OPINION

delivered the opinion of the Court

In this felony prosecution for possession of ecstasy, the State appealed from the trial court’s grant of the appellee’s motion to suppress evidence that the appellee contended was obtained as a result of an illegal traffic stop. The El Paso Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s ruling in an unpublished opinion, holding that the appellee’s initial detention was illegal and that the taint emanating from the initial illegality was not attenuated by the fact that, immediately after the initial stop, the appellee was found to have an outstanding arrest warrant that might give rise to a valid search incident to arrest.1 We granted the State’s petition for discretionary review to examine this holding and now reverse.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL POSTURE

Motion to Suppress

The appellee was indicted for the offense of possession with intent to deliver more than four but less than 400 grams of me-thylenedioxy methamphetamine, popularly known as ecstasy, a first degree felony offense.2 Prior to trial, the appellee filed a motion to suppress evidence stemming from his initial detention in this case. At a pre-trial hearing on March 19, 2009, the State’s only witness was the arresting officer, El Paso Police Officer Christopher Grijalva.

Grijalva testified that, on December 11, 2008, he was assigned to patrol the Sun-land Park Mall area on the west side of El Paso, along with his partner, Officer Mike Chavez. Grijalva and Chavez were part of the Westside Regional Command Center TAC patrol, a unit that does not respond to routine patrol calls but instead performs specific assignments. On this particular day, the TAC patrol was tasked with looking for traffic violators. At approximately 10:00 p.m., the officers were conducting a separate traffic stop when Grijalva noticed a yellow Mustang that pulled into the parking lot of the mall with what Grijalva perceived to be defective taillights. The taillights appeared to Grijalva to emit white light, whereas by statute they should be red.3 Once they completed their traffic stop, Grijalva and Chavez once again observed the yellow Mustang, now parked in the mall parking lot. At around 10:20 p.m., they observed the Mustang begin to move again. After alerting other members of the TAC patrol, they stopped it for the perceived taillight infraction. They had no other reason to stop the Mustang— they did not suspect the occupants of any other crime, nor were they aware that the *297occupants might be the subject of any outstanding warrants.

While Chavez checked the driver’s identification and proof of financial responsibility, Grijalva approached the passenger side of the Mustang, where the appellee sat, and asked the appellee for identification. Without speaking, the appellee produced a driver’s license, and both Chavez and Grijalva returned to their squad car to check for outstanding warrants. When their computer showed that the appellee had at least a pair of outstanding warrants, they contacted the warrants office and confirmed that the warrants were active.4 Grijalva returned to the passenger side of the Mustang and asked the appel-lee to step out. When the appellee complied, Grijalva asked him whether he was aware that he had outstanding warrants, to which the appellee “kind of looked at [Grijalva] and then said yes, I know I have warrants.” Grijalva then “escorted” the appellee to the squad car and “asked him to put his hands on the vehicle.” Intending to pat the appellee down for safety purposes, Grijalva first “asked him if he had anything illegal on him, any weapons or anything else. At which point he stated yes, he did.” When Grijalva asked him what he had, the appellee answered that there was ecstasy in a black pouch in his right front pants pocket. Grijalva subsequently “placed [the appellee] into custody,” patted him down, discovered and seized the ecstasy as well as a small baggie of marijuana, and then put the appellee in the back seat of the squad car. The appel-lee volunteered that the Mustang belonged to his cousin, and that there was “a black zippered bag under the front passenger seat” that did not belong to his cousin. Grijalva retrieved the bag and found that it contained additional baggies of marijuana.

The owner and driver of the Mustang, Isaac Medina, testified for the defense at the motion to suppress hearing. Five years before the traffic stop he had modified his taillights to include “some clear rear lights,” but they retained “red lights in the middle[.]” Medina had never before gotten a ticket, and the car had always passed the annual state inspection. He denied that his Mustang ever “had any white or — any white emitting taillights.” Photographs of the rear of the Mustang were introduced into evidence showing the condition of the taillights as of the time of the traffic stop. The State then recalled Grijalva to the stand and showed him the photographs, which were taken in daylight. Grijalva maintained that the taillights looked much different when illuminated at night. Asked whether, on the night of the stop, “there was any red emminating [sic] from those ... taillights?”, he replied: “There was mostly white. From what I distinctly saw it was mostly white. I don’t recall if we got close and saw that there was any red. But the white dominated the red color.”

Counsel for appellee urged the trial court to discount Grijalva’s testimony.

[DEFENSE COUNSEL]: Your Hon- or, I believe that the Court has the photographs of the taillights in front of him. And as you see the taillights have a clear casing. The bulbs themselves are red. You can see that. You have them in front of you. The light would either be red or not lit at all. And I *298think the officer’s testimony to the contrary is not credible and not believable.5

For her part, the prosecutor reminded the trial court that the photographs had been taken in daylight and that Grijalva had observed them at night. She argued, alternatively, that even if the stop was illegal, “there is case law out there that states that if there is a warrant out for the defendant, an illegal stop doesn’t taint the warrants for the arrest.”6 The trial court asked the prosecutor to produce those cases and took the matter under advisement.

Trial Court’s Findings and Conclusions

On March 25, 2009, the trial court signed an order granting the appellee’s motion to suppress but did not enter findings of fact and conclusions of law. That same day, the State filed a request for findings of fact and conclusions of law.7 On April 9, 2009, the trial court duly entered written findings and conclusions.8 Those findings and conclusions, in relevant part, read:

FINDINGS OF FACT:

1. On December 11, 2008, at approximately 10:20 p.m. Officer Grijalva and Officer Chavez of the El Paso Police Department detained a yellow Mustang vehicle in the parking lot of the Linens n Things on the Westside of El Paso, Texas.

2. The trial court having heard the testimony and having evaluated the demeanor of the witnesses finds that Officer Chavez’s [sic: Grijalva] testimony that he had a reasonable belief that Transportation Code 547.322 had been violated to not be credible.

3. The trial court having heard the testimony and having evaluated the demeanor of the witnesses finds that Officer Chavez [sic] did not have a reasonable belief that the yellow Mustang had white lights to the rear.

4. The trial court having evaluated and heard the testimony of Isaac Medina finds his testimony to be credible and that the photographs admitted as Defense exhibits 1-6 fairly and accurately depict the vehicle and [its] lights as they appeared when the vehicle was stopped on December 11, 2008.

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7. The trial court finds that [the] yellow Mustang’s [taillights] emitted red light on December 11, 2008.

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11. The trial court having evaluated the credibility of the witnesses finds that there was no other reason for the detained [sic] of the vehicle other than white lights to the rear.

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14. The trial court finds that [the ap-pellee] was not read his Miranda warnings.

*29915. The trial court finds that the questioning of [the appellee] and the discovery of contraband were not only in close temporal proximity but were in fact almost simultaneous.

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17. The trial court finds that [the ap-pellee] did not volunteer any information but rather answered the [officer’s] questions when he provided his identifying information.

18. The trial court finds that [the ap-pellee] was not free to leave from the time that the yellow Mustang that he was a passenger in was detained.

19. The trial court finds that [the ap-pellee] was placed under arrest for outstanding warrants after he was detained and questioned by Officer Chavez [sic] after being a passenger in the yellow [M]ustang that was detained by Officer Chavez and Officer Grijalva.

CONCLUSIONS OF LAW[:J

1. The driver of the Mustang did not violate Section 547.322 of the Transportation Code on December 11, 2008.

2. The Police Officers did not have probable cause or reasonable suspicion to perform a traffic stop on that date.

3.The arrest warrants of the Defendant did not purge the taint of the illegal stops due to the flagrancy of the police action, the close temporal proximity and the fact that no Miranda warnings were read.

From these findings and conclusions, the State appealed.9

On Appeal

The court of appeals deferred to the trial court’s credibility determination with respect to Grijalva’s testimony regarding the basis of the stop and held accordingly that the arresting officers “lacked justification to make the stop at its inception because the car’s taillights were not white, as the officer testified.”10 Proceeding to the question whether the taint from that illegal stop may have been attenuated by Grijal-va’s immediate discovery of the outstanding arrest warrants, the court of appeals acknowledged case law from this Court and other courts of appeals holding “that the discovery of a valid warrant, even in a situation involving an illegal detention, breaks the connection between the primary taint and the subsequently discovered evidence.”11 Nevertheless, to hold that the discovery of the appellee’s arrest warrants dissipated the taint of the unlawful stop on the facts of this case, the court of appeals observed, would serve only to “encourage the seizure of suspects upon inadequate grounds while an investigation is conducted for the purpose of establishing probable cause or discovering the existence of search warrants.”12 For this rea*300son, the court of appeals rejected the State’s argument that Grijalva’s discovery of the appellee’s outstanding traffic warrants purged the taint of the primary illegality of the initial stop.13 We granted the State’s petition for discretionary review to address its contention that this holding conflicts with this Court’s opinion in Johnson v. State,14 and, more pointedly, with the holdings of several other courts of appeals in Texas.15

THE ATTENUATION OF TAINT DOCTRINE

Wong Sun and Johnson

The Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule exclusively serves a function of deterrence, to discourage undue police encroachment upon the privacy and personal integrity of the citizenry.16 Because of the substantial social costs involved in exercising this deterrent function, however, application of the exclusionary rule should operate as a “last resort,” not a “first impulse.”17 Accordingly, not every Fourth Amendment violation necessarily results in the suppression of evidence just because, but for that violation, the evidence would never have been exposed. As the Supreme Court observed in Wong Sun v. United States:

We need not hold that all evidence is “fruit of the poisonous tree” simply because it would not have come to light but for the illegal actions of the police. Rather, the more apt question is “whether, granting establishment of the primary illegality, the evidence to which instant objection is made has been come at by exploitation of that illegality or instead by means sufficiently distinguishable to be purged of the primary taint.”18

We expressly invoked this attenuation of taint principle in Johnson,19

Johnson was arrested without a warrant and, he contended, without probable *301cause.20 When the arresting officer transported Johnson to the police station, he discovered an outstanding warrant for his arrest emanating from another county.21 Subsequent to the discovery of the arrest warrant, Johnson was photographed, and the photograph was used in a photographic line-up from which the victim of the robbery for which Johnson was prosecuted was able to identify him.22 In a motion to suppress, Johnson challenged the admissibility of the photographic identification, his contention being that the photograph used was the product of the illegality stemming from his initial unlawful arrest.23 We rejected this contention on direct appeal, holding that, “[e]ven if the arrest was illegal, it would appear that [Johnson’s] detention at the time of the picture taking was not illegal.”24 We went on to conclude that the “identification testimony would have been obtained regardless by means sufficiently distinguishable from the underlying illegality to be purged of the primary taint[,]” citing for authority the above passage from Wong Sun.25

Brown v. Illinois

Two years after Johnson, the Supreme Court elaborated upon Wong Sun and the attenuation of taint doctrine in Brown v. Illinois,26 Brown was arrested “without probable cause and without a warrant.”27 The arresting officers took him to the police station for interrogation, issuing him his Miranda warnings at the outset.28 On appeal, Brown argued that the resulting confession should have been suppressed at trial under the Fourth Amendment because it was the product of his illegal arrest.29 The Illinois Supreme Court disagreed, holding that the taint of the primary illegality was attenuated when the offending officers issued Brown his Miranda warnings before taking his confession, thus assuring its voluntariness.30 Carefully delineating Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights, however, the Supreme Court reversed, holding that, by themselves, Miranda warnings cannot serve as an intervening event sufficient to purge the illegality of an unconstitutional arrest for purposes of applying the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule.31 While the presence or absence of Miranda warnings and the apparent voluntariness of the confession are certainly factors for courts to consider in determining whether suppression is required, they are by no means *302the only factors.32 In addition, “[t]he temporal proximity of the arrest and the confession, the presence of intervening circumstances, and, particularly, the purpose and flagrancy of the official misconduct are all relevant.”33 Applying these factors, the Supreme Court concluded that Brown’s confession should have been suppressed.34

The instant case involves the proper application of the attenuation of taint doctrine, not to a confession, as in Brown, but to contraband that is seized immediately following an unconstitutional detention or arrest. Will the discovery of an outstanding arrest warrant in the relatively few moments that ensue between the illegal stop and the seizure of the contraband invariably serve as an intervening event sufficient to purge the taint of the primary illegality? In our opinion last year in State v. Elias, we observed that “this Court has yet to directly weigh in on this issue,”35 at least since Johnson, and then Brown, were decided. But a number of courts of appeals in Texas have, as have many other jurisdictions across the country.

The Courts of Appeals in Texas

In a line of cases spanning the last twenty years, several courts of appeals in Texas have held that the discovery of an arrest warrant, after an illegal detention or arrest but before the consequent discovery and seizure of contraband, “may” serve to break the causal connection between the initial illegality and the subsequent seizure so as to purge the primary taint. The first and most comprehensively reasoned opinion in this line of cases is that of the Dallas Court of Appeals in Reed v. State.36 Characterizing the issue as one “of first impression” in Texas,37 the court of appeals in Reed boiled it down as follows.

[WJhether, when during the course of an illegal detention of appellant for the stated purpose of determining appellant’s identity, a valid warrant for the arrest of appellant was discovered upon establishing appellant’s identity and appellant was arrested under authority of that warrant, contraband found during the subsequent book-in inventory search is admissible into evidence against appellant because the existence of the warrant sufficiently attenuates the connection between the illegal detention and the discovery of the contraband.38

While acknowledging this Court’s opinion in Johnson, the Reed court proceeded to resolve this issue specifically by reference to the attenuation factors identified in *303Brown, excluding the question of whether Reed received Miranda warnings (presumably because the case did not involve the attempted suppression of a confession, but only of contraband).

Addressing the temporal-proximity factor first, the court of appeals observed:

In the present case, we conclude that the temporal proximity between the first illegal arrest and the second legal arrest does not bear on the attenuation. This factor has been cited and considered exclusively in cases where confessions or statements were obtained from a suspect subsequent to an illegal arrest. We also reason that, unlike the confession cases, where the statements can be seen as a psychological product of the arrest, the diminution of the likelihood of the discovery of physical evidence as a result of the illegal arrest cannot be a function of the passage of time. Thus, we conclude that the temporal proximity factor is of no moment in this case.39

Turning next to the intervening-circumstances factor, the Reed court held “that Johnson stands for the proposition that discovery of an outstanding warrant during an illegal detention of an individual breaks the connection between the discovered evidence and the primary taint.”40 Notwithstanding the seemingly determinative nature of this holding, the court of appeals nevertheless went on to address the purpose and flagrancy of the police misconduct as well, finding “nothing in the record that indicates that the transportation of appellant to the identification section [of the police department] was done for the purpose of ... providing a pretext for a search.”41- Having found both an intervening event and the absence of any purposeful or flagrant police misconduct, the court of appeals held that the trial court properly denied Reed’s motion to suppress.42

Since Reed was decided, a number of other court of appeals opinions have cited it as authority for the proposition that the intervention of a valid arrest warrant between an illegal arrest or detention and the subsequent discovery and seizure of contraband will suffice to attenuate the taint of the primary illegality.43 Unlike Reed, however, these subsequent court of appeals opinions seem to turn exclusively on the intervening-circumstance factor, as if that factor alone were categorically sufficient to establish attenuation, without any need to incorporate the purpose-and-flagrancy factor into the analysis.44 Although this Court has yet to address the question of which of the Brown factors should apply in this context, and how they should apply, the highest courts in a number of other jurisdictions have.

Other Jurisdictions

Practically every other jurisdiction to address the question of attenuation of taint to the illegal seizure of physical evidence has deemed it appropriate to apply three *304of the Brown factors45 — temporal proximity, intervening circumstances, and the purposefulness or flagrancy of the police misconduct — albeit with variable emphases. For example, while no other court since Reed has declared temporal proximity wholly irrelevant, many courts have downplayed its significance, particularly when the discovery of an arrest warrant separates an initial illegal stop from the seizure of contraband.46 Other courts have tended, like our own courts of appeals after Reed, to briefly mention all three of the Brown factors while highlighting the intervening circumstance factor — namely, the interceding discovery of an arrest warrant — as practically determinative of attenuation.47 But the latest trend seems to be for courts to downplay both the temporal proximity factor and, to a lesser extent, the intervening circumstance factor in preference to the purposefulness-and-fla-graney factor, reasoning that it is this third factor that most directly serves the policy of deterrence that fuels the exclusionary rule in the first place.48 We favor this emerging trend.

Illustrative of the trend is last year’s opinion of the Arizona Supreme Court in State v. Hummons.49 At trial, Hummons claimed that certain contraband seized from his person should be suppressed be*305cause it was the product of an illegal detention.50 The trial court denied the motion to suppress, holding that the stop had constituted a consensual encounter, not a detention sufficient to trigger Fourth Amendment concerns.51 The intermediate appellate court affirmed, but on a different basis, declaring that, even if Hummons was illegally detained, the subsequent search of his backpack that exposed the contraband occurred only after the arresting officer discovered that Hummons had an outstanding arrest warrant.52 The Arizona Supreme Court granted review of the intermediate court’s attenuation of taint analysis.53

Applying the three attenuation factors from Brown, the Arizona Supreme Court agreed with the intermediate court that the temporal proximity factor favored suppression, since the seizure of the contraband occurred within a few minutes of the stop.54 But it also agreed with the lower court’s assessment that “this is the least important Brown factor.”55 The Hum-mons court next confirmed the lower court’s conclusion that the discovery of the arrest warrant indeed qualified as an intervening circumstance.56 But it found that the lower court had erred to regard this factor as essentially determinative in itself, observing that the intermediate court had

overemphasized the importance of the warrant as an intervening circumstance in attenuating an illegal detention’s taint upon evidence discovered in a search incident to arrest. If the purpose of an illegal stop or seizure is to discover a warrant — in essence, to discover an intervening circumstance — the fact that a warrant is actually discovered cannot . validate admission of the evidence that is the fruit of the illegality.

If, as the court of appeals suggested, a warrant automatically dissipated the taint of illegality, law enforcement could then create a new form of police investigation by routinely illegally seizing individuals, knowing that the subsequent discovery of a warrant would provide after-the-fact justification for illegal conduct.57

For this reason, the Arizona Supreme Court determined that “the subsequent discovery of a warrant is of minimal importance” in the attenuation of taint analysis.58

By contrast, “[t]he purpose and flagrancy of illegal conduct, the third Brown factor, ... goes to the very heart and purpose of the exclusionary rule.”59 Noting that Brown itself had deemed the third factor “particularly” important,60 the Hummons court observed:

Factors such as an officer’s regular practice and routines, an officer’s reason for initiating the encounter, the clarity of the law forbidding the illegal conduct, and the objective appearance of consent may all be important in this inquiry. By focusing on officer conduct, courts may distinguish between ordinary encounters *306that happen to devolve into illegal seizures and intentionally illegal seizures for the purpose of discovering warrants.61

Applying the three Brown factors as thus prioritized, the Arizona Supreme Court found that any taint from the initial stop was attenuated, focusing particularly on the lack of any evidence in the record to suggest that the detaining officer had deliberately made the stop in the hope of revealing an outstanding arrest warrant that would justify a search.62

Conclusion

We agree with the Arizona Supreme Court’s general assessment. In our view, the first Brown factor is certainly relevant,63 but, even though it usually favors suppression of evidence that is discovered in the immediate aftermath of an illegal pedestrian or roadside stop, it will sometimes prove to be, in the context of the seizure of physical evidence, “the least important factor” — at least relative to the other two. And while we are hesitant to confirm as a categorical matter that the intervening circumstance of a valid arrest warrant is “of minimal importance” — after all, without it, there can usually be no attenuation of taint when physical evidence is unearthed immediately after an illegal stop — we agree that it should not be overemphasized to the ultimate detriment to the goal of deterrence that animates the exclusionary rule. Finally, we agree that the more important factor is the purposefulness and flagrancy, vel non, of the primary illegal conduct — whether the police have deliberately perpetrated what they know to be an illegal stop in the specific hope or expectation that it will generate some legitimate after-the-fact justification to arrest and/or search, or they have otherwise conducted themselves in particularly egregious disregard of the right to privacy and/or personal integrity that the Fourth Amendment protects. For, when this is the case, to admit the physical evidence because of the fortuity that an arrest warrant happens to come to light before the evidence is discovered perversely serves to encourage, rather than discourage, official misconduct and renders the Fourth Amendment toothless.

To summarize: When police find and seize physical evidence shortly after an illegal stop, in the absence of the discovery of an outstanding arrest warrant in between, that physical evidence should ordinarily be suppressed, even if the police misconduct is not highly purposeful or flagrantly abusive of Fourth Amendment rights. Under this scenario, temporal proximity is the paramount factor. But when an outstanding arrest warrant is discovered between the illegal stop and the seizure of physical evidence, the importance of the temporal proximity factor decreases. Under this scenario, the intervening circumstance is a necessary but never, by itself, wholly determinative factor in the attenuation calculation, and the *307purposefulness and/or flagrancy of the police misconduct, vel non, becomes of vital importance. To the extent that our pre-Brown analysis on direct appeal in Johnson placed practically exclusive emphasis on the intervening circumstance of an arrest warrant to justify the admission of evidence following an illegal stop, we disapprove it.64

ANALYSIS

Standard of Review

In the instant case, at the State’s request, the trial court entered express written findings of fact and conclusions of law with respect to the appellee’s motion to suppress.65 In reviewing the trial court’s ultimate ruling on a motion to suppress, an appellate court must give “almost total deference” to the trial court’s resolution of issues of historical fact and to its assessment of the weight and credibility of the testimony.66 But, once having resolved all questions of historical fact and weight and credibility of the testimony in the light most favorable to the trial court’s resolution of the legal issues,67 an appellate court then conducts a de novo review of the proper application of law to the factual disputes and credibility issues as thus resolved, in order to say whether the trial judge has reached the correct legal conclusion with respect to “the legal significance of the facts he has found.”68

Here, the trial court found as a matter of historical fact that “the yellow Mustang’s tail lights emitted red light” at the time of the stop, and it refused to give credence to Grijalva’s testimony at the suppression hearing that he had “had a reasonable belief’ that a traffic code violation had occurred. The State does not *308now contend that the trial court’s historical finding of fact and its credibility determination are unsupported by the record and does not, at this stage, contest the trial court’s consequent legal conclusion that the police “did not have probable cause or reasonable suspicion to perform a traffic stop” of the Mustang in which the appellee was a passenger. We therefore take this legal conclusion as a given and turn to the question whether the trial court properly applied the doctrine of attenuation of taint to the facts of the case to determine whether the unlawful stop should have resulted in suppression of the ecstasy found in the appellee’s pocket.

Application of Law to Facts

Grijalva found the ecstacy in the appellee’s pants pocket and seized it within minutes of the illegal stop — but not before first determining that the appellee had at least two outstanding arrest warrants and confirming that they were active. Thus, while the trial court was correct to conclude that the temporal proximity of the seizure of the ecstasy to the illegal stop supports suppression, that factor does not weigh very heavily in light of the intervening circumstance of the discovery of the valid arrest warrants.69 The trial court also concluded that “the flagrancy of the police action” weighed in favor of suppression, but it made no findings of fact tailored to this conclusion. And indeed, the record is not particularly well developed with respect to this issue.70 But what evidence there is in the record was undisputed and did not, in our view, support the trial court’s application of the law to the facts.

As to purposefulness, the record shows that Grijalva and Chavez were part of a unit specifically tasked on that *309day with looking for traffic violators. There is no indication that they were making traffic stops for any purpose other than to enforce the traffic laws or that' they harbored the specific hope or expectation that they might obtain the consent of motorists to search their vehicles or identify motorists with outstanding arrest warrants so that they might conduct searches incident to arrest. Nor does the record support a conclusion that Grijalva’s conduct during the course of this eon-cededly illegal traffic stop was flagrantly in derogation of the appellee’s Fourth Amendment rights.71 Grijalva did not demand that the appellee, a passenger in the car, supply identification; he merely asked for it. Once the appellee assented to provide that information,72 Grijalva immedi*310ately conducted a check for warrants, as he was entitled to do during a routine traffic stop, so long as that warrant check does not extend the legitimate duration of the traffic stop beyond the scope of its original justification.73 So, while the initial stop itself was illegal, Grijalva never went beyond the bounds of what would have been constitutionally permissible had the stop in fact been justified at its inception. Under these circumstances, applying the law, as we have explicated it in this opinion, to the undisputed facts of the case in our de novo review, we conclude that the behavior of the arresting officers, although clearly unlawful at the outset, was not so particularly purposeful and flagrant that the discovery of the appellee’s outstanding arrest warrants may not serve to break the causal connection between the illegal stop and the discovery of the ecstasy in the appellee’s pants pocket, thus purging the primary taint. We hold that the trial court erred to conclude otherwise.

The court of appeals nevertheless affirmed the judgment of the trial court out of what it deemed an overriding concern that a contrary ruling would “encourage” the police to undertake unlawful stops on a pretext, “for the purpose of establishing probable cause or discovering the existence of arrest warrants.”74 We certainly share that concern. However, we think that prioritizing the purposefulness and flagrancy factor satisfactorily addresses that concern without fashioning a rule that would altogether remove the intervening discovery of an arrest warrant as a factor relevant to the attenuation of taint analysis, as the court of appeals opinion tended to do. The court of appeals adopted an approach that would effectively presume purposeful and/or flagrant police misconduct from the fact of the primary illegality alone rather than assessing the character of that illegality, and of any subsequent police conduct, to determine whether it indicates that they actually behaved purposefully or flagrantly in the particular case. We hold that the court of appeals erred to rely upon this de facto presumption to affirm the trial court’s ruling on the appellee’s motion to suppress. Applying the appropriate analysis today, we hold that the trial court should have denied that motion.

CONCLUSION

Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the court of appeals. We remand the cause to the trial court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

filed a dissenting opinion.

The result fashioned by the majority opens the door for police to ignore the probable cause requirement and make traffic stops without adequate grounds for doing so. The majority’s analysis of the weight of the Brown factors may be correct, but the result discounts the trial court’s findings as to the credibility of the officers.

A reviewing court should “afford almost total deference to the trial court’s rulings on questions of historical fact and on application of law to fact questions that turn upon credibility and demeanor....” Guzman v. State, 955 S.W.2d 85, 89 (Tex.Crim.App. 1997); see Keehn v. State, 279 S.W.3d 330, 334 (Tex.Crim.App. 2009). The majority fails to give proper deference to the trial court’s rulings, in particular the following:

2. The trial court having heard the testimony and having evaluated the demeanor of the witnesses finds that Officer Chavez’s testimony that he had a reasonable belief that Transportation Code 547.322 had been violated to not be credible.

3. The trial court having heard the testimony and having evaluated the demeanor of the witnesses finds that Officer Chavez did not have a reasonable belief that the yellow Mustang had white lights to the rear.

7. The trial court finds that [the] yellow Mustang’s tail lights emitted red light on December 11, 2008.

11. The trial court having evaluated the credibility of the witnesses finds that there was no other reason for the detain[ment] of the vehicle other than the white lights to the rear.

16. The trial court finds that Alvaro Mazuca had not been suspected of any crime or wrong doing when he was questioned by Officer Chavez.

Based on these findings of fact, the trial court made the following conclusions of law:

1. The driver of the Mustang did not violate Section 547.322 of the Transportation Code on December 11, 2008.

2. The Police Officers did not have probable cause or reasonable suspicion to perform a traffic stop on that date.

3. The arrest warrants of the Defendant did not purge the taint of the illegal stop due to the flagrancy of the police action, the close temporal proximity and the fact that no Miranda warnings were read.

In weighing the purpose and flagrancy of the police conduct under Brown, the majority reasons that the court’s application of the law to the facts in determining that the police action was flagrant was not supported by evidence on the record. Maj. op. at 308-09. However, there is no evidence indicating that the officers were justified to make the stop because the taillights emitted red light, rather than only white light. See Dissent (Johnson, J.) at 312-13 (discussing application of Texas Transportation Code § 547.322). The col- or photograph of the vehicle’s taillights that was provided to the trial court showed that the taillights were in compliance with the law. The officer testified to the contrary, thus lending support of the trial court’s determination that the testimony was not credible and that the officers’s conduct was flagrant. The trial court’s determination was supported by the record and involved an evaluation of the credibility of the officers. Thus, the appropriate action of the reviewing court is to defer to the trial court.

Although the majority accepts the trial court’s conclusions, maj. op. at 307-08, it comes to a contrary decision by determining that the taint of the illegal stop was *312attenuated by the discovery of the appel-lee’s arrest warrants. If I had the majority, I would also give deference to the trial court’s findings when considering the flagrancy of the police action and conclude that the taint of the illegal detention supports suppression of the drugs.

Furthermore, the practical effect of the majority’s holding is to encourage police officers to unlawfully stop motorists in the hope that an arrest warrant will be discovered in the process. A law enforcement officer may lawfully stop a motorist only when the officer has probable cause to believe that a traffic violation has occurred. Walter v. State, 28 S.W.3d 538, 542 (Tex.Crim.App. 2000) (citing Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 810, 116 S.Ct. 1769, 135 L.Ed.2d 89 (1996)). As determined by the trial court and supported by the record, the officers here had neither probable cause nor reasonable suspicion to believe that the driver violated section 547.322. Accordingly, the stop was illegal and the evidence seized was rightfully suppressed by the trial court. I agree with the outcome of the court of appeals, and respectfully dissent.

filed a dissenting opinion.

Ignorance of the law is no defense. We have all heard that statement many times, usually in the context of a defendant who claims not to have known of the law he or she is charged with violating. If an average citizen cannot plead ignorance of the law, how are we to condone a law-enforcement officer, who is charged with knowing the law he or she enforces, using that excuse to justify a traffic stop that is blatantly improper? This Court decided in 1988 that the law requiring an automobile to display red light to the rear did not mean that all other colors of light are barred. Vicknair v. State, 751 S.W.2d 180 (Tex.Crim.App. 1988). Vicknair was stopped by a police officer because a taillight lens was cracked, and the crack “permitted some white light to be emitted with red light.” Id. at 187. After stopping Vicknair, police found five pounds of marijuana in his car. Id. On appeal, the court of appeals found that the cracked taillight did not violate the statute then in effect, Art. 6701d, § 111, which required that every motor vehicle must be equipped with at least two tail lamps that emit a red light plainly visible from 1000 feet to the rear. Id. at 190. The current statute, Tex. Transp. Code § 547.322(d) is substantially the same as the statute at issue in Vicknair. “A taillamp shall emit a red light plainly visible at a distance of 1,000 feet from the rear of the vehicle.”

In its opinion, this Court quoted the court of appeals.

There is no evidence whatsoever in this record that appellant’s car failed to emit a red light plainly visible at a distance of 1000 feet to the rear, as required by § 111. On the contrary, the arresting officer testified that it did emit a red light visible to him at all times at an unstated distance to the rear. Since no one testified that appellant’s car failed to emit a visible red light, there was no basis at all to justify the original detention.

Id. at 187.

The officer further testified that he had been instructed at the Houston Police Academy, as well as by his supervisors in the police department, that if a tail light lens on a motor vehicle was ‘cracked to the extent that you could observe white light coming through the rear’ this constituted a violation of the traffic laws of this State. The court of appeals rejected the officer’s “good faith” belief concerning the law governing stopping a motorist driving a motor *313vehicle having a “fractured” tail light lens: “This was a warrantless arrest. A peace officer may arrest an offender without a warrant for any offense committed in his presence or within his view. Tex.Code Pro. Ann. art. 6701d, § 153 (Vernon 1977). However, what this officer testified he observed did not constitute an offense under § 111 of art. 6701d, and the officer’s well-intentioned but mistaken belief that it did will not legitimate this search. Scott v. U.S., 436 U.S. 128 [98 S.Ct. 1717, 56 L.Ed.2d 168] (1978). ‘Instead of motive or intent, the court must view the circumstances objectively to determine whether they support the justification.’ Nickerson v. State, 645 S.W.2d 888, 890 (Tex.App.-Dallas 1983). If the circumstances do not support the justification claimed for an arrest or search, the evidence illegally seized must be suppressed. Tex.Code Crim. Pro. art. 38.23 (Vernon 1979).”

Id. at 187-88.

The sole reason the officer gave for stopping appellant’s vehicle was that he believed appellant had committed a tail light “infraction” of the traffic laws. Given what we have stated, we find and hold that the officer was not justified in stopping appellant’s vehicle for that reason, nor did he have probable cause to stop appellant’s vehicle. Also see and compare Willett v. State, 454 S.W.2d 398 (Tex.Cr.App. 1970); Hall v. State, 488 S.W.2d 788 (Tex.Cr.App. 1973); Pruitt v. State, 389 S.W.2d 475 (Tex.Cr.App. 1965). Furthermore, the inarticulate hunch, suspicion, or good faith of the arresting officer was not sufficient to constitute probable cause for arrest, search, or detention of appellant and his passengers. Talbert v. State, 489 S.W.2d 309 (Tex.Cr.App. 1973). Contrast the above cases with such cases as Praska v. State, 557 S.W.2d 83, 87 (Tex.Cr.App. 1977); Drago v. State, 557 [553] S.W.2d 375, 377 (Tex.Cr.App. 1977); and Soileau v. State, 156 Tex.Cr.R. 544, 244 S.W.2d 224, 226 (1970). The opinions in each of those cases clearly reveal that there was some evidence of an initial legitimate traffic stop. Such does not exist here.

Because the evidence was seized as a result of an unlawful stop, it became inadmissible under Art. 38.23, supra.

Id. at 190.

At the time they stopped appellee, the officers in this case were assigned the duty of looking for traffic violations. One hopes that officers who are assigned to enforce traffic laws know what those laws require, but it appears that these officers were unaware that, for more than 20 years, it had been clear that “red light to the rear” did not require only red light to the rear. While the state argues that the judge couldn’t tell whether the light was red because the pictures were taken in daylight, red light is red in both darkness and daylight.

The trial judge, however, does seem to understand the ruling in Viclcnair. He saw color pictures of the taillights and ruled that they emitted red light. The state has provided us with only black-and-white photographs. The trial judge also found that the officer’s testimony as to the condition of the taillights was not credible. We were not present at the hearing and therefore cannot judge the officer’s credibility for ourselves. As the court of appeals stated,

We afford almost total deference to a trial court’s determination of historical facts that are supported by the record, particularly when such findings are based on an evaluation of witnesses’ credibility and demeanor.... The trial judge is the sole and exclusive trier of fact at a hearing on a motion to suppress. If the trial court has made fact *314findings, a reviewing court does not engage in its own factual review but decides only whether the trial court’s fact findings are supported by the record .... [W]e share the same sentiment of “trepidation” some of our sister courts have expressed in concluding that an officer’s discovery of an arrest warrant while conducting an illegal detention would provide sufficient attenuation to remove the taint from the finding of contraband. We do not want to “encourage the seizure of suspects upon inadequate grounds while an investigation is conducted for the purpose of establishing probable cause or discovering the existence of arrest warrants.” For these reasons, we conclude the uncovering of Appellee’s arrest warrants failed to provide sufficient attenuation so as to insulate the discovery of ecstasy from taint.... [T]he trial court did not err in granting Appellee’s motion to suppress.

State v. Mazuca, No. 08-09-00102-CR, 2011 WL 1533419, at *2, *3, *7 (Tex.App.-El Paso, Apr. 20, 2011) (not designated for publication) (internal citation omitted).

I would hold that the court of appeals correctly recognized that, without the highly improper traffic stop, the officers could not have learned appellee’s name, found active warrants, or searched him and recovered contraband, all fruits of the poisonous tree. We, like the court of appeals, should “afford almost total deference to a trial court’s determination of historical facts that are supported by the record, particularly when such findings are based on an evaluation of witnesses’ credibility and demeanor” and affirm its suppression of the evidence that was obtained because of the improper traffic stop. I respectfully dissent.