E. Inevitable Discovery
Nix v. Williams, 467 U.S. 431 (1984) (On remand following Brewer v. Williams, 430 U.S. 387 (1977) (police conversation with formally charged defendant without his attorney present violated defendant's Sixth Amendment right to counsel), the trial court in Iowa admitted evidence of a murder victim's location and condition on the theory that the body would have been discovered even if incriminating statements had not been elicited from defendant in violation of his Sixth Amendment right to counsel. In this case, defendant was convicted of first-degree murder, and the Iowa Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the "inevitable discovery rule" is a viable exception to the exclusionary rule if the state shows by a preponderance of the evidence that the police did not act in good faith and the evidence in question would have been discovered by lawful means. HELD: If the prosecution can establish by a preponderance of evidence that the evidence in question would have been inevitably discovered independent of the constitutional violation by lawful means, the evidence should be admissible. Also, the State is not required to establish that the initial, illegal police action was not in bad faith. Here, 200 person search party would have ultimately discovered the victim's body if the police had not found it earlier as a result of the defendant's statement. In this case, based on the preponderance of the evidence, the victim's body would inevitably have been discovered by lawful means by volunteers who were searching for her nearby and, therefore, its location and condition were admissible as an exception to the exclusionary rule).
People v. Sutherland, 223 Ill. 2d 187, 860 N.E.2d 178 (2006) (The defendant argued that a search warrant for his vehicle and his person were invalid because they were issued in Illinois, but executed in Montana. Accordingly, the defendant moved to suppress all evidence obtained as a result of the invalid warrants. HELD: Though the warrants were invalid, the search of the defendant's vehicle and person were valid under theory of inevitable discovery. Because the defendant abandoned his vehicle, the police could search the vehicle without a warrant. The vehicle had hair and fiber samples that connected the defendant to a homicide. Thus, authorities would have been able to obtain a warrant to collect the defendant's own hair samples based on what they had found in the vehicle and the evidence would "inevitably" have been...
