Thompson v. State, 81-464
| Decision Date | 06 November 1981 |
| Docket Number | No. 81-464,81-464 |
| Citation | 405 So.2d 501 |
| Parties | Torin D. THOMPSON, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee. |
| Court | Florida District Court of Appeals |
Jerry Hill, Public Defender, and Kathe Kates Davis, Asst. Public Defender, Bartow, for appellant.
Jim Smith, Atty. Gen., Tallahassee, and Peggy A. Quince, Asst. Atty. Gen., Tampa, for appellee.
Appellant was convicted of possession of cocaine following a plea of nolo contendere in which he reserved his right to appeal the denial of a motion to suppress.
The evidence presented at the hearing on the motion to suppress was in conflict. However, because the court denied the motion, we shall present the facts in the light most favorable to the state. Officer Robert Bacon of the Fort Myers Police Department testified that on the evening of September 13, 1980, he was called to the Crown Lounge by its bouncer, Robert Coghill. Coghill told Bacon that two nights before, appellant had been involved in an altercation at the lounge and that a customer had reported to him that appellant was carrying a gun in a small shaving case. Coghill was concerned because appellant had returned to the bar and again had a small shaving case with him. While Coghill and Bacon were talking, appellant left the bar, and the officer followed him outside.
Officer Bacon approached appellant in the parking lot and asked him for identification. Appellant replied that it was in his case which he had placed on the hood of an automobile. The officer felt the outside of the case, and when he did not detect the presence of a weapon allowed appellant to put his hand inside to produce the identification. As appellant pulled his billfold from the case, a small brown manila envelope fell onto the hood, and appellant brushed it onto the ground. Officer Bacon picked it up, opened it, and found marijuana inside. He then arrested appellant and searched the shaving case in which he found cocaine.
There are two questions to be decided in this case, and both of them are close. The first is whether the officer had a well founded suspicion sufficient to permit him to detain appellant for inquiry. The second is whether, in any event, he had a right to look into the manila envelope which fell out of the shaving case.
The detention issue is complicated by the fact that the bouncer testified that the customer who had complained to him about appellant two nights before only said that she feared that appellant had a gun in his shaving case rather than that she had actually seen one. Moreover, the altercation was not a fight but was only a loud argument between appellant and the customer's boyfriend. Had the officer testified that he had received this report from the bouncer, it would be hard for us to sustain appellant's detention in the parking lot. However, we must base our decision upon what was reasonably known to the officer at the time he made his stop. Particularly where the person imparting the information to him is not anonymous, an officer is entitled to accept what he is told unless there is reason to doubt its veracity. If, as here, the facts may have been embellished in the retelling, there was no reason for Officer Bacon to have known it.
Under the circumstances recounted by Officer Bacon, we believe that he had a well founded suspicion of criminal activity which was sufficient to justify temporarily detaining appellant for an interrogation pursuant to Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), and section 901.151(1), Florida Statutes (1979). See State v. Payton, 344 So.2d 648 (Fla. 2d DCA 1977). The officer understood that appellant had recently been in an altercation at the lounge and was reported as carrying a gun in his shaving case at that time. Appellant was again at the lounge, and he again had his shaving case with him. While it is not illegal for a person to carry a shaving case around with him, Officer Bacon had a right to conclude that it was out of the ordinary for appellant to continue to bring it to the lounge. To have ignored the report that appellant carried a gun in it would have been naive in today's violent society. See State v. Hetland, 366 So.2d 831 (Fla. 2d DCA 1979), approved, 387 So.2d 963 (Fla.1980).
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