Court Opinion

ID: 9787636
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 00:21:06.317128+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:59.065741
License: Public Domain

Judge SCHWARTZMAN,
Dissents.
I respectfully dissent. I would uphold the district judge’s order of suppression and spare the state the embarrassment of returning to the trial court to face another round of suppression findings.
The facts of this ease are unsettling, and should be amplified to give the reader a clearer perspective of what was really going on. The state concedes the illegality of the continuing detention after the routine traffic stop procedures were completed, and well it should! The car was occupied by seven people, all presumably Hispanic,1 including three adults (one male and two female), three children and Zavala, the driver. Officer Sievers, noting that Zavala had an Illinois driver’s license and that the Oldsmobile was registered in Idaho to someone else, requested “assistance” from deputy Porter and his drug dog, “Gunnar,” and another officer. Sievers testified that his reason for extending the duration of the traffic stop after writing the speeding citation was as follows:
[Q] Did you find anything out of the ordinary about the driver when you were speaking to him at the beginning?
[A] I noticed that his driver’s license was through, from Illinois. The vehicle was registered to somebody else in the state of Idaho.
[Q] What did you do when you returned to your vehicle with that information?
*538[A] Uh, due to some of the training that I’ve had in drug concealment and uh, other courses, I felt, uh, that I might be able to obtain a search of this vehicle, due to the fact that uh, the information given uh, matched some of the things that we look for in uh, drug concealment.
[Q] In what, what in your training, what were you alerted to by your training in this particular case?
[A] We look for uh, such things as an out-of-state driver’s license with uh, with a vehicle that is not theirs. Either rental cars or someone else’s vehicle.
Sievers further indicated in his police report that he needed the other officers to get a consent to search the vehicle. Sievers said that he waited “no more than twenty minutes” for the other officers to arrive.
After completing the citation, but prior to serving it on Zavala, Sievers returned to the Oldsmobile, had Zavala step out of the car and re-questioned him about where he was going, where he was from and who his passengers were. Sievers then asked Zavala to get back in the car, got the male passenger to step out of the ear, and questioned him. When Deputy Porter, “Gunnar” and the other officer arrived, Sievers had completed his questioning and was standing beside his patrol car, waiting for reinforcements. Sievers’ emergency lights were on; the two back-up patrol ears were parked behind Sievers with their flashers on.
While the other officers stood beside Sievers’ patrol car waiting to “find out whether we were going to [be] able to conduct a search,” Sievers approached Zavala in the Oldsmobile, told him he was “free to go” and handed him his driver’s license, the car registration and insurance papers. Immediately thereafter, Sievers asked Zavala if he would “mind if we perform a vehicle search?” Zavala indicated something to the effect that it would be “okay.”
The crux of this case hinges on a focused and compressed timeframe during which the state asserts that (1) the admittedly illegal detention ended, (2) Zavala gave a free and voluntary consent to search the car and (3) the causal connection between the unlawful detention and the consent was broken, i.e., that Zavala’s “consent” was sufficiently attenuated to dissipate the taint of the illegal detention. The district court can certainly find, as a matter of fact, that this illegal detention never really ended, and that the consent was the result of psychological duress and implied coercion, not to mention an imperfect facility with the English language.2 Regardless, the court must conclude, as a matter of constitutional law and policy, that the causal connection between the primary taint of Zavala’s illegal detention and his purported consent was never broken under the Wong Sun doctrine. 371 U.S. 471, 484, 83 S.Ct. 407, 415, 9 L.Ed.2d 441, 453 (1963).
1. The Illegal Detention
The state concedes that the detention of Zavala and his six passengers became illegal after all the normal procedures for a routine traffic stop had been completed. The officer justified his actions in calling for back-up, including “Gunnar” the drug dog, on his inchoate suspicion or hunch that the car might contain drugs because the driver had an out-of-state license with an in-state automobile registration to someone else, i.e., the vehicle didn’t belong to Zavala or anyone else in the car. What the officer conveniently forgot to articulate in this matrix of suspicion was the fact that the automobile was occupied by Hispanics. It takes no legal rocket-scientist to discern the spectre or appearance of “racial-profiling” as playing some role, consciously or unconsciously, in the officer’s decision to call in reinforcements to try to obtain a “consent search” and maybe discover some drugs.3
I have often wondered, both as a trial judge for over twenty-six years and as an *539appellate judge, just how many times this type of police scenario is replayed and no drugs are ever found. Of course, we shall never know, because the driver is merely allowed to go on his way, relieved that this mini-ordeal is now over without further inconvenience, and not particularly concerned that his constitutional rights have been subtly violated.
2. The Consent
The only evidence on the voluntariness of Zavala’s consent was preliminary hearing testimony to the effect that Sievers handed Zavala his driving papers and told him that he was “free to leave.” This occurred immediately prior to Sievers asking Zavala, “mind if we conduct a vehicle search?” The request for consent occurred after two other police cars had arrived on the scene, with amber lights flashing, and with the officers and “Gunnar” the drug dog, standing at the ready, beside Sievers’ patrol car parked immediately behind the Oldsmobile. Sievers testified that he did not detect a language bander problem, but neither could he recall Zavala’s words or whether he recorded the consent on audio or videotape.
What is particularly troubling is the fact that this entire scenario was being choreographed or staged in an effort to obtain Zavala’s consent because the officer knew he had no basis upon which he could legally search the car. The ploy worked such that some type of “consent” was obtained, and the families were immediately escorted out of the car and herded over to the lawn of an adjacent church while the search was conducted. “Gunnar” alerted, all the adults were then handcuffed and taken to the Twin Falls County Jail and the car was impounded.
The state has the legal burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that Zavala’s consent was given freely, understandingly and voluntarily, and not the result of duress or coercion, either direct or implied. Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 248, 93 S.Ct. 2041, 2058-59, 36 L.Ed.2d 854, 875 (1973). This the state will have a difficult time in proving to the trial judge, especially in view of the fact that the illegal detention never really ended; and even if it technically did, there was no appreciable lapse of time and intervening circumstances to purge the primary taint between the illegal detention and the obtaining of the “consent.” Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 602-05, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 2261-63, 45 L.Ed.2d 416, 426-28 (1975).
3. As a Matter of Constitutional Law and Policy, There Can Be No Attenuation Between Zavala’s Unlawful Detention and his Purported Consent to Search
The second prong of Wong Sun — the attenuation analysis — requires the district court to consider such factors as (a) the temporal proximity between the initial seizure and the consent to search; (b) the presence of intervening circumstances; and (c) the purpose and flagraney of the official misconduct. See, e.g., State v. Barnett, 133 Idaho 231, 235, 985 P.2d 111, 115 (1999); State v. Bainbridge, 117 Idaho 245, 250-51, 787 P.2d 231, 236-37 (1990).
Regarding the temporal proximity between the unlawful detention and the consent to search, the district court found that:
[o]nce the other officers arrived at the scene Deputy Sievers approached the driver’s side of the vehicle and handed the Defendant the citation for speeding, the Defendant’s driver’s license, proof of insurance and vehicle registration, and told the Defendant he was free to go. Both of the other officers were located at the passenger side of Deputy Sievers’ patrol car which was behind the vehicle driven by the Defendant. The other officers were waiting to see if Deputy Sievers would obtain Defendant’s consent for a search of the vehicle.
Immediately after telling the Defendant he was free to go, Deputy Sievers asked Defendant for consent to search the vehicle.
Consent given immediately upon the termination of an unlawful detention does not ipso facto break the chain of causation between the consent and the unlawful detention. State v. Lirar-Lara, 132 Idaho 465, 974 P.2d 1094 (1999) (implicitly holding that Lira-Lara’s consent to search was the product of *540his unlawful detention of up to forty-five minutes while waiting for a Spanish-speaking interpreter and drug dog to arrive at the scene of a traffic stop); see also United States v. Gregory, 79 F.3d 973, 979 (10th Cir.1996) (There was no attenuation between the unlawful detention of the traffic stop and defendant’s consent to a search of his vehicle requested by the officer immediately after returning the defendant’s driver documents. Where consent is given after an illegal detention, the government carries a heavy burden of proving that the primary taint of the illegal stop is purged sufficient to break the causal connection between the illegal detention and the consent.).
Finally, the purpose and flagrancy of the police conduct must be considered. This is especially true where the unlawful detention is part of a deliberate and calculated plan to exploit the opportunity to ask for consent to search the vehicle. See State v. Shoulderblade, 905 P.2d 289, 294-95 (Utah 1995). Here, while awaiting the arrival of “Gunnar” the drug dog and back-up, Sievers again questioned Zavala and his male passenger about where they were going, where they were from and the identities of the other occupants. As the district court found, the state failed to demonstrate any reason for this re-questioning other than waiting for the drug team to arrive. Zavala and his party of six were detained without reasonable suspicion for ten to fifteen minutes while Sievers merely bided his time until reinforcements arrived, thus giving Sievers the added psychological leverage and intimidation factor he sought in asking for consent. See Brown, 422 U.S. at 602, 95 S.Ct. at 2261, 45 L.Ed.2d at 426.
Because the apparent purpose of the extended illegal detention indicates an exploitation thereof for the sole purpose of obtaining consent, with no intervening temporal circumstances, Zavala’s purported consent to search was not sufficiently attenuated to dissipate the primary taint of that unlawful detention. Any other result would send out a green light and stamp of approval to this type of unconstitutional conduct in the hopes it can be exploited and metamorphed into a legal consent search.
Accordingly, as previously stated, I would uphold the district judge’s original order of suppression and spare the state the embarrassment of returning to the trial court to face another round of suppression findings.

. The racial identity of the two women and three children is not specifically disclosed on the record, although the trial court referred to them as part of Zavala’s family. The male passenger was identified as Juan Vasquez.

. I note that throughout all court proceedings, Zavala was provided with a Spanish-speaking translator.

. I seriously doubt that the Clark W. Griswold family, on their way from Illinois to WalleyWorld in the borrowed family truckster (a reference to the hit comedy movie National Lampoon’s Vacation, with Chevy Chase, Warner Bros.1983), would face such an array of police interest and interdiction, including "Gunnar” the drug dog.