Court: Evidence stands after unlawful detainment

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A man mistakenly detained as a fugitive was nonetheless charged with a crime after police discovered evidence of illegal drug possession and a firearm when the man asked officers to grab his cellphone in the car. While the Minnesota Court of Appeals acknowledged that the officers should have released him immediately when they learned he was not the sought-after fugitive, it concluded that the district court was not bound to suppress evidence obtained in the car.

According to the court record, Devonte Smith and another man entered a car when leaving a St. Paul apartment building. A special deputy U.S. marshal and team were surveilling the apartment building looking for a fugitive. Believing that the passenger might be the fugitive, the car was tracked to a Minneapolis car wash. While there, agents became certain that one of the men was the fugitive.

When the men drove away and stopped behind a liquor store, agents made their move, and handcuffed them. The special deputy immediately recognized that Smith was not the fugitive they were after, but Smith was not immediately released. He was told that he was going to be held until they determined the status of the passenger, who they learned was his brother.

While waiting to be released, Smith asked the special deputy to get his cellphone for him in the car’s center console. When the special deputy opened the driver’s side door, he saw a handgun with an extended magazine on the car’s floor. Additionally, he found a bag that Smith had worn earlier; it contained fentanyl pills. A greater search of the car yielded further contraband including suspected narcotics.

Smith was charged with illegal drug possession of 50 or more doses and unlawful possession of a firearm, both felonies. While Smith moved to suppress the evidence obtained while he was detained, the court denied the motion. Smith was found guilty by a jury, and he was sentenced to 45 months in prison for the drug-possession conviction and 60 months, concurrently, for the firearm conviction. Smith appealed.

On appeal, Smith argued that it was unconstitutional to continue to hold him as soon as the agents realized he was not the fugitive. The court agreed.

“We recognize that Special Deputy Eells testified that he gets ‘told wrong names all the time’ and that the agents’ reasonable suspicion to detain Smith was not immediately dispelled simply on hearing Smith’s name,” Judge Kevin Ross asserted. “But we hold that the agents’ suspicion was no longer reasonable once Special Deputy Eells recognized that Smith was not the fugitive.”

While the court agreed that the detainment ceased being constitutional once the agents determined that he was not the fugitive, it affirmed the district court’s denial of the motion to suppress the evidence. It held that, while the detainment became unlawful, Smith’s request for the special agent to retrieve his cellphone was an intervening event that broke the causal chain between the unlawful police conduct and discovery of inculpatory evidence.

“It is true that consent alone might not validate unconstitutional police activity,” Ross wrote. “But Smith’s lawful initial detention and the lawful ongoing separation from his phone meant that he needed to ask agents to retrieve it, a volitional and independent act that broke the causal connection between his unlawful detention and the evidence discovered when he consented to the entry.”