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Nathan v. Municipality of Anchorage3/27/1998
te, 637 P.2d 716, 719-720 (Alaska App. 1981), aff'd on other grounds, 663 P.2d 932 (Alaska 1983). Nathan does not discuss (or even cite) any of these cases.
It is true that, broadly speaking, the purpose of the exclusionary rule is to deter the police from engaging in future illegal conduct. Violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act clearly qualify as "illegal conduct". However, when the government has violated a statute (as opposed to the Constitution), suppression of evidence has generally been imposed only when the government's violation of the statute demonstrably prejudiced a defendant's ability to exercise related constitutional rights or to prepare or present a defense. For instance, in Sundberg, the police used excessive force to arrest a fleeing suspect, but the supreme court refused to suppress the resulting evidence. The court concluded that other effective means existed to deter future similar illegality; the court cited "the possibility of ... police department proceedings; civil rights actions; and common law tort suits against the offending officer". Sundberg, 611 P.2d at 51-52.
Similar measures are apparently available to deter and redress violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Given the existence of these measures, and the absence of any indication that the police have engaged in persistent, purposeful violations of the Act, we hold that exclusion of evidence would not be the remedy even if Nathan could show that the police violated the Act in his case.
The district court properly denied Nathan's motion to suppress his breath test result. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.
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