FIRST DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL

STATE OF FLORIDA

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No. 1D16-1755

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CHRISTOPHER JACKSON,

Appellant,

v.

STATE OF FLORIDA,

Appellee.

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On appeal from the Circuit Court for Leon County.

Angela C. Dempsey, Judge.

February 19, 2017

WINSOR, J.

Christopher Jackson appeals his convictions and sentences, 

claiming violations of the Fourth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments. 

More specifically, Jackson argues that the trial court should have 

granted his second motion to suppress, that only a jury could 

determine his status as a Prison Releasee Reoffender (PRR), and that 

his life sentence constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. We 

affirm.

I.
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Jackson and two others broke into a home and held the home’s 

four occupants at gunpoint. The three assailants forced the victims 

into a bathroom and took turns holding them while the others 

collected valuables. Jackson later claimed one of the victims had 

shorted him some marijuana in a recent sale. He admitted he broke 

into the house but insisted he only intended to take back that 

marijuana. He claimed the other assailants—not he—had stolen the 

other items. 

Among the stolen items was an iPhone, so police quickly looked 

to the “Find My iPhone” application to track the assailants. Armed 

with real-time tracking and the description the victims provided, 

officers broadcast a be-on-the-look-out (BOLO) alert. An officer 

quickly identified a car in the same area as the stolen iPhone, traveling 

in the same direction as the stolen iPhone, and containing people 

matching the assailants’ general descriptions.

After waiting for backup, the officer stopped the car, removed 

and handcuffed the occupants, and conducted a protective sweep of 

the car. The officer initially saw nothing in plain view but then opened 

the trunk and found marijuana and a revolver with an altered serial 

number. Her decision to open the trunk was consistent with her 

department’s “plus one” rule, under which (she later testified) 

officers always search the trunk of a vehicle during a felony traffic 

stop “to make sure there’s no other occupants either in the vehicle or 

in the trunk.” 

Meanwhile, other officers brought the victims to the traffic-stop 

location. The victims identified Jackson and another male passenger 

as participants in the robbery, and officers arrested those two. Officers 

then searched the car’s passenger compartment incident to arrest, and 

they found several items taken during the robbery including a wallet, 

a handgun, and a victim’s driver’s license. They also found the stolen 

iPhone that led to the quick apprehension.

The State charged Jackson with burglary of a dwelling, 

aggravated assault, marijuana possession, possession of a firearm 
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with an altered serial number, possession of a firearm by a convicted 

felon, and four counts of armed robbery. 

Jackson, who represented himself at trial, adopted his codefendant’s two motions to suppress. The first motion sought to 

suppress the evidence found in the trunk before the show-up 

identification. The second motion sought to suppress the evidence 

found in the passenger compartment during the search incident to 

arrest. 

The court granted the first motion saying it was “not convinced 

that [the plus-one] rule actually exists” and that it was “ludicrous” for 

officers to believe there could have been someone hiding in the trunk. 

The court also explicitly rejected the State’s argument that the 

evidence should nevertheless be admitted under the inevitablediscovery exception, stating that “without the evidence from the 

trunk, there was no basis to detain the individuals and the show-up 

might never have occurred.” After this ruling, the State moved to 

dismiss the charges for marijuana possession and possession of a 

firearm with an altered serial number.

But in a later hearing on the second motion to suppress, the court 

concluded police were justified in detaining Jackson for the show-up 

and that “the show-up lineup would have occurred irrespective of 

whether the property in the trunk had been found.” The remaining 

counts then proceeded to trial.

The jury convicted Jackson of burglary of a dwelling, aggravated 

assault, and two counts of armed robbery. At sentencing, the court 

found that Jackson had committed these crimes within three years of 

being released from prison and that he therefore qualified for 

sentencing under the PRR Act. See § 775.082(9), Fla. Stat. (2012). 

Accordingly, the court sentenced Jackson to concurrent life sentences 

with a ten-year mandatory minimum in each of the armed-robbery 

counts, fifteen years’ prison for burglary of a dwelling, and five years’ 

prison with a three-year mandatory-minimum sentence for 

aggravated assault.
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II.

Jackson’s first argument on appeal is that the court should have 

suppressed the evidence found in the passenger compartment. He 

argues that without the evidence found in the trunk, there was no 

basis for searching the vehicle a second time or for detaining the 

occupants for the show-up identification. In other words, he argues, 

the search of the trunk (which the trial court found illegal) was the 

poisonous tree, and everything later found in the car was the fruit. See

Oregon v. Elstad, 470 U.S. 298, 307-09 (1985). We conclude the trial 

court correctly rejected this argument.

Preliminarily, much of Jackson’s argument focuses on the trial 

court’s conclusion that officers illegally searched the trunk. Jackson 

insists that the trial court’s ruling on that point obligated it to 

suppress evidence found after the trunk’s search. He specifically 

argues that “the trial court’s rulings were inconsistent and arbitrary.” 

The trial court’s order suppressing evidence from the trunk is not 

before us, and we are not obligated to presume the correctness of that 

order’s legal conclusions—even assuming they were inconsistent 

with the court’s later conclusions. The State was authorized to appeal 

the order suppressing evidence from the trunk, Fla. R. App. P. 

9.140(c)(1)(B), but it chose not to—perhaps because it figured it could 

secure a conviction and life sentence with the remaining evidence 

alone. The State is not obligated to appeal adverse suppression 

rulings just to preserve convictions secured despite those rulings. We 

therefore must decide whether the suppression ruling that is before 

us was correct in its own right.

An officer may conduct an investigative stop when he or she has 

reasonable suspicion that the occupants have committed or are 

committing a crime. Hunter v. State, 660 So. 2d 244, 249 (Fla. 1995). An 

officer need not personally observe the events giving rise to 

reasonable suspicion, so long as facts are communicated to him by 

another officer or a reliable third party. State v. Bowers, 87 So. 3d 704, 

707-08 (Fla. 2012). Courts evaluating whether an investigatory stop 

based on a BOLO was justified consider “(1) the length of time and 
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distance from the offense; (2) route of flight; (3) specificity of the 

description of the vehicle and its occupants; and (4) the source of the 

BOLO information.” Hunter, 660 So. 2d at 249.

These factors weigh overwhelmingly in the State’s favor. The 

robbery occurred at 5:45 a.m., and the officer initiated the stop shortly 

after 6:00 a.m. Officers knew the perpetrators’ exact route because 

they were tracking the stolen iPhone, which was traveling in the same 

vicinity and in the same direction as Jackson’s vehicle. Finally, the 

vehicle contained the same number of occupants as the BOLO 

description, and the officer saw that one of the occupants wore a 

camouflage hat, consistent with the BOLO. Cf. id. (holding that officer 

had reasonable suspicion to conduct traffic stop and detain occupants 

for a show-up identification based on BOLO where roughly an hour 

had passed since the crime was committed and BOLO description 

included number and description of occupants). 

Given these facts, officers had reasonable suspicion to stop the 

vehicle and detain the occupants for the show-up identification. Once 

the victims identified Jackson, there was probable cause to arrest him 

(assuming there was no probable cause beforehand). And because 

officers reasonably believed that the vehicle contained evidence of the 

robbery, the subsequent search of the passenger compartment was 

justified as a search incident to arrest. See Arizona v. Gant, 556 U.S. 332, 

343-44 (2009). 

The search of the vehicle’s passenger compartment was not a 

violation of the Fourth Amendment. 

III.

Next, Jackson argues that because his eligibility for sentencing 

under the PRR Act was not found by the jury beyond a reasonable 

doubt, his heightened sentence violated his Sixth-Amendment rights 

in light of Alleyne v. United States, 133 S. Ct. 2151 (2013). 

In Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 490 (2000), the Supreme 

Court held that any fact that increases a defendant’s statutory 
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maximum sentence, other than the fact of a prior conviction, must be 

found by a jury or admitted by the defendant. Then, in Alleyne, the 

Supreme Court extended this rule to apply to any fact that increases 

any mandatory-minimum sentence. Alleyne, 133 S. Ct. at 2155. After 

Apprendi but before Alleyne, the Florida Supreme Court upheld the 

constitutionality of the PRR Act, rejecting arguments that the Act 

violated Apprendi. See Robinson v. State, 793 So. 2d 891, 893 (Fla. 2001).

Jackson contends that the United States Supreme Court’s Alleyne

decision effectively overruled the Florida Supreme Court’s Robinson

decision. He contends that in light of Alleyne, the PRR Act violates the 

Sixth Amendment. But this court explicitly rejected that argument in 

Williams v. State, 143 So. 3d 423, 424 (Fla. 1st DCA 2014). Jackson 

argues that Williams was wrongly decided, but this panel is bound to 

follow it. 

IV.

Finally, we reject Jackson’s argument that his life sentence 

violates the Eighth Amendment. The Florida Supreme Court has said 

that “to violate the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, a prison 

sentence must, at least, be grossly disproportionate to the crime.” 

Adaway v. State, 902 So. 2d 746, 749 (Fla. 2005). A life sentence for 

armed robbery falls well short of that standard. Cf., e.g., Harmelin v. 

Michigan, 501 U.S. 957 (1991) (no Eighth Amendment violation with 

life sentence for drug possession); Rummel v. Estelle, 445 U.S. 263 

(1980) (no Eighth Amendment violation with life sentence for 

obtaining money by false pretenses based on recidivist statute). We 

likewise reject Jackson’s argument that his sentence violates the 

Florida Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual 

punishments. See Art. I, § 17, Fla. Const. (noting that Florida provision 

“shall be construed in conformity with decisions of the United States 

Supreme Court which interpret the prohibition against cruel and 

unusual punishment”).

To the extent Jackson argues his sentence is too harsh because it 

could have been lighter if he committed his crimes twelve days later 
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than he did, his timing does not make his punishment any more 

grossly disproportionate.* It is up to the Legislature to determine 

where the appropriate cutoff for a PRR sentence lies, and the Florida 

Legislature chose three years. See Rummel, 445 U.S. at 285 (“Like the 

line dividing felony theft from petty larceny, the point at which a 

recidivist will be deemed to have demonstrated the necessary 

propensities and the amount of time that the recidivist will be isolated 

from society are matters largely within the discretion of the punishing 

jurisdiction.”). Regardless, the Florida Supreme Court has held that 

mandatory-minimum sentences under the PRR Act do not violate the 

Eighth Amendment. State v. Cotton, 769 So. 2d 345, 356 (Fla. 2000) 

(“[T]he [PRR] Act’s mandatory sentencing scheme does not constitute 

‘cruel or unusual’ punishment.”).

AFFIRMED.

BILBREY and M.K. THOMAS, JJ., concur.

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Not final until disposition of any timely and authorized 

motion under Fla. R. App. P. 9.330 or 9.331.

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Candice Kaye Brower and Melissa Joy Ford, Tallahassee, for 

Appellant.

Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, and Kaitlin Weiss, Assistant 

Attorney General, Tallahassee, for Appellee.

*

 The PRR Act allows the State to seek enhanced sentences for 

those who commit certain felonies within three years of release from 

prison. See § 775.082(9), Fla. Stat. (2012). Jackson committed his crimes 

just eleven days short of the three-year mark following his release.