After a brutal rape and murder of an 8-year-old boy, police identified the suspect as a neighbor, Ray, who they took to the police station for an interrogation

Question

Using police practices from the past, officers used telephone books to hit Ray in the ribs without leaving marks, held him face up under an open faucet and let his throat fill with water before turning him over, and attached electrodes to his genitals which, police said, they would turn on if Ray did not confess to the murder. Ray did confess. When police asked where the body was, Ray initially refused. While Ray was at the police station, a search party was searching in the area of a local elementary school for the boy's body. Also, Ray's sister came to the police station to report that Ray had indicated he had killed the boy and dumped his body "near a school yard." Ray eventually told police that the boy's body was under the swing set at the nearby school. At his murder trial, Ray claims that his confession was coerced and should be excluded and his telling the location of the boy's body was fruit of the poisonous tree. The state replied that under the inevitable discovery and independent source doctrines, the body should be admissible. How should the court rule and why?
What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

ANSWER: Answers may vary: Under the Nix v. Williams precedent, if police are in the process of conducting a search that would have inevitably lead them to the body when Ray confessed to the location, the inevitable discovery exception to the exclusionary rule would apply. The independent source doctrine does not apply here.