which connoted a valid warrant. Justice DeWine indicated a reasonable officer would know a warrant was not even necessary given the circumstances.

I predict the arrest will be deemed valid and thus the evidence will not be suppressed here, either under the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule or under the justification that probable cause merited a warrantless arrest