California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from Cornelius v. Superior Court, 102 Cal.Rptr. 59, 25 Cal.App.3d 581 (Cal. App. 1972):
[25 Cal.App.3d 586] Petitioner was acquitted of all charges except the fifth count, possession of the stolen forklift. With that fact in mind, we consider the merits of his motion to suppress. The matrix of his argument is that the officers acted illegally in obtaining the cashier's check and the stock jackets from his bookkeeper, and thus the subsequent searches pursuant to warrants are necessarily tainted by that first warrantless search. But the mere fact of an unauthorized or illegal search does not, ipso facto, make evidence obtained in a subsequent search of the same premises pursuant to a warrant, the fruit of the prior illegal search. (Krauss v. Superior Court, Supra, 5 Cal.3d 418, 96 Cal.Rptr. 455, 487 P.2d 1023.) There must be a nexus, clearly perceivable, between the first search and evidence seized in the second search. Here, none is shown. Petitioner dwells at some length upon the officer's 'high handed' conduct in taking the cashier's check without a warrant. He brands it an illegal search and seizure, while the Attorney General asserts that an emergency existed and, additionally, that the bookkeeper gave consent to the taking. We do not reach the question of 'emergency' or of 'consent' because petitioner does not point to a specific connection between that search and the evidence obtained in the subsequent search. It appears that the first search simply confirmed knowledge derived from the previous investigation before a search of any kind was made. The officers were well aware of the stolen camper and pickup truck operation from their investigation which had been in progress for a long time before the stolen camper was driven from the Ken-Lon lot during surveillance. It is important that the officers, by their prior extensive investigation, were well aware of the activities of the ring, and the so-called 'emergency' seizure of the check and stock jackets did not alert them to anything that was not already known.
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