Cooper v. State, 95-05039

• Decision Date: 13 February 1998
• Docket Number: No. 95-05039,95-05039
• Citation: 706 So.2d 369
• Parties: Eric Allen COOPER, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

Page 369

706 So.2d 369

Eric Allen COOPER, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. 95-05039.

District Court of Appeal of Florida,

Second District.

Feb. 13, 1998.

James Marion Moorman, Public Defender, and A. Victoria Wiggins, Assistant Public Defender, Bartow, for Appellant.

Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Helene S. Parnes, Assistant Attorney General, Tampa, for Appellee.

NORTHCUTT, Judge.

Eric Cooper, charged with grand theft, filed a dispositive motion to suppress evidence against him. After an evidentiary hearing, the circuit court denied the motion. Cooper then pleaded nolo contendere while reserving his right to appeal the suppression issue. We reverse because the police obtained the evidence against Cooper after unlawfully entering his motel room.

At the hearing, Naples Police Department Detective Edward Principe testified that he was investigating some vehicle burglaries at a motel when his attention was drawn to room 204. The motel manager told him that a woman named Melissa Beatty had rented the room, but that it was occupied by men named Jose Roman and Eric Cooper. When the detective knocked on the door to room 204, it was opened by a teenage girl, later identified as Aimee Matherly, age fifteen.

Detective Principe identified himself and told the girl that he was looking for the occupants of the room. He asked if he could come inside, and the girl allowed him to enter. Once inside, Detective Principe observed items that matched descriptions of property taken in the burglaries. Cooper was sound asleep on the bed, and it required the efforts of both the detective and the girl to wake him. Detective Principe questioned Cooper about the items he had seen in the room. Cooper then consented to a search of the room, which turned up other items belonging to the burglary victims.

At the conclusion of the hearing the circuit court denied the motion to suppress, finding that the detective's entry into Cooper's motel room was lawful. We disagree.

The occupants of a motel room enjoy the protection of the Fourth Amendment. This includes the proscription against police making a warrantless entry for purposes of search or arrest, unless they are acting under exigent circumstances or proceeding with a valid consent. See Turner v. State, 645 So.2d 444 (Fla.1994); Sturdivant v. State, 578 So.2d 869 (Fla. 2d DCA 1991). Consent to enter premises occupied by a suspect may be given either by the suspect himself or by a third party who possesses common authority over the premises. See Saavedra v. State, 622 So.2d 952 (Fla.1993), adopting the test announced in U.S. v. Matlock, 415 U.S. 164, 94 S.Ct. 988, 39 L.Ed.2d 242 (1974). As the circumstances of Cooper's case suggested no exigency, the focus of the evidentiary hearing was upon the validity vel non of Aimee Matherly's consent to the detective's entry into the motel room.

The State, which bore the burden to prove the lawfulness of the detective's warrantless entry into the room, did not contend that Aimee actually possessed common authority over the premises. In fact, she did not. The testimony disclosed that Aimee was not an occupant of the room, and that she had no key to it. Rather, she was a friend of a friend of the occupants, and she just happened to be present when Detective Principe knocked on the door.

Instead, the State argued below and urges here that the detective's entry into Cooper's motel room was permissible under Illinois v. Rodriguez, 497 U.S. 177, 110 S.Ct. 2793, 111 L.Ed.2d 148 (1990). In that decision the United States Supreme Court held that a warrantless entry is valid when based on the consent of a third party whom police, at the time of entry, reasonably believe possesses common authority over the premises, but who in fact does not possess such authority. But Rodriguez cautioned that the fact that a person consents to an officer's entry is not, standing alone, sufficient to justify the officer's belief that the person has authority to do so.

[W]hat we hold today does not suggest that law enforcement officers may always accept a person's invitation to enter premises. Even when the invitation is accompanied by an explicit assertion that the person lives there, the surrounding circumstances could conceivably be such that a reasonable person would doubt its truth and not act upon it without further inquiry. As with other factual determinations bearing upon search and seizure, determination of consent to enter must "be judged against an objective standard: would the facts available to the officer at the moment ... 'warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief' " that the consenting party had authority over the premises? Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21-22, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1880, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). If not, then warrantless entry without further inquiry is unlawful unless authority actually exists. But if so, the search is valid.

497 U.S. at 188-89, 110 S.Ct. at 2801-02.

Here, Detective Principe testified that he never questioned the girl's authority to grant him entry, but instead felt that he had no reason to believe that she did not have that authority. He acknowledged that his belief that the girl had common authority over the room was based simply on the fact that she had opened the door. He could not...