The Inevitable Discovery Exception to the Exclusionary Rule under the United States Constitution

Two important exceptions to exclusionary rules under the federal constitution were adopted by the United States Supreme Court within a month of each other in 1984: (1) the inevitable discovery exception in Nix v. Williams, 467 U.S. 431 (1984), and (2) the independent source exception in Segura v. United States, 468 U.S. 796 (1984); see also the later case of Murray v. United States, 487 U.S. 533 (1988). These two exceptions continue to be litigated. This post will discuss the inevitable discovery exception, and my next post will discuss the independent source exception. Nix v. Williams. Following the disappearance of a 10-year-old girl in Des Moines, Iowa, the defendant was arrested and arraigned in Davenport, Iowa. Officers informed the defendant’s attorney that they would drive him back to Des Moines without questioning him, but during the trip one of the officers began a conversation with him that ultimately resulted in his making incriminating statements and directing the officers to the child’s body. A systematic search of the area that was being conducted with the aid of 200 volunteers and that had begun before the defendant made his statements was terminated when he guided the officers to the body. The defendant was convicted of the child’s murder, but his conviction was later reversed by the United States Supreme Court in Brewer v. Williams, 430 U.S. 387 (1977), when the Court ruled that an officer had obtained the statements in violation of the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel. On retrial, the State [...]