Court Opinion

ID: 9499542
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:51:14.294443+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:34.515521
License: Public Domain

COLLOTON, Circuit Judge,
with whom BENTON, Circuit Judge, joins, concurring.
I concur in Judge Bye’s opinion and agree that Craig Allen Thomas’s conviction and sentence should be affirmed. In particular, I concur that the district court properly applied circuit precedent concerning the “inevitable discovery doctrine” to *883the facts of this case. The discussion of that doctrine, however, provides an opportunity to observe that our court’s present articulation of the inevitable discovery doctrine is inconsistent with Supreme Court precedent and warrants consideration at an appropriate time by the en banc court.
In Nix v. Williams, 467 U.S. 431, 104 S.Ct. 2501, 81 L.Ed.2d 377 (1984), the Supreme Court adopted the ultimate or inevitable discovery exception to the exclusionary rule. The Court held that where information is discovered after police violate the Fourth Amendment, the evidence should not be suppressed “[i]f the prosecution can establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the information ultimately or inevitably would have been discovered by lawful means.” Id. at 444, 104 S.Ct. 2501. The rationale for this inevitable discovery exception, like the related independent source doctrine, is that “the interest of society in deterring unlawful police conduct and the public interest in having juries receive all probative evidence of a crime are properly balanced by putting the police in the same, not a worse, position that they would have been in if no police error or misconduct had occurred.” Id. at 443, 104 S.Ct. 2501.
Since then, our court has said that the inevitable discovery exception to the exclusionary rule applies only where the government proves “by a preponderance of the evidence: (1) that there was a reasonable probability that the evidence would have been discovered by lawful means in the absence of police misconduct, and (2) that the government was actively pursuing a substantial, alternative line of investigation at the time of the constitutional violation.” United States v. Conner, 127 F.3d 663, 667 (8th Cir.1997). This two-pronged test was adopted from decisions of the Fifth Circuit, see United States v. Wilson, 36 F.3d 1298, 1304 (5th Cir.1994) (citing United States v. Cherry, 759 F.2d 1196, 1205-06 (5th Cir.1985)), with no analysis of the competing approaches to the doctrine or whether Fifth Circuit’s approach is consistent with Nix v. Williams.
Our court’s present approach is both overinclusive and underinclusive. The first prong of the analysis is overinclusive. It provides that evidence is admissible if the government proves by a preponderance of the evidence that there is merely a “reasonable probability” that the disputed evidence would have been discovered by lawful means. The Supreme Court, however, held that a preponderance of the evidence must show that the evidence “ultimately or inevitably would have been discovered.” Nix, 467 U.S. at 444, 104 S.Ct. 2501 (emphasis added). “Reasonable probability” means something less than “more likely than not.” See Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419, 434, 115 S.Ct. 1555, 131 L.Ed.2d 490 (1995). By diluting the Supreme Court’s standard — “would have been discovered” — to a “reasonable probability that the evidence would have been discovered,” we open the possibility that police will be in a better position as a result of police error or misconduct.
Subsequent, to Nix, the Supreme Court has reiterated that “inevitable discovery of illegally seized evidence must be shown to have been more likely than not.” Bourjaily v. United States, 483 U.S. 171, 176, 107 S.Ct. 2775, 97 L.Ed.2d 144 (1987). The Second Circuit, interpreting Nix, has concluded that “the government cannot prevail . under the inevitable discovery doctrine merely by establishing that it is more probable than not that the disputed evidence would have been obtained without the constitutional violation.” United States v. Heath, 455 F.3d 52, 58 (2d Cir.2006). That court has found “semantic problems in using the preponderance of the evidence standard to prove inevitabili*884ty,” id. at 59 n. 6 (internal quotation omitted), and two of Yale Law School’s most distinguished professors have yet to solve this “semantic puzzle,” other than to observe that there is a difference between proving that something “would have happened” and that something “would inevitably have happened.” United States v. Cabassa, 62 F.3d 470, 474 (2d Cir.1995) (Winter, J.); Heath, 455 F.3d at 59 n. 6 (Calabresi, J.). This analysis arguably overlooks the fact that the Supreme Court spoke of evidence that “ultimately or inevitably would have been discovered,” Nix, 467 U.S. at 444, 104 S.Ct. 2501 (emphasis added), and there may be no difference between proving that something “would have happened” and that something “ultimately would have happened.” In any event, whether the proper standard is “more likely than not” or some higher degree of certainty, suffice it to say for present purposes that a “reasonable probability” standard is inconsistent with Nix and should be eliminated from our court’s formulation. See Heath, 455 F.3d at 60.
The second prong of our court’s analysis, on the other hand, is underinclusive. A rule that the inevitable discovery doctrine applies only where “the government was actively pursuing a substantial, alternative line of investigation at the time of the constitutional violation,” Conner, 127 F.3d at 667, allows for the exclusion of evidence that inevitably would have been discovered. Even if the police were not actively pursuing an alternative line of investigation at the time of police error or misconduct, for example, the government may well be able to establish that the execution of routine police procedure or practice inevitably would have resulted in discovery of disputed evidence. By requiring proof that a “substantial, alternative line of investigation” was in progress, our court’s application of the doctrine contravenes the command of Nix that police should not be placed in a worse position than they would have occupied in the absence of error or misconduct. 467 U.S. at 444, 104 S.Ct. 2501. The existence of an alternative line of investigation may be strong proof, as in Nix, that supports a finding that evidence inevitably would have been discovered in a particular case. But a rigid requirement that such proof be mustered in every case is an inappropriate prophylactic rule that unduly expands the exclusionary rule. Cf. Murray v. United States, 487 U.S. 533, 540 n. 2, 108 S.Ct. 2529, 101 L.Ed.2d 472 (1988) (rejecting prophylactic exception to independent source rule).
Most courts of appeals have expressly or implicitly rejected the “substantial, alternative line of investigation” requirement. See United States v. Vasquez De Reyes, 149 F.3d 192, 195 (3d Cir.1998); United States v. Larsen, 127 F.3d 984, 987 (10th Cir.1997); United States v. Kennedy, 61 F.3d 494, 499-500 (6th Cir.1995); United States v. Fialk, 5 F.3d 250, 253 (7th Cir.1993); United States v. Thomas, 955 F.2d 207, 210 (4th Cir.1992); United States v. Boatwright, 822 F.2d 862, 864 (9th Cir.1987) (Kennedy, J.); United States v. Silvestri, 787 F.2d 736, 745-46 (1st Cir.1986). That prophylactic rule is now followed by only our court, the Eleventh Circuit, and the Fifth Circuit, from which both we and the Eleventh Circuit adopted it. Jefferson v. Fountain, 382 F.3d 1286, 1296 (11th Cir.2004); Conner, 127 F.3d at 667; United States v. Kirk, 111 F.3d 390, 392 (5th Cir.1997). We should align ourselves with the majority of circuits and abandon this unwarranted requirement.
Because I agree that the district court properly applied our governing precedent to the facts of this case, and that Thomas’s other contentions are without merit, I con*885cur in the opinion of the court affirming the judgment of the district court.