Title: State of Florida v. Will Perkins

State: florida

Issuer: Florida Supreme Court

Document:

Supreme Court of Florida
 
____________
No. SC95741
____________
STATE OF FLORIDA,
Petitioner,
vs.
WILL PERKINS,
Respondent.
[April 27, 2000]
PER CURIAM.
We have for review the Fourth District’s decision  in Perkins v. State, 734 So.
2d 480 (Fla. 4th DCA 1999), which certified conflict with the Third District’s
decision in O’Neal v. State, 649 So. 2d 311 (Fla. 3d DCA 1995), and the Second
District’s decision in Ware v. State, 679 So. 2d 3 (Fla. 2nd DCA 1996).  We have
jurisdiction.  Art. V, § 3(b)(4), Fla. Const.  For the reasons that follow we approve
Perkins, and disapprove O’Neal and Ware.
The respondent, Will Perkins, was stopped by a Palm Beach County police
1 At the suppression hearing the State proffered evidence indicating that another officer
radioed the stop officer and advised him to stop the defendant because the officer did not believe
he had a license.  
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officer on July 13, 1997, for the sole purpose of checking the status of his driver’s
license.  After Perkins was stopped, the officer obtained Perkins’ driver’s license
and discovered that it was suspended.  Perkins was arrested and charged with
driving with a suspended license.  
Perkins moved the Palm Beach County Court to suppress all the evidence
obtained from the stop.  The State conceded that the officer did not see Perkins
commit any traffic violations, or any other activity justifying a stop.1  
Accordingly, the trial court held the stop unlawful.  The State, however,
maintained that the evidence obtained from the stop, i.e., the knowledge of Perkins’
name and driving record, was not subject to suppression under O’Neal and Ware. 
Both O’Neal and Ware held that the identity of a defendant could not be suppressed
as the fruit of an unlawful stop in a prosecution for driving with a suspended license.
The trial court, feeling duty-bound to follow the holdings of the Third and
Second Districts in O’Neal and Ware, denied Perkins’ motion to suppress. 
Thereafter, Perkins pled no contest to driving with a suspended license, reserving
his right to appeal.  In its order the trial court certified the following question to the
Fourth District Court of Appeal as being of great public importance:
2   In its order, the trial court reproduced an article by Wayne S. Melnick criticizing the
results reached in O’Neal and Ware as being driven by a misreading of federal case law.  Wayne
S. Melnick, Suppression of Identity:  Has the Supreme Court Carved Yet Another Exception to
the Exclusionary Rule?, 9 Fla. Defender 24 (1997).
3   In Ware, the Second District addressed the identical certified question raised in the
instant case.  The Third District in O’Neal considered the following question:
Is the actual identity of a defendant obtained pursuant to an illegal
stop suppressible as a fruit of the poisonous tree where the police
officer had no knowledge of the defendant’s identity prior to the
stop?
O’Neal, 649 So. 2d at 312.
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Where the identity of a driver is an essential issue that
must be proven, is that identity subject to suppression if it
is discovered as a result of an unlawful search and
seizure?2
On appeal, the Fourth District answered the certified question in the
affirmative, and certified conflict with O’Neal and Ware.  See Perkins v. State, 734
So. 2d 480, 483 (Fla. 4th DCA 1999).
O’Neal and Ware
In O’Neal and Ware, the Third and Second Districts answered certified
questions in the negative which were nearly identical to that question certified to the
Fourth District in the instant case.3  In concluding that a defendant’s identity is not a
suppressible “fruit” of an unlawful stop in a prosecution for driving while license
suspended, both courts principally relied on language from INS v. Lopez-Mendoza,
468 U.S. 1032 (1984).  Specifically, the O’Neal and Ware courts cited the following
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language in Lopez-Mendoza as controlling:
The “body” or identity of a defendant or respondent in a
criminal or civil proceeding is never itself suppressible as
a fruit of an unlawful arrest, even if it is conceded that an
unlawful arrest, search, or interrogation occurred.
Id. at 1039.  
We agree with the Fourth District’s conclusion that the reliance by the
Second and Third Districts on the aforementioned language was misplaced.
In Lopez-Mendoza, the Supreme Court addressed the question of whether the
“Fourth Amendment’s exclusionary rule should be extended to civil deportation
proceedings.”  United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259, 272 (1990).  In
holding that the exclusionary rule did not extend to civil deportation proceedings,
the Court addressed the claims of two aliens, Lopez-Mendoza and Sandoval-
Sanchez, both of whom were denied protection of the exclusionary rule in their
deportation proceedings.  
Lopez-Mendoza claimed his arrest was illegal and, therefore, objected to his
compelled presence at the deportation proceeding.  As the Court noted, Lopez-
Mendoza neither objected to nor sought the suppression of evidence: “At his
deportation hearing Lopez-Mendoza objected only to the fact that he had been
summoned to a deportation hearing following an unlawful arrest; he entered no
4 Sandoval-Sanchez sought the suppression of statements he made to INS agents during
an illegal detention in which he admitted his unlawful entry into the United States.  Lopez-
Mendoza at 1037.
5   In United States v. Crews, 445 U.S. 463 (1980), the Court addressed the question of
whether an “in-court identification of the accused by the victim of a crime should be suppressed as
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objection to the evidence offered against him.”  Lopez-Mendoza, 468 U.S. at 1040. 
Lopez-Mendoza essentially claimed that his illegal arrest operated to deprive the
immigration court of jurisdiction over his person.  It was in the context of this claim,
and not a claim to suppress evidence, that the Court issued the language relied upon
by the O’Neal and Ware courts.  This distinction was highlighted by the Court in
distinguishing Mendoza’s claim from that raised in the consolidated case of
Sandoval-Sanchez: “Respondent Sandoval-Sanchez has a more substantial claim. 
He objected not to his compelled presence at a deportation proceeding, but to
evidence offered at that proceeding.”  Lopez-Mendoza, 468 U.S. at 1040.4 
Moreover, unlike its treatment of Lopez-Mendoza’s claim, the Court did not address
the substance of Sandoval-Sanchez’s evidentiary claim.  The Court instead mooted
Sandoval-Sanchez’s claim by holding the exclusionary rule inapplicable to civil
deportation proceedings.  Id. at 1050.  
Thus, it appears that the Court’s reference to the “body” or identity of a
defendant as immune from suppression truly referred to identity in a personal
jurisdiction sense.5  This reading is further supported by an analysis of the cases
the fruit of the defendant’s unlawful arrest.”  Id. at 465.  In holding that the in-court identification
was not the product of the alleged Fourth Amendment violation, the majority opinion refused to
answer the question of whether the defendant’s “corpus” or “person” could be considered a
“species of evidence” and therefore a “possible fruit of police misconduct.”  That portion of the
majority opinion authored by Justice Brennan, however, was joined by only two others, Justices
Stewart and Stevens.  The remaining five Justices, led by Justice White, thought it appropriate to
address the question, and in so doing ostensibly rejected the claim that a defendant’s “face can be
suppressible as a fruit of an unlawful arrest.”  Analysis of Justice White’s opinion, however,
reveals an affirmation of the Frisbie rule of personal jurisdiction echoed in Lopez-Mendoza, rather
than a complete rejection of identity as a “species” of evidence. 
6   Federal cases interpreting the Lopez-Mendoza identity language have similarly
understood it to refer to personal jurisdiction.  See United States v. $191,910.00 in U.S.
Currency, 16 F. 3d 1051, 1064 (9th Cir. 1994) (“On careful examination, Lopez-Mendoza merely
reaffirms the longstanding rule that a court does not lose jurisdiction over an individual merely
because the government secured his presence in the forum through illegal means.”); Accord
Brown v. Doe, 2 F. 3d 1236, 1243 (2nd Cir. 1993); United States v. $639,558 in U.S. Currency,
955 F. 2d 712, 715 (D.C. Cir. 1992); United States v. Pelaez, 930 F. 2d 520, 525 (6th Cir. 1991);
Matta-Ballesteros v. Henman, 896 F. 2d 255, 260 (7th Cir. 1990).
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cited by the Court in support of its proposition.  See Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103,
119 (1975) (“Nor do we retreat from the established rule that illegal arrest or
detention does not void a subsequent conviction.”); Frisbie v. Collins, 342 U.S. 519,
522 (1952) (“This Court has never departed from the rule . . . that the power of a
court to try a person for crime is not impaired by the fact that he had been brought
within the court’s jurisdiction by reason of a ‘forcible abduction.’”); United States
ex rel. Bilokumsky v. Tod, 263 U.S. 149, 158 (1923) (“Irregularities on the part of
the government official prior to, or in connection with, the arrest would not
necessarily invalidate later proceedings in all respects conformable to law.”).6
Suppression of Evidence
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In Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471 (1963), the Court established the
test to be applied when determining whether a Fourth Amendment violation requires
the suppression of seized evidence:
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 in such a case 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.
Id. at 487-88 (quoting John MacArthur Maguire, Evidence of Guilt 221 (1959)).  
It is clear that in the instant case the evidence required to prosecute the
charge of driving with a suspended license came directly from the exploitation of the
unlawful stop.  We agree with the Fourth District and find “no basis for
distinguishing the circumstances here from others in which evidence must be
suppressed, as fruit of the poisonous tree, where discovered following an unlawful
stop.”  Perkins, 734 So. 2d at 482; e.g., Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648 (1979)
(affirming suppression of marijuana found in plain view as the fruit of an unlawful
stop where the driver was randomly stopped solely to check his driver’s license and
registration and the State offered no empirical data to support its claim that the stop
was justified by a broad concern for highway safety); United States v. Johns, 891 F.
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2d 243 (9th Cir. 1989) (suppressing marijuana as the fruit of an unlawful stop).
Other courts have suppressed some if not all of the evidence obtained from an
unlawful stop in driving with suspended license cases.  See People v. Santiago, 645
N.Y.S. 2d 746, 748-749 (N.Y. City Crim. Ct. 1996) (holding that the officer’s
identification evidence and observations and the DMV records obtained as a direct
result of an unlawful stop may be suppressed);  State v. Asbury, No. 16771, 1998
WL 309267, at *5-6, No. 16771 (Ohio Ct. App. June 12, 1998) (unpublished
opinion) (suppressing the officer’s post-stop observation of the defendant in the
driver’s seat where the evidence established that the officer could not see the
defendant or know his identity prior to the unlawful stop);  State v. Starr, 754 P. 2d
618, 620 (Or. Ct. App. 1988) (suppressing all the evidence flowing from the
unlawful stop, including the defendant’s name and DMV records);  Zimmerman v.
Commonwealth, 363 S.E. 2d 708, 710 (Va. 1988) (dismissing an indictment for
driving after having been declared an habitual offender where the driver was
stopped unlawfully and “defendant’s identity and connection with unlawful activity
were only first discovered through the illegal stop”).
Consistent with this treatment of the exclusionary rule, we hold that when, as
in the instant case, an officer unlawfully stops a defendant solely to determine
whether he or she is driving with a suspended license, that officer’s post-stop
7 Cf. United States v. Foppe, 993 F. 2d 1444 (9th Cir. 1993).  In Foppe, the defendant
was convicted of unarmed bank robbery and on appeal challenged the admissibility of an officer’s
observations of him during an illegal pat-down search in which the police discovered an ink-
stained wad of cash in his back pocket.  The officer testified at trial that when he was arrested
Foppe had a mustache similar to that of the robber in the surveillance photographs taken at the
bank and had since grown a full beard.  The State argued that Foppe’s subsequent growth of a full
beard demonstrated consciousness of guilt.  The Ninth Circuit, in analyzing whether the officer’s
observations were subject to suppression, asked in part “whether the illegal activity tend[ed] to
significantly direct the investigation to the evidence in question.” Id. at 1449.  The Court
concluded that the observations of the defendant were incidental to the criminal investigation and
therefore not suppressible: “Because incidental observations which police have in mind when
detaining a suspect are not objective, suppression of such observations will have no deterrent
effect on unlawful police activity.” Id.
Such is not the case here where the defendant was stopped for the sole purpose of
determining if in fact he was driving with a suspended license.  The principal evidence in the
instant case is the observation of the defendant behind the wheel.  When viewed in the context of
driving with a suspended license, the observations by a police officer of a defendant following an
unlawful stop can hardly be described as incidental to the criminal investigation.
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observation of the defendant behind the wheel must be suppressed.7
Accordingly, we disapprove O’Neal and Ware and approve Perkins’ reversal
of the trial court’s judgment to the extent it holds the officer’s post-stop
observations of the defendant subject to the exclusionary rule.  We remand for
further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
HARDING, C.J., and SHAW, WELLS, ANSTEAD, PARIENTE and LEWIS, JJ.,
concur.
QUINCE, J., dissents with an opinion.
NOT FINAL UNTIL TIME EXPIRES TO FILE REHEARING MOTION, AND IF
FILED, DETERMINED.
8    It appears especially harsh to suppress the defendant’s identity in this case because
there is some evidence that the defendant was known to another officer in the department and the
other officer was somehow involved in this stop.
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QUINCE, J., dissenting.
I agree with the Second District Court of Appeal and the Third District Court
of Appeal in Ware v. State, 679 So. 2d 3 (Fla. 2d DCA 1996) and O’Neal v. State,
649 So. 2d 311 (Fla. 3d DCA 1995), that the identity of a suspect gained through an
illegal stop is not subject to suppression.8  The decision in both cases was premised
on the Supreme Court’s holding in Immigration and Naturalization Service v.
Lopez-Mendoza, 468 U.S. 1032 (1984).  And while Lopez-Mendoza involves a
deportation proceeding, the principle enunciated by the Supreme Court, that “the
body or identity of a defendant or respondent in a criminal or civil proceeding is
never itself suppressible as a fruit of an unlawful arrest” is equally applicable to this
criminal proceeding.  468 U. S. at 1039.  The State suggests in its brief and at oral
argument that the fact which should be subject to suppression in this case is that of
driving.  It seems clear that law enforcement learned the fact of defendant’s
operation of a vehicle by the stop of that vehicle; therefore, the fact of driving
should be the fact challenged as the fruit of the illegal stop.
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Application for Review of the Decision of the District Court of Appeal - Certified
Direct Conflict of Decisions
Fourth District - Case No. 4D98-1424
(Palm Beach County)
Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General, Celia A. Terenzio, Bureau Chief, and Joseph
A. Tringali, Assistant Attorney General, West Palm Beach, Florida,
for Petitioner
Richard L. Jorandby, Public Defender, and Cherry Grant, Assistant Public Defender,
Fifteenth Judicial Circuit, West Palm Beach, Florida,
for Respondent