Terrell v. State, 82-89
Decision Date | 12 April 1983 |
Docket Number | No. 82-89,82-89 |
Citation | 429 So.2d 778 |
Parties | Albert TERRELL, Appellant, v. The STATE of Florida, Appellee. |
Court | Florida District Court of Appeals |
Bennett H. Brummer, Public Defender and Bruce A. Rosenthal, Asst. Public Defender, for appellant.
Jim Smith, Atty. Gen., and Carolyn Snurkowski, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee.
Before SCHWARTZ, C.J., and DANIEL S. PEARSON and FERGUSON, JJ.
Upon a plea of nolo contendere specifically reserving his right to appeal the denial of his concededly dispositive motion to suppress, Terrell was adjudicated guilty of possession of cocaine. We reverse the judgment of conviction with directions to discharge the defendant.
The informant's tip (that Terrell "has cocaine in his car right now and is trying to sell it") which led to the defendant's warrantless arrest and the subsequent contraband-revealing search of Terrell utterly failed to apprise the arresting officer of any "underlying circumstances from which the informant concluded that the narcotics were where he claimed them to be," Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 114, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 1514, 12 L.Ed.2d 723, 729 (1964), and, therefore, notwithstanding the conceded reliability of the informant himself, because the "basis of knowledge" prong of Aguilar was not satisfied, no probable cause to arrest the defendant existed.
. Stanley v. State, 19 Md.App. 507, 531, 313 A.2d 847, 861 (1974) (emphasis in original).
In the present case, the arresting officer gave no testimony from which the conclusion could have been drawn that the informant himself had seen the activities about which he spoke, or that although not personally observing these activities, the informant had learned of them from a credible and reliable source. See Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 89 S.Ct. 584, 21 L.Ed.2d 637 (1969) (White, J., concurring); Reed v. State, 267 So.2d 70 (Fla.1972). From all that appears, the informant here merely suspected, believed or concluded that there were narcotics in Terrell's possession. As in so many like cases, the failure to satisfy this "basis of knowledge" prong of Aguilar renders the defendant's arrest and search incident thereto unlawful. See, e.g., Andersen v. State, 274 So.2d 228 (Fla.), cert. denied, 414 U.S. 879, 94 S.Ct. 150, 38 L.Ed.2d 124 (1973); M.J. v. State, 399 So.2d 996 (Fla. 1st DCA 1981); United States v. Colon, 559 F.2d 1380 (5th Cir.1977); United States v. Chavez, 482 F.2d 1268 (5th Cir.1973); United States v. Long, 439 F.2d 628 (D.C.Cir.1971); Horzempa v. State, 292 Ala. 140, 290 So.2d 220 (1974); ...
To continue reading
Request your trial-
State v. Maya
...said to be prerequisites to reliance upon his information. But see State v. Rizo, 463 So.2d 1165 (Fla. 3d DCA 1984); Terrell v. State, 429 So.2d 778 (Fla. 3d DCA 1983) (informant's reliability and knowledge remain important factors in assessing probable cause). Instead, the "totality of the......
-
State v. Rizo
...detention is inadmissible on that ground, Davis v. Mississippi, 394 U.S. 721, 89 S.Ct. 1394, 22 L.Ed.2d 676 (1969); see Terrell v. State, 429 So.2d 778 (Fla. 3d DCA 1983); J.R.H. v. State, 428 So.2d 786 (Fla. 2d DCA 1983); Pirri v. State, 428 So.2d 285 (Fla. 4th DCA), review denied, 438 So.......
-
State v. Hewitt
...252 (Fla., 1956) also dealt with the inability to support a warrantless search of a vehicle based on double hearsay. Terrell v. State, 429 So.2d 778 (Fla. 3 DCA, 1983) gives no details of the officer's independent observations, so it is assumed that relying solely on the tip, he made the wa......
- Leslie v. Leslie, s. 82-45