Opinion ID: 201937
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Whether the Warrant Was Prompted by the Illegal Search

Text: 34 We turn back to the first Murray prong, which requires that `the search pursuant to warrant was in fact a genuinely independent source' and that the agents' decision to seek the warrant not have been prompted by what the police observed during the prior search. Murray, 487 U.S. at 542, 108 S.Ct. 2529. As the Court wrote, to determine whether the warrant was independent of the illegal entry, one must ask whether it would have been sought even if what actually happened had not occurred. Id. at 542, 108 S.Ct. 2529 n. 3. The second Murray prong, is, as we have held, wholly objective in its focus. By contrast, as articulated by Murray in 1988, the first prong appeared to be subjective: would these particular police officers have sought the warrant even if they had not known, as a result of the illegal search, that drugs were present in the apartment. See id., 487 U.S. at 542 n. 3; Restrepo, 966 F.2d at 971-72. 9 While the first prong of Murray is articulated as a subjective test, nonetheless, it should not be proven by purely subjective means. In making the factual determination as to the police officers' intent, the district court is not bound by after-the-fact assurances of their intent, but instead must assess the totality of the attendant circumstances to ascertain whether those assurances appear implausible. Murray, 487 U.S. at 540 n. 2, 108 S.Ct. 2529; see Restrepo, 966 F.2d at 971-72; see also Devenpeck v. Alford, 543 U.S. 146, 125 S.Ct. 588, 594, 160 L.Ed.2d 537 (2004) (Subjective intent of the arresting officer, however it is determined (and of course subjective intent is always determined by objective means)....). 35 Applying the first prong of Murray, it is clear that objectively the officers were not prompted to seek the warrant by what they saw in the apartment. Significantly, Dessesaure and Officer Broderick both testified that Broderick informed Dessesaure at the station prior to the initial entry into the defendant's apartment that the police were going to apply for a search warrant. Indeed, the freezing of the apartment (whether done for exigent circumstances or not) was done on Broderick's way to get a warrant. Broderick left Dessesaure's apartment after spending only five or ten minutes there to go directly to the District Attorney's office and prepare a warrant application. Moreover, even if there had been no illegal entry into the apartment and the officers lacked knowledge that drugs were present there, there is no evidence to suggest that these officers would not have sought a warrant. Indeed, the absence of knowledge of the evidence viewed via the illegal access could only have encouraged them further to seek a warrant, as that would have been their only way to have sought out the evidence in the apartment they obviously suspected to exist and desired to see. The facts gathered legally, without resort to the facts gathered illegally, provided an independent and adequate source for the warrant application.