Guns found in an illegal search of a man's hotel room should have been suppressed, a federal appeals court has ruled, even though police planned to arrest the man as soon as he left the room and the motel's owner testified that he would have turned anything left behind to police.

Writing for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Judge Gerard Lynch (See Profile) held in United States v. Stokes, 12-2843-cr, that the guns were not admissible under the inevitable discovery doctrine.