State v. Huntley
This text of 501 So. 2d 22 (State v. Huntley) 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.
Opinion
The trial court signed a one sentence order, granting the defendant’s motion to suppress evidence obtained in a warrant-less vehicular search. We reverse.
The evidence relevant to the issue is solely contained in a law enforcement officer’s deposition, which is therefore the basis for the trial court’s decision. The deposition was that of James Hughes, an officer with the Coral Springs Police Department. The incident in question took place on Thursday, July 25, 1985, at approximately 7:30 p.m., when it was still daylight, and fairly bright. Officer Hughes, accompanied by a dispatcher, drove down a dirt road which led through a field, and saw a car parked on the dirt road. We know that which the deposed officer saw would not be enough to justify the subsequent intrusion that occurred, as all he saw was the defendant driver pass something to a back seat passenger, who passed something to another passenger in the front seat. An officer’s bare suspicion, aroused by some indefinite movement by a vehicle's occu[23]*23pants, the nature of which movement the observer cannot articulate, is not a sufficient basis for a stop; for such movement does not raise the suspicion to the level of founded suspicion. See G.J.P. v. State, 469 So.2d 826, 827-28 (Fla. 2d DCA 1985), and cases cited therein. But in the instant case, what the officer himself observed was not by itself the basis for the stop.
The officer subsequently stopped his vehicle, approached the defendant’s vehicle, and asked the defendant to shut off the engine, as the defendant had started the vehicle and had started to back up. The officer then asked to see some identification, as the department had problems with drug transactions “taking place back there.”
The deposition establishes what the officer had heard before he made the stop:
Q You could not tell if they were doing a drug transaction, could you?
A No. What brought my attention to the possibility that this was a drug transaction when we first pulled around the corner is the dispatcher sitting to my right, she said, “Was he snorting something?” I said, “I couldn’t tell,” and she said, “I saw a straw,” so that’s why we approached at that point.
Q Did she say she saw a straw or something that could have been a straw? It’s hard to tell from 35 feet away.
A She said it looked like a straw to her. She said, “It looked like he was snorting something.” I didn’t see that. She said she saw him snorting something. That’s why I approached the car the way I did.
(Emphasis added.)1
The dispatcher was a new, civilian dispatcher who was riding to witness “what was out on the street.” We do not know anything of her training outside of Coral Springs but know she had none relevant to this case with the department involved here.
[24]*24We fully realize what the requirements of a warrantless search are. Nevertheless, we cannot bring ourselves to believe that the officer in the instant case could ignore' what he heard the dispatcher say; or that we can ignore what he heard in determining if there was reasonable suspicion to make the stop.
In our view, the trial court erred in suppressing the evidence. Factually, this case is distinguishable from Carter v. State, 454 So.2d 739 (Fla. 2nd DCA 1984) (Officers observing occupants of legally parked vehicle bend down, and individual officer’s seeing driver place rolled up bill in pocket as officer approached car did not constitute founded suspicion authorizing a lawful investigatory stop and detention under Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968)). In contrast, someone’s snorting through a straw, seen by the dispatcher who was riding with the officer, and communicated by her to the officer, who had previously seen something apparently being passed among the occupants, constitutes an articulate basis for founded suspicion in an experienced law enforcement officer's mind.
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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack
501 So. 2d 22, 12 Fla. L. Weekly 77, 1986 Fla. App. LEXIS 11031, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-huntley-fladistctapp-1986.