Jackson v. State
| Decision Date | 18 March 1924 |
| Citation | 99 So. 548,87 Fla. 262 |
| Parties | JACKSON v. STATE. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
Error to Criminal Court of Record, Orange County; T. Picton Warlow Judge.
Ida Bell Jackson was convicted of resisting an officer, and she brings error.
Reversed and remanded.
Syllabus by the Court
Rules governing criminal law pleading broad and liberal. The rules governing criminal law pleading in this state are broad and liberal.
Search warrant and prerequisite oath must conform strictly to constitutional and statutory provisions. When searches and seizures are made pursuant to the command of a search warrant, both the search warrant and the prerequisite oath or affirmation required for it must conform strictly to the constitutional and statutory provisions authorizing their issue.
Search warrant directing officer to search places generally illegal. The place to be searched should not be left to the discretion of the officer, and the late authorities are unanimous in holding that a search warrant directing an officer to search places generally is clearly illegal.
If officer to whom warrant issued enabled therefrom to definitely locate premises to be searched, it is sufficient designation; description of place to be searched pointing out place to the exclusion of all others sufficient. It is a sufficient designation of the place to be searched if the officer to whom the warrant is directed is enabled to locate the same definitely and with certainty. This does not necessarily require the true legal description to be given in the form it appears on the records of the deed register. Any designation or description known to the locality that points out the place to the exclusion of all others and on inquiry leads the officer unerringly to it satisfies the constitutional requirement.
Description of place held insufficient. Describing the place to be searched as the 'dwelling house of Freddie Jenkins in the county aforesaid and said district aforesaid' is not sufficient under the above rule; the record showing that Freddie Jenkins occupied a room at the home of a third party not named in the search warrant.
Injury to officer in fracas precipitated by him not sufficient to sustain conviction. One inflicting tooth prints on an officer in a fracas precipitated by the officer cannot for such offense be legally punished for resisting an officer under the laws of this state.
Owner or occupant making no resistance or offering no obstruction to search of home may forcibly resist ejectment by officer. The owner or occupant has a perfect right to follow up and observe an officer in making a search of his or her home, so long as no resistance, obstruction, or opposition to the search is offered. If the officer attempts to eject such owner or occupant when no resistance, obstruction, or opposition has been offered, the owner or occupant may offer equal force to resist being ejected.
Hutchins & Hutchins and H. F. Mohr, all of Orlando for plaintiff in error.
Rivers Buford, Atty. Gen., and M. C. McIntosh, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
Ida Bell Jackson, the plaintiff in error, was tried and convicted in the criminal court of record of Orange county on an information charging that she 'did unlawfully, knowingly and willfully, resist, obstruct, and oppose one Floyd Peel, a deputy sheriff, legally authorized to execute process, in the execution of a legal process, to wit, in the service of a search warrant on one Freddie Jenkins, by then and there offering and doing violence to the person of the said Floyd Peel by biting him on the arm and taking hold of his person in a rude, angry, and threatening manner.'
Sentence of three months in the county jail of Orange county was imposed and writ of error taken to this court; error being assigned on the refusal of the trial court to quash the information, denying the motion for new trial, admitting in evidence the search warrant in question, and on other grounds not necessary to consider here.
The motion to quash the information was properly denied. The rules governing criminal law pleading in this state are broad and liberal. Inspection discloses that the information here attacked is substantially in the language of the statute, section 5385, Revised General Statutes, defining the offense which under repeated holdings of this court is sufficient. Wolf v. State, 72 Fla. 572, 73 So. 740; Ellis v. State, 74 Fla. 215, 76 So. 698; Kirkland v. State, 86 Fla. ----, 97 So. 502; People v. Hunt, 120 Cal. 281, 52 P. 658; United States v. Batchelder, Fed. Cas. No. 14,540; section 6064, Rev. Gen. Stats. of Fla. 1920.
When searches and seizures are made pursuant to the command of a search warrant, both the search warrant and the prerequisite oath or affirmation required for it must conform strictly to the constitutional and statutory provisions authorizing their issue. This is true, because there is no process known to the law, the execution of which is more distressing to the citizen or that actuates such intense feeling of resentment on account of its humiliating and degrading consequences. As thus enunciated the law is in line with and is no doubt the child of our Anglo-Saxon spirit of liberty which holds every man's house or dwelling as his castle, and which declares that it must not be invaded or subjected to an uninvited search, except by a duly qualified officer, and then only in pursuance of a valid writ commanding it. White v. Wagar, 185 Ill. 195, 57 N.E. 26, 50 L. R. A. 60.
As was said in Smith v. McDuffee, 72 Or. 276, 284, 142 P. 558, 143 P. 929, such searches are usually made without the consent of the occupant of a domicile, and, the investigation being a proceeding in invitum, the statute authorizing it is to be strictly construed, and no presumptions of regularity are to be invoked in aid of the process under which a proper officer obeying its commands undertakes to justify.
Section 22, Bill of Rights, Constitution of Florida, is as follows:
'The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable seizures and searches, shall not be violated, and no warrants issued but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, particularly describing the place or places to be searched, and the person or persons, and thing or things to be seized.'
The Fourth Amendment to the federal Constitution is almost identical in statement to section 22, Bill of Rights of our Constitution.
Chapter 9321, Acts 1923, has materially affected the issue and execution of search warrants in this state, but section 6186, Revised General Statutes, is controlling as to this case, and is as follows:
'Any committing magistrate may issue search warrants on application duly made by affidavit, but only on probable cause.'
The search warrant that plaintiff in error stands charged with resisting the execution of was put in evidence, and is as follows:
'Whereas C. G. Lee has this day made oath before me that the following goods, to wit: One gold necklace on the 11th day of May, A D. 1923, were feloniously stolen, taken, and carried away out of the residence of the said C. G. Lee in the county aforesaid, and that...
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