FL2: State doesn’t justify entry into motel room on any exigency after suspect’s arrest; standing raised too late

The court declines to remand for more evidence of standing when the state sat on the claim. The state’s protective sweep argument and associated search incident fails for its failure to show exigency for any entry or officer safety. The state raised standing after all the proof was in at the suppression hearing and it’s de facto waived. State v. M.B.W., 2019 Fla. App. LEXIS 11944 (Fla. 2d DCA July 31, 2019):

The purpose for which the officers went to the Express Inn was accomplished when they observed another occupant’s movement. M.B.W. was in custody and posed no threat or harm to the officers. Yet, the officers suggested that their entry into the room was for officer safety. But, as the trial court observed, the witnesses offered no testimony as to why the movement of one occupant caused the officers any safety concern or suggested criminal activity. Furthermore, the trial court correctly reasoned that any safety claim was undercut by the fact that the officers dragged M.B.W. back into the hotel room with them. It is not apparent to us why three officers would place M.B.W., a restrained juvenile, into a potentially hazardous situation from which he had been removed. Our record does not suggest that the officers possessed an objectively reasonable basis to believe that officer safety justified their warrantless entry into the hotel room.

. . .

Without any evidence that the protective sweep was necessary for officer safety or the preservation of evidence, we are left to surmise that entry into the hotel room was done as a matter of routine practice. This was impermissible. See Mestral, 16 So. 3d at 1018 (“In this case the officers entered the residence as part of a routine practice and not on the basis of any articulable facts which would warrant a reasonable belief that there was any dangerous individual inside who posed a threat to those on the arrest scene.”).

Further, recall that law enforcement officers went to the hotel to arrest M.B.W. for a misdemeanor domestic battery charge. The State offered no evidence of what, if anything, the officers sought to protect in their search from imminent destruction as it relates to the battery. See Lee, 856 So. 2d at 1138 (“In order to justify a warrantless entry into a residence to prevent the imminent destruction of evidence, the police must have an objectively reasonable fear that the evidence will be destroyed before a warrant can be obtained.”). Only after making the warrantless entry did law enforcement officers observe the scale containing cocaine and a backpack containing drugs.

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