Does the exclusionary rule apply to evidence obtained by police officers in violation of the Fourth Amendment?

All evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment is subject to exclusion, including not only direct or primary evidence but also derivative evidence subsequently obtained through information obtained by police through their unlawful conduct. (People v. Mayfield (1997) 14 Cal.4th 668, 760.) Several exceptions to this sanction exist on the rationale that deterrence of improper police conduct, the purpose of

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the exclusionary rule, is outweighed by the cost of suppressing reliable evidence of criminal activity. (California v. Greenwood (1988) 486 U.S. 35, 44 [108 S.Ct. 1625, 100 L.Ed.2d 30].)

One of these exceptions, relevant here, is attenuation. If the police obtain evidence by means sufficiently purged of the primary taint, then suppression is not required. Although no single factor is dispositive, those considered are (1) the temporal proximity between the illegal act and the discovered evidence, (2) the presence or absence of intervening circumstances, and (3) the purpose and flagrancy of the misconduct. (People v. Boyer (2006) 38 Cal.4th 412, 448-449.)

Here, under People v. Boyer, supra, 38 Cal.4th 412, the trial court properly denied defendant's motion. First, the officers discovered the probation condition before they searched defendant's car, thus attenuating it from any illegality in the stop because the probation search condition was a lawful basis for conducting a search. Second, the search condition nonetheless provided the officers with a legal authorization to search the car that was independent of the circumstances of the detention. Finally, there was no evidence of flagrancy. Defendant's car was parked at a gas station in a suspicious manner and defendant was engaged in suspicious activity. Under the circumstances here the officers did not stop defendant's vehicle based on a random hunch; they detained defendant based upon reasonable suspicion and conducted a search of the car only after learning he was a probationer with a search condition. Thus, our validation of the officers' conduct here will not contribute to random illegal stops.