Opinion ID: 775404
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The 1995 Warrantless Search of Scott's Car

Text: 55
56 Law enforcement officials gained access to the contents of Scott's car via a routine inventory search after the Natick police impounded the car incident to Scott's arrest on charges of possessing illegally a hypodermic needle. If the arrest was valid, the inventory search was constitutional even though the police had neither a warrant nor probable cause. Colorado v. Bertine, 479 U.S. 367, 371 (1987). Whether the arrest was valid depends on the constitutionality of Brogan's actions leading up to the arrest. Our inquiry focuses first on Brogan's temporary detention of Scott, which we examine as a seizure under the Fourth Amendment, and second on Brogan's order that Scott step out of the car and the subsequent sweep of the car, which we examine as searches. If any of these measures was unconstitutional, that illegality may taint the subsequent arrest and inventory search. See Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 484-87 (1963). 57 We assume based on the district court's opinion that Scott was not free to leave, or at least reasonably believed he was not free, when Brogan began questioning him. The government has argued on appeal that the record would support a conclusion that Scott might have left at any time until Brogan ordered him out of the car. Were this so -- were Brogan's actions in questioning Scott fully consensual -- we would engage in no Fourth Amendment scrutiny of the questioning, as a suspect's voluntary conversation with police is neither a search nor a seizure under the Fourth Amendment. Florida v. Bostick, 501 U.S. 429, 434 (1991). The district court made no finding on whether Brogan exercised his authority to detain Scott, choosing instead to analyze the reasonableness of Brogan's actions under Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968) -- and thus at least implicitly assumed that Scott did not consent to converse with Brogan. We follow and approve this part of its analysis. 58 The Fourth Amendment rule laid down in Terry permits the police to detain temporarily a suspect on a reasonable suspicion, supported by articulable facts, that the suspect has committed or is about to commit a crime. Id. at 21. In this case, Brogan had substantial information supporting a suspicion that Stephens, whom he then knew only as Judge, had attempted to pass a bad check. Stephens, first, had offered a check that was rejected; second, had done so in a manner that aroused the suspicions of store employees, who called the police; and, third, had run from police officers who approached him after he returned to collect his identification. An individual's flight from police combined with other observations by a police officer may support reasonable suspicion sufficient for detention under Terry. Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119 (2000). In Wardlow itself, the only relevant fact other than flight known to the detaining officer was the suspect's presence in an area known for crime. Id. at 124-25. Stephens's prior behavior at the Circuit City store suggested guilt more strongly than would simple presence in such an area, so that the police knew more than was necessary to justify temporarily detaining Stephens. 59 Moreover, Brogan knew enough to suspect reasonably that Scott was involved in the same crime. Brogan knew from Homsi that Scott was driving the same car that had earlier dropped Stephens off at Circuit City, and he knew from his own observation that Stephens had run towards the car. He had also noted that Scott had parked further from the store than one ordinarily would if merely driving a friend on an innocent errand. These observations, however generously read, do not approach probable cause; but they satisfy, as the district court concluded, the requirement that the police know specific and articulable facts on which they may base a temporary detention. Brogan's actions prior to his frisk of Scott and sweep of the car were therefore legal. 6 But the 1997 warrants rely on what was found in Scott's car in 1995, and so the analysis continues. 60 We are less sanguine about the next stage of the encounter: Brogan's frisk of Scott and protective sweep of the car. A police officer may frisk a suspect -- that is, search the suspect's person for weapons -- on reasonable suspicion that the suspect is armed and dangerous. Terry, 392 U.S. at 27. A search of the passenger compartment of a car in which a suspect rides requires the same degree of suspicion. Michigan v. Long, 463 U.S. 1032, 1049-51 (1983). When the officer suspects a crime of violence, the same information that will support an investigatory stop will without more support a frisk, Terry, 392 U.S. at 33 (Harlan, J., concurring), and therefore by implication a car search. This Circuit has extended that rule to encompass crimes commonly associated with violence, even though the criminal act itself may be nonviolent; an example is large-scale trafficking in illegal drugs. United States v. Gilliard, 847 F.2d 21, 25 (1st Cir. 1988) (citing United States v. Trullo, 809 F.2d 108, 113 (1st Cir. 1987)). 61 The investigation involved no more than the fraud of attempting to pass a bad check. The district court nevertheless concluded that Brogan's frisk of Scott and sweep of the car were permissible, relying on United States v. Edwards, 53 F.3d 616 (3d Cir. 1995), for the proposition that reasonable suspicion of fraud justifies a frisk. The Third Circuit reasoned in Edwards that the perpetrators of a fraud in broad daylight may well arm themselves to make an escape. Id. at 618. This logic would seem to permit a frisk on reasonable suspicion of almost any felony, and we do not follow it today. Nor do the other facts relied upon by the district court seem to us to establish reasonable suspicion that Scott was armed and dangerous. The district court could fairly credit Brogan's testimony that the car was parked some distance from the store, that there was little traffic in the parking lot, that Brogan was alone in confronting Scott, and that Scott knew that the police had already detained Stephens. These facts, however, provide an insufficiently particular basis for Brogan to suspect reasonably that Scott was armed and dangerous, and so do not support the district court's conclusion that the frisk and sweep were legal. See Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 63-66 (1968) ([To conduct a] self-protective search for weapons, [an officer] must be able to point to particular facts from which he reasonably inferred that the individual [searched] was armed and dangerous.). 62
63 That, though, does not end the analysis. We also consider an alternative ground of decision presented by the district court. Although evidence derived from unlawful searches is generally subject to suppression, see Wong Sun, 371 U.S. at 484-87, there are numerous exceptions to this rule. One such, the inevitable discovery exception, applies to any case in which the prosecution can show by a preponderance of the evidence that the government would have discovered the challenged evidence even had the constitutional violation to which the defendant objects never occurred. Nix v. Williams, 467 U.S. 431, 440-48 (1984). The district court found that exception to apply to Scott's case, and we agree. 64 This Circuit discussed the rule of inevitable discovery at length in United States v. Silvestri, 787 F.2d 736 (1st Cir. 1986), and has subsequently relied upon Silvestri's discussion in numerous cases, including United States v. Zapata, 18 F.3d 971, 978 (1st Cir. 1994), and United States v. Ford, 22 F.3d 374, 377-81 (1st Cir. 1994). Silvestri divided the question of inevitable discovery into three parts: first, whether the legal means [are] truly independent; second, whether both the use of the legal means and the discovery by that means [are] truly inevitable; and, third, whether the application of the inevitable discovery exception either provide[s] an incentive for police misconduct or significantly weaken[s] fourth amendment protection. 787 F.2d at 744. 65 The district court reasoned that the questioning of Stephens would have led inevitably to Scott's arrest, even had the illegal search of Scott's car never occurred. Stephens's admission of his true age and place of residence allowed the officers to infer his use of false identification, which gave them probable cause to arrest him for attempting to pass a bad check. Scott's lie to Brogan that he did not know Stephens would then have extended probable cause from Stephens to Scott, and Scott would have been arrested and his car subjected to a routine inventory search. The district court's conclusions about what would have occurred are correct. Thus, the alternate avenue of inquiry that involved questioning Stephens was truly independent, because it did not rely on any information derived from Scott; 7 and it was truly inevitable, because the district court concluded without clear error that Brogan would have detained Scott until he finished questioning Stephens, and the results of that questioning are a matter of historical fact. See Nix, 467 U.S. at 444 n.5 (emphasizing the importance of demonstrated historical facts). 66 The first two questions posed by Silvestri are thus answered in the affirmative, save for a difficulty we now reach. The Supreme Court and this Circuit have invariably stated the doctrine of inevitable discovery as requiring inevitable discovery by legal or lawful means. E.g., Nix, 476 U.S. at 444; Ford, 22 F.3d at 377-79; Silvestri, 787 F.2d at 738-46. None of those cases involved a third party and a defendant's claim that the inevitable discovery doctrine should not apply because the third party's rights had been violated. This case involves such a claim because the district court concluded that the police illegally arrested Stephens without probable cause and that Brogan then illegally questioned him without the warnings required by Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 486 (1966). The government has not argued to us that the district court was wrong, and so we assume that Stephens's statements, on which the government's claim of inevitable discovery rests, were taken in violation of Stephens's Miranda rights. The context of the district court's conclusion is important. The police did not believe that they had arrested Stephens before he made the statements; they thought the arrest came later, after the statements, and that the Miranda warnings were timely given. 8 Only on later judicial review did a court determine that the arrests came earlier. We have no way to know whether Stephens would have voluntarily provided any identifying information in the course of the Terry stop had the sequence of events been only slightly different. 67 Ordinarily, that Stephens did not receive Miranda warnings would not benefit Scott in his attempts to exclude evidence. Any illegality did not violate Scott's personal rights, and courts have restricted the exclusionary rule both in the context of searches and in the context of Miranda to violations of a defendant's personal rights. Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 140-50 (1978) (applying this principle to an illegal search); United States v. Lopez, 709 F.2d 742, 745 n.3 (1st Cir. 1983) (applying it in passing to a failure to give Miranda warnings). Scott's case, however, presents the distinct question whether the government in showing inevitable discovery may rely on an illegal action that did not violate the relevant defendant's personal rights. We know of no rule that the legality aspect of the inevitable discovery doctrine plays no role in the analysis when third party rights are involved. The deterrence rationale may be significant in such cases as well. 68 We think this question is close. The application of the inevitable discovery exception to this case would allow the government to benefit at least somewhat from the unconstitutional actions of the Natick police -- and if here there were two illegalities rather than one, that arguably strengthens rather than weakens the need for suppression as a means of deterrence. The history of the inevitable discovery exception, however, is instructive. The Supreme Court has described this exception as an extrapolation, Murray v. United States, 487 U.S. 533, 539 (1988), from the older principle of the independent source. This principle, discussed by Justice Holmes in Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U.S. 385 (1920), is that although the government may first learn of certain facts by illegal means, it may nevertheless prove those facts at trial if it later learns of them by independent, legal means. Id. at 392 (Of course this does not mean that . . . facts [illegally] obtained become sacred and inaccessible. If knowledge of them is gained from an independent source they may be proved like any others . . . .). 69 We think, moreover, that in the case of an actual discovery by an independent source, a defendant cannot obtain the remedy of suppression by simply relying solely on an illegality related to that source if the illegality did not violate the defendant's personal rights. There is no per se rule operating in either direction. An independent source permits use of the evidence because it breaks the causal chain between the constitutional violation alleged and the discovery of the evidence challenged. See Segura v. United States, 468 U.S. 796, 814 (1984) ([E]vidence will not be excluded as 'fruit' unless the illegality is at least the 'but for' cause of the discovery of the evidence.); see also United States v. Crews, 445 U.S. 463, 471 (1980) (In the typical 'fruit of the poisonous tree' case . . . the question before the court is whether the chain of causation proceeding from the unlawful conduct has become so attenuated or has been interrupted by some intervening circumstance so as to remove the 'taint' imposed upon that evidence by the original illegality.). The question in independent source cases is one of causation; suppression requires at least a finding that the challenged evidence would not have been obtained but for a constitutional violation as to the defendant in the case at issue. We conclude, because of the close link between the two doctrines, that the principle should be the same in the case of inevitable discovery: a means by which challenged evidence would inevitably have been discovered that itself violates the law is not, by that violation alone, unlawful as to a defendant if those means did not violate that defendant's personal rights. 70 Silvestri's third question, however, focuses the issue: application of the inevitable discovery exception [must not] provide an incentive for police misconduct or significantly weaken fourth amendment protection. 787 F.2d at 744. 9 Such an analysis necessarily dwells closely on the facts of a particular case. Moreover, a court in conducting this analysis must bear always in mind the social costs of the exclusionary rule. Cf. People v. Defore, 150 N.E. 585, 587 (N.Y. 1926) (Cardozo, J.) (The criminal is to go free because the constable has blundered.). 71 We look at the incentives here. In this case, there were two unconstitutional acts, rather than one, and we think it appropriate to take Brogan's treatment of Stephens into account in assessing the facts as a whole with regard to Scott. On these facts, Brogan had little incentive to violate Stephens's Miranda rights (had he known he was doing so) in order to gain the advantage with Scott of use of the inevitable discovery doctrine. Brogan's incentive was to be able to use Stephens's statements against him. Application of the inevitable discovery doctrine would not, we think, act here as an incentive to unconstitutional behavior. Other cases may present different incentives and warrant a different outcome. We also take into account that neither constitutional violation was truly egregious, as was the excessive force used in United States v. Rullo, 748 F. Supp. 36 (D. Mass. 1990). Moreover, although we have assumed the correctness of the district court's view that the police subjected Stephens to a de facto arrest, we think that point was itself close and that the police might have reasonably believed they had undertaken only a justified investigatory stop. We hold that on the facts of this case the doctrine of inevitable discovery applies and exclusion is not required to remove incentives for future police misconduct.