Opinion ID: 1978971
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: The Flagrancy of the Police Conduct Factor

Text: The third and final factor is the purpose and flagrancy of the police misconduct. In this case, Sergeant Bryant testified that he stopped Petitioner because he and Martin loosely fit a witness's description of the perpetrators of recent robberies. Sergeant Bryant also knew that the robberies had occurred in that area. There exists nothing in the record to suggest that the Sergeant acted in bad faith. As we stated in Myers, once Sergeant Bryant discovered the outstanding warrant for Petitioner's arrest, he gained an independent and intervening reason to arrest and search [Petitioner]. Furthermore, [m]erely because [the Sergeant's] stop of [Petitioner] was determined to be invalid does not mean that his conduct was flagrant. Id. A balance of the factors therefore demonstrates that the arrest pursuant to the outstanding warrant sufficiently attenuates any taint caused by the arguably illegal stop. While only two minutes elapsed between the illegal stop and discovery of the marijuana, we have made clear that this factor alone is not dispositive on the attenuation issue. The arrest pursuant to the outstanding warrant constituted an intervening event, and nothing in the record suggests any flagrant misconduct by Sergeant Bryant when he stopped Petitioner and asked for identification. The other two factors therefore outweigh the temporal proximity factor. Furthermore, we agree with the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit's analysis in United States v. Green, 111 F.3d 515, 522 (1997): Where a lawful arrest pursuant to a warrant constitutes the intervening circumstance (as in this case), it is an even more compelling case for the conclusion that the taint of the original illegality is dissipated. Typically, the intervening circumstance which dissipates the taint involves a voluntary act by the defendant, such as the voluntary confession or consent to search given after an illegal search or seizure. In intervening circumstance cases involving subsequent action on the defendant's part, courts exercise great care in evaluating the later consent or confession to ensure it is truly voluntary and not the result of the earlier, and unconstitutional, police action. . . . In such cases, the dispositive question is whether the illegal act bolstered the pressures for him to give the [statement], or at least vitiated any incentive on his part to avoid self-incrimination. . . . In these cases, the time between the illegality and the consent is important because the closer the time period, the more likely the consent was influenced by the illegality, or that the illegality was exploited. Conversely, where a lawful arrest due to an outstanding warrant is the intervening circumstance, consent (or any act for that matter) by the defendant is not required. Any influence the unlawful stop would have on the defendant's conduct is irrelevant. And in the case of an arrest made pursuant to a warrant there is also no chance that the police have exploited an illegal arrest by creating a situation in which [the] criminal response is predictable, such as creating a situation where the criminal will flee, which in turn will give the police an independent basis for an arrest, and thus a search incident to the arrest. Thus, in this case there is less taint than in the cases already recognized by the Supreme Court and this and other circuits as fitting within the intervening circumstances exception. (Citations omitted.) JUDGMENT OF THE COURT OF SPECIAL APPEALS AFFIRMED, WITH COSTS.