Brown v. State
| Decision Date | 26 May 1950 |
| Citation | 46 So.2d 479 |
| Parties | BROWN v. STATE. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
William W. Judge, Daytona Beach, for appellant.
Richard W. Ervin, Attorney General and Reeves Bowen, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.
The appellant brings here for review a final judgment of the Circuit Court of Putnam County adjudging him to be guilty of feloniously setting up, promoting and conducting a lottery, of possessing and transmitting lottery tickets, and of being interested in and connected with a lottery yet to be played.
By agreement of counsel, the trial on the charges which formed the basis for the judgment was had before the trial judge without the intervention of a jury. From the record made of the trial, it appears that for many weeks prior to the arrest of the appellant the Sheriff of Putnam County had been in possession of trustworthy information that the appellant was engaged in promoting lotteries, that he used his grocery store in Palatka as a sort of headquarters for lottery activities carried on in Putnam County, and that on every Saturday of the week at a certain hour of the day the appellant would transport lottery tickets sold that week, together with money bet thereon, to Daytona Beach where the number was drawn for that week's betting.
Being possessed of this information, the Sheriff, on Saturday, July 2, 1949, procured the issuance of a search warrant from the County Judge authorizing him to search the automobile of the defendant, and later in the day, as the appellant was driving along the highway toward Daytona Beach at a speed of between 80 and 90 miles an hour, the Sheriff overhauled him, placed him under arrest and searched the automobile in which he was traveling. As the result of the search the Sheriff found a number of paper sacks containing lottery tickets for a lottery yet to be played and the sum of $2,000 in bills and coins.
After the appellant was lodged in jail, the Sheriff made a return of the search warrant, setting forth a schedule of the money, articles and things seized by virtue of the search and reciting therein that the warrant had been duly served by a delivery of a true copy to the arrested party.
Prior to the trial the appellant made a motion to quash the search warrant and to suppress the articles taken thereunder as evidence. The motion was granted by the trial judge upon the ground that the affidavit upon which the warrant was based was insufficient and defective.
At the trial the Sheriff testified, in effect, that at the time he arrested the appellant he had reasonable ground to believe and did believe from trustworthy information then in his possession, that when the appellant was proceeding along the highway to attend the drawing at Daytona Beach he had already committed a felony and was then in the process of committing another felony, namely, possession and transmission of lottery tickets in a lottery yet to be played, in violation of the criminal laws of Florida. With this testimony as a predicate the trial judge allowed the lottery tickets and money seized therewith to be admitted in evidence, over the objection of the appellant that they were inadmissible by reason of the prior order of the Court quashing the search warrant.
Subsequently, upon all the evidence submitted the trial judge found the appellant guilty as charged and rendered the judgment from which the appeal is taken.
The parties to this appeal are in hopeless disagreement as to the real issue before us for...
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