TN: Dead body here subject to inevitable discovery

Just because the rent on an apartment hadn’t been paid and there had been no eviction process, his property was there and he was hiding after a murder, he did not abandon the home. The affidavit for search warrant was prepared on legal sized paper but copied on letter sized page, cutting off the signature line. There was no place for the officer to swear to the warrant, although he did sign it somewhere. Even if the first warrant was invalid under the strict state rules for issuance of a warrant, a second warrant had been issued on additional information and that was sufficient to sustain the second warrant. The processes that the state claimed were exigent were “glacial under the circumstances” and they clearly took their time. Exigent circumstances thus does not work for the state. The inevitable discovery rule, however, does. State v. Davidson, 2015 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 164 (March 10, 2015). Are all dead bodies inevitably discovered? To some extent, they would be, as when decomp makes it ever so obvious to everybody within 200′ of the building. Here?

This evidence demonstrates that the police investigation, had it continued in the absence of the illegality, would have resulted in the officers lawfully entering the Chipman Street residence and discovering C.C.’s body. They had ample probable cause to support the issuance of a warrant to search the Chipman Street residence, and they did obtain a warrant that was issued on probable cause and that complied with constitutional requirements. The illegality here is based entirely on a state law violation that did nothing to dissipate the probable cause that existed before the police entered the Chipman Street residence. The police then obtained a second warrant that we have deemed independent from the state law violation that renders the first search warrant invalid. They executed that search warrant at the residence on the same day as the initial, illegal entry. Additionally, officers of the federal government and the TBI executed a validly executed search warrant on January 15, 2007. Had they not already seized her body, the police most certainly would have done so upon executing either the second search warrant or the federal search warrant. See Murray, 487 U.S. at 542 (“It seems to us, however, that reseizure of tangible evidence already seized is no more impossible than rediscovery of intangible evidence already discovered.”). Clearly, the preponderance of the evidence established that lawful means of investigation were being pursued before the first, illegal entry that would have led to the discovery of C.C.’s body. See Nix, 467 U.S. at 444 (“If the prosecution can establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the information ultimately or inevitably would have been discovered by lawful means … then the deterrence rationale has so little basis that the evidence should be received.”); see also id. n.5 (“We are unwilling to impose added burdens on the already difficult task of proving guilt in criminal cases by enlarging the barrier to placing evidence of unquestioned truth before juries.”). For this court to conclude otherwise would require us to “reject logic, experience, and common sense,” id. at 444, and “would do nothing whatever to promote the integrity of the trial process, but would inflict a wholly unacceptable burden on the administration of criminal justice,” id. at 447.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly cautioned against “‘[i]ndiscriminate application'” of the exclusionary rule and has applied the rule only “‘where its deterrence benefits outweigh its substantial social costs.'” Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U.S. 586, 591 (2006) (citations omitted); see also Pa. Bd. of Prob. & Parole v. Scott, 524 U.S. 357, 364-65 (1998) (“Because the exclusionary rule precludes consideration of reliable, probative evidence, it imposes significant costs: it undeniably detracts from the truthfinding process and allows many who would otherwise be incarcerated to escape the consequences of their actions. Although we have held these costs to be worth bearing in certain circumstances, our cases have repeatedly emphasized that the rule’s ‘costly toll’ upon truth-seeking and law enforcement objectives presents a high obstacle for those urging application of the rule.” (citations omitted)). Here, where the record amply demonstrates that C.C.’s body would inevitably have been discovered by lawful means, we can see no reason to exclude this “reliable, probative evidence.” See Scott, 524 U.S. at 364. In consequence, the trial court did not err by denying the defendant’s motion to suppress the evidence obtained during the first January 9, 2007 search of the Chipman Street residence.