SUZANNE BROWNSTEIN, APPELLANT,
v.
STATE OF FLORIDA, APPELLEE
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The court held that evidence found during a traffic stop must be suppressed if the stop was unlawful.
Police stopped defendant's car without a proper basis and found controlled substances in her purse. The defendant was later found to be driving with a…
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LEHAN, Judge.
Defendant appeals from the denial of her motion to suppress capsules of a controlled substance found by the police in defendant’s purse. We reverse.
The capsules were seen by a police officer in the purse while defendant was looking for her driver’s license after the officer had stopped defendant’s car. The officer had no proper basis to stop defendant. The only justifications for the stop were the officer’s testimony that, “Initially I stopped the vehicle to find out if the person was lost, and to let them know they were in a bad part of town and there was some danger being in that location at that particular time,” that the defendant “was a white female traveling alone,” and that “being a police officer, I was cynical. I figured the person was either lost or there to score some dope.”
The capsules should have been suppressed as the product of an unlawful stop. See Morris v. State, 519 So. 2d 706 (Fla. 2d DCA 1988); Ward v. State, 453 So. 2d 517 (Fla. 2d DCA 1984); Vollmer v. State, 337 So. 2d 1024 (Fla. 2d DCA 1976). That defendant was determined to have been driving with a suspended license is of no moment because that determination also resulted from the improper stop. See Ward. Reversed and remanded for proceedings consistent herewith.
SCHEB, A.C.J., and SCHOONOVER, J., concur.
Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus
Citator
Cited By
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McDOUGAL v. State, 580 So. 2d 324 (Fla. 2d DCA 1991)…shown to have been justified. The defendant’s right to privacy tips the balance against the government’s minimal legitimate interest in these circumstances. See United States v. Dunbar, 470 F.Supp. 704 (D.C.Conn.1979). See also Brownstein v. State, 521 So. 2d 371 (Fla. 2d DCA 1988). Reversed and remanded for proceedings consistent herewith. DANAHY, A.C.J., and PARKER, J., concur.…
Authorities Cited
- Lucinda Stratton v. McQUEEN, 337 So. 2d 1024 (Fla. 2d DCA 1976)
- Morris v. State, 519 So. 2d 706 (Fla. 2d DCA 1988)
- Ward v. State, 453 So. 2d 517 (Fla. 2d DCA 1984)