My question involves criminal law for the state of:Colorado) A young male had allegedly punched his (eight-month) pregnant wife in the stomach while they were riding in a vehicle. After the assault, the male allegedly pushed his wife out of the passenger side of the car while it was in motion. The male suspect stopped the car, pulled his wife’s body back inside of the vehicle, and drove her to the hospital. During the interview at the hospital, the suspect changed his story several times but alleged that his wife was trying to kill herself and voluntarily left the vehicle while it was in motion. Doctors tried to deliver the baby but were unsuccessful. Mother and child were pronounced dead. Aside from the wounds resulting from the ejection, doctors found a large bruise on the mother’s belly area and large bruise on the child’s body.



Because we could not locate the scene (the suspect was heavily intoxicated at the time), we focused our efforts on what the suspect told us. I put together a time-distance scenario that more or less determined that the suspect was not telling us the truth. The suspect retained a lawyer so the opportunity for an admission or confession was gone. We asked the attorney if the suspect would come to the police department for a polygraph examination but he declined.



A few days later, a private polygrapher came to my office at the police station to discuss a forgery case. He wanted to show me a VHS tape of an interview he did on a suspect in one of our forgery cases. He had been hired by the defense to determine if their client (our suspect) was lying about the stolen checks. While he was fast-forwarding through the tape, he stopped the tape prematurely. On the screen, I saw our homicide suspect. He was sitting forward with his head hanging low (defeated position). The polygrapher quickly started the fast-forwarding again and mumbled, “Oh, I guess you recognize him.” It was apparent to me that the suspect’s attorney had hired this guy to do a polygraph on the suspect.



Two Questions:



1. Can I seize the VHS tape at that point as evidence?
2. If indeed I do seize it and obtain information from the tape that leads to a search warrant of a location we had not previously discovered to be involved in the homicide, would evidence from the search be allowed even though my seizure of the tape was later determined to be unjustified?