Case Title: The People v. Jose Tolentino

Citation: 

Docket Number: 

State: new-york

Court: New York Appellate Court

Date: 2010-03-30T00:00:00Z

Document:
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This opinion is uncorrected and subject to revision before
publication in the New York Reports.
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No. 37  
The People &c.,
            Respondent,
        v.
Jose Tolentino, &c.,
            Appellant.
Kristina Schwarz, for appellant.
Allen J. Vickey, for respondent.
READ, J.:
At about 7:40 PM on New Year's Day in 2005, defendant
Jose Tolentino was driving a car in the vicinity of West 181st
Street and Broadway in New York City.  The police stopped him for
playing music too loudly, learned his name, and ran a computer
check of Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) files to look up his
driving record.  When this check revealed that defendant's
license was suspended with at least 10 suspensions imposed on at
least 10 different dates, he was arrested and charged with one
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count of aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle in
the first degree.
As part of an omnibus motion, defendant sought to
suppress his driving record and any statements made after arrest;
alternatively, he asked Supreme Court to hold a Mapp/Dunaway
and/or a Huntley/Dunaway hearing.  Defendant alleged that the
police unlawfully stopped his car and illegally obtained his
driving record from DMV.  Specifically, he contended that his
driving record was a suppressible fruit of a Fourth Amendment
violation because "[t]he steps required to obtain a DMV records
check are the stop of the vehicle and the elicitation of the
driver's name or the driver's license number."  As a result,
defendant argued, "[b]ut for defendant's unlawful seizure by the
police, his DMV records would not have been obtained in this
case, and they are therefore the fruit of the police illegality." 
The People opposed the motion, first on the ground that the stop
was legal; second, they took the position that, even if the stop
were, in fact, illegal, a defendant's identity is never a
suppressible fruit, and, in any event, a public agency possessed
the records.
On July 12, 2005, Supreme Court granted defendant's
motion for a Huntley/Dunaway hearing, but denied his request for
a Mapp hearing.  The judge held that "[a]n individual does not
possess a legitimate expectation of privacy in files maintained
by the [DMV] and such records do not constitute evidence which is
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subject to suppression under a fruit of the poisonous tree
analysis."  On August 3, 2005, defendant pleaded guilty to the
crime charged in exchange for five years' probation; on September
28, 2005, Supreme Court sentenced him as promised.
Defendant appealed, claiming that because his driving
record was suppressible, he was entitled to a remand for a
hearing.  The Appellate Division disagreed and unanimously
affirmed (59 AD3d 298 [1st Dept 2009]).  The court relied on the
United States Supreme Court's decision in INS v Lopez-Mendoza
(468 US 1032, 1039 [1984]) for the proposition that the identity
of a defendant is never suppressible as the fruit of an unlawful
arrest.  And because defendant's identity led to the discovery of
his DMV records, those records were likewise not suppressible. 
Finally, the Appellate Division noted that the records had been
compiled independently of defendant's arrest.  A Judge of this
court granted defendant permission to appeal (12 NY3d 860
[2009]), and we now affirm.
In INS v Lopez-Mendoza (468 US at 1039) the Supreme
Court held that the "'body' or identity of a defendant . . . in a
criminal or civil proceeding is never itself suppressible as a
fruit of an unlawful arrest, even if it is conceded that an
unlawful arrest, search, or interrogation occurred."  A contrary
holding would "permit[] a defendant to hide who he is [and] would
undermine the administration of the criminal justice system"
(United States v Farias-Gonzalez, 556 F3d 1181, 1187 [11th Cir
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2009]).  Accordingly, defendant does not argue that his name or
identity would be subject to suppression as a fruit of the
allegedly unlawful stop.  Rather, he claims that the pre-existing
DMV records are subject to suppression because without the
alleged illegality, the police would not have learned his name
and would not have been able to access these records. 
Federal circuit courts addressing this issue in the
context of those suspected of illegally residing in the country
have held that, when the police stop or seize a defendant, learn
his or her name, and use that name to check preexisting
government immigration files, the records are not subject to
suppression (United States v Farais-Gonzalez, 556 F3d at 1189;
United States v Bowley, 435 F3d 426, 430-431 [3d Cir 2006];
United States v Roque-Villanueva, 175 F3d 345, 346 [5th Cir
1999]).  For example, in Hoonsilapa v INS (575 F2d 735, 737 [9th
Cir 1978]), the government sought to deport an alien after
learning from his INS administrative file that he was in the
country illegally.  The alien moved to suppress the file, arguing
that it was the "fruit" of an illegal search and arrest (id.). 
The Ninth Circuit rejected the argument, noting that the alien's
INS file was already in the possession of the government at the
time of the purportedly illegal arrest and search, and that the
government's "decision to search the INS files was only the
'product' of the discovery of [the alien's] identity during the
illegal arrest and search" (id. at 738).  The court emphasized
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that "the mere fact that Fourth Amendment illegality directs
attention to a particular suspect does not require exclusion of
evidence subsequently unearthed from independent sources" (id.).  
The facts here are analogous.  The officers learned
defendant's identity when they stopped his car; that knowledge
permitted the police to run a computer check that led to the
retrieval of defendant's DMV records.  Under the rationale of
Lopez-Mendoza and the above federal circuit court decisions,
defendant's DMV records were therefore not suppressible as the
fruit of the purportedly illegal stop.  In short, "there is no
sanction . . . when an illegal arrest only leads to discovery of
the man's identity and that merely leads to the official file or
other independent evidence" (United States v Guzman-Bruno, 27 F3d
420, 422 [9th Cir 1994] [internal citation and quotation
omitted]).
While not forming an independent basis for this
outcome, the result is further supported by the nature of the
records at issue, which were public records already in the
possession of authorities (United States v Crews, 445 US 463,
475-77 and n 22 [1980] [plurality] ["[t]he exclusionary rule
enjoins the Government from benefitting from evidence it has
unlawfully obtained; it does not reach backward to taint
information that was in official hands prior to any illegality"];
see also Matter of Jason W, 272 AD2d 214, 214 [1st Dept 2000];
People v Bargas, 101 AD2d 751, 752 [1st Dept 1984]).
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In People v Pleasant (54 NY2d 972 [1981]), we applied
similar principles to deny exclusion of independently-compiled
information in the possession of a public agency.  There, the
defendant was illegally arrested in Suffolk County for weapon
possession, at which time the police discovered that one of the
guns recovered during the unlawful arrest had been used in a
robbery in Bronx County.  Suffolk County authorities conveyed
this information, along with the defendant's name and date of
birth, to the Bronx police.  The Bronx police then retrieved the
defendant's photograph from the Bureau of Criminal Identification
and showed it to the robbery victims, who positively identified
the defendant from a photographic array.  After the defendant was
arrested on a warrant, one of the robbery victims identified him
in a lineup.
We rejected the defendant's claim that the photographic
identifications should be suppressed as the fruit of the illegal
arrest, holding that "only defendant's identity was obtained as a
result of the unlawful seizure" and the photographic
identifications "were not an exploitation of the antecedent
illegality, as defendant's photograph was obtained from a source
independent of the unlawful arrest, and such identifications
proceeded from the witnesses' independent recollections"
(Pleasant at 974 and n* [internal citation omitted]).  Similarly,
the DMV records here were obtained by the police from a source
independent of the claimed illegal stop.
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As the Farias-Gonzalez court pointed out, the policy
rationale of the exclusionary rule would not be served by its
application to identity-related evidence.  The social costs of
excluding such evidence are great: courts and the government are
entitled to know who defendants are, since permitting defendants
to hide their identity would undermine the administration of the
criminal justice system and essentially allow suppression of the
court's jurisdiction.  On the other side of the equation, there
are few deterrence benefits.  The Constitution does not prohibit
the government from requiring a person to identify himself to a
police officer.  In addition, "even if a defendant in a criminal
prosecution successfully suppresses all evidence of his identity
and the charges are dropped, the Government can collect new,
admissible evidence of identity and re-indict him.  This is so
because identity-related evidence is not unique evidence that,
once suppressed, cannot be obtained by other means" (Farias-
Gonzalez, 556 F3d at 1188-1189 [internal citation omitted]).  As
a result, "[t]he application of the exclusionary rule to
identity-related evidence will have a minimal deterrence benefit,
as its true effect will often be merely to postpone a criminal
prosecution" (id. at 1189).
Nor do we believe that "[t]oday's opinion [will] give[]
law enforcement an incentive to illegally stop, detain, and
search anyone for the sole purpose of discovering the person's
identity and determining if it matches any government records
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accessible by the police" (dissenting op at 5).  Police are
already deterred from conducting illegal car stops because 
evidence recovered in the course of an illegal stop remains
subject to the exclusionary rule.  
While the Supreme Court has held that fingerprint
evidence -- evidence the dissent describes as "paradigmatic
identity evidence" (dissenting op at 4) -- may be subject to the
exclusionary rule (Davis v Mississippi, 394 US 721, 724 [1969]),
Davis, as well as Hayes v Florida (470 US 811, 815 [1985]), are
distinguishable from this case in two ways.  First, the
defendants in those cases were illegally stopped for the purpose
of obtaining evidence -- fingerprints -- that would connect the
defendants to crimes under investigation.  The "identity
evidence" was not preexisting.  Second, the fingerprints were
used, not to establish the identities of the individuals
apprehended by the police and subject to the jurisdiction of the
court, but to connect those individuals' fingerprints to latent
prints recovered from the crime scene.  The evidence established
defendants' "identities" as the perpetrators, but not their
"identities" in the sense relevant here.  Our decision today
would not alter the outcome of those cases.  We merely hold that
a defendant may not invoke the fruit-of-the-poisonous-tree
doctrine when the only link between improper police activity and
the disputed evidence is that the police learned the defendant's
name.
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Accordingly, the order of the Appellate Division should
be affirmed.
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People v Jose Tolentino
No. 37 
CIPARICK, J.(dissenting):
Because I believe that Department of Motor Vehicles
(DMV) records are subject to suppression if obtained by the
police through the exploitation of a Fourth Amendment violation,
namely an unlawful traffic stop, I respectfully dissent.
The majority has set forth a new rule, that regardless
of police conduct, DMV records obtained through a police stop and
inquiry of the driver are not subject to the exclusionary rule
when the only link between the police conduct and the evidence is
that the police learned a defendant's name (see maj. op. at 9). 
Further, the majority believes that DMV records are not subject
to suppression since they are government records compiled
independently of defendant's arrest.  We disagree on both counts. 
It has long been established that evidence derived from
a Fourth Amendment violation must be suppressed as "fruit of the
poisonous tree" if law enforcement "'exploited or benefitted from
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its illegal conduct' such that 'there is a connection between the
violation of a constitutional right and the derivative evidence'"
(People v Jones, 2 NY3d 235, 242 [2004] [citations omitted]).  We
have never before excluded any category of evidence from this
rule.  Fruit of the poisonous tree may be anything "of
evidentiary value" (Davis v Mississippi, 394 US 721, 724 [1969],
quoting Bynum v United States, 262 F2d 465, 467 [DC Cir 1958]),
including fingerprints (id.), photographs (United States v Crews,
445 US 463, 472 [1980]), and identifications (People v Gethers,
86 NY2d 159, 162 [1995]). 
The majority relies heavily on a misreading of
Immigration and Naturalization Serv. v Lopez-Mendoza (468 US 1032
[1984]).  In that case, the United States Supreme Court reviewed
two civil deportation proceedings that resulted from illegal
police conduct.  In the first case, Adan Lopez-Mendoza raised a
jurisdictional issue, that he had been summoned to the
deportation proceeding as a result of an unlawful arrest.  He did
not challenge the admissibility of the evidence proffered against
him.  In the companion case, Elias Sandoval-Sanchez challenged
the introduction of illegally obtained evidence in his
deportation proceeding.  With respect to Lopez-Mendoza's claim,
the Court wrote that, "the 'body' or identity of a defendant or
respondent in a criminal or civil proceeding is never itself
suppressible as a fruit of an unlawful arrest" (id. at 1039). 
The Fourth, Eighth, and Tenth Circuits read this language as
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referring only to the court's personal jurisdiction over Lopez-
Mendoza, not admissibility of identity evidence (see United
States v Oscar-Torres, 507 F3d 224, 227-230 [4th Cir 2007];
United States v Olivares-Rangel, 458 F3d 1104, 1111-1112 [10th
Cir 2006]; United States v Guevara-Martinez, 262 F3d 751, 753-755
[8th Cir 2001]).  I agree with these courts. 
There are several reasons why this reading of Lopez-
Mendoza is more persuasive than the reading given by the
majority.  Most importantly, the authority cited for the
proposition that a defendant's identity cannot be suppressed
refers to an older rule, undisputed here, that the identity of a
defendant is never suppressible so as to defeat a court's
jurisdiction over that defendant (Lopez-Mendoza, 468 US at
1039-40, citing Gerstein v Pugh, 420 US 103, 119 [1975] and
Frisbie v Collins, 342 US 519, 522 [1952]).  As such, the Lopez-
Mendoza language at issue is found in the section of the opinion
addressing Lopez-Mendoza's jurisdictional claim.  The Court later
addressed Sandoval-Sanchez's claim that the specific identity
evidence against him should be suppressed.  Rather than applying
any "identity rule," as it had when addressing Lopez-Mendoza's
jurisdictional claim, the Court held that the exclusionary rule
did not extend to deportation proceedings -- purely civil
proceedings determining a person's eligibility to stay in this
country. 
I agree with the majority that a defendant's identity
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cannot be suppressed to defeat the personal jurisdiction of a
court.  However, identity-related evidence can and should be
subject to the exclusionary rule.  Indeed, the United States
Supreme Court has twice found that fingerprints -- paradigmatic
identity evidence -- are suppressible under the exclusionary rule
(Davis, 394 US at 724; Hayes v Florida, 470 US 811, 815 [1985]). 
In Davis, the Court held that because "fingerprint evidence is no
exception" to the exclusionary rule, defendant's illegally
obtained fingerprints that matched the perpetrators' fingerprints
on file should have been suppressed (394 US at 724).  The Court
reaffirmed Davis in Hayes and found that a defendant's
fingerprints taken for an investigative purpose in the course of
an unlawful detention were inadmissible fruit of that detention
(470 US at 816). 
Certainly the deterrent purpose of the exclusionary
rule should be applicable to identity-related evidence.  The
majority's "broad[] reading of Lopez-Mendoza [gives] the police
carte blanche powers to engage in any manner of unconstitutional
conduct so long as their purpose [is] limited to establishing a
defendant's identity" (Olivares-Rangel, 458 F3d at 1111). 
Today's opinion gives law enforcement an incentive to illegally
stop, detain, and search anyone for the sole purpose of
discovering the person's identity and determining if it matches
any government records accessible by the police.  Permitting law
enforcement to exploit a Fourth Amendment violation that produces
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identity or identity-related evidence misses the point; what
matters is the legality of the police conduct, not the type of
evidence obtained.  
Of course, this does not mean that identity-related
evidence will necessarily be excluded, even if it is the product
of an unlawful stop, but merely that it is subject to the same
rules as other evidence.  It may indeed be admissible, along with
other evidence secured as a result of acquiring defendant's
pedigree information, if there is an independent source,
discovery was inevitable, or the evidence is attenuated from the
illegality (Gethers, 86 NY2d at 162).  If none of these
exceptions apply, the records obtained as a result of identity
information acquired during an illegal stop are suppressible. 
Here, however, because Supreme Court made no determination
regarding the legality of the stop, we are in no position to
determine whether the proffered evidence should be suppressed. 
The majority's second argument -- that the DMV records
are not subject to the exclusionary rule because they were
compiled by a state agency independent of any illegality --
ignores that the police located these specific records only by
relying on identifying information that may have been the product
of an illegal stop.  Contrary to the majority's opinion, our
holding in People v Pleasant (54 NY2d 972, 974 [1981]) does not
suggest that evidence in possession of a government agency is
immune from the exclusionary rule's constraints.  In fact,
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Pleasant was entirely premised on the identification at issue
being "'sufficiently distinguishable to be purged of the primary
taint'" (id., quoting Wong Sun v United States, 371 US 471, 488
[1963]).  In other words, far from holding that identity-related
evidence was not subject to suppression, Pleasant actually
applied the Wong Sun analysis and found the evidence at issue to
be sufficiently attenuated so as to be admissible.  A similar
analysis should have been conducted here.
Nor should it matter that the records were public. 
Defendant here need not establish a legitimate expectation of
privacy in the evidence he seeks to suppress, but only that
police discovery of the evidence was the product of a Fourth
Amendment violation (see Kamins, New York Search and Seizure §
1.01 [5] [a], at 1-22 [2009] [compiling lower court decisions
that defendant need not have a "reasonable expectation of privacy
in the fruit itself"]).  Supreme Court below therefore should
have considered "whether exploitation of an illegal search and
seizure produced the critical link between a defendant's identity
and his [government agency] record[s]" (Olivares-Rangel, 458 F3d
at 1120). 
In short, if these DMV records were discovered as a
result of an allegedly unlawful stop, they should be subject to
suppression as fruit of that illegality.  I would reverse the
order of the Appellate Division and remit to Supreme Court for a
Mapp/Dunaway hearing. 
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*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
Order affirmed.  Opinion by Judge Read.  Judges Graffeo, Smith,
Pigott and Jones concur.  Judge Ciparick dissents and votes to
reverse in an opinion in which Chief Judge Lippman concurs.
Decided March 30, 2010