Thurman N. WILSON, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, Appellee.
No. 13-CM-564.
District of Columbia Court of Appeals.
Argued Oct. 2, 2014. Decided Nov. 6, 2014.
102 A.3d 751
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the Office of Administrative Hearings is reversed, and the case is remanded for аdditional proceedings consistent with this opinion.
So ordered.
Bryan P. MacAvoy, for appellant.
Stephen F. Rickard, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Ronald C. Machen Jr., United States Attorney, and Elizabeth Trosman, Assistant United States Attorney, were on the brief, for appellee.
Beforе FISHER and BECKWITH, Associate Judges, and NEBEKER, Senior Judge.
FISHER, Associate Judge:
I. Factual and Procedural Background
Viewed in the light most favorable to the government,1 the evidence showed the following. At approximately 5:45 p.m. on June 5, 2012, Officer Andre Martin, a veteran of the Metropolitan Police Department with twenty years of drug enforcement experience, was conducting undercover surveillance at the 4200 block of 4th Strеet, S.E., an area known for high drug activity. After observing a known drug buyer give appellant what appeared to be money in exchange for a small object, Officer Martin broadcast a lookout for a male wearing a dаrk fishing hat.
Officers Kristopher Plumley and Marcus Stevens heard the broadcast, spotted appellant, who matched the lookout description, and got out of their unmarked vehicle to approach him. Officer Plumley worе plain clothes, but he also sported a tactical vest emblazoned with “police” in three-inch lettering. Before the officers could speak, appellant saw them and took off running in the opposite direсtion. Officer Plumley eventually caught up to appellant and placed him in handcuffs. Soon thereafter, Officer Martin positively identified appellant in a show-up procedure.
After the show-up, appellant stoоd in handcuffs between Officers Plumley and Stevens. Without warning, appellant jerked his body and pulled his arms away from the officers’ hold, falling backwards to the ground and knocking Officer Plumley off the curb. The officers tried to pick appellant up, but he refused to stand on his own. After informing appellant that he was under arrest for assault on a police officer, the officers escorted him to their cruiser. As they tried to place him in the vehicle, appellant flailed his arms and kicked and pushed his legs. The officers eventually subdued appellant and transported him to their station. There, a search incident to arrest uncovered cocaine in appellant‘s shoe аnd $140 in U.S. currency.
II. The Suppression Motion
Appellant contends that he was arrested without probable cause and that the cocaine found in his shoe should have been suppressed as the fruit of this unlawful detention. We need not decide whether or when the police had probable cause to arrest appellant for a drug crime because there is an independent ground for denying the suppression motion.2 We therefore assume, without deciding, that appellant was arrested without probable cause.
Generally, when physical or testimonial evidence is uncovered by an illegal search or seizure, it must be suppressed as the “fruit of the poisonous tree.” Clark v. United States, 755 A.2d 1026, 1029 (D.C.2000), abrogated on separate grounds by Carrell v. United States, 80 A.3d 163 (D.C. 2013). However, there are exceptions to this general rule. See, e.g., Hicks v. United States, 730 A.2d 657, 661-62 (D.C.1999) (applying the inevitable discovery doctrine); Al-Mahdi v. United States, 867 A.2d 1011, 1023-24 (D.C.2005) (applying the independent source rule). The test is whether the evidence in question “has been come at by exploitation of [the primary] illegality or instead by means sufficiently distinguishable to be purged of the primary taint.” Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 488, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963) (citation omitted).
In Clark we held that “absent unforeseen exceptional circumstances,3 the commission of a separate and distinct crime while in unlawful police custody is the type of intervening act which purges the primary taint.” Clark, 755 A.2d at 1030. There, we affirmed the admission of a threat made to an officer during the course of an unlawful arrest. Id. at 1027. Notwithstanding the causal connection between the unlawful arrest and the words which constituted the threat, we followed the lead of United States v. Bailey, 691 F.2d 1009 (11th Cir. 1982), and other courts which have “refus[ed] to suppress either evidence of the distinct crime itself or evidence seized incident to arrest for the distinct crime.” Clark, 755 A.2d at 1029-30.
Clark did not involve the admissibility of physical evidence tending to prove the crime which led to the initial (unlawful) arrest. To resolve this case, we turn to Bailey, upon which Clark chiefly relied. There, assuming that the defendant had been unlawfully arrested on suspicion of being a drug сourier, the United States
Joining many other courts that have adopted the rule articulated in Bailey, we extend Clark and hold that, absеnt unforeseen exceptional circumstances, where a defendant commits a separate and distinct crime while unlawfully in police custody, evidence uncovered by a search incident to the later, lawful аrrest is not suppressible as the fruit of the poisonous tree. See, e.g., United States v. Dawdy, 46 F.3d 1427, 1430-31 (8th Cir.1995) (assuming that defendant was unlawfully arrested for possession of methamphetamine, his struggle with state trooper provided independent grounds for arrest, and аdditional methamphetamine uncovered by subsequent searches of his person and automobile was admissible); see also United States v. Marine, 51 M.J. 425, 429-30 (C.A.A.F.1999) (even if defendant was unlawfully detained for investigation of assault, subsequent arrest for disrespect tо commissioned officer, a military offense punishable by court-martial, was an intervening circumstance which purged the initial taint; marijuana cigarette discovered during search incident to arrest was admissible); Kavanaugh v. Commonwealth, 427 S.W.3d 178, 181 (Ky.2014) (assault on offiсer purged the taint of unlawful Terry stop; crack cocaine found during valid search incident to arrest was admissible); State v. Williams, 192 N.J. 1, 926 A.2d 340, 345-46 (2007) (handgun was seized incident to lawful arrest for obstructing the police, an offense which attenuated the taint of unlawful detention for suspicion of drug activity). Even if appellant had been unlawfully detained, our next discussion shows that he committed the separate and distinct crime of APO before the cocaine and money were discovered. Thus, any taint from an unlawful arrest was purged, and the motion to suppress was properly denied.
III. The APO Conviction
Anyone who “without justifiable and excusable cause, assaults, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates, or interferes with a law еnforcement officer ... while that law enforcement officer is engaged in the performance of his or her official duties” is guilty of assault on a police officer.
For example, in Coghill v. United States, 982 A.2d 802, 806 (D.C.2009), we upheld an APO conviction where a motorist resisted оfficers’ attempts to remove him from his vehicle. By bracing his feet against the floorboard and gripping the steering wheel, the motorist “imposed an active, physical obstacle to the officers’ effectuation of thеir duties.” Id.; see also In re J.S., 19 A.3d 328, 331 (D.C.2011) (“[R]esisting handcuffing constitutes the type of active resistance directed against police that is prohibited by the APO statute.“).
By jerking his body and pulling his arms away from the officers’ hold, appellant ac-
Notwithstanding this active and oppositional behavior, appellant argues that resistance to unlawful police action does not “trigger” the APO statute. We disagree. By its plain text, the statute prohibits forсible resistance to police action, whether it is lawful or unlawful.4
Appellant forcibly resisted Officers Plumley and Stevens to prevent them from carrying out their duties. See In re C.L.D., 739 A.2d at 357 (“The key is the active and oppositional nature of the conduct for the purposе of thwarting a police officer in his or her duties.“). Such conduct falls squarely within the APO statute.
IV. Conclusion
The judgment of the Superior Court is hereby
Affirmed.