United States v. Filimon Garcia-Beltran

Defendant-appellant Filimon Garcia-Beltran appeals the district court’s grant of the government’s motion to require Garcia-Beltran to provide a pretrial fingerprint exemplar. The district court granted this motion after having first suppressed defendant’s fingerprint exemplars taken while defendant was in custody after an arrest lacking probable cause. The decision to suppress defendant’s fingerprints followed from the district court’s finding that the fingerprints had been taken for both investigative and identification purposes. The district court’s finding came at the direction of this court to hold an evi-dentiary hearing to determine the government’s purpose in taking the fingerprints.

Garcia-Beltran contends that the law of the case doctrine and the rule of mandate preclude the district court from granting the motion to compel a new set of fingerprint exemplars. In addition, Garcia-Bel-tran asserts that, without an independent basis for fingerprinting, the evidence is subject to the exclusionary rule and, hence, cannot be used by the government at trial. We reject both arguments, and we affirm the district court’s ruling on the government’s motion to require Garcia-Beltran…