Court Opinion

ID: 9481090
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:07:27.960846+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:05.319071
License: Public Domain

WILKINS, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I concur in the result reached by the majority with respect to its treatment of defendant McCraw but disagree with its conclusion regarding the suppression of evidence obtained following Mathis’ arrest. This evidence ultimately might prove to be inadmissible after inquiry by the district court; however, the gross deficiency of the record concerning the events following Mathis’ arrest should prevent this court from drawing conclusions as to its admissi*231bility without a remand for proper development of the record.
The majority is correct that reliance by the district court upon United States v. Santana, 427 U.S. 38, 96 S.Ct. 2406, 49 L.Ed.2d 300 (1976), was misplaced. The district court found no exigent circumstances justifying the entry into Mathis’ hotel room, a finding we must accept unless clearly erroneous, and a finding essential to an application of Santana. Thus, the law enforcement officers were required to obtain a warrant prior to forcibly entering Mathis’ hotel room, and their failure to do so rendered the arrest unlawful. See Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 588-89, 100 S.Ct. 1371, 1381, 63 L.Ed.2d 639 (1980). The majority’s discussion of doorway arrests is, in my view, unnecessary to the opinion.
The language used by the majority in discussing the suppression of evidence obtained in the voluntary consent search of the hotel room and the voluntary statements made by Mathis could be read to establish a per se rule of exclusion of all evidence obtained in the “home” following a Payton violation. I do not read Payton or New York v. Harris, _ U.S. _, 110 S.Ct. 1640, 109 L.Ed.2d 13 (1990), to compel such a result nor do I read Harris to completely erase the attenuation analysis recognized by Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 45 L.Ed.2d 416 (1975), and its progeny following a Payton violation.
In Harris, the Supreme Court specifically limited its inquiry to whether an inculpa-tory statement made by the defendant at a police station following an arrest made in violation of Payton should be suppressed. 110 S.Ct. at 1642. Finding that the statement was admissible, the Court held that an attenuation analysis was not required following a Payton violation when the defendant made a statement outside the home. Id. at 1643-44. The Court reasoned that the underlying purpose for the exclusionary rule was to deter police from failing to comply with the warrant requirement. This purpose would not be furthered by suppressing evidence obtained outside the home, since police would “know that a warrantless entry will lead to the suppression of any evidence found or statements taken inside the home.” Id. at 1644.
Viewed in context, this language from Harris does not establish a per se rule mandating suppression of evidence obtained in the home that, under a traditional attenuation analysis, would be free from the taint of the illegal arrest. The goal of deterrence that the exclusionary rule fosters would not be furthered by the suppression of such evidence because, by definition, such evidence must be sufficiently attenuated from the taint of the illegal activity to be admissible.
Likewise, surely Harris did not nullify the inevitable discovery doctrine. See Murray v. United States, 487 U.S. 533, 108 S.Ct. 2529, 101 L.Ed.2d 472 (1988); Segura v. United States, 468 U.S. 796, 104 S.Ct. 3380, 82 L.Ed.2d 599 (1984); Nix v. Williams, 467 U.S. 431, 104 S.Ct. 2501, 81 L.Ed.2d 377 (1984). Harris does not mandate the exclusion of evidence obtained in the “home” following a Payton violation that would be admissible under the inevitable discovery doctrine because, again, no goal of the exclusionary rule would be furthered by the suppression.
The record before this court is virtually void of facts regarding what transpired after the arrest. Indeed, the record is so deficient that it does not reveal what evidence was discovered or what statements were made. As the majority opinion notes, Mathis was handcuffed and given Miranda warnings within two minutes following his arrest. However, the record is silent concerning the temporal proximity of the arrest to the officers’ request to search and to Mathis’ statements. The record even suggests that some of the statements which Mathis sought to suppress were made outside the hotel room. Similarly, the events following Mathis’ arrest are not sufficiently developed to permit this court to infer that intervening circumstances were absent. The circumstances surrounding and following events in the hotel room are not sufficiently developed for this court *232to draw conclusions about the admissibility of any of the evidence.
It does appear on the meager record before us that officers obtained and executed a search warrant for the hotel room. Nevertheless, the record does not disclose precisely when the warrant was obtained, what facts the magistrate was given to support a finding of probable cause, or when the warrant was executed. Consequently, the record is insufficient to permit the court to conduct an inevitable discovery analysis.
The majority recognizes the inadequacy of the record created by the breadth of Mathis’ motion to suppress and the dearth of facts in the record concerning the events following Mathis’ arrest. It attempts to solve the dilemma by limiting reversal to evidence obtained in the hotel room and permitting further proceedings consistent with the opinion on remand. However, the reason which necessitates further proceedings to unravel that evidence which is admissible under the rule announced in Harris applies equally to require further inquiry by the district court into the facts which are needed to essay an attenuation analysis and an application of the inevitable discovery doctrine.
The district court found that the arrest of Mathis was lawful and that his consent to the search and his statements were voluntary. Thus, the court had no occasion to consider the admissibility of the evidence on any other basis. I would remand this issue with instructions to fully develop the record and rule on the admissibility of the evidence after conducting an attenuation analysis, applying the rule of Harris to statements made outside the hotel room, and considering the application of the inevitable discovery doctrine. The evidence may be found inadmissible in the final analysis, but we should not draw such a conclusion on this record without allowing a thorough inquiry by the district court.