Opinion ID: 1770591
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: application of evans and white

Text: Our constitution requires that search and seizure rights shall be construed in conformity with the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court. Art. I, § 12, Fla. Const. In this vein, we recognize that the United States Supreme Court has stated that the exclusionary rule is a judicially created remedy designed to safeguard Fourth Amendment rights generally through its deterrent effect. United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 348, 94 S.Ct. 613, 38 L.Ed.2d 561 (1974). As noted, we expressed the view in White that [i]t is repugnant to the principles of a free society that a person should ever be taken into police custody because of a computer error precipitated by government carelessness. White at 667 (quoting State v. Evans, 177 Ariz. 201, 866 P.2d 869, 872 (1994), rev'd, 514 U.S. 1, 115 S.Ct. 1185, 131 L.Ed.2d 34, (1995)). In this regard we find ourselves in agreement with the views expressed by Justice O'Connor (and joined in by two of her colleagues) in Evans: In recent years, we have witnessed the advent of powerful, computer-based recordkeeping systems that facilitate arrests in ways that have never before been possible. The police, of course, are entitled to enjoy the substantial advantages this technology confers. They may not, however, rely on it blindly. With the benefits of more efficient law enforcement mechanisms comes the burden of corresponding constitutional responsibilities. Evans, 514 U.S. at 17-18, 115 S.Ct. 1185, (O'Connor, J., concurring). Based upon our analysis of the duties and responsibilities of the Department of Highway Safety as set out above, we conclude that the Department, including its driver's license division, is essentially a law enforcement agency, and that our holding in White should apply. We reject the invitation of the State to focus solely on the work of the Division of Driver Licenses. We cannot focus solely on the internal subdivisions of the Department of Highway Safety any more than we can focus solely on the internal subdivisions of any large law enforcement agency in assessing its accountability and protecting our citizens from unlawful arrests due to agency mistakes. While a record keeping clerk in a sheriff's office may be absolutely devoted solely to his own work, that makes him no less a part of the sheriff's office and subject to its management and control. So, too, with a division of the Department of Highway Safety. Moreover, we conclude that if the exclusionary rule is not applied to evidence secured due to the division's mistakes, neither the Department of Highway Safety nor its driver's license division will have an incentive to maintain records current and correct. [5] By applying the rule it will be clear that there is a visible consequence to the mistake and the mistake will not simply be overlooked. Further, and clearly unlike the court personnel in Evans, we conclude that at the very least the employees of the Division of Driver Licenses are adjuncts to the law enforcement team in the Department of Highway Safety. Accordingly, the operation of the exclusionary rule in this context does not, as the State would suggest, serve to punish police for their reasonable reliance upon the mistake of some wholly separate and independent agency completely unconnected to law enforcement. We have already discussed the many law enforcement roles of the Department of Highway Safety and its divisions, and their close relationships. In addition, the information maintained and provided by the Department through its divisions is used in virtually every traffic stop effectuated by the police: thus it affects every Florida citizen using the state's roads. Since the Department processes over 1,000,000 license suspensions and revocations each year, even a slight error rate puts thousands of Florida's citizens at risk of unlawful arrests and subsequent seizures. Finally, and of greatest importance, we conclude that the exclusion of evidence in cases such as the one at bar will surely serve to encourage accurate record-keeping of driver's license information. The exclusionary rule is perhaps the only means by which the judiciary can help to ensure the accuracy of records and information compiled by the Department of Highway Safety and its divisions that routinely provide records to Florida's police and sheriffs' departments. Because the Department of Highway Safety is responsible for the related law enforcement functions of agency record-keeping and monitoring traffic offenses and crime on the state's highways, there is an institutional obligation as well as a direct mechanism for feedback from fellow employees to communicate the effect of the exclusionary rule. Surely, the Department of Highway Safety, above all others, will consistently strive to see that no mistakes are made and that no citizen is wrongfully subjected to an arrest or search predicated upon a mistake. That is, after all, the net effect of our ruling, to recognize that the government had no right, because of a mistake by the Department of Highway Safety, to seize and search one of its citizens. In the end, the government is discouraged from making such mistakes, and is only deprived of what it had no right to in the first instance.