IN THE SUPREME COURT OF IOWA

No. 20–1595

Submitted March 23, 2022—Filed May 20, 2022

STATE OF IOWA,

Appellant,

vs.

EARNEST JONES HUNT JR.,

Appellee.

On review from the Iowa Court of Appeals.

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Dubuque County, Michael J. 

Shubatt, Judge.

Defendant seeks further review of court of appeals decision that reversed 

a district court ruling granting his motion to suppress evidence obtained during 

a pat-down search for weapons. COURT OF APPEALS DECISION AFFIRMED; 

DISTRICT COURT SUPPRESSION RULING REVERSED AND CASE 

REMANDED.

McDermott, J., delivered the opinion of the court in which Christensen, 

C.J., and Waterman, Mansfield, McDonald, and Oxley, JJ., joined. Appel, J., filed 

a dissent.
2

Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, and Zachary Miller, Assistant Attorney 

General, for appellant.

Martha J. Lucey, State Appellate Defender, and Bradley M. Bender, 

Assistant Appellate Defender, for appellee.
3

McDERMOTT, Justice.

May a police officer seize a concealed package from someone’s pocket

during a pat-down for weapons if the officer determines—through the officer’s 

sense of touch—that the packaging is consistent with drugs of some sort, but 

the officer can’t determine the precise type of drugs in the packaging? This case 

presents this court’s first review of a district court decision addressing what has 

become known as the “plain feel” doctrine. The district court held that the 

officer’s confessed inability to discern the type of drugs in the packaging before 

removing them from the person’s pocket—and thus an inability to discern 

whether the substances were even drugs at all—required suppressing the 

evidence. The court of appeals reversed. We granted the defendant’s application 

for further review.

I.

Earnest Hunt, Jr. was a “person of interest” in the investigation of a 

shooting in Dubuque. The day after the shooting, Officer Chad Leitzen saw Hunt 

riding in the passenger seat of a Chevy Impala moving through downtown

Dubuque. Following the Impala in an unmarked car, Leitzen saw the Impala 

make a left turn without signaling and stopped it. He approached the Impala on 

the passenger (Hunt’s) side with his gun drawn but not trained on Hunt. Leitzen 

directed Hunt to place his hands on the dashboard and began asking questions. 

While responding, Hunt removed his hands from the dashboard, prompting 

Leitzen to command Hunt to keep his hands on the dash. Leitzen described Hunt 
4

as acting “extremely nervous,” speaking quickly, and asking several times 

whether he was under arrest.

When Hunt again removed his hands from the dash without permission, 

Leitzen told Hunt to get out of the car and that he was being detained in 

handcuffs because his behavior was making Leitzen nervous. Leitzen asked Hunt 

for permission to search him. Hunt refused. Leitzen then told Hunt that Leitzen 

would pat him down for weapons.

While patting Hunt down, Leitzen (according to his later testimony) 

“immediately felt small plastic or small hardballs, packaged balls which were 

inside of a plastic bag” in Hunt’s sweatshirt pocket. Leitzen said that he could 

“hear the crunch of the plastic bag” and could feel the plastic bag and the 

individual hard packages inside the bag. The small individual packages he felt 

in Hunt’s pocket were, according to Leitzen, “invariably how cocaine, crack 

cocaine, or heroin are packaged for sale in Dubuque.” Leitzen testified that it 

was “immediately apparent” that the objects were illegal drugs and that he didn’t 

manipulate or squeeze the package within Hunt’s pocket to determine what it 

was. Leitzen removed the drugs from Hunt’s pocket. In looking at the packages, 

Leitzen believed that they contained drugs, but he still couldn’t discern what 

type. He told Hunt, “Now you’re being arrested for the drugs,” and placed Hunt 

under arrest.

Leitzen admitted that he couldn’t specifically identify the type of drugs in 

the packaging based on the pat-down. The packaging led him to believe it was 

heroin, powder cocaine, or crack cocaine, but he couldn’t determine for sure 
5

which one. After he removed the bags from Hunt’s pocket, Leitzen manipulated

the bags to try to figure out what the substance was. Bodycam recordings from 

the scene show Leitzen touching and looking at the small bags trying to 

determine the substance. He stated that “one of the bags felt like it was very 

squared off,” which was inconsistent with the usual feel of crack cocaine.

Hunt was charged with possession with intent to manufacture or deliver 

forty grams or less of cocaine base—commonly known as “crack”—under Iowa 

Code section 124.401(1)(c)(3) (2019). He moved to suppress the evidence of the 

drugs, arguing that the police seized the drugs in violation of his rights under 

the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and article I, section 8 of the 

Iowa Constitution.

At the suppression hearing, Leitzen testified that he’d worked as a police 

officer for eighteen years, and for seven of those years worked in a drug task 

force. He testified based on his experience that in Dubuque, “powder cocaine, 

crack cocaine, and heroin are packaged in the corner of sandwich baggies, just 

twisted into a knot and tied into small circulars from the corner of a plastic bag.”

By comparison, he testified that in Dubuque, “almost without exception, 

methamphetamine is packaged in small Ziploc-type gem baggies” and that

“marijuana can be packaged in numerous ways.” Leitzen described the different 

textures of powder and crack cocaine, with powder cocaine having 

(unsurprisingly) a powder texture and crack cocaine having a more crystallized 

or rock-like texture.
6

The district court suppressed the evidence, finding that “[t]he State has 

not met its burden of showing that there was probable cause to believe that 

Defendant had drugs in his pocket.” The district court elaborated that the item 

in Hunt’s pocket “could have been anything.” The court reasoned that “Leitzen’s 

testimony that he knew it was drugs lacked sufficient explanation as to how and 

why he knew that to be true,” particularly since “Leitzen was not sure of the 

nature of the substance in the bags even after he had removed them and was 

examining them by feel and sight.”

The State applied for discretionary appellate review. Our court granted the 

application for discretionary review, stayed the district court proceedings, and 

transferred the case to the court of appeals. The court of appeals reversed the 

district court’s suppression ruling, determining it sufficient under the plain-feel

exception to the warrant requirement that Leitzen believed the package 

contained heroin, powder cocaine, or crack cocaine despite not knowing which 

one, and remanded the case. We granted Hunt’s application for further review. 

II.

Because Hunt’s motion to suppress asserts a violation of his constitutional 

rights, our review is de novo, which means that we will independently evaluate 

the record in the case. State v. Hillery, 956 N.W.2d 492, 498 (Iowa 2021). “We 

give deference to the district court’s fact findings because of that court’s ability 

to assess the credibility of the witnesses,” but “we are not bound by those 

findings.” State v. Carter, 696 N.W.2d 31, 36 (Iowa 2005).
7

Both the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and article 

I, section 8 of the Iowa Constitution grant people a right of protection against 

unreasonable searches and seizures of “their persons, houses, papers, and 

effects.” U.S. Const. amend. IV; Iowa Const. art. I, § 8. The Fourth Amendment’s 

protections apply to the states based on the Fourteenth Amendment. McDonald 

v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 761 (2010). These rights safeguard people 

against warrantless searches and seizures by the government, with carefully 

drawn exceptions. 

In Terry v. Ohio, the Supreme Court held that a law enforcement officer 

may pat-down a suspect without violating the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition 

against unreasonable searches if the officer “has reason to believe that he is 

dealing with an armed and dangerous individual, regardless of whether he has 

probable cause to arrest the individual for a crime.” 392 U.S. 1, 27 (1968). The 

officer must provide “specific reasonable inferences” to justify the pat-down; a 

“hunch” isn’t enough. Id.

Hunt doesn’t contest the basis for the traffic stop, nor does he contest 

Leitzin’s ability to perform the pat-down after the stop. Hunt makes no claim, in 

other words, that Leitzen violated his constitutional rights in frisking him for 

weapons. Hunt argues instead that Leitzen exceeded the lawful scope of that

frisk when he seized the package—which Leitzen knew wasn’t a weapon—from

Hunt’s pocket.

In Minnesota v. Dickerson, the Supreme Court articulated an exception to 

the warrant requirement based on an officer’s “plain feel” of contraband during 
8

a lawful frisk for weapons. 508 U.S. 366, 375 (1993). In Dickerson, officers were 

on patrol near a “crack house” when a man spotted the police car and abruptly 

began walking in the other direction. Id. at 368–69. The officers, suspicions now 

aroused, stopped the man to investigate. Id. at 369. One of the officers patted 

the man down for weapons. Id. Although he found no weapons, the officer 

testified to feeling “a small lump” in the defendant’s pocket. Id. He examined the 

lump with his fingers and concluded it was crack cocaine packaged in 

cellophane. Id. The officer reached into the man’s pocket and removed the 

package, which indeed turned out to contain a lump of crack. Id.

The man moved to suppress the evidence of the seizure, arguing that it 

violated his Fourth Amendment rights. Id. The Court compared the seizure of the 

package of crack, which was rooted in the officer’s sense of touch, to lawful 

seizures rooted in a different sense: the “plain view” doctrine. Id. at 374–75. The 

plain-view doctrine is an exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant 

requirement that allows officers to seize contraband when an officer sees the 

contraband in plain view, is lawfully present when they observe it, and has a 

lawful right to access it. Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325–26 (1987); Michigan 

v. Long, 463 U.S. 1032, 1050 (1983). 

The Court articulated the plain-feel justification to seize property during a 

frisk for weapons this way:

If a police officer lawfully pats down a suspect’s outer clothing and 

feels an object whose contour or mass makes its identity 

immediately apparent, there has been no invasion of the suspect’s 

privacy beyond that already authorized by the officer’s search for 

weapons; if the object is contraband, its warrantless seizure would 
9

be justified by the same practical considerations that inhere in the 

plain-view context.

Dickerson, 508 U.S. at 375–76 (emphasis added). The Court rejected arguments 

that touch is less reliable or more invasive than sight, noting the Court in Terry

had already determined that a pat-down could reliably detect weapons and that 

officers could use their sense of touch for that search. Id. at 376–77. Regardless 

of the means of perception (sight, touch, or otherwise), the Fourth Amendment 

in all cases requires that “the officer have probable cause to believe that the item 

is contraband before seizing it.” Id.

But when the Supreme Court actually applied the plain-feel doctrine to 

the facts presented, it found that the officer didn’t meet the plain-feel exception 

because the officer determined the lump was contraband only after “squeezing, 

sliding and otherwise manipulating the contents of the defendant’s pocket.” Id.

at 378 (quoting State v. Dickerson, 481 N.W.2d 840, 844 (Minn. 1992)). And since 

by that point the officer knew that the lump wasn’t a weapon, and wasn’t sure 

that it was contraband without further manipulation, the officer exceeded the 

scope of the Terry pat-down with his “continued exploration” of the pocket’s 

contents. Id.

Neither party argues that we should apply a plain-feel standard under the 

Iowa Constitution that differs from the standard applied under the Federal 

Constitution in Dickerson. Hunt argues that Leitzen’s search failed to satisfy the 

requirements of the plain-feel doctrine because it wasn’t “readily apparent” to 

Leitzen that the package in Hunt’s pocket contained contraband. If an officer 

believes an item in a pocket could be one of three different things, Hunt urges, 
10

then the officer has no basis to say the item’s identity is apparent—let alone 

readily so—to justify the officer’s seizure under the plain-feel doctrine. The 

district court agreed and suppressed the evidence.

The State argues that Leitzen’s testimony establishes that the item’s 

packaging made its identity as contraband “readily apparent,” and thus its 

seizure met the requirements of the plain-feel doctrine. Even if Leitzen couldn’t 

articulate the precise drug in the packaging, the State argues, he didn’t have to 

know exactly what was in the bags; it was enough that Leitzen resolutely 

concluded that the bag he felt in Hunt’s pocket contained illegal drugs. 

And more broadly, the State argues that probable cause existed for the 

seizure under any rendering of the facts here. The plain-feel exception, the State 

urges, doesn’t put in place some heightened probable-cause standard to permit 

an officer to seize contraband. An officer has probable cause to investigate when 

“a person of reasonable prudence would believe a crime has been committed or 

that evidence of a crime might be located in the particular area to be searched.”

State v. Naujoks, 637 N.W.2d 101, 108 (Iowa 2001); see 2 Wayne R. LaFave, 

Search and Seizure: A Treatise on the Fourth Amendment § 3.2(b), at 44–45

(6th ed. 2020) [hereinafter LaFave]. 

The district court and court of appeals focused heavily on Dickerson’s 

“immediately apparent” language, analyzing whether Leitzen needed to know the 

exact illegal drug in the package or whether it was enough that the package 

contained some illegal drug. But there’s a broader principle that Dickerson 

suggests, and one that we think better clarifies the test for determining whether 
11

a seizure of contraband comports with the constitution’s search-and-seizure 

protections. 

If an officer develops probable cause during a pat-down to believe that a 

person possesses contraband and thus is committing a crime, then the officer 

may lawfully arrest the person. See State v. Stevens, 970 N.W.2d 598, 604 (Iowa 

2022). And if an officer may lawfully arrest a person, then the officer may perform 

a warrantless search incident to that arrest. Id.; see 1 LaFave § 2.2(a), 

at 635–36. The search incident to arrest would, in turn, justify the warrantless 

seizure of the contraband. Stevens, 970 N.W.2d at 604 (citing United States v. 

Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 234 (1973)). “Even though a search incident to arrest 

typically occurs after an arrest, ‘the timing of the formal arrest is not fatal to the 

search.’ ” Id. (quoting State v. Horton, 625 N.W.2d 362, 364 (Iowa 2001) 

(en banc)).

An officer can develop probable cause that a crime has been committed at 

any time—including while frisking a person for weapons. See State v. McGee, 

381 N.W.2d 630, 632 (Iowa 1986). And this is where the standard for probable 

cause becomes important. “[P]robable cause does not require absolute certainty,

but a probable determination through the eye of a reasonably prudent person.” 

State v. Prior, 617 N.W.2d 260, 268 (Iowa 2000) (en banc). The phrase 

“immediately apparent” in Dickerson is logically read to refer to facts sufficient 

to establish probable cause, not to establish certainty in the officer’s mind. See 

2 LaFave § 4.11(d), at 1013–15.
12

The facts of this case indicate that Leitzen, while conducting a lawful Terry 

frisk for weapons, determined based on his experience that the objects he felt in 

Hunt’s pocket were packaged drugs, specifically either powder cocaine, crack 

cocaine, or heroin. Unlike in Dickerson, the record in this case contains no 

evidence to suggest that Leitzen extended the pat-down or explored Hunt’s 

pocket further than permitted to discover if Hunt was armed. This determination 

that Hunt at that moment possessed illegal drugs, if founded, would establish 

probable cause for Hunt’s arrest and seizure of the drugs after a search incident 

to his arrest.

A question nonetheless remains about whether Leitzen’s level of knowledge 

gained by touching the packaging, without certainty of the contents inside the 

packaging, was enough to generate probable cause to arrest Hunt. Leitzen didn’t 

actually testify to feeling any drugs (for example, a powdery substance or rocklike objects) in Hunt’s pocket. We must decide whether Leitzen’s conclusion that 

Hunt possessed drugs in fact meets the bar to establish probable cause.

We hold that it does. Again, Leitzen worked as a police officer for eighteen

years, and for seven of those years worked in a drug task force. He testified based 

on his experience that in Dubuque, “powder cocaine, crack cocaine, and heroin 

are packaged in the corner of sandwich baggies, just twisted into a knot and tied 

into small circulars from the corner of a plastic bag.” Letizen’s testimony 

describing, in his experience, how these particular drugs are uniquely packed 

into bags of a particular size and shape, with a particular means of fastening,

lends credence to his assertion of having identified the packages as likely to 
13

contain one of the three drugs packaged in this way. Leitzen was also able to 

rule out other types of drugs solely based on the packaging because the 

packaging of the drugs was not similar to that of methamphetamine or 

marijuana. The evidence, on the record before us, would establish probable 

cause for Leitzen to have arrested Hunt for drug possession. See United States v. 

Proctor, 148 F.3d 39, 42–43 (1st Cir. 1998) (finding an officer who “made an 

immediate determination that the bulge was in fact a glassine bag containing 

marijuana” could seize the object); Doctor v. State, 596 So. 2d 442, 445 (Fla.

1992) (during lawful frisk, officer was able by virtue of his particularized 

experience to determine defendant carrying crack cocaine by “the texture of the 

plastic bag that it’s in, the little rock formations of it”); People v. Custer, 630 

N.W.2d 870, 879 (Mich. 2001) (“[W]hile conducting the patdown search of 

defendant, the officer felt a two-by-three-inch object in defendant’s pocket that 

he believed was a card of blotter acid . . . based on his knowledge that blotter 

acid was often contained on sheets of cardboard . . . . Under these circumstances, 

the officer had probable cause to believe that the object he felt in defendant’s 

pocket was contraband.”); State v. Bradley, 867 So. 2d 31 (La. App. 2004) (finding 

it sufficient that the officer felt a bulge in the defendant’s pocket that “in his 

opinion felt like plastic bags such as are used for drug packaging”) State v. 

Ochoa, 93 P.3d 1286, 1290 (N.M. 2004) (“An officer’s experience and training, 

considered within the context of the incident, may permit the officer to identify

drug paraphernalia or drug packaging with a reasonable level of probability, 

sufficient for probable cause.”); Commonwealth v. Parker, 957 A.2d 311, 316 (Pa. 
14

Super. Ct. 2008) (“[T]he officer here was able to immediately identify the object 

he felt as packaged crack cocaine before he reached into Parker’s pocket and 

looked at the plastic bags.”); Maestas v. State, 416 P.3d 777, 782 (Wyo. 2018) 

(“Corporal Halter’s testimony indicates that he felt and immediately believed the 

rock-like object was contraband. At that moment, Corporal Halter had probable 

cause to seize the object.”).

Again, the bar for probable cause is not absolute certainty, but rather 

whether “a person of reasonable prudence would believe a crime has been 

committed or that evidence of a crime might be located in the particular area to 

be searched.” Naujoks, 637 N.W.2d at 108. See generally 2 LaFave § 3.2(c), at 

58–59 (stating that probable cause “is to be viewed from the vantage point of a 

prudent, reasonable, cautious police officer . . . guided by his experience and 

training” (quoting United States v. Davis, 458 F.2d 819, 821 (D.C. Cir. 1972) (per 

curiam) (omission in original))).

Our holding today neither stiffens nor dilutes the probable cause standard

that applies to law enforcement’s encounters with people. We simply apply it to 

a factual scenario in which a police officer, while conducting what the defendant 

concedes is a lawful frisk for weapons, establishes probable cause through touch 

to believe that the defendant has committed a crime (in this case, possession of 

illegal drugs). For purposes of establishing probable cause, there’s no meaningful 

difference between Leitzen seeing Hunt place a package in his pocket with these 

physical characteristics and Leitzen feeling a package with these same physical 

characteristics while frisking for weapons.
15

Probable cause isn’t limited to any particular method of perception. We’ve

previously held that an officer can develop probable cause based on smell. State 

v. Watts, 801 N.W.2d 845, 854 (Iowa 2011) (holding “that a trained officer’s 

detection of a sufficiently distinctive odor, by itself or when accompanied by other 

facts, may establish probable cause”). And we can surmise no good reason that 

officers should be rendered unable to act on probable cause that develops during 

the course of a lawful pat-down based on the officer’s sense of touch when the 

officer is otherwise able to act on probable cause that develops during the course 

of a lawful pat-down based on the officer’s seeing something, smelling something, 

or hearing something. Probable cause based on tactile identification may be just 

as compelling as probable cause drawn from visual, aural, or olfactory 

identification.

For these reasons, we thus reverse the district court’s grant of Hunt’s 

motion to suppress and remand for further proceedings.

COURT OF APPEALS DECISION AFFIRMED; DISTRICT COURT 

SUPPRESSION RULING REVERSED AND CASE REMANDED.

Christensen, C.J., and Waterman, Mansfield, McDonald, and Oxley, JJ., 

join this opinion. Appel, J., files a dissenting opinion.
16

#20–1595, State v. Hunt

APPEL, Justice (dissenting).

This case involves a double-barreled risk of unconstitutional invasion of 

privacy arising from a warrantless pretextual stop for a minor traffic violation 

permitted under Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 (1996), followed by a 

warrantless search for weapons based not on probable cause but diluted 

reasonable suspicion under the sprawling doctrine of Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 

(1968). The combination of these troublesome doctrines causes me to examine 

closely the underlying legal doctrine and its application to the facts of this case.

See State v. Warren, 955 N.W.2d 848, 873–76 (Iowa 2021) (Appel, J., dissenting)

(citing interplay of Supreme Court doctrines in search and seizure).

As is always the case, the constitutional analysis is not about “correct” 

and “incorrect” decisions but about choices made and roads not taken. And, 

where exceptions to the warrant requirement are involved, there is always the 

problem of mission creep, where supposedly narrow exceptions to the warrant 

requirement (like Terry-type stops) end up being robust in practice.

Finally, I approach the question of the warrantless stop and warrantless 

search in this case with a recognition that exceptions to the warrant requirement 

must be tightly contained and that every expansion of government power to 

search and seize leads to a corresponding reduction in personal liberty. See, e.g.,

State v. Price-Williams, ___ N.W.2d ___, ____, 2022 WL 1194018, at *7–28 (Iowa 

Apr. 22, 2022) (Appel, J., dissenting) (arguing that a valid stop does not mean 

that a frisk is necessarily permitted; there must be a reasonable suspicion that 
17

the individual is armed and dangerous); State v. Hauge, ___ N.W.2d ___, ____, 

2022 WL 1193721, at *12–43 (Iowa Apr. 22, 2022) (Appel, J., dissenting) 

(arguing for use of waiver doctrine in consent searches).

I. Historical Overview of “Plain Touch” Doctrine.

A. From Terry v. Ohio to Minnesota v. Dickerson. The United States 

Supreme Court adopted the notion of a warrantless pat-down search for weapons 

in the controversial case of Terry v. Ohio. 392 U.S. at 30–31. In Terry, the 

Supreme Court emphasized that it was authorizing only “narrowly drawn 

authority” to engage in a search for weapons. Id. The pat-down search was to be 

a “carefully limited search of the outer clothing of [the suspect] in an attempt to 

discover weapons.” Id. at 30.

After Terry, the Supreme Court adopted the “plain view” doctrine in 

Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 465–67 (1971). According to the 

Coolidge plurality, the police were permitted to engage in a warrantless search if 

(1) the object is in plain view, (2) its discovery was inadvertent, and (3) it was 

“immediately apparent” that the items may be evidence of a crime, such as 

contraband. 403 U.S. at 466–73. The plurality in Coolidge emphasized, as the 

Supreme Court often does when crafting yet another exception to the warrant 

requirement, the narrowness of the holding. Specifically, the plurality stated that 

“[t]he ‘pla[i]n view’ doctrine may not be used to extend a general exploratory 

search from one object to another until something incriminating at last emerges.” 

Id. at 466.
18

A few years later, however, the Supreme Court abandoned the 

inadvertence requirement in Horton v. California, 496 U.S. 128, 137 (1990), 

thereby eliminating one of the protections against pretextual searches. In 

Arizona v. Hicks, the Supreme Court addressed the meaning of the term 

“immediately apparent” as used in Coolidge. 480 U.S. 321, 326–27 (1987). The 

Hicks Court held that “immediately apparent” meant only that probable cause 

must be present, not the higher degree of certitude that some appellate courts 

were embracing. Id. at 326. Thus, what may have been a narrow exception to the 

warrant requirement was expanding beyond its original confines.

Using Coolidge and Terry as a springboard, a number of federal courts 

expanded the exception to the warrant requirement yet again to include 

circumstances where a police officer engaged in a Terry-type search determines 

that a person is carrying contraband based on the “plain feel” of the object. See, 

e.g., United States v. Roach, 477 F. App’x 993, 998–99 (4th Cir. 2012) (per 

curiam); United States v. Yamba, 506 F.3d 251, 256–60 (3d Cir. 2007); United 

States v. Rivers, 121 F.3d 1043, 1046–47 (7th Cir. 1997); United States v. Russell, 

670 F.2d 323, 325 (D.C. Cir. 1982); United States v. Ocampo, 650 F.2d 421, 427–

29 (2d Cir. 1981).

There was, however, an important distinction in the caselaw worth our 

discussion. In United States v. Williams, the United States Court of Appeals, 

District of Columbia Circuit adopted a variant of plain feel that insisted that the 

police officer have a “reasonable certainty” of the presence of contraband. 822 

F.2d 1174, 1184 (D.C. Cir. 1987). The reasonable certainty standard was a 
19

higher standard than probable cause and, according to the Williams Court, was 

justified based upon the differences between the plain-view and plain-feel 

doctrines. Id. at 1184–85. Similarly, in United States v. Ocampo, the Second 

Circuit applied a seemly-higher-than-probable-cause standard in applying the 

newly minted exception. See 650 F.2d at 429 (noting that the agent was “able 

readily to identify [the] contents as wrapped currency simply by feeling the 

outside of the [paper] bag” and concluding that “[w]here the contents of a 

container are easily discernible by frisking the exterior of a package, there is little 

likelihood that the owner could reasonably expect any substantial degree of 

privacy”).

Several state courts chose a different interpretation of the Fourth 

Amendment in the context of the evolving plain-feel doctrine prior to Minnesota 

v. Dickerson, 508 U.S. 366 (1993). State courts in Arizona, Illinois, and 

Pennsylvania chose to reject the plain-feel doctrine largely because they sought 

to enforce strict limitations of Terry and because the plain-feel doctrine was 

thought to be too intrusive to withstand Fourth Amendment muster. See State 

v. Collins, 679 P.2d 80, 81–84 (Ariz. Ct. App. 1983); People v. McCarty, 296 

N.E.2d 862, 863 (Ill. App. Ct. 1973) (per curiam); Commonwealth v. Marconi, 597 

A.2d 616, 619 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1991); State v. Broadnax, 654 P.2d 96, 101–03 

(Wash. 1982) (en banc).

In a case decided just before the Supreme Court decided Dickerson, the 

New York Court of Appeals rejected the plain-feel doctrine under both the United 

States and New York Constitutions in People v. Diaz, 612 N.E.2d 298, 299 (N.Y. 
20

1993). The Diaz court distinguished the plain-view doctrine from the plain-feel 

doctrine in several ways. First, under the plain-view doctrine, no search occurs. 

Id. at 301–02. Further, because the objects are out in the open, there is no 

expectation of privacy. Id. at 302. But, according to the Diaz court, these features 

of plain view do not extend to plain-feel cases. Id. A concealed item cannot be 

identified except by further search, and the person who has the item concealed 

in their clothing has an expectation of privacy in its contents. Id. Additionally, 

the Diaz court noted the inherently unreliable nature of touch compared with 

sight. Id. (“While in most instances seeing an object will instantly reveal its 

identity and nature, touching is inherently less reliable and cannot conclusively 

establish an object’s identity or criminal nature.”). The Diaz court recognized that 

plain feel would often be based upon a police officer’s testimony, but that 

identification of a concealed item would ordinarily require “a degree of pinching, 

squeezing or probing” beyond the limited intrusion permitted under Terry. Id.

(cautioning additionally that to allow the plain-feel exception would risk “blurring 

of the limits to Terry searches”).

The Supreme Court of Minnesota took a similar view to Diaz in State v. 

Dickerson, 481 N.W.2d 840 (Minn. 1992). In Dickerson, the court considered a 

case where a police officer conducting a Terry pat-down concluded the suspect 

was carrying contraband after he examined a lump he felt with his fingers to be 

crack cocaine. Id. at 842–43. The court refused to extend the plain-view doctrine 

to a situation involving a plain feel for two reasons. Id. at 845. First, the court 

noted that the senses of touch and sight are not equivalent as the sense of touch 
21

is less immediate and reliable than sight. Id. Further, the court noted that 

touching involves a greater invasion of privacy than plain-view situations. Id. As 

a result, the court held that the evidence of the search must be suppressed under 

the Fourth Amendment. Id.

After Dickerson, a few courts have interpreted the phrase “immediately 

apparent” as requiring a showing of some certainty as suggested in the preDickerson case of Williams. For example, in Mason v. State, the Georgia appellate 

court stated that under the plain-feel doctrine, the officer must express a degree 

of certainty in identifying the item because the search is being conducted solely 

for the safety of the police officer and others nearby, not to procure evidence. 647 

S.E.2d 308, 309 (Ga. Ct. App. 2007); see also United States v. Ross, 827 F. Supp. 

711, 719 (S.D. Ala. 1993); United States v. Winter, 826 F. Supp. 33, 37 (D. Mass. 

1993); State v. Parker, 622 So. 2d 791, 795 (La. Ct. App. 1993); People v. 

Champion, 549 N.W.2d 849, 861–62 (Mich. 1996) (near certainty required for the 

plain-feel doctrine); Commonwealth v. Stevenson, 744 A.2d 1261, 1267 (Pa. 

2000); State v. Bridges, 963 S.W.2d 487, 495 (Tenn. 1997) (per curiam). Other 

state courts, however, have rejected this approach. See, e.g., State v. Wonders, 

952 P.2d 1351, 1362 (Kan. 1998).

B. The United States Supreme Court’s Choice in Minnesota v. 

Dickerson. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari in Minnesota v. 

Dickerson to consider whether the Minnesota Supreme Court properly rejected 

the plain-feel doctrine. 508 U.S. at 368. In Dickerson, the Supreme Court 

unanimously held in a short opinion that the principles of the established plain-
22

view doctrine extended by analogy to cases involving plain feel when police 

officers engage in a Terry search. Id. at 374–76. According to Justice White, if a 

police officer uncovers contraband during a Terry search, there is no further 

invasion of privacy when the police officer seizes that item. Id. at 375–76. The 

majority of the Court, however, concluded that the unlawful nature of the 

contraband at issue in Dickerson was not “immediately apparent” because the 

police officers engaged in “squeezing, sliding and otherwise manipulating the 

contents of the defendant’s pocket” in a fashion not authorized by a Terry search. 

Id. at 378–79 (quoting Dickerson, 481 N.W.2d at 844). In an interesting 

concurrence, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice Scalia questioned the 

validity of Terry itself. Id. at 379–83 (Scalia, J., concurring).

Some academic commentary was critical of Dickerson. See, e.g., George M. 

Dery III, The Uncertain Reach of the Plain Touch Doctrine: An examination of 

Minnesota v. Dickerson and its Impact on Current Fourth Amendment Law and 

Daily Police Practice, 21 Am. J. Crim. L. 385, 394–404 (1994) (criticizing the 

plain-feel doctrine because it fails to recognize the difference between the sense 

of sight and touch, and could encourage pretextual searches); Anne Bowen 

Poulin, The Plain Feel Doctrine and the Evolution of the Fourth Amendment, 

42 Vill. L. Rev. 741, 755 (1997) [hereinafter Poulin] (pointing out Dickerson may 

tempt police to exploit any opportunity to search more broadly and to probe more 

aggressively).

In my view, Dickerson has a number of problems. First, the immediately 

apparent standard, even as potentially modified by Hicks, seems subjective in 
23

nature. Determining what a police officer knew and when they knew it is a 

slippery slope and not subject to effective cross-examination. As a result, 

deferential application of the immediately apparent test will permit retrospective 

“magic words” to sustain a search when a police officer provides scripted 

testimony that declares expertise in drug matters and asserts that to the police 

officer, it was immediately apparent the concealed substance was contraband. 

Jones v. State, 682 A.2d 248, 256 (Md. 1996). In addition, because the item is 

necessarily hidden from view, the ability of a police officer to determine what the 

substance is with accuracy is necessarily highly speculative and not nearly as 

reliable as evidence subject to visual examination. And, unlike the plain-view 

doctrine, the plain-feel doctrine provides a basis for an intrusive seizure of 

evidence on the body of a suspect, a highly intrusive act compared to the seizure 

of objects in plain view. Finally, the plain-touch doctrine could encourage routine 

pretextual searches where the stop and the subsequent weapons search is 

primarily designed as a warrantless search for contraband rather than a stop 

designed to promote public safety and protect police officers from the threat of 

weapons. In my view, it is of critical importance that if it is to be adopted at all, 

the plain-feel warrantless seizure should be permitted only in narrow, welldefined circumstances. 

C. “Plain Feel” Caselaw after Dickerson. The federal caselaw, of course, 

follows Dickerson. The main issue in the federal cases is whether the standard 

for further search of a person based on plain feel is “probable cause” or the higher 

standard of “immediately” apparent utilized by the D.C. Circuit in the pre-
24

Dickerson case of Williams. This possibility, however, was largely undercut by 

Hicks, where the United States Supreme Court found that probable cause was 

the standard under the plain-view doctrine, which, by analogy, might also apply 

to plain-feel cases.

In the state courts, Dickerson has generally been adopted as a plain-feel 

exception to the warrant requirement. See, e.g., State v. Trine, 673 A.2d 1098, 

1107 (Conn. 1996); People v. Mitchell, 650 N.E.2d 1014, 1023 (Ill. 1995); 

Champion, 549 N.W.2d at 856. Some of the state cases, however, adhere strictly 

to the requirement that the nature of the contraband must be immediately 

apparent. For example, in Murphy v. Commonwealth, the Virginia Supreme Court 

held that a police officer’s detection of a plastic baggie during a pat-down was 

not sufficient to justify a seizure of the baggie because its unlawful nature was 

not immediately apparent. 570 S.E.2d 836, 839–40 (Vir. 2002); see also Ex parte 

Warren, 783 So. 2d 86, 94–95 (Ala. 2000); Commonwealth v. Stevenson, 744 A.2d 

at 1268; State v. Parker, 622 So. 2d 791, 795 (La. Ct. App. 1993).

In these cases, “immediately apparent” means something beyond probable 

cause and approaching certitude. The heightened standard is imposed because 

of the need to ensure the narrow confines of Terry searches and to prevent 

searches for weapons from routinely morphing into searches for drugs.

D. Caselaw Involving Drugs and Baggies. It is a surprise to no one that 

the plain-feel doctrine has become an important tool for law enforcement in drug 

investigations. Indeed, the police officers involved in this case were on duty as 

part of a drug enforcement unit. It is not surprising that there are a number of 
25

plain-feel cases involving Terry-type searches revealing baggies underneath the 

clothing of the person being searched. The caselaw is diverse in part because the 

cases are fact-specific.

In Commonwealth v. Stackfield, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court 

considered whether the discovery of contraband during a Terry-type search was 

valid under the plain-feel doctrine. 651 A.2d 558, 561 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1994). The 

court concluded that the facts did not establish that the police officer 

immediately recognized the presence of contraband while conducting the Terry

search. Id. at 562. According to the Stackfield court: 

A zip-lock baggie is not per se contraband, although material 

contained in a zip-lock baggie may well be. . . . The record supports 

a factual finding that the officer felt a mass that he recognized as a 

baggie; it does not support a factual finding that the officer felt what 

he immediately recognized as contraband. Sight unseen, the 

contents of the baggies that the officer felt in appellant’s pants 

pockets could as easily have contained the remains of appellant’s 

lunch as contraband.

Id.

The fact that the material could be an illegal substance and that the police 

officer had observed illegal substances being carried in baggies was insufficient. 

As stated in Stackfield, to hold otherwise would be to ignore Dickerson’s mandate 

that the plain-feel doctrine is a narrow exception to the warrant requirement that 

only applies when an officer conducting a lawful Terry frisk feels an object and 

the object’s mass or contour makes its identity as contraband immediately 

apparent. Id. Note the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s emphasis on the 

narrowness of the doctrine.
26

In G.M. v. State, the police officer conducting a pat-down of the defendant 

felt a bag inside the defendant’s pocket that he believed to have a plant-like 

material within the bag. 172 So. 3d 963, 964 (Fl. Dist. Ct. App. 2015). The police 

officer testified that based on his training and experience, he thought it was 

marijuana within the bag and pulled it out of the defendant’s pocket. Id. at 965. 

The court held the police officer did not know what kind of plant was in the bag—

the officer simply claimed that based on his training and experience that it was 

marijuana. Id. at 968. The court found the officer had nothing more than an 

“inkling” that the plant within the baggie could have been marijuana. Id. The 

officer’s perception that there was contraband in the defendant’s pocket was not 

a result of his “tactile perception” but an educated guess based on the plain feel 

of the object. Id. This did not meet the immediate apparent requirement. Id.

Another instructive baggie case is State v. Garvin, 207 P.3d 1266 (Wash. 

2009) (en banc). In Garvin, the police officer conducting a Terry frisk felt a plastic 

baggie in the pocket of the defendant. Id. at 1268. Without removing the bag, the 

officer squeezed the bag and felt something more within. Id. at 1269. The police 

officer then recognized the item as something used by drug users and removed 

the baggie. Id. at 1268–69. The Garvin court held that the actions of the police 

officer exceeded that permitted by Dickerson and held that the evidence should 

have been suppressed. Id. at 1272.

In Garvin, the officer admitted the common-sense notion that it was 

necessary to squeeze a baggie in order to determine its contents. While the 

existence of the baggie may have been immediately apparent, the determination 
27

of the contents crossed the line from a permitted Terry-type frisk into an 

impermissible plain-feel search.

In Murphy, the Virginia Supreme Court considered whether a police 

officer’s seizure of a plastic baggie containing drugs was permitted under the 

plain-feel doctrine where the police officer felt a plastic baggie and testified that 

he knew from training and experience that the plastic bag contained drugs. 570

S.E.2d at 837. Consistent with Garvin, the Murphy court held that the plain-view 

doctrine was not satisfied on such a minimal showing. Id. at 840.

Another case of interest is State v. Hudson, 874 P.2d 160, 166 (Wash. 

1994). In Hudson, the police officer testified that when he reached into the 

defendant’s pocket to touch a baggie, he believed he felt “a one ounce size piece 

of cocaine broken off a kilo size.” Id. The Hudson court remanded the case for 

further fact-finding, noting that “the detective described the substance in the 

baggie with a particularity arguably unattainable without extensive 

manipulation.” Id. That was exactly the point made in Garvin. Garvin and

Hudson stand for the proposition that the greater the detail obtained by police 

officers of the physical characteristics of the hidden material, the greater the 

likelihood that the action of the police officer exceeded the limited pat-down 

permitted by Terry. See Poulin, 42 Vill. L. Rev. at 787–88 (asserting that Garvin

and Hudson stand for the proposition that the greater the detail obtained by 

police officers of the physical characteristics of the hidden material, the greater 

the likelihood that the action of the police officer exceeded the limited pat-down 

permitted by Terry).
28

Finally, consider State v. Henderson, 589 S.E.2d 647 (Ga. Ct. App. 2003). In 

this case, the Georgia appellate court held that the mere fact that a police officer 

with experience in narcotics testified that drugs are frequently packaged in 

plastic and that a coin pocket is a site used to store drugs was insufficient to 

support a seizure based upon Dickerson. Id. at 650. Any further inquiry would 

be outside the narrow confines of a Terry-type search under Garvin and Hudson. 

Id.; see also People v. Blake, 645 N.E.2d 580, 583 (Ill. App. Ct. 1995) (noting the 

search was more of a grope than a pat-down and suppressing marijuana packed 

in plastic bag); Aguilar v. State, 594 A.2d 1167, 1172–73 (Md. Ct. Spec. App. 

1991) (holding if a police officer pats a person’s clothing and finds only soft 

objects, further search is not allowed under Terry); State v. Conners, 994 P.2d 

44, 46 (Nev. 2000) (per curiam) (suppressing evidence where the police officer 

concluded weapons were not present but continued hand palpitation); Graham 

v. State, 893 S.W.2d 4, 8 (Tex. App. 1994) (suppressing drug evidence where the 

police officer continued to rub and pinch the pocket after determining that it did 

not contain a weapon).

There are certainly other cases, however, that evince a more demanding 

approach to Dickerson plain-feel cases. In In the Matter of L.R., a Texas appellate 

court considered a case where a police officer felt small baggies during a Terry

search. 975 S.W.2d 656, 659 (Tex. App. 1998). The Texas court found that the 

police officer “immediately” recognized drugs as illegal substances because drugs 

were typically “wrapped in cellophane packaging.” The Texas court concluded 
29

that the police officer identified the contraband before manipulating the object. 

In my view, the evidence was pretty thin.

Similarly, in Johnson v. State, a police officer conducting a Terry pat-down 

felt a lump that he stated “felt like a ‘ball of drugs.’ ” 157 N.E.3d 1199, 1208 (Ind. 

2020). The Johnson court concluded that the police officer immediately 

recognized the hallmark of a narcotic packaged for sale. Id. Hard round objects 

abound, however, but the court was content to defer to the police officer’s 

expertise.

Among other things, there are several variables in these cases. First, to 

what extent is the “immediately apparent” language in Dickerson taken at face 

value or regarded as rhetorical excess. Second, when does a limited Terry patdown designed to be narrowly focused on a search for weapons cross the line to 

become an overbroad touching, whether characterized as a grope, palm press, 

additional pat, squeeze, or manipulation. Finally, to what extent does the trier of 

fact credit conclusory testimony by police officers or engage in independent 

review based on the totality of facts and circumstances presented.

In my view, the reviewing courts should engage in a degree of skepticism 

in reviewing plain-feel cases in light of the important privacy interests involved, 

the limited reliability of identification of unseen items, and the troublesome 

interaction between Whren, Terry, and Dickerson described earlier. One 

commentator has proposed a three-part test to aid district courts in making the 

determination. First, a reviewing court should examine in court the physical 

evidence claimed to have been identified as contraband under plain feel. Poulin, 
30

42 Vill. L. Rev. at 786. Second, the court should consider objectively whether a 

very limited Terry pat-down would immediately establish that the suspect is 

carrying contraband. Id. at 786–87. Finally, the court should consider the 

narrow scope of Terry-type searches and examine whether the touching 

necessarily involved in identifying the contraband exceeded the permissible 

narrow scope of the warrantless and probable-cause-less search under Terry. Id.

at 787–88.

II. Application of Plain-Feel Doctrine in This Case. 

A. Preservation of Iowa Constitutional Claims. Hunt asserts the 

admission of contraband evidence in this case violated the search and seizure 

provisions of both article I, section 8 of the Iowa Constitution and the Fourth 

Amendment to the United States Constitution. The majority asserts that while 

Hunt cited the Iowa Constitution, he does not argue for a different standard 

under the Iowa Constitution compared to the established caselaw of the United 

States Supreme Court under federal law. 

The majority is correct. Hunt did not advance under the Iowa Constitution 

the argument embraced by the New York Court of Appeals in Diaz or Justice 

Scalia in Dickerson that the plain-feel exception should not be recognized or the 

evidence not admissible in later criminal proceedings. As a result, the issue is 

not presented in this case and, of course, the unpresented issue is not decided 

by the majority. And, although Hunt repeatedly claimed that the standard for 

application of the plain-feel doctrine was an immediately apparent standard, he 

did not assert that the required showing was something more than an immediate 
31

determination of probable cause under Williams and some well-reasoned state 

law cases. 

And yet, to the extent a party has not argued for a different substantive 

standard under the Iowa Constitution than that embraced by the United States

Supreme Court and federal caselaw, we may nonetheless apply the standard in 

a fashion different from the federal caselaw. In short, we may apply the 

immediately apparent standard with more “teeth” than the prevailing federal 

caselaw. That is how I approach the facts in this case.

B. Overview of the Facts. In this case, there was no dispute that the 

Whren-type stop of Hunt was valid and that the police officers had sufficient 

grounds to conduct a Terry-type search for weapons. The record is devoid of any 

suggestion arising from the pat-down search that Hunt possessed any weapon. 

The important facts focus on the circumstances under which the police officer 

discovered a baggie or baggies under Hunt’s clothing.

At the hearing on the motion to suppress, the police officer conducting the 

pat-down testified:

I went across the sweatshirt pocket that he was wearing, the right 

front sweatshirt pocket, I immediately felt small plastic or small 

hardballs, packaged balls which were inside of a plastic bag. I could 

hear the crunch of the plastic bag and I could feel it, and I also felt 

the small individual hard packages inside of that plastic bag. 

The police officer testified about his reaction when he felt the hard balls 

inside the plastic bag: 

I immediately knew that it was packaged drugs for sale inside of a 

plastic bag. It is almost invariably how cocaine, crack cocaine, or 

heroin are packaged for sale in Dubuque . . . . [Drug dealers] almost 

always put them inside of a larger plastic bag to keep them a 
32

together so that they don’t lose them in their plastics or reach in 

their pocket and pull it out and have one fall out and lose it. 

The police officer further stated, “[O]ne of the bags felt like it was very squared 

off. It wasn’t asymmetric in shape . . . .” But when asked if he had to manipulate 

or squeeze the object and determine that it was contraband, the police officer 

said, “[N]ot at all.”

C. Rulings of the District Court and Court of Appeals. The district court 

held that the evidence should be suppressed. The district court noted that the 

question is whether the object in Hunt’s pocket had a contour or mass that made 

it immediately apparent that there was probable cause that Hunt possessed 

drugs. According to the district court, the item in the pocket “could have been 

anything” and the police officer’s testimony that he knew it was drugs “lacked 

sufficient explanation as to how and why he knew that to be true.” The district 

court concluded that the police officer “did not know exactly what was in the 

bags he thought he felt.” As a result, under Dickerson, the district court ordered 

suppression.

The court of appeals reversed the district court. The court of appeals noted 

that in other unpublished opinions, it had credited testimony from police officers 

regarding the identification of contraband in Terry-type searches. The court of 

appeals held that on the record before the district court, the State established 

that the presence of contraband was “immediately established” in light of the 

testimony of the officer. Although the exact nature of the drug could not be 

identified, the court of appeals reasoned that the precise identification of the 
33

drug was not required so long as there was probable cause to believe contraband 

was present. 

D. Discussion. The State challenges the district court’s ruling, noting that 

all that is required under the plain-feel doctrine is for the State to establish that 

the officer had probable cause to believe that Hunt possessed unlawful drugs. 

Relying on the unreported case of State v. Carey, No. 12–0230, 2014 WL 3928873 

(Iowa Ct. App. Aug. 13, 2014), the State contends that the experienced narcotics 

officer “immediately recognized” drugs as a result of packaging. The State 

rejected the view of some courts that the “immediately apparent” language in 

Dickerson required a higher standard of certainty than probable cause. The State 

contends that the unlawful nature of the substance in the baggies in Hunt’s 

pocket was “immediately apparent” without any squeezing or manipulating of 

the object.

Hunt responds that Dickerson requires that the unlawful character of the 

substance must be “immediately apparent,” that the officer may not engage in a 

search more intensive than the very limited Terry pat-down permitted to discover 

weapons, and that the officer did not know the identity of the drugs until after 

the baggie was removed and the material was examined more closely. While Hunt 

concedes that absolute certainty might not be required under Dickerson, the 

State must still show that an item’s incriminating nature was “immediately 

apparent” and that the immediately apparent requirement is not met when an 

officer has multiple-choice options regarding the nature of the substance.
34

This is a close case based upon a very limited factual record. Based on a 

careful review of the record, I conclude that Hunt has the better argument. In 

my view, it is hard to see how the officer “immediately” knew that there were 

bags within bags containing drug-like substances concealed in Hunt’s sweatshirt 

without engaging in physical contact that exceeds that permitted by Terry. In 

other words, it is hard to understand how the officer developed the detailed 

knowledge presented in the suppression hearing if he only conducted a mere 

pat-down for weapons. Instead, it appears from the facts that the officer touched 

the outer pocket of a sweatshirt, a very thick piece of clothing, with sufficient 

action to hear “the crunch of the plastic bag” and to determine that there were 

“bags within bags” containing small hard substances. He also testified that he 

determined that the bags were “very squared off.” So he touched through the 

sweatshirt pocket with sufficient force to generate a cracking sound, pressed to 

determine not simply that there were bags but that there were bags within bags 

of some kind of material, and that one of the bags “felt like it was very squared 

off.” This sounds more like a drug search than a search for weapons. In order to 

obtain such detail through a sweatshirt, the search must have exceeded the 

narrow and limited pat-down authorized by Terry. See State v. Woods, 680 

N.E.2d 729, 732–33 (Ohio Ct. App. 1996) (holding it not reasonable to conclude 

a quick pat-down would provide sufficient details to identify presence of unlawful 

drugs); State v. Hudson, 874 P.2d 160, 166 (Wash. 1994) (en banc) (noting that 

the officer’s detailed description of the cocaine found in defendant’s pocket 
35

suggested “considerable manipulation of the baggie”). As a result, I would uphold 

the district court’s decision to suppress the evidence in this case.

I recognize that this case involves a fine-line-drawing exercise and that the 

majority has ultimately come to a different conclusion. I emphasize that the 

result in this case is fact-bound and that it does not provide a broad precedent 

for law enforcement to avoid the narrow confines of Terry and Dickerson even if 

these cases remain good law. Indeed, if Terry and Dickerson are to remain good 

law, the limitations in these cases must be scrupulously recognized by law 

enforcement and enforced by the courts.

III. Conclusion. 

For the above reasons, I dissent. I would hold that the district court 

properly suppressed the evidence in this case.