Court Opinion

ID: 9495485
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:03:56.892949+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:02.787584
License: Public Domain

MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I believe that it is not necessary to decide the difficult question of whether stopping Mr. Yousifs vehicle was constitutional, because it is wrong to conclude, as the court does, that the district court clearly erred in finding that Mr. Yousifs consent to the search of his vehicle was voluntary. If we had the power to review the record independently, so that we could arrive at a de novo conclusion on the matter of voluntariness, I might well be of the view that the motion to suppress was improperly denied. But that of course is not our role. We are to decide whether, after examining the record, we are “left with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed,” United States v. United States Gypsum Co., 333 U.S. 364, 395, 68 S.Ct. 525, 92 L.Ed. 746 (1948).
In this case, the district court heard testimony from the principals involved, and it was that court’s responsibility in the first instance to decide whether Mr. Yous-ifs will had been overborne when he consented to the search. See Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 225-26, 248-49, 93 S.Ct. 2041, 36 L.Ed.2d 854 (1973). In other words, the district court had to determine what Mr. Yousifs state of mind was at a certain time, and it will be a rare case when an objective observer could say that that determination, whichever way it went, was clearly erroneous. The instant case has a great deal in common with cases in which a court must determine whether a particular person was motivated by some kind of animus when he or she committed an act, and we know that such findings are “peculiarly within a trial judge’s province.” Wainwright v. Witt, 469 U.S. 412, 428, 105 S.Ct. 844, 83 L.Ed.2d 841 (1985).
Certainly there are facts in the record here that support the district court’s conclusion, among the most prominent of which is that Mr. Yousif did not revoke his consent when the officer explained that a search could not legally proceed without consent or probable cause to believe that *833evidence of a crime would be uncovered. In any event, in the circumstances I cannot say that after examining this record I am left with a conviction that the district court’s factual finding was clearly wrong.
Mr. Yousif argues that even if his consent to the search of his vehicle was voluntarily given, the law nevertheless requires suppression of the evidence because his consent was not so distinct from the unconstitutional stop as to purge the taint of the original illegality. As the court recognizes, Wong Sun itself established the principle that evidence that would not have been uncovered but for an unconstitutional act is admissible if its discovery is fairly attributable to some other event that acts as a kind of intervening, independent cause of the discovery. See Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 487-88, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963).
Some of our cases seem to proceed on the principle that a voluntary consent to a search ipso facto amounts to an intervening event that renders evidence admissible, even though the evidence would have not been discovered but for an illegal act of some kind. See, e.g., United States v. Green, 275 F.3d 694, 700 (8th Cir.2001); United States v. Beason, 220 F.3d 964, 967 (2000). Mr. Yousif criticizes these cases on the ground that they conflate two separate issues, namely, the voluntariness of the consent and the severability of that consent from the initial illegality. In other words, he says, a good argument can be made that even a voluntary consent to search will not always be a sufficiently independent act to render seized evidence admissible.
In any event, our more expansive discussions of the matter do assume that cases like the present one involve two distinct issues, namely, whether the consent to search was voluntary, and, if so, whether that consent was given in circumstances that render it an independent, lawful cause of the discovery of the relevant evidence. See, e.g., United States v. Kreisel, 210 F.3d 868, 869-70 (8th Cir.2000), cert. denied, 531 U.S. 916, 121 S.Ct. 273, 148 L.Ed.2d 198 (2000); United States v. Ramos, 42 F.3d 1160, 1164 (8th Cir.1994), cert. denied, 514 U.S. 1134, 115 S.Ct. 2015, 131 L.Ed.2d 1013 (1995). Whatever approach one takes, however, the significant fact (as the district court recognized) is that we have never held that incriminating evidence must be suppressed as the fruit of the poisonous tree when a voluntary consent to search has intervened between an illegal stop and the discovery of that evidence. There is nothing distinctive about the present case that would serve to remove it from the usual rule. The court’s holding therefore runs contrary to all of our precedents.
In sum, the evidence was admissible against Mr. Yousif even if the stop of his vehicle violated the fourth amendment. I would affirm the judgment of the district court.
I therefore respectfully dissent.