Opinion ID: 474302
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Egregious Conduct

Text: 37 Further, the majority incorrectly concludes that: (1) Cervantes-Cuevas failed to show egregious conduct on the part of the Border Patrol; and (2) the Border Patrol's conduct must undermine the probative value of evidence illegally obtained before its exclusion is appropriate. 38 In Adamson v. Commissioner, 745 F.2d 541, 544-45 (9th Cir.1984), we applied Lopez-Mendoza 's egregious violation language. 1 We recognized there that a police officer's bad faith violation of a person's fourth amendment rights could amount to an egregious violation, warranting exclusion of evidence in a civil tax proceeding. Adamson, 745 F.2d at 546. Although in Adamson we found no bad faith, we did suggest that bad faith would be found if a reasonably competent officer would have believed the search to be illegal. Id. In this case, Cervantes-Cuevas essentially argues that a reasonably competent officer would have known that under Brignoni-Ponce, decided in 1975, Hispanic appearance alone does not justify a stop. Because I believe that the Border Patrol agent articulated no significant facts apart from those that are insufficient to justify detention under existing law, I would conclude that he did not act in good faith. 39 I further believe that we are not required to limit exclusion of evidence illegally obtained to instances where the government's egregious conduct in obtaining the evidence undermined its probative value. I thus disagree with the majority's reading of Lopez-Mendoza that undermined probative value is a second requirement for the exclusion of evidence in civil proceedings. 40 In Adamson we implictly rejected the requirement that for the exclusionary rule to apply, the probative value of illegally obtained evidence must be undermined. There, we also suggested that an officer's bad faith violation of fourth amendment rights alone would constitute an egregious violation requiring exclusion of evidence illegally obtained. 745 F.2d at 546. We did not mention any requirement that an officer's bad faith must undermine the probative value of the illegally obtained evidence for the exclusionary rule to apply. The approach we took in Adamson is correct because requiring that the probative value of the illegally obtained statement be undermined would render admissible evidence obtained by even the most egregious means. For example, in Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165, 72 S.Ct. 205, 96 L.Ed. 183 (1952), officers directed a doctor to induce Rochin to vomit in order to extract drug capsules from his stomach. The capsules, once extracted from Rochins's stomach, were highly probative evidence of his possession of contraband. Id. at 166, 72 S.Ct. at 206. Yet this is the very case the Supreme Court cited as support for the proposition that evidence obtained by an egregious violation of individual liberties may be excluded from civil proceedings. Lopez-Mendoza, 104 S.Ct. at 3490. 2 41 It is hard to understand how requiring undermined probative value is consistent with the primary purpose of the exclusionary rule. The Supreme Court has noted that the rule's prime purpose, if not the sole one, is to deter official misconduct. Lopez-Mendoza, 104 S.Ct. at 3486 (quoting United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 347, 94 S.Ct. 613, 619, 38 L.Ed.2d 561 (1974)). If, in cases of bad faith violations of fourth amendment rights, courts exclude only illegally obtained evidence whose probative value is somehow undermined, then application of the rule would be narrowly limited and its deterrent effect on official misconduct would be minimal.