Undercover officer is tailing a dude in his car. Officer calls dispatch on his cell phone and confirms that the dude has active warrants. Officer asks dispatch to have a uniformed officer pull the dude over and arrest him for the warrants. Dude is pulled over arrested for the warrants and searched yielding 22 grams of meth.

Officer later finds out that the warrants were defective because they were signed by the JP prior to the accompanying complaint having been signed.

I think good faith excpetion applies. Agreed? Any cases directly on point I can show the court?

"The trial court admitted the evidence under the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule because the warrant check indicated that appellant had an outstanding warrant for his arrest. See Tex.Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.23 (Vernon 2005) (exclusionary rule and good faith exception). We agree. The exclusionary rule does not apply in cases in which an arresting officer is reasonably acting upon information provided to him even if that information is later determined to be erroneous. Arizona v. Evans, 514 U.S. 1 (1995); State v. Mayorga, 901 S.W.2d 943, 945 (Tex.Crim.App.1995); see also Article 38.23(b); Dunn v. State, 951 S.W.2d 478, 479 (Tex.Crim.App.1997). Officer Davidson was acting in objective, good faith reliance upon dispatch's information that an outstanding arrest warrant existed. Thus, the evidence was properly admitted. Appellant's second issue is overruled."

Thompson v. State, NO. 11-07-00093-CR, 2008 WL 4440436 at *2 (Tex.App.-Eastland October 02, 2008, no pet.) (not published)

This has happened to me before. Warrant comes up, I have dispatch confirm, and I get a confirmation. I've done everything I can to confirm that the warrant is current, active, and valid. Good faith applies.

If I DIDN'T confirm the warrant, then there may be an argument. That's why we always do (or should)

I don't know if your judge cares about Supreme Court cases, but there's a new case on point out of Alabama - good faith applies - Herring v. U.S. 129 S.Ct. 695.

Here's a link to the thread discussing Herring. Note also that if this is an erroneous dispatch case, the San Antonio Court of Appeals seems to have applied the good faith exception to that circumstance in White v. State, 989 S.W.2d 108.

[This message was edited by David Newell on 04-08-09 at .]