TN: Statement during Terry stop was not product of flagrant misconduct

Defendant’s statement during an investigative detention was not the subject of flagrant police conduct warranting suppression under Brown. State v. Buford, 2012 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 342 (May 24, 2012)*:

Consequently, a weighing of the Brown factors leads to the conclusion that the defendant’s statements were sufficiently the product of his own free will so as to purge the taint of any illegal arrest. Moreover, in this case, the legal conclusion dictated by Brown is confirmed by the presence of additional facts. The record reflects that the defendant never requested to leave at any point during the time period he was in police custody. Furthermore, the statements that the defendant made to police were intended to be exculpatory. While the principle that exculpatory statements may be suppressed as fruits of the poisonous tree is a concept as old as the doctrine itself, see Wong Sun, 371 U.S. at 487 (rejecting the government’s argument that certain statements should be admissible because they were ostensibly exculpatory), the overarching picture painted by this record is not one of a defendant coerced into making an involuntary confession – or indeed any sort of statement at all–to the police as a result of some pressure or trauma resulting from an illegal detention.