FL2: Holding DL too long made consent invalid; defendant should have been free to leave

Defendant went to a convenience store and was walking home. There were no sidewalks, so she was walking on the grass. She said 6′ from the road, the officer said 10′-15′. He could see from her license that she was 15 doors from home. He ran a wants and warrants check and it came up clean. Two other patrol cars arrived by that time. He held her license and asked for consent, and it was invalid consent. The stop should have ended. Horne v. State, 113 So. 3d 158 (Fla. 2d DCA 2013):

Here, when the officer initially pulled into Horne’s path, he thought it was suspicious that she was walking so far from the road and suspected that she may have been taking items from cars in a driveway. Horne provided the officer with a reasonable explanation, and her warrants check was clear. At one point during the warrants check, three officers and two patrol cars were at the scene, and during the entire encounter, the officer’s car remained parked between Horne and the path she was taking home. Additionally, once the officer ran the computer check on Horne, he was aware of her home address and that she was standing only fifteen houses from her own residence. But where Golphin resulted in an arrest due to the warrants check, any basis for the encounter with Horne, consensual or otherwise, ended at the conclusion of Horne’s clear warrants check.