Ewen v. State

518 So. 2d 1285, 1987 WL 421
CourtDistrict Court of Appeal of Florida
DecidedFebruary 10, 1988
Docket87-0329
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 518 So. 2d 1285 (Ewen v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court of Appeal of Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Ewen v. State, 518 So. 2d 1285, 1987 WL 421 (Fla. Ct. App. 1988).

Opinion

518 So.2d 1285 (1987)

Dennie Pryse EWEN, III, Appellant,
v.
STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. 87-0329.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fourth District.

June 10, 1987.
On Motion for Rehearing February 10, 1988.

Richard L. Jorandby, Public Defender, and Thomas F. Ball, III, Asst. Public Defender, West Palm Beach, for appellant.

Robert A. Butterworth, Jr., Atty. Gen., Tallahassee, and Carolyn V. McCann, Asst. Atty. Gen., West Palm Beach, for appellee.

PER CURIAM.

AFFIRMED. See Berry v. State, 493 So.2d 1098 (Fla. 4th DCA 1986).

DOWNEY, GLICKSTEIN and WALDEN, JJ., concur.

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING

Appellant, in his motion for rehearing, asserts that our affirmance of this case presents a conflict with Kearse v. State, 384 So.2d 272 (Fla. 4th DCA 1980). However, Kearse is distinguished from this case by the following factors. First, in Kearse, the incident took place in broad daylight, whereas in the instant case, it was late at night. Second, in Kearse, the leaning into the window took place at a gas station, whereas in this case, the leaning into the window occurred across the street from two known crack houses. Finally, in Kearse, the hypodermic syringe was observed as a result of a pat down search which was conducted after the illegal stop. In the instant case, by way of manifest difference, the single edge razor blade was observed in plain view after the stop. We find that the differences between this case and Kearse and the totality of the circumstances in the instant case do support the conclusion that the appellant was legally stopped. See also Murphy v. State, 512 So.2d 1006 (Fla. 4th DCA 1987) (where one *1286 of the facts recited was that a black male was "handing in the window" of appellant's car).

With regard to the racial insinuation contained in the dissent, we should keep in mind that the focal point in this case is whether there was a founded suspicion to detain appellant. As we all know, in order to justify the stop in this, or any other such case, only a founded suspicion in the mind of the detaining officer is required. State v. Stevens, 354 So.2d 1244 (Fla. 4th DCA 1978). A founded suspicion is a suspicion that has some factual foundation in the circumstances observed by the officer, when those circumstances are interpreted in the light of the officer's knowledge. Stevens, supra. Factors to be considered as reasonably suggesting the suspect's involvement in the possible commission of a crime are:

The time; the day of the week; the location; the physical appearance of the suspect; the behavior of the suspect; the appearance and manner of operation of any vehicle involved; anything incongruous or unusual in the situation as interpreted in the light of the officer's knowledge.

354 So.2d at 1247. Here, we have a white suspect in a predominantly black neighborhood, late at night, parked in his truck across the street from two known cocaine rock houses. A black male known to the police as a drug pusher is seen leaning into the cab of the truck on the driver's side thereof. In addition to those objective facts, the police know from their experience that the presence of a white person in this neighborhood at nighttime indicates a drug buy. In answer to the following question: "Is it incongruous to have someone, a white male, in that area in that specific location, at that time of night?", the arresting officer testified: "The only ones I have seen there are there to buy cocaine." We suggest this scenario and the experience of the officers involved is exactly what this court meant in Stevens when it listed one of the factors as "anything incongruous or unusual in the situation as interpreted in the light of the officers' knowledge." Nor is this scenario unusual in the jurisprudence of this state during the past decade with the particular reference to cases involving the illicit sale of drugs.

Accordingly, the petition for rehearing is DENIED.

DOWNEY and WALDEN, JJ., concur.

GLICKSTEIN, J., dissents with opinion.

GLICKSTEIN, Judge, dissenting.

I now feel that in agreeing with the original PCA I failed to heed my own words in Six Essential Ingredients of Extraordinary Judging and Lawyering: Craftsmanship, Industry, Sensitivity, Courage, Fun and Service, The Florida Bar Journal, (January, 1985):

Every case should appear to a judge as having an inner essence that can be perceived only if the judge's receptivity is sharply honed. While sensitive judges may differ in their value judgments, all share a responsibility to reach a level of concern that reveals the heart of the matter.

Id. at 52. Even when the defendant's motion for rehearing was filed, initially I did not dig deeply enough to take into consideration, in its historical perspective, the important constitutional issue that is involved here.

The writer could not foretell when he authored Kearse v. State, that it would be more important in 1988 as authority to hold onto the principles recited therein six years earlier. It was written at a time when most of us did not yet perceive a trend toward erosion of individual rights in keeping with a massive emotional swing to the right in this nation and state. In 1982, we Floridians adopted a constitutional amendment which, by tying Florida law to United States Supreme Court decisions, effectively *1287 gutted Section 12 of our State's Declaration of Rights. There truly must be a pendulum, as Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., observed, swings every so often from left and right.

Justice Douglas must have recognized this swing; and he kept his foot on the brake, all the way to the floor, when he perceived as sensitive a court as the Warren Court to be eroding individual rights. In his dissent in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968) he raised a grave concern that for the first time the nation's highest court was permitting a warrantless seizure of an individual without the necessity of finding probable cause. His concurrence in United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 889, 95 S.Ct. 2574, 2584, 45 L.Ed.2d 607, 621 (1975) echoed the same:

The fears I voiced in Terry about the weakening of the Fourth Amendment have regrettably been borne out by subsequent events. Hopes that the suspicion test might be employed only in the pursuit of violent crime — a limitation endorsed by some of its proponents — have now been dashed, as it has been applied in narcotics investigations, in apprehension of "illegal" aliens, and indeed has come to be viewed as a legal construct for the regulation of a general investigatory police power. The suspicion test has been warmly embraced by law enforcement forces and vigorously employed in the cause of crime detection. In criminal cases we see those for whom the initial intrusion led to the discovery of some wrongdoing. But the nature of the test permits the police to interfere as well with a multitude of law-abiding citizens, whose only transgression may be a nonconformist appearance or attitude. As one commentator has remarked:
"`Police power exercised without probable cause is arbitrary.

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Bluebook (online)
518 So. 2d 1285, 1987 WL 421, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/ewen-v-state-fladistctapp-1988.