CA7: Exclusionary rule won’t be applied to identity in an illegal reentry case

The exclusionary rule won’t be applied to suppress the identity of an undocumented person leading to illegal reentry prosecution (relying on Hudson). United States v. Chagoya-Morales, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 10277 (7th Cir. June 9, 2017):

The Eleventh Circuit grounded its analysis in the decision of the Supreme Court in Hudson, 547 U.S. 586, 126 S. Ct. 2159, 165 L. Ed. 2d 56. There, the Court held that the exclusionary rule was an inappropriate remedy for violations of the knock-and-announce requirement. The Court reasoned that the exclusionary rule should be invoked “only where its remedial objectives are thought most efficaciously served—that is, where its deterrence benefits outweigh its substantial social costs.” Id. at 591 (internal citations omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court saw little deterrence benefit to the application of the exclusionary rule in knock-and-announce violations. In the Court’s view, officers violate the requirement not to obtain evidence that is not otherwise obtainable, but to avoid unnecessary violence and to ensure the preservation of evidence.

On the other hand, the use of the exclusionary rule, reasoned the Court in Hudson, resulted in the exclusion of relevant and probative evidence and imposed a high social cost with very little return.

The Eleventh Circuit in Farias-Gonzalez then determined that the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Hudson with respect to the knock-and-announce rule applied to the exclusion of identity-related evidence as well. The court concluded that the social costs are indeed high because the identity of the defendant is necessary to the proper functioning of the court system. Permitting the defendant to hide his true identity would undermine the administration of justice and would achieve the same result as allowing him to suppress the court’s jurisdiction over him. Turning to the benefits of permitting the exclusionary rule, the court concluded that there was no identification evidence that could not be found through other independent means. “[E]ven if a defendant in a criminal prosecution successfully suppresse[d] all evidence of his identity and the charges are dropped, the Government can collect new, admissible evidence of identity and re-indict him.” Farias-Gonzalez, 556 F.3d at 1188.

Indeed, this approach was foreshadowed by our court in United States v. Roche-Martinez, 467 F.3d 591 (7th Cir. 2006), when we remarked that, even if a Fourth Amendment violation had occurred, information about the defendant’s identity in an illegal reentry prosecution should not be suppressed. Id. at 594 (“[The defendant’s] illegal presence could have been proven absent the illegal entry. Once he was taken outside the house, detained, and fingerprinted, he was still present in the United States on July 1, 2004.”).

These considerations are applicable here. The Government seeks only to use Mr. Chagoya-Morales’s identity from the stop. Once that is known, Mr. Chagoya-Morales’s immigration status can be confirmed outside of the traffic stop’s context. This means that excluding the evidence now would “merely [] postpone a criminal prosecution.” Farias-Gonzalez, 556 F.3d at 1189; see also United States v. Navarro-Diaz, 420 F.3d 581, 588 (6th Cir. 2005) (“Directing the district court to grant [the defendant]’s suppression motion … would not affect the ultimate outcome of the charge against him. … Because [the defendant] could simply be reindicted for the same offense, suppressing his identity would have little deterrent effect ….”); United States v. Ortiz-Hernandez, 427 F.3d 567, 578-79 (9th Cir. 2005) (“Were [the defendant] to be released, law enforcement officials immediately would have probable cause to re-arrest him based on their knowledge of his identity and his criminal and immigration records. … To conclude otherwise would lead to an absurd result.”). The identity evidence therefore is admissible.