So this means this conviction is upheld but future convictions may be overturned if they similarly don't acquire a warrant?
This "good faith exception" is so absurd I struggle to believe that it's real.
Ordinary citizens are expected to understand and scrupulously abide by all of the law, but it's enough for law enforcement to believe that what they're doing is legal even if it isn't?
What that is is a punch line from a Chapelle bit[1], not a reasonable part of the justice system.
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Note that this case is not about ignorance of the law. This is I knew the law and was trying to follow it - I just honestly thought it didn't apply because of some tricky situation that isn't 100% clear.
We're talking about orthogonal issues.
Mens rea applies to whether the person performs the act on purpose. Not whether they were aware that the act was illegal.
Let's use fraud as an example since you brought it up.
If I bought an item from someone and used counterfeit money on purpose, that would be fraud. Even if I truly believed that doing so was legal. But it wouldn't be fraud if I didn't know that the money was counterfeit.
Now, there is prior case law declaring it illegal.
The ruling is made in such a way to say “we were allowing this, but we shouldn’t have been, so we wont allow it going forward”.
I am not a legal scholar, but that’s the best way I can explain it. The way that the judicial system applies to law is incredibly complex and inconsistent.
This ends up feeling a lot like gambling in a casino. The casino can afford to bet and lose much more than the individual.
1. It was unclear if a warrant was necessary
2. Any judge would have given a warrant
3. You didn't get a warrant
4. A warrant was actually required.
Thus, it's not clear that any harm was caused because the right wasn't clearly enshrined and had the police known that it was, they likely would have followed the correct process. There was no intention to violate rights, and no advantage gained from even the inadvertent violation of rights. But the process is updated for the future.
Because of that, precedent is largely going to be set with guilty parties, but will apply equally to violations of the rights of the innocent.
It simply means that at the trial court level, future prosecutions will not be able to rely on the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule if warrantless inculpatory evidence is obtained under similar circumstances. If the governement were to try to present such evidence at trial and the trial judge were to admit it over the objection of the defendant, then that would present a specific ground for appeal.
This ruling merely bolsters the 'better to get a warrant' spirit of the Fourth Amendment.