CA11: Ditching a backpack and then fleeing the police was abandonment

Defendant was a member of the Coast Guard stationed at Key West. He was a suspected peeping tom and the police had a description of a man with a backpack. When defendant was found he didn’t have the backpack. He said it was in “his house” or “the house” and then he fled. The backpack was found stashed under somebody else’s porch. It was held abandoned. “Because any alleged unconstitutional stop or arrest occurred after Witten abandoned the backpack, the search cannot be the fruit of the poisonous tree.” When it was searched, a computer was found and child pornography was found on the computer. United States v. Witten, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 8820 (11th Cir. May 13, 2016).