Court Opinion

ID: 9797058
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:12:11.576433+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:52:30.075431
License: Public Domain

Chief Judge LANSING,
concurring in the result.
I concur with the majority’s view that the suppression order in this case must be reversed, but I respectfully disagree with its holding that the initial traffic stop, for a seatbelt violation, was lawful.
I would hold that the traffic stop was impermissible. In my view, the rather unusual formulation of I.C. § 49-673 — requiring the use of seatbelts but making noncomplianee an infraction only if the person has been convicted for violating another traffic law- — means that there is no infraction, and hence no justification for a traffic stop, when the seatbelt violation is the only purpose for the stop. Although at the time in question the statute was not specific with respect to police authority to conduct a vehicle stop for a violation, the peculiar structure of the statute signaled a legislative intent that vehicle operators were not to be subject to law enforcement actions for non-use of seatbelts unless and until another traffic law had been violated. Therefore, as a matter of statutory application, the stop was unjustified.
It does not follow, however, that the subsequent arrest of passengers and the search of the vehicle were unlawful as fruit of the illegal stop. The search of the automobile was conducted as a search incident to the arrest of Roe’s fellow passenger after officers discovered that there were three outstanding warrants for the passenger’s arrest. The discovery of outstanding warrants, which represent prior judicial determinations of probable cause for arrest, constitutes an intervening circumstance that overcomes the taint of the initial unlawful detention. Evidence that would not have been found but for illegal police conduct will not be subject to suppression if the evidence was not acquired by exploitation of the illegality but, instead, “by means sufficiently distinguishable to be purged of the primary taint.” Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 488, 83 S.Ct. 407, 418, 9 L.Ed.2d 441, 455 (1963). See also State v. Bainbridge, 117 Idaho 245, 249, 787 P.2d 231, 235 (1990). That is, if the causal chain between the illegal police conduct and the acquisition of the evidence is so attenuated as to dissipate the taint of the illegal behavior, suppression is unnecessary. Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 603-04, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 2261-62, 45 L.Ed.2d 416, 426-27 (1975). In Brown, the United States Supreme Court identified three factors to be used in determining whether the causal chain is sufficiently attenuated: (1) the time elapsed between the illegality and the acquisition of the evidence; (2) the presence of intervening circumstances; and (3) the purpose and flagrancy of the official misconduct. Id.
Numerous jurisdictions have held that the discovery of an outstanding arrest warrant gives the officer independent probable cause to arrest and thereby constitutes an intervening circumstance that dissipates the taint of an initial illegal stop. See United States v. Green, 111 F.3d 515 (7th Cir.1997); People v. Hillyard, 197 Colo. 83, 589 P.2d 939 (1979); Ruffin v. State, 201 Ga.App, 792, 412 S.E.2d 850 (1991); State v. Hill, 725 So.2d 1282 (La.1998); State v. Thompson, 231 Neb. 771, 438 N.W.2d 131 (1989); Fletcher v. State, 90 S.W.3d 419 (Tex.Crim.App.2002); Reed v. State, 809 S.W.2d 940 (Tex.Crim.App.1991); State v. Rothenberger, 73 Wash.2d 596, 440 P.2d 184 (1968). In such a circumstance, probable cause for the individual’s arrest was established prior to the unlawful detention, as evidenced by the valid arrest warrant, and therefore authority for the arrest is not developed through exploitation of the unlawful stop. As the court in Green noted, a rule disallowing arrest on a lawful warrant discovered during the course of an unlawful detention would lead to an anomalous result. “It would be startling to suggest that because the police illegally stopped an automobile, they cannot arrest an occupant who is found to be wanted on a warrant — in a sense requiring an official call of ‘Oily, Oily, Oxen Free.’ ” Id. at 521.
This is not to suggest, of course, that officers are free to conduct stops that they know to be unsupported by reasonable suspi*185cion simply to check an individual’s identity and run a warrants check. Nearly twenty-five years ago the United States Supreme Court made it clear that in the absence of any basis for suspecting an individual of misconduct, the Fourth Amendment does not allow government agents to detain the individual and demand identification. Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. 47, 99 S.Ct. 2637, 61 L.Ed.2d 357 (1979). Because the purpose and flagrancy of the official misconduct is one of the factors to be considered in applying the attenuation doctrine, Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. at 604, 95 S.Ct. at 2262, 45 L.Ed.2d at 427 an officer’s intentional disregard of this Fourth Amendment limitation would weigh heavily against any argument that a preexisting warrant dissipated the taint. Here, however, the officer was acting in good faith although, in my view, unlawfully, when he stopped the car in which Roe was riding; and there is no indication that the officer was using the seatbelt violation as a pretext to obtain the identities of the vehicle’s occupants.
Because I conclude that the existence of an outstanding warrant for the arrest of a passenger constitutes an intervening circumstance that dissipates the taint of the illegal stop, I concur with the majority holding that the search of the vehicle was lawful as a search incident to the passenger’s arrest.
I also concur with section 11(C) of the lead opinion, holding that the police were entitled to search the shorts that Roe was carrying when officers undertook a search of the vehicle incident to the arrest of another passenger. Therefore, I agree that the district court’s order granting Roe’s motion to suppress evidence must be reversed.