The affidavit for search warrant here didn’t show nexus to defendant’s home, and the good faith exception doesn’t carry it. Smitherman v. State, 2022 Fla. App. LEXIS 1715 (Fla. 2d DCA Mar. 11, 2022):
According to the affidavit, the investigation solely concerned the contents of the package, and the Cal Cove home’s only connection to any illegal activity was that Smitherman brought the package there. Once law enforcement detained Smitherman in the garage while he was holding the contents of the package, they had obtained all the evidence of the only crime they were investigating. Based on the allegations in the affidavit, law enforcement could only speculate that additional evidence would be present in the house, and speculation alone cannot support probable cause. See Garcia v. State, 872 So. 2d 326, 330 (Fla. 2d DCA 2004) (holding that a warrant application failed to establish probable cause when it relied on speculation rather than evidence establishing a fair probability that drugs would be present).
While Smitherman’s opening of the package at the Cal Cove home may have suggested some link between the home and Smitherman’s alleged trafficking, that event, standing alone, did not create a probability that further narcotics or similar evidence of trafficking would be present at that location. See Dyess v. State, 988 So. 2d 146, 149 (Fla. 1st DCA 2008) (holding that the defendant’s involvement in a controlled drug sale in a grocery store parking lot did not create probable cause for a search of the defendant’s home, even when the defendant went straight home after the sale because “[w]hile it could certainly be inferred that Appellant might have other drugs and paraphernalia in the residence, this inference is nothing more than speculation”).
The State contends that the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule should apply to the fruits of the warrant for the Cal Cove home, asserting that “there can be no way that the detailed and accurate affidavit and warrant presented to and approved by a Circuit Judge in the case at bar can be seen as so deficient as to not meet the good faith exception.” See generally United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 922, 104 S. Ct. 3405, 82 L. Ed. 2d 677 (1984) (holding that the exclusionary rule does not apply when an officer acts in “objectively reasonable reliance on a subsequently invalidated search warrant”). But our precedent is to the contrary. “Where, as here, the supporting affidavit fails to establish probable cause to justify a search, Florida courts refuse to apply the good faith exception.” Garcia, 872 So. 2d at 330 (first citing Getreu v. State, 578 So. 2d 412 (Fla. 2d DCA 1991); and then citing Bonilla v. State, 579 So. 2d 802 (Fla. 5th DCA 1991)). A reasonably trained law enforcement officer would have known that the affidavit in this case failed to establish probable cause for the search, so the good-faith exception does not apply.
Accordingly, because the sworn application for the warrant to search the Cal Cove home failed to demonstrate probable cause therefor, we reverse Smitherman’s convictions related to the fruits of that search (counts two, three, and four).
by John Wesley Hall
Criminal Defense Lawyer and
Search and seizure law consultant
Little Rock, Arkansas
Contact: forhall @ aol.com / The Book www.johnwesleyhall.com
"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't." —Me
"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well." –Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868) (erroneously attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, among others)
“I am still learning.” —Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)).
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud
"It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
—Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc.” 255 (1848)
"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced."
—Williams
v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold,
J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984).
"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws,
or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence." —Mapp
v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961).
"Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment."
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987).
"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that
bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the
police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater
than it is today."
— Terry
v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting).
"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their
property."
—Entick
v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765)
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have
frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And
so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his
case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth
Amendment."
—United
States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting)
"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated
here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth."
—Chapman
v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).
"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the
bottom of a turntable."
—Arizona
v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987)
"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly
exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth
Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in
an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected."
—Katz
v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967)
“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to
protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born
to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded
rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men
of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
—United
States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)
“Liberty—the freedom from unwarranted
intrusion by government—is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by
government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose
it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark.”
—United
States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989)
"You can't always get what you want /
But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need."
—Mick Jagger & Keith Richards
"In Germany, they first came for the communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for
the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came
for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration
camp]
“You know, most men would get discouraged by
now. Fortunately for you, I am not most men!”
---Pepé Le Pew
"The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers,
is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which
reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that
those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being
judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting
out crime."
—Johnson
v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948)