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No. 101,263 IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF KANSAS STATE OF KANSAS, Appellee, v. DAVID CHRISTOPHER KARSON, Appellant.

SYLLABUS BY THE COURT

A police officer who conducts a search in reasonable reliance upon the settled caselaw of the Kansas Supreme Court and the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has not engaged in misconduct even if a later United States Supreme Court decision deems the search invalid. Accordingly, under the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule, evidence found in such a search is not excluded based on the search's invalidity.

Appeal from Johnson District Court; THOMAS H. BORNHOLDT, judge. Opinion filed July 30, 2010. Affirmed.

Rachel L. Pickering, of Kansas Appellate Defender Office, for appellant.

Steven J. Obermeier, assistant district attorney, Ramsey A. Olinger, legal intern, Stephen M. Howe, district attorney, and Steve Six, attorney general, for appellee.

Before LEBEN, P.J., PIERRON, J., and BUKATY, S.J.

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LEBEN, J.: David Karson's pickup truck was searched in 2007 after a police officer arrested him on a warrant. At the time, pretty much all courts in the United States--and certainly those with jurisdiction over Kansas police officers--said it was legal to search the passenger compartment of a car any time one of its occupants was arrested. Drugs and drug paraphernalia were found in Karson's truck, and he was convicted of drug charges.

But in 2009, the United States Supreme Court concluded that a vehicle could not be searched merely because an occupant had been arrested when, as was true in Karson's case, the defendant was already handcuffed and in the back of a patrol car. Karson now argues that the evidence against him should have been excluded because his constitutional rights were violated. But the purpose of the exclusionary rule is not served here: we cannot fault law-enforcement officers for following the law as it was being uniformly interpreted by the courts at the time. The purpose of the exclusionary rule is to deter wrongful conduct by police, not to suggest that they should be leery of following what courts have told them is the law. We therefore conclude that the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies here, and we affirm the defendant's convictions.

The facts of Karson's case are simple and undisputed. Karson parked his pickup at a Quik Trip, where an officer performed a routine check on the license plate. During that check, the officer found that it was registered to Karson and that Karson had an outstanding arrest warrant for a traffic violation. After securing Karson in the back of the officer's patrol car, the officer searched Karson's pickup.

Let's review the legal landscape at the time of the search. The Fourth Amendment protects our right to be secure in our persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures. Caselaw interpreting the Fourth Amendment tells us

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that a search without a warrant is unreasonable unless it falls within one of several limited, well-defined exceptions to the warrant requirement. State v. Thompson, 284 Kan. 763, Syl.

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Kansas Law