The officer slow walked “what should have been a brief detention” and can’t rely on its “attempt to characterize the situation as an evolving [which] one misses the mark.” United States v. Davis, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 207203 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 14, 2024):
The government’s attempt to characterize the situation as an evolving one misses the mark. To the extent the situation did evolve, it was due to Sergeant Currie unlawfully prolonging what should have been a brief detention so that deputies could impound the vehicle. Otherwise, law enforcement would be free to extend any detention long enough for probable cause to materialize for some offense, even if wholly unrelated to the offense justifying the initial intrusion.
This incident illustrates the danger in permitting law enforcement to take that approach. After the initial detention and pat down, Sergeant Currie availed himself of every opportunity to manufacture some reason to illegally prolong Davis’s detention. After the initial pat down, even though Davis was not the one approaching the Nissan’s driver side door, Sergeant Currie accused Davis of drinking. Then, Sergeant Currie accused Davis of having dope on him after Davis complied with his command to close his eyes. Sergeant Currie then consulted with Deputy Kuhl. Assuming, without deciding, that Sergeant Currie disabled his audio during that conversation consistent with county policy, the effect of that conversation is clear on this record. Once he consulted with his colleague, Sergeant Currie’s mission was to continue to prolong Davis’s detention until probable cause for some offense materialized. He walked back from his conversation with Deputy Kuhl peering into the vehicle, presumably for any sign of contraband. He then, for the first time, expressed that Davis was being “talkative” and “animated.” And once Davis asked for his lawyer and invoked his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, Sergeant Currie used that as a basis to arrest Davis, claiming that his refusal to answer drug-related questions interfered with an investigation into unlawful drug use – something wholly unrelated to the impound warrant about which Sergeant Currie had not asked Davis a single question.
These actions by Sergeant Currie unreasonably prolonged Davis’s detention in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Rodriguez, 575 U.S. at 350 (“[A] police stop exceeding the time needed to handle the matter for which the stop was made violates the Constitution’s shield against unreasonable seizures.”). The unlawful arrest, and the search incident to arrest, which led to the discovery of the gun, suspected cocaine, and toot straw thus “followed directly in an unbroken causal chain of events from that constitutional violation. As a result, the seized [evidence] is the ‘fruit of the poisonous tree’ ” and is inadmissible under the exclusionary rule. See Gorman, 859 F.3d at 714. The Court now turns to whether the government may nonetheless rely on the unlawfully obtained evidence under any exception to the exclusionary rule.
B. Exceptions to Exclusion
Evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment, “is ordinarily ‘tainted’ by the prior ‘illegality’ and thus inadmissible, subject to a few recognized exceptions.” Id. at 716 (citing United States v. Washington, 490 F.3d 765, 774 (9th Cir. 2007)). There are three recognized exceptions which allow the admission of evidence derived from official misconduct: “the ‘independent source’ exception, the ‘inevitable discovery’ exception, and the ‘attenuated basis’ exception.” Id. at 718 (citing United States v. Ramirez-Sandoval, 872 F.2d 1392, 1396 (9th Cir. 1989)).
The government relies on two of these — the attenuated basis exception and inevitable discovery exception — to salvage the admissibility of the evidence uncovered during the illegal search. Opp. at 19-21. Neither applies.
