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case, we do not reach the question whether an egregious violation
of the Fourth Amendment, in and of itself, warrants invoking the
exclusionary rule. We find that the police officers involved did
not act improperly, much less egregiously, when they searched
petitioner's house.
As the party moving for suppression of evidence, petitioner
bears the burden of proof. Houser v. Commissioner, 96 T.C. 184,
196 (1991). Petitioner has not met his burden. At most, he has
pointed to circumstances that are subject to conflicting
interpretations and has invited us to assume bad faith on the
part of the officers involved and to ignore testimony that
contradicts his hypotheses. We decline to do so.
To support his bad faith theory, petitioner notes that on
the morning of the arrest, he left his house for a time. He
asserts that the deputies, who then had him under surveillance,
should have apprehended him outside his house. He says they
waited until he went back inside simply because they wanted to
get into his house and conduct a search. This supposition is
contradicted by the record. Sergeant Steve DeFries, a
supervising officer who was at the scene, testified credibly at
the hearing that his officers were not in position to make the
arrest safely when petitioner left his house that morning.
Petitioner also makes much of a hindsight observation by
Sergeant DeFries, expressing disappointment with the outcome of
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