United States v. Dennis Dean Mahoney

PATRICK E. HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judge:

The government appeals under 18 U.S.C. § 3731 from the district court’s order suppressing Dennis Mahoney’s post-arrest confession “as the fruit of an unlawful arrest.” Finding that the actions of the state law enforcement agents, though assumed here to be illegal, were taken in a reasonable and good faith belief that they were legal, we apply the “good faith exception” to the exclusionary rule explicated in United States v. Williams, 622 F.2d 830 (5th Cir. 1980) (en banc), and reverse.

On February 24, 1982, a federal grand jury in Austin, Texas, returned…