Gonzalez

In this case the defendant confessed to a robbery after he was arrested without probable cause. Following this confession, and while he was still in custody, police officers from another jurisdiction obtained his confession to other crimes. The issue is whether the confession to a crime other than the one for which the defendant was illegally arrested, to officers from a different police agency who were unaware of the circumstances of the defendant’s arrest, is sufficiently attenuated from the illegal arrest to dissipate its taint. We hold that under the circumstances described an otherwise valid confession to the second crime is not made inadmissible by the initial illegality of the defendant’s arrest.

Facts and Proceedings Below

We give a brief overview of the facts and proceedings below, leaving a more detailed examination to our discussion of the issues below.

Two men dressed in ski masks robbed Paul’s Kitchen, a restaurant in Monterey Park. One of them shot and wounded three restaurant employees. The witnesses believed one man was Black and the other Hispanic. The men escaped in a dark blue compact car driven by a third man.

Three days later, one man wearing a…