Koch

In Segura v. United States (1984) 468 U.S. 796 [ 82 L.Ed.2d 599 , 104 S.Ct. 3380 ], the United States Supreme Court upheld the seizure of incriminating evidence obtained from a private residence under a valid search warrant even though the police had earlier made an unlawful entry into the residence. Since the search warrant had been issued on information obtained by the police before the illegal entry, there had been an independent source for its issuance and consequently suppression of the evidence was not constitutionally compelled. Four years later, in Murray v. United States (1988) 487 U.S. 533 [ 101 L.Ed.2d 472 , 108 S.Ct. 2529 ], the high court was “faced with the question whether, again assuming evidence obtained pursuant to an independently obtained search warrant, the portion of such evidence that had been observed in plain view at the time of a prior illegal entry must be suppressed.” (Id., at p. 535 [ 101 L.Ed.2d at p. 479 ].) Once again the high court held that the Fourth Amendment would not compel suppression if the search warrant sprang from a genuinely independent source. The independent source doctrine, the Murray court ruled, is not limited just to…