THE STATE OF FLORIDA, APPELLANT,
v.
EDILBERTO AGUSTO GOVEA, APPELLEE
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Florida's appellate court reversed a suppression order, holding that police may conduct consensual encounters and request searches without articulable suspicion, and that the defendant's consent was valid because officers did not retain his documents.
Police may engage a person in conversation and request consent to search without articulable suspicion, and consent is valid when officers do not seize the person's documents.
[1] Police may conduct consensual encounters and request searches without articulable suspicion, and consent remains valid absent a seizure of the person's documents or prope…
Previewing 1 of 1 headnotes on this case. FLexlaw’s editorially structured points of law — every proposition, pinpointed — are reserved for members.
Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence“police officers, without any articulable suspicion that a person has committed or is about to commit a crime, to engage such person in conversation and request such person's consent to a search”
The court acknowledged the established law permitting warrantless consensual encounters and searches despite the trial court's concerns about its correctness.
Police officers approached defendant Govea, viewed his airline ticket and alien registration card, and requested consent to search his tote bag, from …
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PER CURIAM.
Notwithstanding the trial court’s strongly expressed misgivings about the correctness of decisional law which permits police officers, without any articulable suspicion that a person has committed or is about to commit a crime, to engage such person in conversation and request such person’s consent to a search, this is the law by which both this court and the trial court are bound. Art. I, § 12, Fla.Const.; Florida v. Rodriguez, 469 U.S. 1,105 S.Ct. 308, 83 L.Ed.2d 165 (1984); Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491,103 S.Ct. 1319, 75 L.Ed.2d 229 (1983).
See also Login v. State, 394 So. 2d 183 (Fla. 3d DCA 1981).
Since, contrary to the defendant’s contention, there is no evidence to support the trial court’s finding that the police officers retained the defendant’s airline ticket and alien registration card after they were shown to the officers, there was no seizure of the defendant which would have rendered his subsequent consent invalid. Compare Horvitz v. State, 433 So. 2d 545 (Fla. 4th DCA 1983) (consent search invalid where police retained possession of defendant’s airline ticket); State v. Frost, 374 So. 2d 593 (Fla. 3d DCA 1979) (same).
Accordingly, the trial court’s order suppressing the cocaine seized from the defendant’s tote bag is reversed and the cause remanded for further proceedings.
Reversed and remanded.
Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus
Citator
Cited By
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State v. Brown, 619 So. 2d 378 (Fla. 2d DCA 1993)…ng consent to search. We, therefore, find no merit in the appellee’s contention. Since there was a proper stop and consent to search, the trial court erred in suppressing the search on the basis of lack of danger to the officer. See State v. Govea, 514 So. 2d 80 (Fla. 3d DCA 1987). Accordingly, this case is reversed and remanded with directions to set aside the order granting the appellee’s motion to suppress. THREADGILL and PATTERSON, JJ., concur.…
Authorities Cited
- Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491 (U.S. 1983)
- Florida v. Rodriguez, 469 U.S. 1 (U.S. 1984)
- Login v. State, 394 So. 2d 183 (Fla. 3d DCA 1981)
- State v. Frost, 374 So. 2d 593 (Fla. 3d DCA 1979)
- Horvitz v. State, 433 So. 2d 545 (Fla. 4th DCA 1983)