Opinion
CR-19-2997
01-13-2020
STATE OF MAINE v. IBRAHIM AHMEDI Defendant
ORDER ON DEFENDANT'S MOTION TO SUPPRESS
DEBORAH P. CASHMAN JUDGE
The court held an evidentiary hearing on Defendant's Motion to Suppress on December 17, 2019. Student Attorney Emily Acritelli appeared on behalf of the State, with Assistant Attorney Amanda Doherty. Defendant was present and represented by Student Attorney Andrew McLean with supervising attorney Tina Schneider, Esquire from the Cumberland Legal Aid Clinic. The court heard testimony from Officer Brian Grasser of the Westbrook Police Department and reviewed video footage from the camera in Officer Grasser's cruiser.
The facts are essentially uncontested. Officer Grasser testified that he observed a vehicle traveling without an inspection sticker. When he pulled the vehicle over, he observed the driver and passenger swap seats. Defendant, now in the passenger seat, looked familiar to Officer Grasser. Officer Grasser asked for the occupants' identification, stating, "You jumped seats because you don't have a driver's license." Officer Grasser ordered Defendant out of the vehicle and held him against it until backup arrived, at which point he walked Defendant to his cruiser. One of the other officers who had arrived handed Officer Grasser a wallet recovered from the vehicle, possibly from the glove compartment. Defendant seeks to suppress the wallet and the identification contained therein.
At hearing, counsel advised the court that Defendant was not contesting the validity of the traffic stop, but rather was seeking suppression on the ground that the search which yielded the wallet was not authorized by any of the exceptions to the warrant requirement, As the Law Court has noted, "the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine only applies to evidence seized as a violation of constitutional rights ...." State v. St. Yves, 2000 ME 37, ¶ 16 (emphasis in original). See also State v. Tomah, 586 A.2d 1267, 1269 {Me. 1991) ("The exclusionary rule was designed to take away the advantage gained by police misconduct, It was not designed to place the state in a weaker position than it would have been had the misconduct not occurred.").
Having reviewed the evidence, the court finds no violation of Defendant's constitutional rights, Because law enforcement is entitled to review an individual's identification during a valid vehicle stop, Defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his identification. Defendant is heard telling the officer, "let me find my ID", manifesting that he had no subjective expectation of privacy with respect to it. See, e.g., State v. Cloutier, 544 A.2d 1277, 1281 (Me. 1988) ("To come within the guarantees against unreasonable searches and seizures ... an individual must entertain a reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to the activities for which Fourth Amendment protection is sought. The Katz test of reasonable expectation of privacy is met if 1) a person has manifested a subjective expectation of privacy with respect to a place or object, and 2) society is willing to recognize that expectation as reasonable.") (citing Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967)). See also In re Arturo D., 38 P.3d 433 (Cal. 2002) ("Limited warrantless searches for required registration and identification documentation are permissible when, following the failure of a traffic offender to provide such documentation to the citing officer upon demand, the officer conducts a search for those documents in an area where such documents reasonably may be expected to be found"). Accordingly, the court finds that law enforcement did not offend Defendant's constitutional rights when conducting a limited search of the vehicle for Defendant's wallet and identification.
Moreover, pursuant to the inevitable discovery exception to the exclusionary rule, even assuming arguendo that the search had been impermissibly conducted, suppression is not warranted when the evidence sought to be suppressed inevitably would have been discovered by lawful means. See, e.g., State v. Prinkleton, 2018 ME 16, ¶ 18. Here, "because the evidence could have been gained lawfully from information that is truly independent from the warrantless search," "the evidence inevitably would have been discovered by such lawful means," and "the application of the inevitable discovery exception neither provides an incentive for police misconduct nor significantly weakens Fourth Amendment protections," id., there is no basis for suppressing the wallet and identification.
Accordingly, because the limited search of the vehicle was constitutionally permissible and because in any event suppression is not warranted because the wallet and identification would have been inevitably discovered, it is hereby ORDERED that Defendant's Motion to Suppress is hereby DENIED.