Legal Commentary

I do not know enough about exclusionary-rule doctrine. But a question for those who do: Is the long-term upshot of Herring v. United States that the Court brought the exclusionary rule into line with qualified immunity: An officer's reasonable mistake (of law or fact) about some underlying issues (here, whether the arrest warrant on Herring was still outstanding) that justified an unconstitutional search or seizure does not trigger the exclusionary rule despite the constitutional violation. Tom Goldstein at SCOTUSBlog argues that this is where the language of the decision will lead. But that analysis sounds identical to the qualified immunity analysis, which immunizes an officer from damages if his underlying understanding of the situation that lead to his unconstitutional conduct was nevertheless reasonable.