Case Summaries--Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals (Oct. 2019)

This post summarizes published decisions from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that may be of interest to state criminal practitioners from October, 2019. (1) Defendant’s statements following officer’s promise to not arrest were involuntary and properly suppressed; defendant’s statements before the promise were voluntary; (2) No Rodriguez violation where officer had reasonable suspicion to stop vehicle and to extend the stop’s duration; (3) Inevitable discovery applied where the officer could and would have searched the vehicle apart from illegally obtained statements; (4) Arrest of defendant by task force was sufficiently attenuated from constitutional violations U.S. v. Alston, ___ F.3d ___, 2019 WL 5440084 (Oct. 24, 2019). In this case from the Middle District of North Carolina, the defendant pled guilty to a weapons offense and appealed the denial of his motion to suppress. A Durham County deputy blue-lighted the defendant after seeing him run a red light. The defendant did not stop and reached under the passenger seat to the point that the deputy couldn’t see him. The defendant continued reaching under the passenger seat while looking back at the deputy and collided with a parked car. When the deputy approached, the defendant stated the reason that he reached under the seat was because he dropped his cell phone. The deputy found this suspicious because the defendant was on a call over the car speakers and was holding his phone in his left-hand (but had reached under the seat with his right). When asked if he had any contraband, the [...]