Officers arrive on scene in response to report of a large fight involving a knife. They find themselves outnumbered 10-1. One officer detains a small group and frisks them for weapons. Finds dope on D. Arrests D. Later discovers D had a valid arrest warrant.

I know there's no "inevitable discovery," but even if the frisk was bad (contested issue), doesn't the existence of a valid warrant tend to make that irrelevant? D would have been arrested and searched regardless, but the officer did not have PC to arrest at the exact time he searched D.

I think the discovery of the warrant has to precede the search.

State v. Maland, 140 Idaho 817, 103 P.3d 430 (2004) (Green not applicable in instant case, as there but not here "the arrest warrant was discovered and executed before the officers found the evidence sought to be suppressed; "the discovery of the arrest warrant [in the instant case] cannot be an intervening circumstance because it occurred after the wrongful seizure of the evidence").

People v. Padgett, 932 P.2d 810 (Colo.1997) (where after stop on insufficient grounds dispatcher indicated possibility of preexisting warrant for defendant, that did not break causal chain between illegal seizure and later search of defendant, given close “temporal and geographical proximity” of illegal stop and evidence discovery and fact officer had “not confirmed that an arrest warrant existed” for defendant prior to search).

See also United States v. Green, 111 F.3d 515 (7th Cir.1997),


People v. Brendlin, 195 P.3d 1074, 1078-79 (Cal. 2008)

You might also look at

State v. Elias, --- S.W.3d ----, 2011 WL 1267248, at *8 (Tex.Crim.App. April 6, 2011) ("While this Court has yet to directly weigh in on this issue, we note that a number of other jurisdictions have held that an intervening arrest warrant MAY, under certain circumstances, serve to attenuate taint, depending upon an application of the attenuation factors of Brown v. Illinois.")

Your arrest warrant doesn't seem to be intervening.