McBath v. State

In McBath v. State (2005), 108 P.3d 241, an Alaska appeals court employed the attenuation test and held that any taint flowing from a police officer's illegal detention of defendant was dissipated by the subsequent discovery of outstanding warrants which justified the arrest and search of defendant incident to the arrest. The court held that there was no egregious or flagrant police misconduct, since the officer had a valid reason for asking the defendant for identification, given the release of property seized from the vehicle to the defendant who was a passenger in the vehicle following the arrest of the driver. The court further stated, however, where evidence was obtained while police officers were executing an outstanding arrest warrant, "the flagrance of the police conduct may still require suppression of the evidence-as, for example, where the police conducted an unjustifiable 'dragnet' investigative stop of many people, hoping to find some for whom there were outstanding arrest warrants." Id. at 249.