FL: State statute requries exclusionary rule for knock-and-announce violation, declining to follow Hudson

Florida holds that state law requires exclusion of evidence obtained in violation of the knock-and-announce requirement. The court is not obligated to follow Hudson under the Fourth Amendment. State v. Cable, 51 So. 3d 434 (Fla. 2010), aff’g Cable v. State, 18 So. 3d 37 (Fla. 2d DCA 2009):

We conclude that Hudson does not control the question of whether the exclusionary rule applies to statutory knock-and-announce violations in Florida because we deem the distinction between common law remedies and constitutional remedies stressed in Cable a meaningful one. As explained by the Second District in Cable:

The issue in the instant case, however, is not—as it was in Hudson-—whether the evidence is subject to suppression under the Fourth Amendment. Instead, the issue is whether suppression of the evidence is a remedy that must be applied for the violation of the statutory knock-and-announce provision. The Florida case law recognizes the common law and constitutional background for the knock-and-announce statute. See Benefield, 160 So. 2d at 710 (stating that section 901.19 “appears to represent a codification of the English common law which recognized the fundamental sanctity of one’s home”); State v. Loeffler, 410 So. 2d 589, 593 (Fla. 2d DCA 1982) (stating that the purpose of the knock-and-announce statute “parallels that of the constitutional guarantees against search and seizure”). But the case law does not support the conclusion that the statute has no force independent of the requirements of the Fourth Amendment. Under the Florida case law, it is by no means clear that the exclusionary rule has been applied to violations of the knock-and-announce statute only because Fourth Amendment knock-and-announce violations were subject to the exclusionary rule. Indeed, Benefield applied the exclusionary rule for violations of the knock-and-announce statute long before the United States Supreme Court decided in Wilson v. Arkansas, 514 U.S. 927, 115 S. Ct. 1914, 131 L. Ed. 2d 976 (1995), that the common law knock-and-announce rule was also a “‘command of the Fourth Amendment.’” Id. at 931 (quoting New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325, 337, 105 S. Ct. 733, 83 L. Ed. 2d 720 (1985)).

Cable, 18 So. 3d at 39.

Under Hudson, it is clear that the exclusionary rule does not apply to Fourth Amendment knock-and-announce violations. However, Hudson is not automatically dispositive of the question of whether the exclusionary rule may be applied for violations of Florida’s knock-and-announce statute because, as explained in State v. Slaney, 653 So. 2d 422, 425 (Fla. 3d DCA 1995):

[T]he states are privileged under their state law to adopt higher, but not lower, standards for police conduct than those required by the Fourth Amendment. Cooper v. California, 386 U.S. 58, 62, 87 S. Ct. 788, 17 L. Ed. 2d 730 (1967) (state constitutional provision on search and seizure); Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 61, 88 S. Ct. 1889, 20 L. Ed. 2d 917 (1968) (state statute). In Florida, these higher standards may not, as a matter of state law, be imposed under the state constitutional guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures, Art. I, § 12, Fla. Const. (1982 amendments); Bernie v. State, 524 So. 2d 988 (Fla. 1988), but may be imposed by other provisions of Florida law, including a state statute.

(Emphasis added.) As a matter of state law, a state may provide a remedy for violations of state knock-and-announce statutes, and nothing in Hudson prohibits it from doing so. Benefield was based on state law grounds and not the Fourth Amendment.

Also, the court would not retreat from Benefield.