Court Opinion

ID: 9489882
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:26:46.026102+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:46.347320
License: Public Domain

RIPPLE, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I agree that the judgmént of the district court must be affirmed. I am puzzled, however, by the route the court takes to reach this result. In my view, the district court’s judgment should be affirmed on the ground that marijuana plants were seen in plain view by an officer who was legally present in the barn at the time. Indeed, the magistrate judge specifically found that at least one plant “was in open view in an area of the barn in which the officers were lawfully present.” Magistrate Judge’s Recommendation at Í3. The district court accepted this finding and found further that the officers would have sought Mr. Liss’ consent or a search warrant even if the marijuana in plain view had been the only incriminating evidence discovered. Based on my review of the record, I am satisfied that these factual findings are not clearly erroneous. As a result, I agree with the district court that the illegal search in this case did not taint the subsequent consent search, or the evidence derived therefrom, because the illegally-obtained evidence was not the impetus for seeking consent. The evidence need not be suppressed because it would have been discovered absent any illegality. See Nix v. Williams, 467 U.S. 431, 104 S.Ct. 2501, 81 L.Ed.2d 377 (1984); Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 487-88, 83 S.Ct. 407, 417, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963). Additionally, the illegally-seized evidence was not used as a device to coerce Mr. Liss’ consent.
Because this case can be resolved on the basis of fundamental legal principles, I do not understand why the majority decides instead to mount a frontal assault on the precedents of the Supreme Court of the United States and this court. The majority holds that “Liss’s subsequent [voluntary] consent to search his home purged the evidence seized under the warrant of any taint from the illegal search of the barn.” Ante, at 620. A voluntary consent, however, standing alone, does not purge the evidence of the taint of an antecedent illegal search.1 “[T]he more apt question in such a case is “whether, granting establishment of the primary illegality, the evidence to which instant objection is made has been come at by exploitation of that illegality or instead by means sufficiently distinguishable to be purged of the primary taint.’ ” Wong Sun, 371 U.S. at 488, 83 S.Ct. at 417. To determine whether the taint has been purged, we look to “(1) the temporal proximity of the illegal detention [and the defendant’s consent]; (2) the presence of intervening factors between the two events; and (3) the circumstances surrounding, and the nature of, the official misconduct.” United States v. Sanchez-Jaramillo, 637 F.2d 1094, 1099 (7th Cir.) (citing Brown v. Illi*623nois, 422 U.S. 590, 603-04, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 2261-62, 45 L.Ed.2d 416 (1975)), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 862, 101 S.Ct. 166, 66 L.Ed.2d 79 (1980). Without doubt, a voluntary consent is a powerful “intervening factor” that should be weighed in the Brown balance, but the Supreme Court has yet to hold that such a consent per se breaks the causal chain.2 Indeed, Brown makes clear that per se rules of this type are unacceptable. 422 U.S. at 603, 95 S.Ct. at 2261.
The only solace one can take from the majority’s deviation from accepted judicial methodology is that the court has limited expressly its new rule to those situations in which a voluntary consent follows an illegal search. Ante, at 620-21. The majority, therefore, does no violence to the strong body of case law that has held, typically after applying Brown, that the voluntary consents at issue were tainted by illegal seizures, stops, detentions or arrests.3 As a result, most of the Supreme Court’s mandate in Brown is still alive. I say “most” because taint analysis applies whether the antecedent Fourth Amendment violation is an illegal seizure or an illegal search: “In Wong Sun, the Court pronounced the principles to be applied where the issue is whether statements and other evidence obtained after an illegal arrest or search should be excluded.” Brown, 422 U.S. at 597, 95 S.Ct. at 2259 (emphasis added).4
I respectfully decline to concur in the majority’s decision to alter controlling precedent. Under the principle of stare decisis, we are bound by our own decisions. “And the Supreme Court has told the lower federal *624courts, in increasingly emphatic ... terms, not to anticipate an overruling of a decision by the Court; we are to leave the overruling to the Court itself.” Khan v. State Oil Co., 93 F.3d 1358, 1363 (7th Cir.1996). This case could have been decided under Brown and its progeny. Because it was not, I concur in the judgment of the majority.

. Cf. United States v. Morgan, 725 F.2d 56, 58 (7th Cir.1984) ("Our inquiry does not end with a determination that Morgan’s consent was voluntary, for if the agents had improperly 'seized’ the defendant, her consent to a search would have been tainted and the evidence should have been suppressed.”).

. The Tenth Circuit experimented with the majority’s rule in United States v. Carson, 793 F.2d 1141 (10th Cir.), cert. denied, 479 U.S. 914, 107 S.Ct. 315, 93 L.Ed.2d 289 (1986), “voluntary consent, as defined for Fourth Amendment purposes, is an intervening act free of police exploitation of the primary illegality and is sufficiently distinguishable from the primary illegality to purge the evidence of the primary taint.” Id. at 1147-48. The Tenth Circuit subsequently abandoned the Carson rule. In United. States v. Melendez-Garcia, 28 F.3d 1046 (10th Cir.1994), the Tenth Circuit, rejecting Carson, decided that “not only must the government show that consent is voluntary in fact, but it must also demonstrate a break in the causal connection between the illegality and the consent, so that the court will be satisfied that the consent was ‘sufficiently an act of free will to purge the primary taint.' ” Id. at 1054 (quoting Wong Sun, 371 U.S. at 486, 83 S.Ct. at 416-17); see also 3 Wayne R. LaFave, Search and Seizure; A Treatise on the Fourth Amendment § 8.2(d) (3d ed. 1996) (“[E]vidence obtained by the purported consent should be held admissible only if it is determined that the consent was both voluntary and not an exploitation of the prior illegality.... [T]he fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine also extends to invalidate consents which are voluntary.”).

. See Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491, 507-08, 103 S.Ct. 1319, 1329, 75 L.Ed.2d 229 (1983) (plurality opinion) (“Because ... Royer was being illegally detained when he consented ..., we agree that the consent was tainted by the illegality and was ineffective to justify the search.”); United States v. Novak, 870 F.2d 1345, 1353 (7th Cir. 1989); United States v. Babwah, 972 F.2d 30, 34 (2d Cir. 1992); United States v. Cebadlos, 812 F.2d 42, 49-50 (2d Cir.1987); United States v. McCraw, 920 F.2d 224, 230 (4th Cir.1990); United States v. Gooding, 695 F.2d 78, 84 (4th Cir. 1982); United States v. Chavez-Villarreal, 3 F.3d 124, 127-28 (5th Cir.1993); United States v. Cherry, 759 F.2d 1196, 1211-12 (5th Cir.1985) (remand); United States v. Grant, 920 F.2d 376, 388 (6th Cir.1990); United States v. Ramirez, 91 F.3d 1297, 1302-04 (9th Cir. 1996); United States v. Suarez, 902 F.2d 1466, 1468 (9th Cir.1990); United States v. Delgadillo-Velasquez, 856 F.2d 1292, 1299-1300 (9th Cir.1988); United States v. Howard, 828 F.2d 552, 556 (9th Cir.1987); United States v. Melendez-Garcia, 28 F.3d 1046, 1053-56 (10th Cir.1994) (remand); United States v. Guillen-Cazares, 989 F.2d 380, 382, 384 (10th Cir.1993); United States v. Valdez, 931 F.2d 1448, 1452 (11th Cir.1991); United States v. Timberlake, 896 F.2d 592, 595, 596 n. 2 (D.C.Cir. 1990).

.See also United States v. Gillespie, 650 F.2d 127, 129 (7th Cir.1981) (suppressing heroin discovered during consent searches that were conducted subsequent to an illegal search), cert. denied, 458 U.S. 1111, 102 S.Ct. 3495, 73 L.Ed.2d 1374 (1982); United States v. Navedo-Colon, 996 F.2d 1337, 1339 (1st Cir.1993) (Breyer, J.) (finding an independent, lawful reason for the police’s seeking consent); United States v. Tortorello, 533 F.2d 809, 815 (2d Cir.) (procurement of voluntary consent based on illegal search may taint consent), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 894, 97 S.Ct. 254, 50 L.Ed.2d 177 (1976); United States v. Calhoun, 49 F.3d 231, 234 (6th Cir.1995) (“Calhoun’s consent, like the search warrants in Murray and Segura, was not obtained on the basis of any information garnered during the illegal search.”); United States v. Ramirez, 91 F.3d 1297, 1303 (9th Cir.1996) ("If an unlawful search ultimately leads to the seizure of tangible materials, they, too, will be suppressed if their connection is close enough.”).