Hayes v. State, 82-436

Citation439 So.2d 896
Decision Date16 September 1983
Docket NumberNo. 82-436,82-436
PartiesJoe HAYES, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
CourtFlorida District Court of Appeals

Jerry Hill, Public Defender, and Michael E. Raiden, Asst. Public Defender, Bartow, for appellant.

Jim Smith, Atty. Gen., Tallahassee, and William I. Munsey, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., Tampa, for appellee.

CAMPBELL, Acting Chief Judge.

Joe Hayes appeals his convictions for burglary and sexual battery. He challenges the admission into evidence at his trial of fingerprints taken from him during a police investigation and of tennis shoes removed from the front porch of his home during the course of that same investigation. We find no error, and we affirm.

Early on the morning of May 13, 1980, a man entered the victim's home and raped her. When the man left, she called the police, and when the officers arrived, they found latent fingerprints on the doorknob of the victim's bedroom door. The police also found a herringbone pattern tennis shoe print on the east side of the victim's front porch.

The police continued investigating this case for the next several weeks, and with the help of the victim, they prepared a composite drawing of the assailant that yielded the following description: A slender, white male with short brown hair. The police officers conducted field interviews with thirty to forty men who generally fit that description. One of the men interviewed was appellant.

Gradually, appellant emerged as a possible suspect in this and several other sexual battery cases, and so Detectives Shoup and Brady, along with the assistant police chief of Punta Gorda, went to appellant's home to obtain his fingerprints. They intended to compare these prints with the latent prints lifted from the victim's home. A search warrant was not obtained prior to going to appellant's home.

Detective Shoup later testified that they only wanted to obtain appellant's fingerprints, but he added that they were prepared to arrest appellant if he refused to cooperate because they believed they already had sufficient probable cause to do so. The officers never entered appellant's home but talked to him on his front porch. He said he would rather go with the officers to the station than be arrested. It is, therefore, at best, highly questionable that appellant's accompanying the officers to the station could be considered voluntary. While the officers stood on the front porch, they also noticed a pair of herringbone pattern tennis shoes lying on the front porch.

Appellant went to the station with the officers and allowed them to take his fingerprints. When the police compared these prints with the latent prints removed from the crime scene, they found that the prints matched, and appellant was thereafter arrested for and later charged with burglary and sexual battery.

Appellant sought, both before and during trial, to suppress the fingerprints and tennis shoes seized during the police investigation. The trial judge refused to suppress these articles of evidence, and the jury eventually found appellant guilty as charged.

Initially, we note that even though the officers did not have a warrant, Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 100 S.Ct. 1371, 63 L.Ed.2d 639 (1980), does not apply here since the discussion about fingerprints and the seizure of the tennis shoes occurred on the front porch of appellant's home. Because the officers found the shoes on appellant's front porch, the trial court did not err in admitting the shoes into evidence. State v. Rickard, 420 So.2d 303 (Fla.1982), demonstrates that these shoes clearly were not in a constitutionally protected area at the time the officers saw them and so were subject to seizure.

We move then to a consideration of the stop of appellant and the seizure of his fingerprints, and we begin and end with an examination of the fourth amendment. Generally, to be valid under the fourth amendment, a search and seizure should be made only pursuant to a warrant that is based upon probable cause. In fact, a warrantless search is per se invalid unless it falls within one of the carefully defined exceptions to the warrant requirement. Engle v. State, 391 So.2d 245 (Fla. 5th DCA 1980); Ulesky v. State, 379 So.2d 121 (Fla. 5th DCA 1979).

However, law enforcement officials frequently make a determination of probable cause, based upon the facts before them, that is later judicially sustained. Here, the police officers believed they had probable cause sufficient to arrest appellant before they obtained his fingerprints. However, we conclude that the officers did not have probable cause at that point in the investigation. The officers were seeking an intended, investigatory confrontation, an encounter in which law enforcement officials frequently engage. Such confrontations may occur in the context of preventing a crime from occurring, or, as here, where officers are involved in an ongoing investigation in an effort to solve a particular crime. At the time the officers approached appellant's home, they had only the partial description given in the composite drawing to guide them and the knowledge that appellant was evidently a suspect in some other sexual batteries. These factors were alone insufficient to give the officers probable cause to arrest appellant. Since they did not have probable cause to arrest appellant, we must determine whether appellant's encounter with the police may be lawfully explained in another manner. To answer this question, we still must examine the fourth amendment because clearly the strictures of that amendment apply during the investigatory as well as the accusatory or arrest stage of the criminal process. Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200, 99 S.Ct. 2248, 60 L.Ed.2d 824 (1979). However, to resolve this issue, we must examine that amendment from another perspective.

Not all searches and seizures are invalid simply because probable cause is lacking. In Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), the United States Supreme Court upheld a policeman's stop and frisk of a person whom he suspected of being involved in criminal activity. In reaching its conclusion, the Court set out a very limited context in which the probable cause requirement of the fourth amendment does not apply. The focus for the Court in Terry and the focus which we follow here is whether the official governmental intrusion was reasonable. This focus is dictated by the very language of the amendment because it is beyond peradventure that the fourth amendment protects citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures, not all searches and seizures. Terry; Elkins v. United States, 364 U.S. 206, 80 S.Ct. 1437, 4 L.Ed.2d 1669 (1960); Gaskins v. State, 89 So.2d 867 (Fla.1956); State v. White, 312 So.2d 475 (Fla. 4th DCA 1975); Gilbert v. State, 289 So.2d 475 (Fla. 1st DCA), cert. denied, 294 So.2d 660 (Fla.1974); Webster v. State, 201 So.2d 789 (Fla. 4th DCA 1967). And when the probable cause requirement of the fourth amendment is not implicated in the facts of a particular case, courts must then examine all the attendant facts and circumstances involved to determine whether that governmental intrusion was reasonable for fourth amendment purposes. United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 95 S.Ct. 2574, 45 L.Ed.2d 607 (1975); Longo v. State, 157 Fla. 668, 26 So.2d 818 (1946); Starks v. State, 108 So.2d 788 (Fla. 2d DCA 1959). In undertaking this examination, a court must compare and then balance the competing interests involved. Brignoni-Ponce; Terry; Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 87 S.Ct. 1727, 18 L.Ed.2d 930 (1967).

The public, and through it the police, has an understandably strong interest in effective detection and prevention of crime. As the Court stated in Terry, "it is this interest which underlies the recognition that a police officer may in appropriate circumstances and in an appropriate manner approach a person for purposes of investigating possible criminal behavior even though there is no probable cause to arrest." 392 U.S. at 22, 88 S.Ct. at 1880, 20 L.Ed.2d at 906. This legitimate interest must be balanced in turn with the individual's interest in being free from unjustified, humiliating physical intrusions as well as against his overall interest in privacy. In making this inquiry under the fourth amendment, courts must be cognizant that the analysis must proceed at two different levels. First, there must be a seizure of the individual by law enforcement officials. Then, there must be a search for and a seizure of evidence. United States v. Dionisio, 410 U.S. 1, 93 S.Ct. 764, 35 L.Ed.2d 67 (1973).

Appellant clearly was seized for purposes of the fourth amendment when the officers accosted him on his front porch and asked for his fingerprints. Because this was the sole reason for this intended investigative confrontation and because no interrogation occurred, we conclude that under the narrow circumstances of this case, this was a reasonable seizure or detention of appellant under the fourth amendment.

It does not matter that the officers had to take appellant to the police station to actually obtain his prints. Whether the prints were taken at the station or on appellant's front porch is immaterial. State v. Merklein, 388 So.2d 218 (Fla. 2d DCA 1980), petition for review denied, 392 So.2d 1377 (Fla.1981), illustrates why this is so. There, sheriff's deputies were responding to an attempted robbery that occurred on Siesta Key. One deputy broadcast a BOLO describing the getaway car and the two suspects inside. Other deputies covered the bridges leading to the mainland and stopped several vehicles that fit the description in the BOLO. The defendant and his companion were stopped, and then they were held until another deputy could transport the victim and the witnesses to the scene for purposes of identification. This court found that this was a reasonable detention. "It is...

To continue reading

Request your trial
5 cases
  • Hayes v. Florida, 83-6766
    • United States
    • U.S. Supreme Court
    • 20 Marzo 1985
    ...like an arrest to invoke the traditional rule that arrests may constitutionally be made only on probable cause. Pp. 813-817. 439 So.2d 896 (Fla.App.1983), Michael E. Raiden, Bartow, Fla., for petitioner. William I. Munsey, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., Tampa, for respondent. Justice WHITE delivere......
  • Hayes v. State
    • United States
    • Florida District Court of Appeals
    • 29 Enero 1986
    ...Mr. Hayes initially appealed from his convictions for burglary and sexual battery, which were affirmed by this court in Hayes v. State, 439 So.2d 896 (Fla. 2d DCA), cert. denied, 447 So.2d 886 (Fla.1983). Subsequently, the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the applica......
  • Cobb v. State, 85-2025
    • United States
    • Florida District Court of Appeals
    • 18 Agosto 1987
    ..."at most persuasive" and not precedential, Continental Assurance Co. v. Carroll, 485 So.2d 406, 408 (Fla.1986); see Hayes v. State, 439 So.2d 896, 902 (Fla. 2d DCA 1983), review denied, 447 So.2d 886 (Fla.1984), reversed on other grounds, 470 U.S. 811, 105 S.Ct. 1643, 84 L.Ed.2d 705 (1985),......
  • Stepp v. Stepp
    • United States
    • Florida District Court of Appeals
    • 24 Febrero 1988
    ...and the child's grandmother and not between the natural parents. See Hoffman v. Jones, 280 So.2d 431 (Fla.1973); Hayes v. State, 439 So.2d 896, 901-902 (Fla. 2d DCA 1983), cert. denied, 447 So.2d 886 (Fla.1984), rev'd on other grounds, Hayes v. Florida, 470 U.S. 811, 105 S.Ct. 1643, 84 L.Ed......
  • Request a trial to view additional results

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT