Court Opinion

ID: 9534879
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:43:19.495634+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:33:06.807376
License: Public Domain

Ciparick, J. (dissenting).
Because I believe that Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) records are subject to suppression if obtained by the police through the exploitation of a Fourth Amendment violation, namely an unlawful traffic stop, I respectfully dissent.
The majority has set forth a new rule, that regardless of police conduct, DMV records obtained through a police stop and inquiry of the driver are not subject to the exclusionary rule when the only link between the police conduct and the evidence is that the police learned a defendant’s name (see majority op at 388). Further, the majority believes that DMV records are not subject to suppression since they are government records compiled independently of defendant’s arrest. We disagree on both counts.
It has long been established that evidence derived from a Fourth Amendment violation must be suppressed as “fruit of the poisonous tree” if law enforcement “ ‘exploited or benefited from its illegal conduct’ such that ‘there is a connection between the violation of a constitutional right and the derivative evidence’ ” (People v Jones, 2 NY3d 235, 242 [2004] [citations omitted]). We have never before excluded any category of evidence from this rule. Fruit of the poisonous tree may be anything “of evidentiary value” (Davis v Mississippi, 394 US 721, 724 [1969], quoting Bynum v United States, 262 F2d 465, 467 [DC Cir 1958]), including fingerprints (id.), photographs (United States v Crews, 445 US 463, 472 [1980]), and identifications (People v Gethers, 86 NY2d 159, 162 [1995]).
The majority relies heavily on a misreading of INS v LopezMendoza (468 US 1032 [1984]). In that case, the United States Supreme Court reviewed two civil deportation proceedings that resulted from illegal police conduct. In the first case, Adan Lopez-Mendoza raised a jurisdictional issue, that he had been summoned to the deportation proceeding as a result of an unlawful arrest. He did not challenge the admissibility of the evidence proffered against him. In the companion case, Elias Sandoval-Sanchez challenged the introduction of illegally *389obtained evidence in his deportation proceeding. With respect to Lopez-Mendoza’s claim, the Court wrote that “[t]he ‘body’ or identity of a defendant or respondent in a criminal or civil proceeding is never itself suppressible as a fruit of an unlawful arrest” (id. at 1039). The Fourth, Eighth, and Tenth Circuits read this language as referring only to the court’s personal jurisdiction over Lopez-Mendoza, not admissibility of identity evidence (see United States v Oscar-Torres, 507 F3d 224, 227-230 [4th Cir 2007]; United States v Olivares-Rangel, 458 F3d 1104, 1111-1112 [10th Cir 2006]; United States v Guevara-Martinez, 262 F3d 751, 753-755 [8th Cir 2001]). I agree with these courts.
There are several reasons why this reading of Lopez-Mendoza is more persuasive than the reading given by the majority. Most importantly, the authority cited for the proposition that a defendant’s identity cannot be suppressed refers to an older rule, undisputed here, that the identity of a defendant is never suppressible so as to defeat a court’s jurisdiction over that defendant (Lopez-Mendoza, 468 US at 1039-1040, citing Gerstein v Pugh, 420 US 103, 119 [1975] and Frishie v Collins, 342 US 519, 522 [1952]). As such, the Lopez-Mendoza language at issue is found in the section of the opinion addressing Lopez-Mendoza’s jurisdictional claim. The Court later addressed Sandoval-Sanchez’s claim that the specific identity evidence against him should be suppressed. Rather than applying any “identity rule,” as it had when addressing Lopez-Mendoza’s jurisdictional claim, the Court held that the exclusionary rule did not extend to deportation proceedings—purely civil proceedings determining a person’s eligibility to stay in this country.
I agree with the majority that a defendant’s identity cannot be suppressed to defeat the personal jurisdiction of a court. However, identity-related evidence can and should be subject to the exclusionary rule. Indeed, the United States Supreme Court has twice found that fingerprints—paradigmatic identity evidence—are suppressible under the exclusionary rule (Davis, 394 US at 724; Hayes v Florida, 470 US 811, 815 [1985]). In Davis, the Court held that because “[f]ingerprint evidence is no exception” to the exclusionary rule, defendant’s illegally obtained fingerprints that matched the perpetrator’s fingerprints on file should have been suppressed (394 US at 724). The Court reaffirmed Davis in Hayes and found that a defendant’s fingerprints taken for an investigative purpose in the course of an unlawful detention were inadmissible fruit of that detention (470 US at 816).
*390Certainly the deterrent purpose of the exclusionary rule should be applicable to identity-related evidence. The majority’s “broad[ ] reading of Lopez-Mendoza [gives] the police carte blanche powers to engage in any manner of unconstitutional conduct so long as their purpose [is] limited to establishing a defendant’s identity” (Olivares-Rangel, 458 F3d at 1111). Today’s opinion gives law enforcement an incentive to illegally stop, detain, and search anyone for the sole purpose of discovering the person’s identity and determining if it matches any government records accessible by the police. Permitting law enforcement to exploit a Fourth Amendment violation that produces identity or identity-related evidence misses the point; what matters is the legality of the police conduct, not the type of evidence obtained.
Of course, this does not mean that identity-related evidence will necessarily be excluded, even if it is the product of an unlawful stop, but merely that it is subject to the same rules as other evidence. It may indeed be admissible, along with other evidence secured as a result of acquiring defendant’s pedigree information, if there is an independent source, discovery was inevitable, or the evidence is attenuated from the illegality (Gethers, 86 NY2d at 162). If none of these exceptions apply, the records obtained as a result of identity information acquired during an illegal stop are suppressible. Here, however, because Supreme Court made no determination regarding the legality of the stop, we are in no position to determine whether the proffered evidence should be suppressed.
The majority’s second argument—that the DMV records are not subject to the exclusionary rule because they were compiled by a state agency independent of any illegality—ignores that the police located these specific records only by relying on identifying information that may have been the product of an illegal stop. Contrary to the majority’s opinion, our holding in People v Pleasant (54 NY2d 972, 974 [1981]) does not suggest that evidence in possession of a government agency is immune from the exclusionary rule’s constraints. In fact, Pleasant was entirely premised on the identification at issue being “ ‘sufficiently distinguishable to be purged of the primary taint’ ” (id., quoting Wong Sun v United States, 371 US 471, 488 [1963] [some internal quotation marks omitted]). In other words, far from holding that identity-related evidence was not subject to suppression, Pleasant actually applied the Wong Sun analysis and found the evidence at issue to be sufficiently attenuated so *391as to be admissible. A similar analysis should have been conducted here.
Nor should it matter that the records were public. Defendant here need not establish a legitimate expectation of privacy in the evidence he seeks to suppress, but only that police discovery of the evidence was the product of a Fourth Amendment violation (see Kamins, New York Search and Seizure § 1.01 [5] [a], at 1-22 [2009] [compiling lower court decisions that defendant need not have a “reasonable expectation of privacy in the fruit itself’]). Supreme Court below therefore should have considered “whether exploitation of an illegal search and seizure produced the critical link between a defendant’s identity and his [government agency] record[s]” (Olivares-Rangel, 458 F3d at 1120).
In short, if these DMV records were discovered as a result of an allegedly unlawful stop, they should be subject to suppression as fruit of that illegality. I would reverse the order of the Appellate Division and remit to Supreme Court for a Mapp/Dunaway hearing.
Judges Graffeo, Smith, Pigott and Jones concur with Judge Read; Judge Ciparick dissents and votes to reverse in a separate opinion in which Chief Judge Lippman concurs.
Order affirmed.