United States v. Thompkins , 408 F. App'x 719 ( 2011 )

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 10-4646
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
JAIME L. THOMPKINS, a/k/a Jaima L. Thompkins,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern
District of Virginia, at Richmond. Henry E. Hudson, District
Judge. (3:09-cr-00251-HEH-2)
Submitted: December 21, 2010 Decided: January 20, 2011
Before MOTZ and KING, Circuit Judges, and HAMILTON, Senior
Circuit Judge.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Michael S. Nachmanoff, Federal Public Defender, Elizabeth S.
Wilson, Paul G. Gill, Assistant Federal Public Defenders,
Richmond, Virginia, for Appellant. Neil H. MacBride, United
States Attorney, Michael A. Jagels, Special Assistant United
States Attorney, Richmond, Virginia, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Jaime L. Thompkins appeals her conviction and ten-day
sentence for one count of possession of a firearm by an unlawful
user of controlled substances in violation of 18 U.S.C.
§ 922(g)(3) (2006).
Though Thompkins pled guilty pursuant to a plea
agreement, she expressly reserved the right to appeal the denial
of her motion to suppress certain incriminating statements made
to police after they searched her home and found illegal drugs
in her purse. She does not allege that she was not read her
Miranda 1 rights, or that the confession was otherwise
involuntary. Rather, she claims that while police executed the
search warrant of her home, she was illegally detained and her
statements should have been suppressed as fruits of the illegal
detention.
In reviewing the district court’s ruling on a motion
to suppress, we review the district court’s factual findings for
clear error, and its legal determinations de novo. United
States v. Cain, 524 F.3d 477, 481 (4th Cir. 2008). The facts
are reviewed in the light most favorable to the prevailing party
below. United States v. Jamison, 509 F.3d 623, 628 (4th
Cir. 2007).
1
Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966).
2
Police obtained a search warrant for the home shared
by Thompkins and her boyfriend, James Mayo, after a confidential
informant conducted several controlled purchases of marijuana
from Mayo out of the home. Prior to executing the warrant,
police stopped Thompkins and Mayo in their car several miles
from their home, placed them in handcuffs, and drove them in a
police car to another location while they conducted the search
of the house. At the time police initiated the stop, Mayo had
just sold marijuana to the confidential informant in the
bathroom of a McDonald’s restaurant, though the record is
unclear whether Thompkins was aware of or a participant in that
transaction. 2
After police discovered contraband during their search
of the home, they called the officers detaining Thompkins and
Mayo and instructed the officers to place Thompkins and Mayo
under arrest. The couple were brought to their house and
questioned. After the police read Thompkins her Miranda rights,
Thompkins indicated she understood her rights and informed
police that she possessed and used marijuana on a daily basis,
but denied any involvement in drug distribution.
2
The record is also unclear whether police knew of the
transaction at the time they stopped Thompkins and Mayo in their
car.
3
Thompkins moved to dismiss the statements as fruits of
an allegedly illegal seizure. She argued that the police
arrested her without probable cause and that the police exceeded
their authority when they detained her during the search of her
home.
The district court concluded that Thompkins was an
accessory to the drug transaction at the McDonald’s, and that
probable cause existed at that time to arrest her. Moreover,
even if the police lacked probable cause at that time, and even
if the police illegally detained Thompkins while they searched
her home, probable cause existed to place her under arrest when
they found contraband in her purse. Thus, the court reasoned
that Thompkins’s arrest was valid, and that the valid arrest
attenuated any alleged taint in the evidence that may have been
caused by the illegal detention. The court accordingly denied
Thompkins’s motion to suppress the incriminating statements.
On appeal, Thompkins argues that the police lacked
probable cause to arrest her because there was insufficient
evidence that she was an accessory to the drug transaction at
the McDonald’s, that the police exceeded their authority by
detaining her at another location while police searched her
home, and that her confession should have been suppressed as
fruit of her illegal detention. We do not agree.
4
Because we conclude that Thompkins’s confession was
sufficiently attenuated from any alleged illegal seizure, we
need not address the question of whether probable cause existed
to arrest Thompkins at the time she was stopped by the police,
or the issue of whether the police acted improperly in detaining
her away from her home during the execution of the warrant.
The Supreme Court has held that evidence obtained
after an illegal arrest or seizure must be suppressed as fruit
of the illegal detention. See Hayes v. Florida, 470 U.S. 811(1985). Thompkins’s statements are still admissible, however,
if the connection between the illegal arrest and the discovery
of challenged evidence was sufficiently attenuated as a result
of an investigation independent of the unlawful arrest. See
Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 487-88 (1963) (“We need
not hold that all evidence is ‘fruit of the poisonous tree’
simply because it would not have come to light but for the
illegal actions of the police. Rather, the more apt question in
such a case is ‘whether granting establishment of the primary
illegality the evidence to which instant objection is made has
been come at by exploitation of that illegality or instead by
means sufficiently distinguishable to be purged of the primary
taint.’”).
Here, when police discovered contraband in Thompkins’s
purse, that discovery was not linked to her allegedly illegal
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detention. The police acted on a valid warrant, and there is no
evidence in the record that had Thompkins not been in custody,
the police would not have found the marijuana that prompted her
confession. We agree with the district court’s conclusion that
Thompkins’s subsequent arrest, supported by probable cause,
purged any taint that may have been caused by the allegedly
illegal detention. See United States v. Edwards 103 F.3d 90(10th Cir. 1996) (“the relevant inquiry in determining whether
the taint of an illegal arrest is purged by a subsequent legal
arrest is whether the evidence obtained following the legal
arrest was discovered through any exploitation of the initial
illegal arrest.”). Because the police did not exploit
Thompkins’s allegedly illegal seizure to obtain the evidence
that ultimately gave them probable cause to arrest her, we
conclude that the court did not err in denying the motion to
suppress the statements.
Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the district
court. We dispense with oral argument because the facts and
legal contentions are adequately presented in the materials
before the court and argument would not aid the decisional
process.
AFFIRMED
6