Mitchell v. State
| Decision Date | 17 October 1952 |
| Citation | 60 So.2d 726 |
| Parties | MITCHELL v. STATE. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
T. T. Turnbull, Tallahassee, for appellant.
Richard W. Ervin, Atty. Gen., and Reeves Bowen, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee.
This is another of those criminal cases which lately have frequently found their way to this Court in which it is contended that the evidence which was introduced, upon motion made, should have been suppressed because it was contraband that had been found as the result of an unlawful search and seizure contrary to the 4th Amendment to the Federal Constitution and Section 22 of the Florida Declaration of Rights, F.S.A., each of which provides against unreasonable seizures and searches.
In the recent case of Kraemer v. State, Fla., 60 So.2d 615, we determined that the contraband which was introduced in evidence against the defendants had been discovered or found as a result of an unlawful search. In that case after the illegal search had commenced one of the defendants apparently attempted to dispose of two packages, one of which was subsequently found to contain money and the other, after the arrest of the accused persons, was found to contain bolita tickets. We concluded that contraband so discovered should not have been introduced in evidence against the defendants and that the evidence should have been suppressed because it was discovered as the result of an unlawful search.
In this case Joseph Mitchell attempted to dispose of what was subsequently discovered to be bolita tickets by throwing them into the brush a distance of approximately twenty or thirty feet from his car, before any search was instituted by the officer who thereafter, according to his own testimony, searched Mitchell.
It is contended by the appellant that the search started when Officer McCollum began pursuit of the car driven by the accused with the undisclosed but admitted intention to search him and/or his car. Counsel, in support of this contention, cited the case of Ford v. City of Jackson, 153 Miss. 616, 121 So. 278. The facts of that case are somewhat analogous to those in the instant action. In that case, as in this, the officer was pursuing the appellant for the purpose of overhauling and searching him, although in the instant suit Mitchell was not conscious of such fact until he had voluntarily parked his car. In each case the appellant was at the time disposing of the contraband by throwing it out of his car in order to prevent such contraband from being found upon a search. However, Joseph Mitchell, appellant herein, had nothing more than a suspicion that he might be searched when he threw the package from his car for he was not conscious of the fact that he had been pursued but simply became alarmed when Officer McCollum parked in the driveway and turned on his car lights. The appellant in the case of Ford v. City of Jackson, supra, when he disposed of the contraband, 'realized that he was being pursued, and speeded up his car to get out of the way of the policemen' which fact caused him to be reasonably certain, rather than merely to suspect that he and/or his car would be searched. The Mississippi Court held: 'The pursuit for the purpose of search was just as much a part of the search as the act of the officers in laying hands upon the car and looking into it for the purpose of discovering its contents.' If the difference in the factual structure of the Ford v. City of Jackson case and that of the instant suit does not justify a sound distinction being made between the two cases we, nevertheless, with due respect for the ruling of the Mississippi Court, are not inclined on the point under discussion to follow the precedent set by that Court for we believe its conclusion would be a tenuous and strained construction of what is meant by the Federal and State Constitutional provisions which guarantee security against unreasonable seizures and searches, should we adopt it in...
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State v. Oliver
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