DUI Law- Florida Says Drug Stop is Legal

This case comes to DAD from Fort Pierce and Key West Florida Attorney Mike Kessler. (Notice: Beginning in 2012, if you send DAD an appellate decision and your info, if DAD uses it here you will get credit and a link to your site). In May v. State of Florida, the appeals court held that the officer had reasonable suspicion to stop a vehicle where the officer saw a car leave a pharmacy suspected of prescription fraud, followed the car, and saw the occupants pass around a prescription bottle as if each was removing some of the items in the bottle. The police claimed they had observed a brake light violation, but the State stipulated that a stop for such an incident alone would have been invalid. The State then argued the stop was valid based upon the suspected illegal pill-sharing:

"[A]t the suppression hearing the detective testified that from her training and experience, a lot of narcotics violations by hand-to-hand transactions or “sharing of pills” typically occur in the parking lots of pain clinics. She also testified that the pain clinic under investigation was a “cash only” operation, which is the situation with a majority of pain clinics. She further testified that it is common to observe people leaving pain clinics engage in conduct she referred to as “sharing of pills,” in which people “divvy up the proceeds of what they received from the doctor.” She explained that often the drugs obtained by the patient leaving the pain clinic are given to the driver of the vehicle as payment for driving the patient to the clinic. Frequently, the situation is a “sponsorship” arrangement whereby a person in the vehicle supplies the cash to purchase the drugs. In return, for supplying the cash, the sponsor is given some of the drugs. The detective also testified: “But the fact that the pill bottle goes around was suspicious, especially working diversion cases and these types of crimes, people don't share their prescription bottle.”

Even though an objective view of the facts might appear to show only wholly innocent conduct, the court gave great weight to the officer's experience in findsing that the stop was still valid:

"As we observed in Santiago v. State, 941 So. 2d 1277, 1279 (Fla. 4th DCA 2006),

Diverse facts have been recognized as useful in deciding whether reasonable suspicion exists, including: “[t]he time; the day of the week, the location; the physical appearance of the suspect; the behavior of the suspect; the appearance and manner of operation of any vehicle involved; anything incongruous or unusual in the situation as interpreted in the light of the officer's knowledge.”

(quoting State v. Stevens, 354 So. 2d 1244, 1247 (Fla. 4th DCA 1978)). In Santiago we went on to say that it was not necessary that an officer actually observe drugs change hands to establish reasonable suspicion. Instead, an officer may rely on other circumstances, such as “whether the officer can see either drugs or money being transferred, the officer's narcotics experience, the reputation of the location for drug transactions, the extent of the period of surveillance, and the history of previous multiple arrests from that site.” Id. at 1279.

"A police officer may stop a person for the purpose of investigating possible criminal behavior if the officer has reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime. State v. Davis, 849 So. 2d 398 (Fla. 4th DCA 2003). “In order not to violate a citizen's Fourth Amendment rights, an investigatory stop requires a well-founded, articulable suspicion of criminal activity.” Popple v. State, 626 So. 2d 185 (Fla. 1993). “A founded suspicion is one which has a factual foundation in the circumstances observed by the officer, when those circumstances are interpreted in the light of the officer's knowledge and experience.” Davis, 849 So. 2d at 400 (citing Stevens, 354 So. 2d at 1247 (emphasis added).⁴

Continuing, the court wrote:

"Our prior statements in Benemerito, Santiago, and Davis lead us to conclude that in determining whether an officer has a reasonable suspicion to conduct an investigatory stop, some deference should be given to the officer's perspective and the officer's training and experience.⁵ What may appear to be innocent conduct to the average citizen, who is unaware of how drug crimes are committed, may reasonably appear suspicious to an officer. In this case, the officer testified about a pattern of illegal conduct (“sharing of pills”) which the officer learned through observation and training occurs with regularity at or near cash-only pain clinics. “Sharing of pills” is illegal drug activity that includes seemingly innocent behavior to the average citizen (passing a pill bottle to another person). In the context of the facts known to the officer, passing a prescription bottle around in a vehicle is consistent with illegal “sharing of pills.” “Sharing of pills” behavior is a very different illegal drug activity than the hand-to-hand sales transactions involved in Benemerito and Santiago.⁶ As we said in Santiago, observation of drugs is not necessary in the context of hand-to-hand sales of drugs. In the context of “sharing of pills,” it seems to us that observation of the drugs themselves is likewise not necessary and observation of passing a prescription pill bottle is sufficient."

The court thus affirmed the denial of the motion to suppress.

Editor's note: although 'deference to the police officer is found nowhere in the US Constitution,  the presumption of innocence and the requirement of a search warrant are explicitly written therein.

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