Fields v. State

• Decision Date: 25 March 2020
• Docket Number: Case No. 2D18-5067
• Citation: 292 So.3d 889
• Parties: Tamar R. FIELDS, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

292 So.3d 889

Tamar R. FIELDS, Appellant,

v.STATE of Florida, Appellee.

Case No. 2D18-5067

District Court of Appeal of Florida, Second District.

Opinion filed March 25, 2020.

Howard L. Dimmig, II, Public Defender, and Karen M. Kinney, Assistant Public Defender, Bartow, for Appellant.

Ashley Moody, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Cerese Crawford Taylor, Assistant Attorney General, Tampa, for Appellee.

SILBERMAN, Judge.

Tamar R. Fields appeals his convictions and sentences for (1) trafficking in cocaine, (2) resisting an officer without violence, and (3) loitering or prowling. Fields entered into a negotiated plea agreement and reserved for appeal the denial of his dispositive motion to suppress. He contends that a deputy did not have reasonable suspicion to detain him or probable cause to arrest him. We agree and reverse his convictions and sentences and remand for discharge.

This case arose from a 911 call made on November 21, 2017, at approximately 10:00 p.m. by a resident (the caller) in the Linda Loma Drive subdivision in Fort Myers. The 911 call was admitted into evidence at the suppression hearing. In addition, the caller and a deputy testified for the State. A cousin of Fields who lived nearby testified for the defense.

In the 911 call, the caller said that she saw a black man on her elderly neighbors' doorstep at the corner of Luanne Lane and Juanita Avenue and wanted a police cruiser to come by. She was walking her dog when she saw the man on their doorstep, and "he was trying to turn the doorknob." She knew the man did not live there. At another point she said the man was "standing at the door turning the knob."

She went home to get her phone and came back and called 911. She had seen the man on the doorstep about fifteen minutes before she called.¹ When she returned, the man was standing in front of the neighbors' house and started walking towards her, and then she turned away. She described the man as tall, black, and in his twenties. He was wearing a white t-shirt, knit cap, hoodie, and blue jeans. She did not think she was in danger but expressed fear of him seeing her walk back to her house. She lived one street over.

She stood on the street and watched the man. A car stopped by him, the man talked to the person in the vehicle briefly, and then the car left. She could see the man on and off, and she stayed on the line with 911 until she saw the police lights down the street.

The caller testified at the suppression hearing that she saw a black man standing at her neighbors' front door. The caller was asked if she observed anything else when the man was standing at the neighbors' door, and she said no. Then she stated, "I said [in the 911 call] I saw him jiggle the knob, but I don't recall saying that, so I'm not gonna sit here and say that I saw that."

The deputy testified that he received information that a black male was attempting to make entry into a home and that the man was last seen at the intersection of Luanne and Juanita. The deputy responded to the call at around 10:00 p.m. and saw a man matching the description "a block or two past that intersection in the roadway, walking." The deputy did not recall seeing anyone else out, and he considered the area to be a high crime area but did not specify any particular type of crime.

The deputy activated his lights and got the man's attention. The man, who turned out to be Fields, turned around to face the deputy and continued "his slow walk." However, instead of walking toward the deputy, Fields "was kind of, like, trying to walk around." As the deputy asked Fields questions about where he was coming from and if he lived in the area, Fields gave no verbal response. The deputy needed to determine if Fields "was involved in any criminal activity or if there was a crime that occurred." The deputy was walking towards Fields who was putting his hands in and out of his pockets or his pants.

Fields did not comply with the deputy's demands to not put his hands in his pockets and to not walk away. As the deputy tried to close the gap between them, Fields tried to walk around another way to make the gap greater. The deputy testified:

So, when I finally get to him, we, kind of, both walk in the direction of where my vehicle was and we ended up, like, right there at the vehicle. So, using that as, kind of, like, a place where he wouldn't be able to walk further away, that's when I grabbed his arm, to say we need to stop reaching in our pants because I don't know what's going on.

At that point the deputy detained Fields and later arrested him for resisting an officer without violence and loitering or prowling.²

When the deputy initially saw the man walking in the roadway, the deputy did not see him doing anything that caused immediate concern and did not observe any criminal activity. The deputy testified that he was investigating "[a] possible burglary or an attempted burglary" that evening. Fields was never arrested for burglary or attempted burglary.

Harvey Andrew Cherry, who is Fields' second cousin, testified for the defense. Cherry lives on Char Ann Drive in Fort Myers. Fields is from New York and came to visit Cherry a little before Thanksgiving of 2017. Cherry testified that Fields "was only there for a couple hours. He went to the store and never came back." Cherry's residence is around the corner from Juanita Avenue.

The defense argued that the deputy did not have probable cause to arrest Fields for loitering or prowling and did not have reasonable suspicion to detain him. Defense counsel requested that any evidence found on Fields should be suppressed. The trial court ruled as follows:

THE COURT: I have a citizen who observes the defendant jiggling the lock or the door handle of a neighbor. She identifies—she calls 911. She identifies the clothing that he was wearing, the person that did this. The person doesn't leave the neighborhood. The citizen stays on the phone with the 911 operator giving details, watching this individual until the sheriff's deputy or law enforcement arrives. I think there was a basis for the Terry stop when I factor all of that in and not just bits and pieces. So, there was reasonable suspicion by the officer. I deny the motion.

MS. CALDERONE: Just so that I can have a clear record, are you saying that there was probable cause for the officer to arrest him for loitering and prowling?

THE COURT: I am.

At the suppression hearing, the trial court had stated that the motion was dispositive. Fields subsequently entered a negotiated plea and reserved the right to appeal the denial of the motion to suppress. In accordance with the plea agreement, the trial court sentenced Fields to forty-eight months in prison with a three-year minimum mandatory on the trafficking charge and to time served on the two misdemeanors.

Fields contends on appeal that the deputy did not have reasonable suspicion to stop him for an attempted unlawful entry into a home or probable cause to arrest him for loitering or prowling. On appellate review of the denial of a motion to suppress, this court reviews the trial court's factual findings for competent, substantial evidence and conducts a de novo review of the trial court's application of the law to the facts. J.C. v. State, 15 So. 3d 870, 872 (Fla. 2d DCA 2009).

1. Reasonable Suspicion for Investigatory Detention

It is undisputed that when the deputy told Fields to stop, cornered him at the patrol vehicle, and then grabbed his arm, a Fourth Amendment seizure occurred. "[W]henever a police officer accosts an individual and restrains his freedom to walk away, he has ‘seized’ that person." Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 16, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). To support an investigatory detention, an officer "must have a well-founded, articulable suspicion that a person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime." Thomasset v. State, 761 So. 2d 383, 385 (Fla. 2d DCA 2000) (citing § 901.151, Fla. Stat. (1997) ). To determine whether an officer had reasonable suspicion to make an investigatory stop, we consider the totality of the circumstances. Peterson v. State, 264 So. 3d 1183, 1189 (Fla. 2d DCA 2019). A "mere suspicion" of criminal activity is insufficient. Id. "Thus, where a person's conduct is consistent with both criminal and noncriminal activity, such facts do not give rise to a reasonable suspicion of a crime." Id.

The caller in this case was not an anonymous tipster but a citizen informant. She obviously gave sufficient identifying information because she testified at the suppression hearing. "A citizen informant is one who ‘by happenstance finds himself in the position of a victim of or a witness to criminal conduct and thereafter relates to the police what he knows as a matter of civic duty.’ " State v. Woldridge, 958 So. 2d 455, 459 (Fla. 2d DCA 2007) (quoting State v. Evans, 692 So. 2d 216, 219 (Fla. 4th DCA 1997) ). A tip from a citizen informant usually "falls at a higher end of the reliability scale." Peterson, 264 So. 3d at 1189 (quoting Baptiste v. State, 995 So. 2d 285, 291 (Fla. 2008) ). But the reasonable suspicion needed to support an investigatory stop depends "upon both the content of information possessed by police and its degree of reliability." Id. (quoting Alabama v. White, 496 U.S. 325, 330, 110 S.Ct. 2412, 110 L.Ed.2d 301 (1990) ).

Even when a tip is from a citizen informant, the tip must be reliable "in its assertion of illegality." Cooks v. State, 28 So. 3d 147, 149 (Fla. 1st DCA 2010) (quoting Florida v. J.L., 529 U.S. 266, 272, 120 S.Ct. 1375, 146 L.Ed.2d 254 (2000) ). In Cooks, the appellate court determined that a hotel clerk's report that a black man tried to open the back door of the hotel and then left in a maroon Lincoln with two other black men in the car was insufficient to raise a reasonable suspicion of a trespass or attempted burglary. Id. at 150. The opinion does not state whether the back door to the hotel was one used by the public. In addition, although...