If you are charged with a crime, the government needs to provide the evidence to convince a jury you actually did the crime. Defense attorneys rigorously scrutinize the evidence against their clients, and there are tools we can use to get evidence thrown out if the government is trying to use illegal evidence in your case.
The main method for throwing out illegal evidence in any criminal case is called “suppression.” With suppression, the judge can block evidence from being entered on the record if the police obtained it through illegal means, including if they violated your rights to get the evidence. However, suppression is only available in certain instances.
Contact our Utah criminal defense lawyers at Overson Law by calling (801) 758-2287 for help with your case today.
What is Evidence Suppression in Utah Criminal Cases?
If the police come knocking on your door without a warrant, search your house, and seize evidence to use against you, should they be allowed to use it against you in a criminal case? The unanimous answer from courts is typically no – and the power used to block this evidence from being used against you is called evidence suppression.
What is Suppression?
Judges can “suppress” evidence by ordering it kept out of the case. This keeps down or pushes down the evidence so that is does not get out and taint the case by swaying the jury’s views with illegal information.
Suppression as Punishment
Suing a police officer is incredibly difficult, even if they did something outrageously wrong. These lawsuits usually come under what’s called a “Section 1983 lawsuit,” but a principle called “qualified immunity” often lets police who were acting under the color of law get out of any punishment, even for serious constitutional rights violations.
Instead, evidence suppression is often the only tool available to punish police and prosecutors who violate the defendant’s rights. It does this by blocking them from benefiting from their illegal actions.
Suppression as Deterrence
Evidence suppression also helps stop police and prosecutors from obtaining and using illegally seized evidence, as they know they will not be able to use it. Because of this, it is important for criminal defense lawyers all over the country to aggressively pursue suppression and for courts to be willing to grant it, so that police and prosecutors know not to mess around with people’s rights in the future.
Where Does Suppression Come From?
This power to suppress is called the “exclusionary rule,” and it comes from a 1961 U.S. Supreme Court case called Mapp v. Ohio. This rule isn’t found in the U.S. Constitution, but it flows from the protections against unreasonable search and seizure found in the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Illegal Searches and Seizures
The 4th Amendment stops unreasonable search and seizures, requires warrants before a search or arrest takes place, and requires probable cause for a search. A violation of any of these requirements is usually enough to get the resulting evidence suppressed. However, all of these terms and conditions have been addressed in numerous cases over the years, resulting in some exceptions.
Consent
First, evidence will be allowed against you if you consented to giving it over or consented to the search. Never volunteer information or consent to a search without talking to a lawyer first.
Police often broadly interpret consent. For example, if you step aside when they are trying to enter your house and do not say no, then never say no as they begin a search, they might take that as consent – and whether it qualifies as valid consent or not will be an issue in your suppression hearing.
Warrant and Probable Cause Required
Under the text of the 4th Amendment, police must have two things to perform a search:
- A warrant signed by a judge
- Probable cause that a crime has been committed and that evidence will be found through this search.
Judges only sign warrants if they find probable cause for the search, but sometimes they make mistakes. We can challenge the probable cause in court if there was a mistake or miscommunication, but a signed warrant is often hard to beat.
Exceptions to the Warrant Requirement
However, police can often skip the warrant requirement if they meet certain exceptions. In these situations, they still need probable cause, but it is much simpler for a judge to overrule the officer’s determination of probable cause when there was no warrant.
- Moveable property can often be searched with probable cause alone, given that you cannot leave, get a warrant, and hope it is still there when you get back.
- If the police officer witnesses the crime before them, they do not have to go get a warrant.
- Police can perform a “search incident to arrest” at the time of arrest, as long as it is not too intrusive and occurs after/during an arrest with probable cause.
Plain View Doctrine
Police can also seize evidence they can see in plain view, as long as they are legally in the location where they are standing. For example, if you have a pile of cocaine on the table, and the police can see it through your window, they can enter and seize it.
Plain view doctrine can also be extended to “plain touch,” such as when an officer can feel a hypodermic needle or pills in your pocket during a pat-down, or “plain smell,” such as when an officer can smell the odor of burnt marijuana coming from your car.
Exigent Circumstances
There are also other situations where police can enter a home or other restricted place without determining whether they have probable cause and without obtaining a warrant. They are known as “exigent circumstances.”
The goal here isn’t to perform a search, but once they enter, they can take advantage of the plain view doctrine to seize evidence or make arrests. This classically involves the following common “exigencies”:
- Medical emergencies where someone apparently needs help (e.g., a cry for “help” allows them to enter)
- Being in “hot pursuit” of a defendant (i.e., actively following someone into a building)
- When the police believe evidence is being destroyed, they can enter to stop that (e.g., they hear someone inside shouting, “Flush the drugs!”)
Where Warrants Have Been Affirmatively Required
Some things have been deemed by courts to still require a warrant, even though some of these exigencies and other concerns might be present. For example, police usually need a warrant to draw your blood after a DUI stop under U.S. Supreme Court Cases Missouri v. McNeely (2013) and Birchfield v. North Dakota (2016), but also under Utah Code § 77-23-213. A warrant is also needed to seize and search a cell phone under Riley v. California (2014).
Illegal Stops
Not every police interaction constitutes a “search” or “seizure.” The most common other category is an “investigatory detention, a.k.a., a “stop.” This is sometimes called a “Terry stop” for the Supreme Court case it is named for, or “stop and frisk” for a common police policy (though not every stop involves a frisk).
Reasonable Suspicion
Instead of requiring “probable cause,” an officer needs “reasonable, articulable suspicion” that crime is afoot.
When This Happens
Police must meet this standard to pull you over in your car, stop you on the street and ask you questions, or otherwise interrogate you.
What Happens During a Stop?
Police cannot search you unless they get to the point of probable cause and meet the warrant requirement or another exception discussed above. During a stop, they can only briefly detain you to ask you questions and look around, and perhaps perform a pat-down for officer safety.
They may be able to put you in handcuffs in some situations, but you are not “free to go” during a stop/investigatory detention.
Miranda Violations
Miranda v. Arizona (1966) was a case where the U.S. Supreme Court found that police interrogations are inherently pushy, and that to protect people’s rights, the police need to specifically warn people about these rights before questioning them.
Rights Implicated
The Miranda court found that there were four important Amendments that needed to be protected through warnings:
- The 4th Amendment rights, including the right against unreasonable search and seizure
- The 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination (i.e., the “right to remain silent”)
- The 6th Amendment right to a lawyer.
Additional Layer of Protection
This is why police are required to say things like, “You have the right to remain silent,” and so on, before questioning you. This right does not come directly from the Constitution but is instead an additional barrier the courts put up to protect your rights – and violations of Miranda can also lead to suppression.
When Miranda Rights Must be Read
It isn’t like on TV shows where they read you your rights when you are arrested. Instead, rights are only required to be read during a “custodial interrogation.” This requires two things happening:
- You are in police custody.
- They are asking you questions.
These two circumstances create an inherently coercive or threatening environment, which is what Miranda warnings are designed to cure.
Invoking Your Right and Results
If you invoke your right to remain silent, questions on this topic are supposed to stop, but they can ask about other things. If you invoke your right to counsel, questions can only continue after your lawyer is present.
To invoke your rights under Miranda, you have to say so out loud in unambiguous terms. If the police are unsure if you have invoked your rights or not, they may continue questioning and do not have to ask for clarifications.
Saying something like “I invoke my right to remain silent” instead of just remaining silent might sound absurd, but it is what is required under the law.
Suppression
If, ultimately, the police obtain something like a forced confession after failing to read you your Miranda rights, even that confession should be suppressed.
“Fruit of the Poisonous Tree” Doctrine
Sometimes the police obtain evidence illegally, but then use that evidence to lead them to more evidence. Any evidence, arrests, interrogations, etc., that are obtained because of a prior illegal search or seizure should also be suppressed as “fruit of the poisonous tree.”
Usage
Essentially, courts find that anything that grew out of an illegal search or arrest is also illegal, so it should be suppressed, too. But this only works when one piece of illegal evidence leads to another piece of evidence.
However, it can also stop what would later be legal evidence. For example, if the police illegally stop you without reasonable suspicion, then they find probable cause during that interaction, the stop and everything after it is still illegal.
Illegal Stops
Illegal stops are one of the most common places where the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine comes up. If the police did not have reasonable suspicion to approach you in the first place, then any evidence they seize, any confessions you make during the interaction, and any searches they make (even with probable cause later) must be suppressed.
Illegal Confessions
One of the most impactful places where the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine comes up is in cases of illegal confessions. Everything obtained in an illegal confession has to be thrown out.
Confessions are often illegal because the police violated your Miranda rights or because of actual coercion, threats of violence, or actual violence.
Exceptions
There is a narrow exception to the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine for “inevitable discovery” of evidence. This essentially says that if the police find a piece of evidence because of illegal searches or seizures, but it would have been inevitably discovered anyway, then they can use it anyway.
For example, if they torture a confession out of you, but your accomplice was on the way to the police station with his lawyer to confess and tell everything you did, they may still be able to use that information.
When Evidence Can’t Be Suppressed in Utah Criminal Cases
Keep in mind that the kind of suppression we are discussing is only reserved for illegal evidence that the prosecution is not supposed to have.
Rules of Evidence
There are other ways to get evidence thrown out if it is unfair or biased, but they are found under the Rules of Evidence and usually apply to legally obtained evidence rather than illegal evidence. Suppression is still the strongest tool for blocking illegal evidence, but it cannot block everything.
Violating Other People’s Rights
For evidence to be suppressed, the rights violation has to have involved the defendant’s rights and a violation of their own personal expectation of privacy.
If the violation involved a search of someone else’s things – e.g., the police entering a friend’s house without a warrant and finding your drug stash in their bathroom – then you might not be able to suppress the evidence because you had no expectation of privacy that your drugs would be private in their bathroom.
FAQs for Evidence Suppression in Utah
When Can Illegal Evidence Be Suppressed in a Utah Criminal Case?
Evidence suppression is permitted when the evidence was obtained illegally. What is “illegal” changes depending on the specific facts in the case and the source of the rule deeming the actions “illegal,” but illegal evidence is usually blocked on the grounds discussed below.
Can Legal Evidence Be Suppressed?
The term “suppression” is also typically applied to other evidence that might have been seized legally, but is not allowed into the case under the Rules of Evidence. For example, if the police try to introduce hearsay from a witness interview, it will usually be blocked – which is the same thing as “suppressed.” They instead need to have the witness come into court to testify in person.
When Do They Read Your Miranda Rights?
Miranda rights are only read while you are in custody and undergoing questioning. If there are no questions, there is no Miranda reading; if there is no arrest, there is no Miranda reading.
When in the Case Does Suppression Happen?
Police and prosecutors must turn over all of their evidence to your Utah criminal defense lawyers before trial in the “discovery” stage. At this stage, we can look at what they are going to use and issue our pretrial motions for suppression.
All of this is usually handled before the case goes to trial, out of the presence of any jurors.
What if Jurors See Illegal Evidence?
If the judge denies your suppression request and the jury sees illegal evidence, it might taint the whole case and cause you to lose. If this happens, we can appeal and have an appeals court review the case and determine whether suppression should have been granted, and whether it affected the outcome.
If it did, we can get the case reversed and sent back for a new trial – with the evidence suppressed this time.
What if the Police Do Not Have Enough Evidence After Suppression?
If we can suppress evidence such that the defense doesn’t have enough to win the case, we can win that way. They still need to prove their accusations beyond a reasonable doubt, and if they do not have enough evidence to do so because they acted illegally, then we can win the case on the evidence alone.
Can Police Use Alternative Sources?
If the police obtain evidence illegally, they may still be able to go back and look for the evidence in another place and do it legally. For example, if they searched your office illegally and searched your house with a warrant, they may be able to use the warrant from the home search even if it turns up the same info as the office search.
Call Our Utah Criminal Defense Lawyers for Help Today
If you have been charged with a crime, call our Utah criminal defense lawyers at Overson Law today at (801) 758-2287 for a free case evaluation.
