United States v. David Carter

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

No. 09-1608

U NITED S TATES OF A MERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

D AVID R. C ARTER,

Defendant-Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 08 CR 149—Joan B. Gottschall, Judge.

A RGUED JUNE 4, 2009—D ECIDED JULY 20, 2009

Before F LAUM, W OOD , and T INDER, Circuit Judges.

F LAUM , Circuit Judge. David R. Carter is charged

with robbery of a Chicago Community Bank branch on

the south side of Chicago in February 2008. The con-

stable blundered while investigating his case, and the

district court accordingly suppressed much of the

evidence against him. The government now appeals,

arguing that the district court erred by suppressing (1) a

bank teller’s out of court identification of Carter, (2) bait

bills and other evidence taken from an apartment

2 No. 09-1608

where Carter was arrested, and (3) Carter’s post-arrest

statement to investigators.

For the following reasons, we reverse the district

court’s order suppressing the disputed evidence.

I. Background

On February 20, 2008, someone robbed the Chicago

Community Bank on the south side of the city by ap-

proaching a teller, reaching into his jacket as though he

had a gun, demanding money, and making off with a

little over $1,000. Unfortunately for the robber, he also

took with him a number of “bait bills,” or easily identifi-

able bills used to trace stolen money. Witnesses

described the robber as being a white male in his late

forties or early fifties, standing about 5’10” tall and weigh-

ing about 160 pounds, with facial stubble. Witnesses also

said he was wearing a tan or gray jacket and a blue base-

ball cap with white lettering. He fled eastbound from

the bank on foot.

After responding to the robbery, Chicago police officers

sent out a flash message with a description of the robber

and his clothing. Officers questioning potential witnesses

near the bank also learned that the description of the

bank robber matched that of a man who had walked into

a food court on 35th Street the night before, demanded

money, and asked employees, “How about I blow all

your brains out?” The description of the robber also rang

a bell for Chicago police officer Alfred Thome, who

heard the flash message and believed the description

No. 09-1608 3

matched a man he had seen earlier in a domestic

violence call in the same neighborhood. Thome was not

assigned to the case, but decided to check out his hunch.

At around 11:00 that morning, he went to the address of

the earlier call, 937 W. 34th Place, to find the suspect.

There are three residences at 937 W. 34th Place; there is

a single-family residence facing the street with a two-flat

building sitting behind that. Thome first went to the

rear building, where he had previously encountered his

suspect, but found the way blocked by a large dog. So

he went around to the front unit. There, he met Barbara

Hunter, the girlfriend of the landlord’s son. Thome

asked Hunter about the residents of the upstairs rear

unit. She told him that nobody was living in the unit at

the time and that the landlord was in the process of

kicking out the residents of that apartment. Hunter

agreed to escort Thome to the apartment with a set of

keys, and Thome radioed for back-up from other officers.

Hunter gave Thome permission to go inside, and three

or four other officers, responding to Thome’s call for back-

up, went inside once they arrived.

The apartment was apparently in some kind of disarray,

although Thome did find some personal effects,

including a Cook County Inmate ID Card for a “David

Carter.” Sure enough, the photo on the ID card matched

the description of the bank robber. Thome gave the card

to two other Chicago police officers and asked them to

show it to the employees at the food court. The employees

confirmed to those officers that the man in the ID photo

looked like the man who had tried to rob them the night

4 No. 09-1608

before. (The same man had apparently come in to the

food court that morning as well, which presumably

made it much easier to confirm his identity.)

The search of the upstairs apartment caught the

attention of Mark Alvarado, the landlord at the apart-

ment on 34th Place, who lived in the lower rear unit

and who came out to talk to Thome. Alvarado told

Thome that the people in the upstairs unit had been

“thrown out.” Thome’s search also attracted the

attention of FBI Special Agent Sean Burke, who was

investigating the bank robbery. Burke arrived at the

apartment on 34th Place, and took the Cook County ID

card from Thome. He also spoke with Alvarado, who

said that Carter was receiving mail at the apartment

and may have been staying there, although under the

terms of the lease only Carter’s girlfriend and her son

were supposed to be living in the unit. Alvarado

explained that eviction proceedings were ongoing and

that nobody had paid rent in four months. At some

point in their conversation, Alvarado also supplied

Burke with a list he had created with the names of nine

people who had received mail at the apartment; the list

included David Carter (who was listed on the form

as “David Carter – Sex Offender”).

Burke left 34th Place around noon and went back

to the police station. He used the CLEAR database, a

compilation of Chicago Police Department files, to

look up the criminal history for a “David Carter” associ-

ated with the 34th Place address. This history revealed a

number of run-ins with law enforcement, some as

No. 09-1608 5

recently as a month before. The file also contained a

photo of Carter (evidently a different photo from the

ID card) that Burke used to create a six-person photo

array. At around 1:00 p.m., Burke took the photo array

to the bank teller, who identified Carter as the robber.

Chicago police officer Anthony Corral was one of a

number of officers assigned to look for Carter that after-

noon. Corral and his partner learned from a restaurant

employee at 34th and Halsted that Carter was in the

area from time to time; Corral and his partner then con-

tinued asking people in the neighborhood if they recog-

nized Carter or had seen him recently. An individual

living in the 3300 block of May Street not only recognized

Carter but believed that he was staying at an apartment

at 3326 South May Street. Later, that same person

contacted Corral and told him that Carter was in the

apartment at 3326 South May. Corral and his partner

went to the apartment, knocked on the door, and received

permission to enter from the person who answered.

They found Carter inside, along with several bait bills

from the Chicago Community Bank. Carter signed a

Miranda waiver at the station and agreed to give a state-

ment, in which he admitted robbing the Chicago Com-

munity Bank.

On March 11, 2008, a grand jury indicted Carter for one

count of bank robbery. On May 28, 2008, Carter filed a

motion to suppress much of the evidence against him,

including the bank teller’s identification from the

photo array, a food court employee’s identification of

Carter from the night before and the morning of the

6 No. 09-1608

robbery, and his post-arrest statement. Carter argued

that Thome had illegally searched his residence on 34th

Place without a warrant or permission, and that the case

against him was largely built out of that search, since the

police only learned his identity from the ID card Thome

took from the apartment. The district court initially

granted the motion in part and denied it in part. After

Carter filed a motion to reconsider and the district court

held an evidentiary hearing, however, the district court

ruled that much of the evidence was inadmissible

because it was too closely tied to information gleaned

from the illegal search. As the district court found,

No doubt the officers desired to act quickly to arrest a

suspected robber before he disappeared or com-

mitted another crime, and the officers seized upon the

impermissible fruit and ran with it. No sufficiently

distinguishable source of momentum altered the

trajectory of the officers’ activities. Given both the

short period of time, the direct connection to the illegal

search, and the clear purpose of the illegality, the

attenuation theory does not protect: (1) the out of court

identification by the bank teller; (2) evidence seized

during Carter’s arrest and ensuing search; or

(3) Carter’s post-arrest statement.

The government now appeals the adverse evidentiary

ruling. Before the district court, the government argued

that the evidence is admissible under the inevitable

discovery exception to the exclusionary rule, and alterna-

tively that at least some of the evidence should be

allowed in because its discovery is attenuated from the

No. 09-1608 7

illegal search of Carter’s apartment. The government

does not appeal the district court’s determination that

Thome’s search of Carter’s apartment was illegal and

concedes that the out of court identification of Carter by

a food court employee based on the ID card seized from

the apartment is inadmissible. They argue, however,

that the remaining evidence is admissible because its

discovery was attenuated from the illegal search, and

that the district court was incorrect to conclude otherwise.

II. Discussion

The government’s argument focuses on the attenua-

tion issue and they have not advanced an inevitable

discovery argument. We review a district court’s order

rejecting an attenuation theory de novo. United States v.

Ienco, 182 F.3d 517, 526 (7th Cir. 1999). We review the

factual findings underlying that decision for clear error.

United States v. Parker, 469 F.3d 1074, 1077 (7th Cir. 2006).

The exclusionary rule requires the suppression of

evidence seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

However, “the fact that a Fourth Amendment violation

occurred—i.e., that a search or arrest was unreason-

able—does not necessarily mean that the exclusionary

rule applies . . . [T]he exclusionary rule is not an

individual right, and applies only where it ‘results in

appreciable deterrence.’ ” Herring v. United States, 129 S. Ct.

695, 700 (2009) (quoting United States v. Leon, 468 U.S.

897, 909 (1984)).

The Supreme Court developed an exception to the

exclusionary rule for cases where an arrest or search

8 No. 09-1608

involved a Fourth Amendment violation but the con-

nection between the illegal conduct and the subsequent

discovery of evidence “become[s] so attenuated that the

deterrent effect of the exclusionary rule no longer

justifies its cost.” Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 609 (1975)

(Powell, J., concurring). “[T]he Court has determined

that the exclusionary rule should not apply when the

causal connection between illegal police conduct and

the procurement of evidence is ‘so attenuated as to dissi-

pate the taint’ of the illegal action.” United States v. Fazio,

914 F.2d 950, 957 (7th Cir. 1990) (internal citation omitted).

Attenuation “mark[s] the point of diminishing returns

of the deterrence principle inherent in the exclusionary

rule.” Ienco, 182 F.3d at 526. “It is critical that courts

wrestling with ‘fruit of the poisonous tree’ issues keep

that fundamental notion in mind, for when it is lost sight

of the results can be most unfortunate.” La Fave, Search

and Seizure, § 11.4(a) at 235 (1996). When determining

whether the causal chain between the illegal police

action and the discovery of the disputed evidence is

sufficiently attenuated to permit introduction of the

evidence, a court examines three factors: “(1) the time

elapsed between the illegality and the acquisition of the

evidence; (2) the presence of intervening circumstances;

and (3) the purpose and flagrancy of the official miscon-

duct.” Ienco, 182 F.3d at 526. Bearing this standard of

review in mind, we turn to the disputed evidence in

this case.

No. 09-1608 9

A. The teller’s out of court identification

The first piece of evidence is the bank teller’s identifica-

tion of Carter as the robber based on a photo taken from

the CLEAR database. The government first argues that

the only information gleaned from the search of Carter’s

apartment was his name and a photo of him on an ID card;

the photo simply confirmed that he matched the descrip-

tion of the robber and the name gave them the identity

of a potential suspect. Burke’s decision to run down

Carter’s criminal history and to assemble a photo array

with a different photo was thus an intervening event

that separated the teller’s identification from the illegal

search. They argue in addition that Burke could

have conducted the database search without any of the

information from Thome because Alvarado supplied him

with Carter’s name and the fact that he was a sex offender.

Given his proximity to the scene of the robbery, Thome’s

suspicions about a man living at his address who resem-

bled the robber, and his criminal history, the apartment

search was attenuated from the CLEAR search that ulti-

mately produced the photograph used in the teller’s

identification.

Carter counters that neither circumstance qualifies as

an intervening event. First, he argues that the district

court found that Alvarado talked to the police only

after their illegal search of the apartment upstairs from

him caught his attention. His encounter with the police

was thus directly caused by the illegal search of Carter’s

home. Second, he argues that Burke’s search of the

CLEAR database was not an intervening circumstance

10 No. 09-1608

because Burke was only looking to confirm information

that Thome discovered during the illegal search: Carter’s

identity and his criminal history. Burke did not search

the database for any of the other names on Alvarado’s

list, and only looked for a David Carter residing at the

address on 34th Place, and not any of the other David

Carters in the city of Chicago.

The district court found that the teller’s identification

of Carter came about by exploitation of the evidence seized

from his apartment because Burke knew, before ever

running the database search, that Carter was a suspect

in the bank robbery and that he should focus his search

on Carter. The court was thus unimpressed with the

fact that Burke could have learned the same information

by running down the list of names from Alvarado (and

may indeed have focused on Carter first, since the

list revealed his criminal record).

The out of court identification is indeed the most ques-

tionable piece of evidence, but we conclude that is ad-

missible under an attenuation theory. The district court’s

order suggests that the issue is “why [Burke] was focusing

on Carter” and, in the end, Burke was focusing on Carter

because Thome had taken his ID card during the search.

Few cases, if any, applying the attenuation exception

hold that evidence separately uncovered through com-

pletely lawful means is inadmissible because an illegal

search first made a particular person a suspect in a

No. 09-1608 11

criminal investigation.1 The Supreme Court has broadly

rejected that kind of strict but-for causality in this context.

Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U.S. 586, 591 (2006) (“But-for

causality is only a necessary, not a sufficient cause for

suppression.”). Indeed, requiring suppression because

an illegal search made Carter a target of the bank robbery

investigation comes perilously close to Judge Friendly’s

famous hypothetical of “grant[ing] life-long immunity

from investigation and prosecution simply because a

violation of the Fourth Amendment first indicated to

the police that a man was not the law-abiding citizen

he purported to be . . .” United States v. Friedland, 441

F.2d 855, 861 (2d Cir. 1971).

1

The district court’s order cited three cases supporting its

ruling on this issue. United States v. Crews, 445 U.S. 463 (1980)

and United States v. Foppe, 993 F.2d 1444 (9th Cir. 1993) both

involved out of court identifications using photographs taken

during unlawful detentions; they are thus analogous to the out

of court identifications from the food court employees using

the unlawfully seized ID, but not to out of court identifications

using a photograph that the police obtained through lawful

means. The final case, United States v. Edmons, 432 F.2d 577

(2d Cir. 1970), concerned suspects arrested for not carrying

selective service cards and then pressed into identification line-

ups for unrelated investigations. Unlike those cases, the bank

teller identified a photo of Carter that Burke obtained from a

police database, not from the warrantless search. (And, again,

the only connection between the search and ths discovery of

the photo is Carter’s name and address, which as discussed

above is not a suppressible product of the illegal search

under these circumstances.)

12 No. 09-1608

The Ninth Circuit has previously held that “it is not

sufficient in demonstrating taint that . . . an illegal search

uncovers the alleged perpetrator’s identity, and

therefore ‘directs attention to a particular suspect.’ ” United

States v. Smith, 155 F.3d 1051, 1061 (9th Cir. 1998) (citation

omitted). The Eighth Circuit has reached a similar con-

clusion. United States v. Watson, 950 F.2d 505, 508 (8th

Cir. 1991) (“[W]e conclude that where a law enforcement

officer merely recommends investigation of a particular

individual based on suspicions arising serendipitously

from an illegal search, the causal connection is suf-

ficiently attenuated so as to purge the later investigation

of any taint from the original illegality.”).2 Setting aside

the out of court identifications from the food court em-

ployees shown Carter’s ID card (the suppression of those

identifications was proper, and anyway the government

does not appeal the issue), the search supplied investiga-

tors with Carter’s name and (since the investigators

had seen the illegally seized ID card) the knowledge

that Carter matched the description of the bank robber.

However, the fact that the search gave investigators a

lead on a possible suspect does not make a subsequent

identification of that suspect, given by a witness who

had no knowledge of the illegal search and was not

shown any of the evidence produced by it, subsequently

inadmissible.

2

Those decisions also accord with a decision from the Fifth

Circuit holding that the convictions of two defendants

were not illegal when their identity was first learned through

a confession given without proper Miranda warnings.

Gissendanner v. Wainwright, 482 F.2d 1293 (1973).

No. 09-1608 13

We also find it important that both Carter’s name and

address were provided to Burke by Mark Alvarado. That

was all the information that Burke needed in order to

run the CLEAR search that, ultimately, produced the

photo used in the bank teller’s identification. Carter

argues that Alvarado’s decision to supply the list of

people who had received mail at the address was not a

sufficient intervening event because Alvarado left his

apartment to talk to the police in response to noise from

the search upstairs, and because he only mentioned

Carter’s name after Burke asked about him. Neither of

those arguments addresses the crucial issue, however. If

a witness gave information to investigators after an

illegal search the issue for purposes of the intervening

factor inquiry is whether the witness voluntarily disclosed

it, not whether the illegal search bore any causal relation-

ship at all to the disclosure. In United States v. Carsello,

578 F.2d 199 (7th Cir. 1978), we held that evidence given

to investigators by witnesses who were found, in part,

because of records seized during an illegal search

was nonetheless admissible. When the witnesses had

voluntarily cooperated with the investigation and

provided the police with tangible evidence, a court

would not further the deterrent purpose of the

exclusionary rule by suppressing that evidence. Id. at

203 (citing United States v. Ceccolini, 435 U.S. 268 (1978)).

We conclude that Alvarado voluntarily provided the

information about Carter and the other occupants of the

apartment to Burke. Alvarado was not a suspect in the

robbery and was not in custody when the investigators

questioned him. Moreover, he had at least some incentive

14 No. 09-1608

to cooperate with investigators, as he was in the process

of evicting Carter and his girlfriend and because Carter

was living in the apartment off-lease. In short, the circum-

stances suggest that Alvarado voluntarily cooperated

with Burke’s investigation, and that the information that

he provided should not be discounted because of

Thome’s warrantless search. See Ceccolini, 435 U.S. at 277

(a court should examine “the time, place and manner of

the initial questioning of the witness” in order to deter-

mine whether “any statements are truly the product of

detached reflection and a desire to be cooperative on the

part of the witness.”). Alvarado’s list, which provided

Carter’s name and address and some indication of his

previous criminal record, was itself sufficient to produce

the photograph from the CLEAR database used in the

teller’s out of court identification.

Finally, we conclude that neither the timing of the

events nor the purpose and flagrancy of the search sup-

ports suppression in this case. While the government

concedes that very little time separated Thome’s

search of the apartment on 34th Place from the teller’s

identification, “the time frame [is] only one factor to

consider, and is never dispositive.” Ienco, 182 F.3d at 526.

We have previously held that a search was attenuated

from illegal conduct even where only a few minutes

passed between the conduct and the search. See Parker,

469 F.3d at 1078-79.

Nor do we conclude that the purpose and flagrancy of

the violation supports suppression. The district court

found that this factor weighed against the admissibility of

No. 09-1608 15

the evidence because “every activity was undertaken in an

effort to develop the evidence against Carter. There was no

purpose other than to confirm Carter’s name and to

confirm if Carter was the suspect in question.” This way

of phrasing the issue conflates the inquiry between

flagrant and purposeful behavior, however. Courts have

previously found that a Fourth Amendment violation

was flagrant and purposeful where “(1) the impropriety

of the official’s misconduct was obvious or the official

knew, at the time, that his conduct was likely uncon-

stitutional but engaged in it nevertheless; and (2) the

misconduct was investigatory in design and purpose and

executed ‘in the hope that something might turn up.’ ”

United States v. Simpson, 439 F.3d 490, 496 (8th Cir. 2006)

(quoting Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 605 (1975)). Where

the police erred but the record does not support an infer-

ence of bad faith, however, the violation was not flagrant.

See United States v. Green, 111 F.3d 515, 523 (7th Cir. 1997);

Fazio, 914 F.2d at 958 (“Because the primary purpose of

the exclusionary rule is to discourage police miscon-

duct, application of the rule does not serve this deterrent

function when the police action, although erroneous,

was not undertaken in an effort to benefit the police at

the expense of the suspect’s protected rights.”).

In this case, we find that the circumstances weigh

against a finding that the Fourth Amendment violation

was flagrant. Thome was acting on good police instincts

in connecting the man he had previously seen at the

apartment on 34th Place with the man who robbed the

Chicago Community Bank. When he reached the apart-

ment he did not enter straight away but instead spoke

16 No. 09-1608

with someone on the premises (Barbara Hunter) who

told him that no one was living in the unit and that the

landlord was in the process of kicking the previous

tenants out. As the district court’s first suppression order

noted, Hunter also told Thome that Carter did not live

in the apartment but only stayed there off and on with

his girlfriend. Hunter also had a set of keys to the unit,

which may have indicated to Thome that she had some

authority to enter the unit. Finally, testimony indicated

that the apartment was in a state of disarray when the

officers entered, further suggesting that the tenants had

already moved out. While in retrospect the search was

constitutionally deficient, we cannot conclude that

under these circumstances Thome knew or should have

known that the apartment was still occupied and that

the search was likely to be unconstitutional. Accordingly,

this case does not involve the sort of flagrant and pur-

poseful misconduct that merits application of the

exclusionary rule to evidence unearthed subsequent to

the warrantless search.

B. Evidence seized during Carter’s arrest

The government next argues that the district court

erroneously suppressed evidence seized from the

May Street apartment when Carter was arrested, in

particular the bait bills tying Carter to the robbery. As an

initial matter, Carter argues that the government

has not properly presented this issue because they

have not demonstrated that “Individual B,” the anony-

mous person who answered the door at the apartment

No. 09-1608 17

and gave the officers permission to enter, had actual or

apparent authority to authorize a search. The history of

this issue is a little complicated: The government argued

below that the search was a valid consent search, autho-

rized by Individual B, who was a guest of the person

leasing the apartment, and the lessee, who returned

home after being contacted by the police and also con-

sented to a search. If true, this would validate the

warrantless search. At any rate, this argument is no help

to Carter since he has never tried to establish a Fourth

Amendment interest in the May Street apartment where

he was arrested. His larger Fourth Amendment argu-

ment depends on the apartment at 34th Place being his

residence, since that is where the warrantless search

took place. His connection to the May Street apartment

is less clear, but he would need to advance some con-

nection with the place before he would have standing to

assert Fourth Amendment rights on behalf of the owner.

Without that, he cannot assert someone else’s protected

privacy interest. United States v. Mendoza, 438 F.3d 792,

795 (7th Cir. 2006).

The district court excluded the bait bills because their

admissibility “depends on the admissibility of the bank

teller identification, or something else that would

provide an intervening basis for the CPD’s and FBI’s

interest in Carter as a suspect.” But the court found

that absent the illegal search, there was no basis for

suspecting Carter. The government argues that even if

we rule that the teller’s identification did not provide

the police with probable cause to arrest Carter, Individual

B’s consent to search was a sufficient intervening event

18 No. 09-1608

to break the causal chain between the illegal search and

the search of the May Street apartment.

This circuit’s precedents, most importantly United States

v. Liss, 103 F.3d 617 (7th Cir. 1997), support the govern-

ment’s contention that the valid consent search of the

apartment on May Street makes the bait bills and other

evidence admissible, regardless of the reason that the

police were looking for Carter. The defendant in Liss

was charged with trafficking crystal methamphetamine

after the police discovered drugs during a consent search

of his home. Id. at 619-20. He argued that the results of

the consent search should have been suppressed

because the police only requested consent to search his

home after discovering marijuana plants during a prior

consensual search of his barn that, he argued, went

beyond the scope of his consent. Id. at 620. Thus, he

claimed that without the first illegal search there would

have been no reason to suspect him of wrongdoing and

no reason to want to search his home. We held that Liss’

consent to search was a sufficient intervening event to

break the causal chain between any illegal search and

the subsequent discovery of incriminating evidence in

his home. Id. at 621.

We reasoned in Liss is that the police do not need a good

reason to request permission to search someone’s home.

Id. (citing Florida v. Bostick, 501 U.S. 429, 434-35 (1991)).

Their motivation is essentially irrelevant because the

person asked can always refuse to grant consent and stop

No. 09-1608 19

the search.3 “The fact that an officer had actual suspicion,

however obtained, cannot render invalid a consent for

which the officer did not need any suspicion at all

to request.” Id.

In part this issue is settled by the resolution of the

earlier issue, since the information Burke gleaned from

the CLEAR database gave the police probable cause for

seeking Carter’s arrest. Even without that evidence,

however, our holding in Liss requires us to conclude

the bait bills taken from the apartment are admissible.

C. Carter’s confession

The government finally seeks admission of Carter’s

statement, made after the police arrested him at the

apartment on May Street. There is no question that

3

Liss drew a particularly strong concurrence, which argued that

the Supreme Court has never said that consent, or any other

factor, is per se an intervening event severing an illegal

search from a subsequent discovery of evidence. Id. at 622-23

(Ripple, J., concurring). We subsequently explained in United

States v. Robeles-Ortega, 348 F.3d 679 (7th Cir. 2003), that Liss

is not a per se rule validating every consent search following

a Fourth Amendment violation, and in Robeles-Ortega we

held that it did not apply when the consent was given at the

site of the illegal entry. Id. at 684. In the present case, however,

consent was given by a person unaware of the earlier

warrantless entry, at a different location, and with different

police personnel involved. The holding of Liss would

squarely govern these facts.

20 No. 09-1608

Carter made the statement voluntarily and after receiving

proper Miranda warnings. The district court suppressed

the confession, however, because Carter’s arrest was

dependent upon the validity of the bank teller’s iden-

tification; because that identification was the fruit of the

poisonous tree, there was no probable cause to justify

Carter’s arrest.

Whether the district court’s suppression decision was

appropriate thus depends upon whether the bank teller’s

statement was admissible. As we have already con-

cluded that the identification is admissible, it would

provide probable cause for Carter’s arrest and makes his

subsequent statement admissible. Even apart from the

teller’s identification, however, Carter was found in the

May Street apartment with bait bills from the robbery,

and he matched the general description of the robber

given in the police department’s flash message, both

facts supporting probable cause for his arrest. Conse-

quently, the statement is admissible.4

4

The record does not contain any evidence indicating that

Carter was shown the Cook County ID card or asked about it,

and so we have no reason to conclude that the warrantless

search of his apartment influenced his decision to make a

statement. The district court also found that “[t]here is no

allegation that Carter was treated improperly or otherwise

coerced after being taken into custody, but there is also no

evidence of any intervening event that might have prompted

Carter to confess voluntarily.” The district court’s decision to

suppress the statement was based on Taylor v. Alabama, 457 U.S.

(continued...)

No. 09-1608 21

III. Conclusion

For the foregoing reasons, we R EVERSE the district court’s

suppression order and remand for proceedings consistent

with this opinion.

4

(...continued)

687 (1982), and United States v. Reed, 349 F.3d 457 (7th Cir. 2003),

both cases involving a confession given by a suspect arrested

without probable cause. Taylor, 457 U.S. at 690-91; Reed, 349 U.S.

at 463. As we have concluded that the arrest in this case

was supported by probable cause, we have no reason to

inquire whether, under Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590 (1975),

there were sufficient intervening events to separate the con-

fession from an illegal arrest.

7-20-09