{"id":62067,"date":"2025-10-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-05T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=62067"},"modified":"2025-10-04T17:49:25","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T22:49:25","slug":"fl2-the-smell-of-marijuana-alone-is-no-longer-pc-but-the-gfe-applies-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=62067","title":{"rendered":"FL2: The smell of marijuana alone is no longer PC but the GFE applies here"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The smell of marijuana alone is no longer probable cause but the good faith exception applies here. Williams v. State<\/a>, 2025 Fla. App. LEXIS 7375 (Fla. 2d DCA Oct. 1, 2025) (en banc):<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

We agree that legislative changes over the years to the definition and regulation of cannabis have eliminated the continuing validity of the plain smell doctrine in this context. We accordingly hold that, under the updated statutory text, the smell of cannabis standing alone is insufficient to establish probable cause. In doing so, we recede from prior precedent to the contrary, thereby aligning the analysis for cannabis with the totality-of-the-circumstances approach that broadly applies to other Fourth Amendment questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, as our precedent expressly permitted the search at the time it occurred, we affirm the denial of suppression because in conducting it law enforcement was acting in objectively reasonable reliance on binding appellate precedent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The smell of marijuana alone is no longer probable cause but the good faith exception applies here. Williams v. State, 2025 Fla. App. LEXIS 7375 (Fla. 2d DCA Oct. 1, 2025) (en banc):<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,51,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-good-faith-exception","category-plain-view","category-probable-cause"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62067"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62068,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62067\/revisions\/62068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}