S.D.Ga.: Inevitable discovery explained in a Rodriguez violation

The government established that inevitable discovery applied here despite a Rodriguez violation. United States v. Henderson, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 134131 (S.D.Ga. July 19, 2021). The court explains:

Defendant’s argument conflates Trooper Sikes’s pre-Rodriguez violation actions—i.e., his questioning about the rental agreement and stating his intention to obtain it—with his Rodriguez-violative actions themselves—i.e., his impermissible questioning. According to Defendant, because Trooper Sikes asked impermissible questions, he was not actively pursuing the traffic violation. Such an analysis would render the active pursuit requirement meaningless; it would require that whenever a Fourth Amendment violation occurs, the officer was never engaged in active pursuit prior to the violation. The active pursuit requirement of the inevitable discovery exception exists to address those exact situations: where a police officer is actively pursuing a violation, commits a constitutional violation, and then obtains evidence. See, e.g., United States v. Satterfield, 743 F.2d 827, 846 (11th Cir. 1984) (“[I]f evidence is obtained by illegal conduct, the illegality can be cured only if the police possessed and were pursuing a lawful means of discovery at the time the illegality occurred.”), superseded by statute on other grounds as stated in United States v. Edwards, 728 F.3d 1286, 1292 n.2 (11th Cir. 2013). “‘Subtract the [illegal search] from the factual picture in this case’ and ‘nothing of substance’ would have changed.” Johnson, 777 F.3d at 1274 (quoting Jefferson, 382 F.3d at 1297). Such are the cases where the inevitable discovery exception applies.

If Defendant were correct, and if Trooper Sikes’s Rodriguez violation required exclusion of the evidence later seized, then the “active pursuit” requirement “would not return the government to the same position it ‘would have been in [without the violation]’ … because [Trooper Sikes] would have discovered the [evidence] in the course of his ordinary investigation into the ownership of the [vehicle].” Id. (quoting Nix, 467 U.S. at 443). That Trooper Sikes violated Rodriguez is the reason we examine whether an exception to the exclusionary rule applies at all; the violation itself cannot also defeat the applicability of the exception. The Magistrate Judge was correct in that Trooper Sikes was actively pursuing the traffic violation prior to his Rodriguez violations, and this requirement of the inevitable discovery doctrine is satisfied.

The R&R objections are overruled.

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