Can Illegally Obtained Evidence Be Thrown Out in Minnesota?

What is the exclusionary rule?

The exclusionary rule is the legal principle that evidence obtained through an unconstitutional search or seizure generally cannot be used against you at trial. It comes from the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Mapp v. Ohio (1961), which made the rule apply to state courts, and Minnesota has followed it ever since.

The rule’s main purpose is to deter police misconduct — to remove the incentive for officers to violate your rights by making the resulting evidence useless in court. It is not a reward to the defendant and it is not automatic. Courts weigh whether throwing the evidence out will actually serve that deterrent purpose.

What this means for you: If police broke the rules to get evidence, the law has a built-in remedy — keeping that evidence away from the jury. Whether it applies in your case depends on what went wrong and how serious it was.

How do you get evidence thrown out in Minnesota?

You do not get evidence excluded just by pointing out a problem. Your attorney has to file a motion to suppress and usually argue it at a pretrial hearing (in Minnesota this is often called a Rasmussen hearing). Minnesota law specifically allows a person who has been subjected to an unlawful search or seizure to ask the court to suppress the evidence (Minnesota Statutes Section 626.21).

A few practical points:

• Timing matters. Suppression issues are generally raised before trial, not in the middle of it.
• It has to be your rights. You can only suppress evidence that came from a violation of your constitutional rights, not someone else’s. This is called standing.
• Winning can change everything. If the key evidence is suppressed, the State may be left with too little to prove its case, which can lead to a dismissal or a much better resolution.

What this means for you: Suppression is not automatic and it is not something you can do on your own at the last minute. It takes a lawyer reviewing the police paperwork and filing the right motion at the right time.

What is “fruit of the poisonous tree”?

The exclusionary rule reaches more than the item police seized illegally. It also reaches evidence they discovered because of the illegal act — what courts call the fruit of the poisonous tree (from Wong Sun v. United States). If an illegal stop leads police to a confession or to other evidence, that later evidence can be tainted too.

The question a court asks is whether the later evidence was found by exploiting the original illegality, or by some independent, untainted path.

What this means for you: An early violation — like an illegal stop or search — can knock out a whole chain of evidence that followed from it, not just the first thing police found.

What are the exceptions that let the State keep the evidence?

Even when police make a constitutional mistake, the law recognizes several exceptions. If one applies, the evidence can come in anyway. The main ones are:

• Independent source. Evidence is admissible if police actually obtained it through a separate, lawful route that did not rely on the illegal act (Murray v. United States).
• Inevitable discovery. Evidence can come in if the State proves police would have found it anyway through lawful means (Nix v. Williams). Minnesota courts require this to rest on real, provable facts — not guesses about what might have happened.
• Attenuation. If enough separates the illegal act from the evidence — time, intervening events, or the person’s own free choices — the “taint” can dissipate.
• Good faith. In limited situations, evidence is not suppressed when officers reasonably relied on authority they believed was valid (discussed in detail below).
• Public safety. Statements taken without Miranda warnings can still be used when police questions were needed to protect themselves or the public from immediate danger (New York v. Quarles).
• Impeachment. Even suppressed evidence can sometimes be used to challenge a defendant’s credibility if the defendant testifies and contradicts it (Harris v. New York).

What this means for you: A violation does not guarantee suppression. The State will often argue that one of these exceptions applies, so the fight is usually over the exception, not just the initial mistake.

Does Minnesota have a “good-faith exception”?

Yes — but a narrow one, and this is a key area where Minnesota law has changed.

Under federal law, the good-faith exception lets the government keep evidence when officers acted in objectively reasonable reliance on something they believed was valid — for example, a search warrant later found defective (United States v. Leon), or binding court precedent later overruled (Davis v. United States).

For many years, Minnesota refused to adopt the broad federal good-faith exception, choosing to give people more protection under the Minnesota Constitution. That changed in part with State v. Lindquist (2015). There, the Minnesota Supreme Court adopted a good-faith exception in one limited situation: when officers rely on binding appellate precedent that is later overruled. Lindquist was a DWI case in which police drew blood without a warrant based on the law as it stood before a later U.S. Supreme Court decision changed the rules.

The exception remains narrow. In State v. Malecha (2024), the Minnesota Supreme Court refused to extend good faith to a search and arrest based on a warrant that had actually been quashed but still appeared active because of a court clerical error — and the court declined to announce any broad good-faith rule for other situations.

What this means for you: Minnesota now recognizes a good-faith exception, but only in tightly limited circumstances, and Minnesota courts still tend to protect privacy rights more than federal courts do. If the State raises good faith in your case, whether it actually applies is a serious, fact-specific legal question worth challenging.

Is Minnesota law more protective than federal law?

Often, yes. The Fourth Amendment sets a constitutional floor — a minimum level of protection that applies everywhere. But under Article I, Section 10 of the Minnesota Constitution, Minnesota courts can and sometimes do give people more protection than federal law requires. The good-faith exception is a good example: Minnesota’s version is much narrower than the broad federal rule.

What this means for you: A search that might survive in federal court can still be challenged under the Minnesota Constitution. A Minnesota defense lawyer will look at both.

What should you do if you think evidence against you was illegally obtained?

As general guidance — not advice for any specific case:

• Do not assume the evidence is automatically valid. How police got it can be challenged.
• Write down what happened — the stop, the search, what officers said and did, and when — while it is fresh.
• Do not discuss the details of your case over the phone, by text, or on social media.
• Get the police reports and warrant paperwork reviewed by a lawyer. Suppression often turns on details buried in those documents.
• Act early. Suppression motions have deadlines, and the sooner a lawyer is involved, the more options you have.

What this means for you: The strongest move is to get an experienced Minnesota criminal defense attorney to examine how the evidence was gathered before it is ever used against you.

Talk to a Minnesota criminal defense lawyer

Whether evidence can be suppressed depends on the specific facts of your stop, search, or arrest — and on fast-changing rules like Minnesota’s narrow good-faith exception. If you are facing charges in Chanhassen or anywhere in Minnesota and believe the evidence may have been obtained illegally, Keil Defense can review your case and file the right motions. Call (651) 315-3097 for a confidential consultation.