Wheeler v. Texas (original by judge slaughter)
Annotate this CaseIn applying for a blood-alcohol search warrant, a police officer submitted an unsworn probable-cause affidavit. Finding that the affidavit articulated probable cause but not realizing that it was unsworn, a magistrate signed and returned the search warrant. The same police officer then executed that search warrant. It was undisputed the officer’s failure to take the oath and swear to his probable-cause affidavit was improper. The question before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals was whether despite this defect, and assuming a valid warrant issued, the good-faith exception to the Texas exclusionary rule applied such that the blood-alcohol evidence was admissible. The Court held that, under the facts of this case, the good-faith exception was inapplicable and the evidence was subject to suppression. The Court agreed with the court of appeals that the officer in this case was objectively unreasonable in executing a search warrant he knew was unsupported by a sworn probable-cause affidavit, such that he could not be said to have acted in objective good-faith reliance upon the warrant.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.