Wilson v. State

• Decision Date: 19 April 1996
• Docket Number: No. 94-2662,94-2662
• Citation: 673 So.2d 505
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals
• Parties: 21 Fla. L. Weekly D938 Curtis WILSON, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.

Page 505

673 So.2d 505

21 Fla. L. Weekly D938

Curtis WILSON, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. 94-2662.

District Court of Appeal of Florida First District.

April 19, 1996.

Rehearing Denied June 3, 1996.

An appeal from the Circuit Court for Duval County; John D. Southwood, Judge.

Alan E. Rosner of Harris, Guidi, Rosner, Dunlap & Mordecai, P.A., Jacksonville, for Appellant.

Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General; Amelia L. Beisner, Assistant Attorney General; Lisa D. Norris, Certified Legal Intern, Tallahassee, for Appellee.

VAN NORTWICK, Judge.

Curtis Wilson appeals the trial court's denial of his motion to suppress, arguing that the search warrant was unlawfully executed since the police did not comply with the knock-and-announce provisions of section 933.09, Florida Statutes (1993). Because we conclude that, under the particular facts of the instant case, the police had a reasonable basis for an unannounced entry, we affirm.

Factual and Procedural Background

In the instant case, a confidential police informant reported to the police that he had been in Wilson's home, where the informant noticed a "substantial quantity" ¹ of off-white rock-like substance on the kitchen table, which the informant recognized as crack cocaine. The home was located on Irvington Avenue in Jacksonville. Within ten days, Detective Koivisto applied for and was granted a search warrant for that residence. The record reflects that, immediately preceding the execution of the search warrant, Detective Koivisto talked to Detective Thurne and discussed the execution of the search warrant on Wilson's house on Irvington Avenue. Detective Thurne then said: "Well, you know, that's the same guy's house that we served out on Lee Street." Detective Koivisto testified that he and Detective Thurne had served a warrant on a so-called drug "sales house" of Wilson's on Lee Street in Jacksonville and, when the officers executed the search warrant on the Lee Street house, several handguns were recovered.

Detective Koivisto and several other officers proceeded to the Irvington Avenue house. Detective Koivisto was wearing street clothes, and a blue vest with a reflector police marking across the chest over his bulletproof vest. According to him, he had a mask sitting on top of his head which was not pulled down, but it could be pulled down once he entered the residence so that those within would be unable to recognize his identity. When the officers arrived, they jumped from their vehicles and immediately began yelling "police, search warrant." Upon reaching the home the officers inserted a large pry bar into the outer burglar bar door and, using a sledge hammer to drive the pry bar, opened the burglar bar door. At the same time, they were yelling "police, search warrant." Detective Koivisto rammed the front door with a battering ram allowing the detectives to enter the home. No one knocked on the door. ²

In the house, the officers found a trafficking amount of cocaine in a shaving kit in the kitchen. Regina Evans was in a back bedroom watching television. She said she heard banging, and the police ran in wearing ski masks. She testified that she asked the police why they did not knock on the door and that she would have let them in. She also testified that she knew Wilson carried a gun.

Wilson was later arrested, in possession of a firearm, and admitted that the cocaine found in the Irvington Avenue house belonged to him. ³

Wilson moved to suppress the evidence against him contending, among other things, that the warrant was illegally executed contrary to section 933.09, Florida Statutes (1993), which requires officers to knock and announce their presence before forcibly entering a residence. At the hearing, Wilson relied upon the supreme court's decision in State v. Bamber, 630 So.2d 1048 (Fla.1994). At the conclusion of the suppression hearing, the trial court orally announced its decision that, although the police officers had not complied with the knock-and-announce provision of the Florida Statutes, exigent circumstances justified a no-knock entry. The trial court stated its reasons, as follows:

However, in spite of the Bamber case ... the officers had reason to believe that the cocaine in question was in the kitchen of the house, and this being a quote, unquote, nice house with standard plumbing, it's certainly reasonable to believe it could have been easily disposed of at that particular location within the house.

They also had reasonable suspicions based upon prior knowledge of this defendant that he may be in possession of weapons, and not having any idea whether he was present at the time of the execution of this warrant,--for officers' safety those two exigent circumstances as far as I'm concerned are satisfied....

Reserving his right to appeal the trial court's denial of his motion to suppress, Wilson pled nolo contendere to trafficking in 400 grams or more of cocaine or a mixture containing cocaine contrary to section 893.135(1)(b)1.c., a first degree felony, and was sentenced to a 15-year minimum mandatory and ordered to pay a $250,000 fine.

The Knock-and-Announce Rule and its Exceptions

Consistent with the common law protection of the home as a person's "castle of defense and asylum," 3 W. Blackstone, Commentaries 288, the knock-and-announce rule has long been a part of English and American common law. The earliest statement of the knock-and-announce requirement is usually thought to be in Semayne's Case, an opinion issued in 1603, in which the court held that, in serving a writ at a party's house, the sheriff was required to announce his authority and purpose. ⁴ Although Semayne's Case involved service of a civil writ, the rule of the case has been applied in both civil and criminal contexts. See, Robert J. Driscoll, Unannounced Police Entries and Destruction of Evidence after Wilson v. Arkansas, 29 Colum.J.L. & Soc. Probs., 1, 6-8 (1995). The knock-and-announce requirement has been recognized as a part of the common law of Florida. As Justice Terrell explained in Benefield v. State, 160 So.2d 706, 709 (Fla.1964):

Entering one's home without legal authority and neglect to give the occupants notice have been condemned by the law and the common custom of this country and England from time immemorial.

* * * * * *

The law forbids the law enforcement officers of the state or the United States to enter before knocking at the door, giving his name and the purpose of his call. There is nothing more terrifying to the occupants than to be suddenly confronted in the privacy of their home by a police officer decorated with guns and the insignia of his office. This is why the law protects its entrance so rigidly. The law so interpreted is nothing more than another expression of the moral emphasis placed on liberty and the sanctity of the home in a free country.

As most states, ⁵ Florida has adopted the knock-and-announce requirement by statute. See, Florida Statutes, sections 901.19 (making arrest) and 933.09 (1995) (executing search warrant). These statutes appear "to represent a codification of the English common law which recognized the fundamental sanctity of one's home...." Benefield, 160 So.2d at 710. In codifying the knock-and-announce requirement, Florida has also recognized the established exceptions to the common law rule. As the Benefield court concluded:

... Suspects have no constitutional right to destroy or dispose of evidence ... Moreover, since the demand and explanation requirements of [the forcible entry statute] are a codification of the common law, they may reasonably be interpreted as limited by the common law rules that compliance is not required if the officer's peril would have been increased or the arrest frustrated had he demanded entrance and stated his purpose.... Without the benefit of hindsight and ordinarily on the spur of the moment, the officer must decide these questions in the first instance.

Id. (quoting People v. Maddox, 46 Cal.2d 301, 294 P.2d 6 (1956), cert. denied, 352 U.S. 858, 77 S.Ct. 81, 1 L.Ed.2d 65 (1956) (citations and notes omitted). Thus, Benefield adopts the common law exceptions justifying an unannounced entry, holding:

[O]ur statute is violated by an unannounced intrusion in the form of a breaking and entering any building, including a private home, except (1) where the person within already knows of the officer's authority and purpose; (2) where the officers are justified in the belief that the persons within are in imminent peril of bodily harm; (3) if the officer's peril would have been increased had he demanded entrance and stated the purpose, or (4) where those within made aware of the presence of someone outside are then engaged in activities which justify the officers in the belief that an escape or destruction of evidence is being attempted.

Id.

Recently, the United States Supreme Court has recognized that the common law knock-and-announce rule forms a part of the reasonableness inquiry of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Wilson v. Arkansas, 514 U.S. 927, 115 S.Ct. 1914, 131 L.Ed.2d 976 (1995). However, the Court did not require a rigid rule that "every entry must be preceded by announcement," Wilson, 514 U.S. at ----, 115 S.Ct. at 1917, but recognized that "the common-law principle of announcement was never stated as an inflexible rule requiring announcement under all circumstances." Id. at ----, 115 S.Ct. at 1918. Thus, the Court held that "although a search or seizure of a dwelling might be constitutionally defective if police officers enter without prior announcement, law enforcement interests may also establish the reasonableness of an unannounced entry." Id. at ----, 115 S.Ct. at 1919. The supreme court left to the lower courts the task of determining the circumstances under which an unannounced entry is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. The parties here have not raised, and we do not decide, whether Florida's...