Court Opinion

ID: 9719294
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:48:00.379906+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:05.835440
License: Public Domain

FELTON, C.J.,
concurring.
I concur in that part of the majority opinion affirming the trial court’s judgment denying appellant’s motion to suppress the eyewitness testimony of the law enforcement officers who *92saw appellant attack the victim.16 The majority opinion affirms the trial court’s ruling that the officers did not violate appellant’s Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures when they placed a GPS device in the bumper of appellant’s employer’s van, used by appellant in his job, while the van was parked on a public street, and used the data from that device to track and map appellant’s movement. While I have no concerns with the analysis of the majority in its determination that the placement of the GPS on the van and the use of the GPS tracking information did not violate appellant’s Fourth Amendment rights, it is my view that analysis is not the narrowest grounds on which to decide the issue before the Court on appeal: whether the officers’ eyewitness testimony of the attack should be suppressed. “[A]n appellate court decides cases ‘on the best and narrowest ground available.’ ” Luginbyhl v. Commonwealth, 48 Va.App. 58, 64, 628 S.E.2d 74, 77 (2006) (en banc) (quoting Air Courier Conference v. Am. Postal Workers Union, 498 U.S. 517, 531, 111 S.Ct. 913, 921-22, 112 L.Ed.2d 1125 (1991) (Stevens, J., concurring)).
Appellant was a registered sex offender who had recently been released from prison. At the time of appellant’s attack on the victim, law enforcement officers were conducting a visual surveillance of appellant as he drove his personal car on public roadways. Based on information law enforcement officers had developed in investigating a series of unsolved sexual assaults in that region, they had begun to focus on appellant as a prime suspect in those unsolved crimes prior to placing the GPS device on appellant’s employer’s van.
Even assuming, without deciding, that the officers’ placing a GPS device in the bumper of employer’s van driven by appellant, while that vehicle was on a public street, somehow violated appellant’s Fourth Amendment rights, the evidence *93appellant sought to suppress was the officers’ eyewitness testimony of appellant attacking the victim. There is no dispute that the officers’ eyewitness testimony, which appellant seeks to suppress as the “fruit of the poisonous tree” of the asserted violation of his Fourth Amendment rights,17 was competent and relevant evidence proving appellant abducted the victim from the sidewalk to sexually assault her.
In Warlick v. Commonwealth, 215 Va. 263, 266, 208 S.E.2d 746, 748 (1974),18 the Supreme Court provided three limitations to the exclusionary rule and the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine: “(1) evidence attributed to an independent source; (2) evidence where the connection has become so attenuated as to dissipate the taint; and (3) evidence which inevitably would have been gained even without the unlawful action.” The record on appeal clearly reflects that the officers had obtained evidence independently of that provided through the GPS device that appellant was a strong suspect in the recent unsolved sexual assaults in the region. The record shows that their focus on appellant as a prime suspect was based on a comparison of the modus operandi that led to his prior conviction to the modus operandi used by a perpetrator of the recent unsolved sexual assaults. The latter assaults occurred in the area where appellant lived and where he attended meetings required as part of his probation requirements following his release from prison. Based on that information, the officers determined that they would visually follow appellant’s movement. On the day of the attack at issue here, they observed appellant driving his personal car, then park and leave it on a public street and walk in the *94direction of a woman who was walking by herself on the public way. When the officers saw appellant sexually attack the woman, they intervened, rescued the victim, and arrested him for the sexual assault.
In my view, the record on appeal provides no basis to exclude the eyewitness testimony of the officers who witnessed appellant’s sexual attack on the victim. The officers’ eyewitness testimony, as well as that of the victim, was competent to prove that appellant was guilty of abduction with the intent to defile the victim. Accordingly, I would affirm appellant’s conviction without addressing the GPS Fourth Amendment issue.

. Appellant's petition for appeal to this Court contained eight questions presented. We granted only three questions presented, each of which related to whether the officers’ use of the GPS tracking device violated appellant’s Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizure requiring the trial court to exclude any direct or derivative evidence obtained by the use of that device.

. See Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 487-88, 83 S.Ct. 407, 417, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963).

. See Brown v. City of Danville, 44 Va.App. 586, 600-02, 606 S.E.2d 523, 530-32 (2004) (”[I]f a person engages in new and distinct criminal acts in response to unlawful police conduct, the exclusionary rule does not apply, and evidence of the events constituting the new criminal activity, including testimony describing the defendant’s own actions, is admissible.”).