People v. McWilliams, 524 P.3d 768

In January 2017 Officer Croucher, responding to a report of two suspicious individuals with flashlights in a parking lot, encountered Duvanh McWilliams reclined alone in a parked car.
Croucher ordered McWilliams out of the vehicle without reasonable suspicion, ran a records check after taking McWilliams’s ID, and learned McWilliams was on parole subject to suspicionless parole searches.
Croucher then searched McWilliams and his vehicle and seized an unloaded firearm, ammunition, drugs, and paraphernalia.
McWilliams moved to suppress; the trial court denied the motion and McWilliams pleaded guilty. The Court of Appeal found the initial stop unlawful but held the discovery of the parole-search condition attenuated the taint and affirmed admission of the evidence.
The Supreme Court granted review and reversed: it held that the officer’s discretionary parole search did not sufficiently attenuate the causal link between the unlawful detention and the discovery of contraband, so the evidence must be suppressed.

Issue	People’s Argument	McWilliams’s Argument	Held
Whether discovering a parole-search condition during an unlawful detention sufficiently attenuates the causal link so evidence from a subsequent search is admissible	Discovery of the parole-search condition is like finding an outstanding arrest warrant: it predates the stop, independently authorizes the search, and thus breaks the causal chain	Discovery of the parole-search condition is the fruit of the illegal stop or, at best, insufficient to attenuate because the subsequent search was discretionary and immediate	Court held the parole-search discovery did not sufficiently attenuate the taint: the search was discretionary, occurred minutes after an unlawful stop, and the stop showed purposeful conduct, so evidence must be suppressed

Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471 (fruit of the poisonous tree/attenuation principle)
Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590 (sets three-factor attenuation test)
Utah v. Strieff, 579 U.S. 232 (outstanding warrant can attenuate connection after unlawful stop)
People v. Brendlin, 45 Cal.4th 262 (applies Brown factors; warrant discovery can break causal chain)
Davis v. United States, 564 U.S. 229 (exclusionary rule framework)
Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U.S. 586 (attenuation and limits on exclusion)
Arizona v. Gant, 556 U.S. 332 (search incident to arrest principles)
People v. Reyes, 19 Cal.4th 743 (limits on arbitrary or harassing parole searches)
People v. Sanders, 31 Cal.4th 318 (officer must know parole condition at time of search)
Samson v. California, 547 U.S. 843 (parolees’ diminished expectation of privacy)