Opinion ID: 165798
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: May 10, 2002, Vehicle Search

Text: 27 On May 10, 2002, Windrix was pulled over for a traffic violation. A drug-detection dog sniffed his car and alerted. A police officer asked for Windrix's consent to search the car, but Windrix refused. Officers then took Windrix into custody and detained him at headquarters for four hours while they applied for and received a search warrant for the car. When officers eventually searched the car, they discovered methamphetamine and methamphetamine-manufacturing materials. 28 Windrix contends that his four-hour detention at police headquarters was unconstitutional and that the evidence discovered in the search of his car must therefore be suppressed. But we suppress evidence because of an unconstitutional arrest only when the evidence was discovered by exploitation of the arrest. Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 487-88, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963). 29 Windrix rightly concedes that the arresting officers had probable cause to search [his] vehicle right ... after the dog alert. Windrix's Aplt. Br. at 19. It was the dog alert, not the arrest or anything Windrix said or did during the arrest, that justified the search. The evidence was not discovered by exploitation of the arrest. Consequently, it was proper not to suppress the evidence, regardless of the constitutionality of the arrest. See United States v. Shareef, 100 F.3d 1491, 1508 (10th Cir.1996) (seizure of vehicle was not fruit of unlawful detention of occupants); United States v. Eylicio-Montoya, 70 F.3d 1158, 1166-67 (10th Cir.1995) (burlap bags containing marijuana would not have been any less visible had car's occupants not been unlawfully arrested). 30