Opinion ID: 793736
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Majority Misreads Lopez-Mendoza

Text: 9 One seemingly innocuous sentence, reiterating a well established principle of personal jurisdiction, has led to amaranthine confusion. In Lopez-Mendoza the Supreme Court stated that [t]he `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. Lopez-Mendoza, 468 U.S. at 1039, 104 S.Ct. 3479. The Court made this statement in the context of addressing a challenge by Lopez-Mendoza to the fact that he had been summoned to a deportation hearing following an unlawful arrest. Id. at 1040, 104 S.Ct. 3479. Lopez-Mendoza entered no objection to the evidence offered against him. Id. The Court cited six cases, which all considered whether jurisdiction over a defendant or seized res properly existed. Id. at 1039-40, 104 S.Ct. 3479. I see no way to read the body or identity sentence in Lopez-Mendoza as anything other than an affirmation of the established principle that an illegal arrest does not bar prosecution for a crime. 10 One need look no further than Lopez-Mendoza itself to confirm that the body or identity language is inapplicable where a defendant raises a Fourth Amendment evidentiary challenge. The second respondent in Lopez-Mendoza, Sandoval-Sanchez, objected not to his compelled presence at a deportation proceeding, but to evidence offered at that proceeding. Id. at 1040, 104 S.Ct. 3479. Distinguishing Sandoval-Sanchez's case from Lopez-Mendoza's, the Supreme Court cited Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963), and stated that [t]he general rule in a criminal proceeding is that statements and other evidence obtained as a result of an unlawful, warrantless arrest are suppressible if the link between the evidence and the unlawful conduct is not too attenuated. Lopez-Mendoza, 468 U.S. at 1040-41, 104 S.Ct. 3479. The Court did not create an exception for evidence that tends to establish a defendant's identity, such as fingerprint evidence. Nor did it indicate any intention to overrule Davis v. Mississippi, 394 U.S. 721, 89 S.Ct. 1394, 22 L.Ed.2d 676 (1969) (holding that fingerprint evidence obtained in the absence of probable cause to arrest must be suppressed), and Hayes v. Florida, 470 U.S. 811, 105 S.Ct. 1643, 84 L.Ed.2d 705 (1985) (same). 11 The Ortiz-Hernandez majority misreads the body or identity sentence as applying to evidentiary challenges, and in so doing conflates two distinct lines of cases. The Frisbie v. Collins, 342 U.S. 519, 72 S.Ct. 509, 96 L.Ed. 541 (1952), line of cases holds that a tribunal has jurisdiction to try a defendant even if his presence in court was obtained through illegal means. It was the Frisbie line of cases, addressing personal jurisdiction, that the Supreme Court cited to immediately after the body or identity sentence in Lopez-Mendoza. See Lopez-Mendoza, 468 U.S. at 1039-40, 104 S.Ct. 3479. The Wong Sun line of cases — requiring suppression of evidence discovered as a consequence of an illegal arrest, unless an independent source dissipates the taint of the illegality — is distinct and applies in cases where the government seeks to use evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The majority's reading of Lopez-Mendoza takes language from the Frisbie line of cases and applies it to the Wong Sun line of cases in a way that renders Wong Sun inapplicable to fingerprint evidence. The fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine contains no such exception. See Davis, 394 U.S. at 724, 89 S.Ct. 1394 ( [A]ll evidence obtained by searches and seizures in violation of the Constitution is . . . inadmissible in . . . court. Fingerprint evidence is no exception to this comprehensive rule.  (internal quotation marks and explanatory parenthetical omitted) (second emphasis added)). 12 Other courts have recognized the potential for misreading the body or identity language and correctly concluded that it applies to jurisdictional, not evidentiary, challenges. See, e.g., United States v. Garcia, 2005 WL 3556089, at  (D.Utah Dec.28, 2005); United States v. Olivares-Rangel, 324 F.Supp.2d 1218, 1223-24 (D.N.M.2004); United States v. Mendoza-Carrillo, 107 F.Supp.2d 1098, 1105-07 (D.S.D.2000); State v. Perkins, 760 So.2d 85, 86-87 (Fla.2000) (per curiam); see also United States v. Navarro-Diaz, 420 F.3d 581, 584-86 (6th Cir.2005) (explaining that Lopez-Mendoza's body or identity language does not apply to challenges to fingerprint evidence, but rather requires admission in court of a defendant's identity, i.e., who he is). 1 13 Indeed, our court made this distinction in Garcia-Beltran and even earlier in United States v. $191,910.00 in U.S. Currency, 16 F.3d 1051, 1063-64 (9th Cir.1994) (recognizing that Lopez-Mendoza's body or identity language applies to jurisdictional, not evidentiary, challenges, in the civil forfeiture context), superseded by statute on other grounds as stated in United States v. $80,180.00 in U.S. Currency, 303 F.3d 1182, 1184 (9th Cir.2002). In Garcia-Beltran, we explicitly rejected the Government's argument that Lopez-Mendoza's's body or identity language applied to fingerprint evidence: 14 Garcia-Beltran, however, did not seek to suppress the fact of his identity or body; he recognized that he could lawfully be compelled to appear in court. Rather, he sought to exclude all evidence obtained from him as a result of his illegal arrest, including evidence that would tend to establish his true identity, such as fingerprints, photographs and oral statements. Contrary to the government's argument, Lopez-Mendoza does not preclude suppression of evidence unlawfully obtained from a suspect that may in a criminal investigation establish the identity of the suspect. 15 Garcia-Beltran, 389 F.3d at 866-67. We explained that United States v. Guzman-Bruno, 27 F.3d 420 (9th Cir.1994), and United States v. Del Toro Gudino, 376 F.3d 997 (9th Cir.2004), stood only for the proposition that a defendant may not suppress the fact of who he is, and we held those cases inapplicable to the question of whether to suppress fingerprint evidence. See Garcia-Beltran, 389 F.3d at 866 (We acknowledged [the Lopez-Mendoza ] rule in Guzman-Bruno where . . . we said that `[a] defendant's identity need not be suppressed merely because it is discovered as the result of an illegal arrest or search.' (third alteration in original)); id. (quoting Del Toro Gudino as stating, `We continue to hold today that the simple fact of who a defendant is cannot be excluded, regardless of the nature of the violation leading to his identity.'); id. at 867 n. 4 ( Guzman-Bruno did not directly address the problem of fingerprints taken for an investigative purpose in the context of potential criminal violations of immigration law. . . . [ Guzman-Bruno ] did not involve fingerprint evidence and the need to classify it as either investigatory or identification evidence (and thus Hayes and Davis were not implicated).). 16 Garcia-Beltran then cited to and quoted from the Eighth Circuit's decision in United States v. Guevara-Martinez, 262 F.3d 751 (8th Cir.2001), which held that Lopez-Mendoza's body or identity language applies only in the jurisdictional, not evidentiary, context. Garcia-Beltran, 389 F.3d at 868. By adopting a contrary interpretation of Lopez-Mendoza, the Ortiz-Hernandez majority has created an intracircuit split with our holding in Garcia-Beltran. 2
17 As Judge W. Fletcher recognized, Garcia-Beltran is on all fours with the present case: 18 Garcia-Beltran, like Ortiz-Hernandez, was illegally arrested by an officer of the Portland Police Department. His fingerprints, like Ortiz-Hernandez's, were taken after arrest. Like Ortiz-Hernandez, he was subsequently charged with illegal entry. At Garcia-Beltran's criminal trial, the district court admitted his fingerprint exemplars as evidence of his identity. We reversed and remanded, holding that the fingerprint exemplars must be suppressed if they were taken for purely investigatory purposes. 19 Ortiz-Hernandez, 427 F.3d at 580 (W.Fletcher, J., dissenting) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). The majority incorrectly limits Garcia-Beltran to the initial set of fingerprints. By its clear language, Garcia-Beltran applies to any fingerprint exemplars taken for purely investigatory purposes. 20 The question to ask in this case is whether the Government seeks fingerprint exemplars to connect a suspect to a crime, or instead to confirm the identity of a properly charged defendant. Sometimes fingerprint exemplars are insuppressible evidence confirming a defendant's identity, see Parga-Rosas, 238 F.3d at 1215 (Because the fingerprints were not taken for investigatory purposes but for the sole purpose of proving Parga-Rosas's identity, the Fourth Amendment is not implicated.), and sometimes they are evidence connecting a suspect to a crime, suppressible under Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961), see Hayes, 470 U.S. at 813-15, 105 S.Ct. 1643; Davis, 394 U.S. at 724, 89 S.Ct. 1394. The distinction turns on whether the fingerprints were taken for investigatory purposes, or instead are used to confirm the identity of a defendant the government already has probable cause to arrest and indict. See Rise v. Oregon, 59 F.3d 1556, 1560 (9th Cir.1995) (Thus, in the fingerprinting context, there exists a constitutionally significant distinction between the gathering of fingerprints from free persons to determine their guilt of an unsolved criminal offense and the gathering of fingerprints for identification purposes from persons within the lawful custody of the state.), abrogated on other grounds as recognized in Vore v. U.S. Dep't of Justice, 281 F.Supp.2d 1129, 1134 n. 1 (D.Ariz. 2003). 21 I do not dispute the proposition that, once the government has independent, untainted evidence that permits it to book and indict a defendant, it may obtain a fingerprint exemplar for use at trial. See id. Those facts, however, are not present in Ortiz-Hernandez's case. Ortiz-Hernandez was arrested illegally and taken to the police station, where officers proceeded to run the false names he had provided through their databases. When the officers' search came up empty, they arranged for Ortiz-Hernandez to speak with immigration officials. When that interview produced no useful information, the officers sent Ortiz-Hernandez for fingerprinting and then ran his prints through another database. Eureka! Just as the officers suspected, Ortiz-Hernandez was in this country illegally. The crucial point, however, is that it was not until this final search produced a hit that the officers learned Ortiz-Hernandez's true identity and had probable cause to arrest him for a violation of § 1326. See Ortiz-Hernandez, 427 F.3d at 578 (It is true that the government would not have known Ortiz-Hernandez's identity without having unlawfully taken the first set of fingerprints. . . .). 22 The Government has not made a showing that it has procured untainted evidence of Ortiz-Hernandez's guilt. There is no indication that, after the district court suppressed Ortiz-Hernandez's initial set of fingerprints, the Government undertook an additional investigation to uncover evidence of Ortiz-Hernandez's alleged crime or his identity, or that the Government had sufficient evidence to indict Ortiz-Hernandez before they obtained his fingerprints. Without such a showing, the Government's request for a second set of fingerprint exemplars is investigatory and must be denied as fruit of the poisonous tree.
23 The majority's statement to the contrary notwithstanding, Parga-Rosas supports this conclusion. Parga-Rosas presented a green card to police, which in turn led to discovery of his immigration file — prior to any illegal conduct on the officers' part. It was only after this information was obtained that Parga-Rosas was questioned without having been read his Miranda rights. Parga-Rosas then was taken to a border patrol station and fingerprinted. The district court suppressed the fingerprints as fruits of an illegal arrest. It was a second set of fingerprints, taken five months after his initial arrest, that were at issue in Parga-Rosas. We correctly affirmed the district court's denial of Parga-Rosas's motion to suppress this second set of fingerprints on the theory that they were not taken for investigatory purposes but rather to prove his identity. Parga-Rosas, 238 F.3d at 1215. The government had independent, untainted evidence of Parga-Rosas's crime without the first set of fingerprints. In contrast to Ortiz-Hernandez's case, the second exemplar was not investigatory evidence necessary to build the case against Parga-Rosas, but instead evidence confirming Parga-Rosas's identity that was admissible at trial. The majority's reliance on Parga-Rosas is therefore misplaced. 24 Contrary to the majority's conclusion, see Ortiz-Hernandez, 427 F.3d at 578 n. 5 (While the dissent is correct to note that the general rule under the Fourth Amendment is to suppress unlawfully obtained evidence, the [Supreme] Court [in Lopez-Mendoza ] created a specific exclusion from that general rule for evidence of identity.), not all identity evidence is insuppressible. Rather, evidence tending to establish a defendant's identity is suppressible when unconstitutionally obtained and used for investigatory purposes, but may be introduced in court to confirm the identity of a properly charged defendant. 25 If there was any question whether evidence that establishes a defendant's identity could be suppressed under Wong Sun, that question was answered by the Supreme Court in United States v. Crews, 445 U.S. 463, 100 S.Ct. 1244, 63 L.Ed.2d 537 (1980). Crews upheld a trial court's decision to admit an in-court identification. But prior to this in-court identification, the defendant in Crews was the subject of out-of-court photographic and lineup identifications that were products of an arrest without probable cause. The Supreme Court reiterated the basic principles of Wong Sun's fruit of the poisonous tree analysis, id. at 470-71, 100 S.Ct. 1244, and affirmed the trial court's ruling that the photographic and lineup identifications (i.e., evidence tending to establish the defendant's identity) were inadmissible at trial as suppressible fruits of the Fourth Amendment violation, id. at 472, 100 S.Ct. 1244. 26 In affirming the trial court's admission of the in-court identification, the Court emphasized that the victim's presence in the courtroom, where she made the identification, was not the product of any illegal police conduct. Id. at 471-72, 100 S.Ct. 1244. Relying on the Frisbie line of cases, the Court also held that Crews could not challenge his own presence at trial. Id. at 474, 100 S.Ct. 1244. Because the in-court identification was not tainted by the illegal arrest, it was not suppressed. The Court explicitly recognized that if the out-of-court identifications had affected the reliability of the in-court identification, the latter would be tainted and could be suppressed as the fruit of an illegal arrest. Id. at 472-73, 100 S.Ct. 1244. In other words, the Court stated that identity evidence used to build a case against a defendant could and would be suppressed if it was improperly obtained, under the principles of Wong Sun. 27 Ortiz-Hernandez raises an evidentiary challenge to the use of illegally obtained fingerprint evidence at his criminal trial. He does not contest the district court's jurisdiction over his person, nor does he argue that the district court must exclude at trial the fact of who he is. Under Garcia-Beltran, it is Hayes and Davis, not Lopez-Mendoza's, Guzman-Bruno, or Del Toro Gudino, that govern the outcome in this case. 28