Opinion ID: 1106337
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Decision on Jurisdiction

Text: Although we clearly have jurisdiction based upon the Fourth District's certification, see art. V, § 3(b)(4), Fla. Const., we also have the discretion to determine that we should not exercise our jurisdiction in this case. Respondent initially asserts that we should exercise our discretion and discharge jurisdiction because Foust does not conflict expressly and directly with this case. Specifically, respondent maintains that the traffic stop of respondent in this case only required founded suspicion, which is a different issue than that in Foust. See Foust, 262 So.2d at 688 ([T]he reasonableness of the search after arrest was not affected by the fact that the original stopping . . . may have been without probable cause.). Thus, according to respondent, Foust should be read simply as rejecting the requirement of probable cause, as opposed to founded suspicion, which was the apparent standard for the stop in the Foust case. We agree with respondent that a stop for the violation of motor vehicle laws is similar to the investigative detention in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), and may be made when there is founded suspicion. However, respondent gives Foust too narrow a reading. We read Foust to mean that the search incident to the outstanding warrant was sufficiently attenuated from the illegality of the original stop so as not to be sufficiently tainted by it to be the fruit of the poisonous tree, regardless of whether the standard for the original stop was probable cause or founded suspicion. We likewise do not agree with respondent's assertion that even if the Foust decision conflicted with the Fourth District's decision in this case, the Third District's later case of Rozier v. State, 368 So.2d 379 (Fla. 3d DCA 1979), changed the law in the Third District from Foust. See Rozier, 368 So.2d at 380 ([T]he motion to suppress should have been granted because the police officers' initial stop of the defendant, which resulted in the arrest, was based on no more than a `bare suspicion of illegal activity' rather than the `founded' or `reasonable' suspicion constitutionally required to support it.). First, Rozier was a decision by another panel of the Third District which does not mention Foust and therefore could not and did not recede from Foust. Additionally, not only does the Fourth District certify that there is a present conflict with Foust, we note that the Second District in Mays v. State, 887 So.2d 402, 404 n. 3 (Fla. 2d DCA 2004), held that there is a present conflict on the issue.