State v. Delong

The scope of consent in a search is "determined by reference to what a typical, reasonable person would have understood by the exchange between the officer and the suspect in light of the totality of the circumstances surrounding the grant of consent in a particular case."

During an arrest, the arrestee consented to having his vehicle searched. During the search, the officer found a fanny pack and searched its contents finding drugs and drug paraphernalia. The Court held this search exceeded the scope of the consent given to search because the arrestee consented to having his vehicle searched, not the contents inside the vehicle and it was not reasonable for arrestee to assume officers would look for small objects like this. Arrestee was given belated Miranda rights after the search and then made confessions post-Miranda. The Court holds that according to the Unger exploitation test, the statements must be suppressed because there was no evidence that without the results of the illegal search the arrestee would have made any incriminating statements and there were no "intervening or mitigating circumstances" that attenuated the taint of the unlawful search which produced the confession. Reversed and remanded.