The Minnesota DWI Case Of The Week is State v. Marshall (decided September 9, 2024, Minnesota Court of Appeals, Unpublished) which stands for the proposition that a search warrant is still valid if probable cause for its issuance still exists after the illegally obtained allegations in the warrant have been excluded.
In Marshall, the Defendant was stopped by the police and as the officer approached the driver's side window, the officer smelled the odor of burnt marijuana. Another officer arrived at the scene to assist.
Marshall exited the SUV at the first officer’s request. As the first officer spoke with Marshall outside the SUV, he smelled the odor of marijuana coming from Marshall’s person. The first officer asked whether there was marijuana in the car, and Marshall said “no.” The first officer then asked, “When was the last time it was in there?” and Marshall responded, “It was not. . . never in there . . . like four hours ago we all was just chilling.” The first officer inferred that “chilling” “implied that [Marshall] was using marijuana hours earlier.” The first officer observed that Marshall’s pupils were “constricted,” which made him “concerned about impairment” by a drug other than marijuana.
The first officer seated Marshall in the squad car and searched Marshall’s SUV. In the “main area” of the SUV “where [Marshall] was sitting,” the first officer “observed there was some marijuana debris” and “a cup” with “a cough syrup or medicine odor, along with pop inside of it.” The first officer also found a backpack with “an empty prescription bottle” that “appeared to be a cough syrup.” The other officer found another prescription bottle in the backseat. The first officer returned to the squad car and conducted a horizontal gaze nystagmus (HGN) test, noting how Marshall’s pupils “reactfed] to light.” The first officer saw the “presence of nystagmus, which led [him] to believe there might be . . . [a] narcotic involved.”
The first officer brought Marshall to the police station, read Marshall his Miranda rights, and asked if he would agree to “a full drug recognition evaluation” (DRE). Marshall agreed. Based on the DRE, the first officer suspected that Marshall was impaired by a stimulant, a narcotic analgesic, and cannabis.
The first officer applied for a warrant to obtain a blood or urine sample from Marshall. The district court issued the warrant, and, after chemical testing, Marshall’s blood-test results showed the presence of oxycodone, oxymorphone, and cannabis.
The state charged Marshall with fourth-degree DWI under Minn. Stat. § 169A.20, subd. 1(7) (2020), for operating a vehicle under the influence of a controlled substance. Marshall moved to suppress “all evidence specified in the notice by the prosecuting attorney” and to dismiss the case, arguing that there was “no reasonable suspicion for the expansion of the stop” and “no probable cause for the search of [Marshall] and/or [his] vehicle.”
The District Court granted the Defendant's motion to suppress concluding that “constricted pupils and the smell of marijuana on the person” did not “create a fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime will be found in the car.” The district court also rejected the state’s arguments that Marshall consented to the search of his backpack, reasoning that Marshall asked only “if the officer could retrieve his stuff from the car.” The district court therefore concluded that the items found in the search of the SUV should be suppressed and excluded from the warrant affidavit.
The district court did not consider the result of the HGN test in the back of the squad car but concluded that the DRE was “fruit of the poisonous tree” because it “would never have happened but for the smell of the cups, the cough syrup, [and] the eye check.” The district court determined that the search-warrant affidavit should have excluded any reference to the “marijuana debris and two Styrofoam cups with what appeared to be pop and a medicine like odor coming from it,” the “empty bottles of a prescription liquid medication,” and the DRE. The district court ruled that the “warrant as rewritten is inadequate and would not be signed by a reasonable magistrate reviewing just the evidence that is admissible”; therefore, the district court suppressed Marshall’s blood-test results and dismissed the case.
The State appealed the district court ruling and the Minnesota Court of Appeals reversed the lower court stating:
"In its ruling suppressing the blood-test evidence, the district court concluded that law enforcement did not have probable cause to search Marshall’s SUV based only on the smell of burnt marijuana and the first officer’s observation of Marshall’s constricted pupils. It consequently also concluded that the evidence obtained from that search—marijuana debris, the medicine-like odor emanating from the foam cups, and the empty prescription bottles for liquid medication—were not properly included in the warrant application because they were obtained unlawfully."
"...we conclude that the warrant application includes other facts that did not derive from the challenged search of Marshall’s SUV and which are independently sufficient to establish probable cause for the search warrant."
"In Minnesota, even if the application for a search warrant includes information that the issuing magistrate should not have considered, the warrant nonetheless may be supported by probable cause based on facts that were obtained independently of the tainted information."
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"Similarly, and as alleged here, if a warrant application includes information that was impermissibly obtained in violation of a defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights, exclusion of the evidence obtained through the search warrant is not required if the application also contains lawfully acquired evidence that is independently sufficient to support issuance of the warrant. State v. Hodges, 287N.W.2d 413, 415-16 (Minn. 1979). Thus, if we redact from the blood-sample search-warrant application all information obtained from the search of Marshall’s SUV, and if the facts that remain nevertheless establish probable cause, then we may conclude that the warrant was valid regardless of any taint on the redacted information."
"We conclude, however, that the district court erred by excluding the DRE results when evaluating probable cause for the warrant because the DRE was permissibly included in the warrant application based on the independent-source doctrine. The “independent source doctrine . . . will countenance introduction of otherwise illegally-seized evidence if the police could have retrieved it on the basis of information obtained independent of their illegal activity.” State v. Diede, 795 N.W.2d 836, 849 (Minn. 2011) (quotation omitted)."
"Marshall’s constricted pupils, the odor of burnt marijuana on Marshall’s person and from the SUV, and Marshall’s statement about “chilling” from which the officer inferred recent marijuana use—all of which the first officer observed before the SUV search—more than adequately supported the officer’s initial suspicion that Marshall was impaired and more than adequately supported the officer’s request that Marshall participate in the DRE following his arrest on the outstanding warrant. The record thus establishes that law enforcement could have—and very likely would have—sought to determine whether Marshall had been driving while impaired by requesting a DRE, regardless of whether his SUV had been searched. Accordingly, it was error for the district court to reject the DRE results in its evaluation of probable cause for the search warrant."
"Having determined that the DRE was, at a minimum, validly supported by the first officer’s observations of Marshall’s constricted pupils, the odor of marijuana on his person and from the SUV, and Marshall’s recent use of marijuana, we finally consider whether the facts in the warrant application—minus the information derived from the SUV search— are sufficient to establish probable cause for blood-sample search warrant.
“Probable cause exists when there is a fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime will be found in a particular place.” Onyelobi, 932 N.W.2d at 281 (quotation omitted). Considering the validly obtained information in the search-warrant affidavit, we are satisfied that they establish a fair probability that a sample of Marshall’s blood would disclose evidence of a crime. We therefore conclude that the search warrant was supported by probable cause irrespective of whether the application properly included information obtained from the SUV search. We therefore reverse the district court’s decision to suppress the blood-test results."
Moral Of The Story: Do not submit to a DRE.
If you or a loved one have been charged with a Minnesota DWI, feel free to contact Minnesota DWI Lawyer, F. T. Sessoms at (612) 344-1505 for answers to all of your Minnesota DWI and DUI questions.
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