In State v. Watana, the Fourth District Court of Appeal affirmed the lower court’s order granting the defendant’s motion to suppress certain evidence, ruling that the record of the proceeding gave support to the lower court’s ruling that defendant’s purported consent to search wasn’t voluntary.
The facts of the case are as follows: At approximately 3 o’clock in the morning on the }morning in question, a police sergeant stopped the defendant for careless driving. According to the police officer he witnessed, the defendant’s vehicle traveling at speeds between ninty & one hundred miles per hour over a bridge. The police officer also saw defendant’s car crossing all lanes of traffic. Defendant did not pull over immediately, but instead proceeded a small distance & parked behind a business that was closed. The police officer said defendant’s behavior was very unusual, because defendant had ample places to pull over on 17th Street. As the defendant sat in the driver’s seat of his car, the police officer asked for defendant’s drivers license and vehicle registration. The defendant was noticably nervous, & continuously looked around and over his shoulder. The officer described defendant as being very distracted as the police officer was talking to him, picking up items located in his car not related to the traffic stop, & sweating profusely.
The police officer instructed the defendant to exit his vehicle after observing this behavior. The officer stated that he requested permission to conduct a search of defendant’s person, & that defendant complied, never resisting the officer or withdrawing his consent to search. When the police officer asked whether or not he had articulable reasons to believe the defendant had any weapons, the police officer stated he only had a heightened suspicion.
The officer put his hand inside of defendant’s right front pocket and removed a small bag which contained a residual amount of cocaine. Defendant moved to suppress the cocaine, asserting in part that the bag had been obtained during the course of an unlawful detention and that he did not consent to the police officer’s request but, simply acquiesced to the officer’s show of authority.
The defendant testified that he couldn’t remember exactly how fast he was traveling around the time of the stop, but that he was sure it was not 90 to 100 miles per hour. He was nervous when he saw the police car behind his car because it was 3:00 in the morning, and that he was out later than he told told his wife. Defendant had looked for a spot to safely pull over. When defendant saw the officer coming towards the car, he rolled his window down. He then presented the officer his license, registration, & insurance card, when the officer requested those items. As the police officer returned to defendant’s vehicle shortly thereafter, he told the defendant to get out of his vehicle. Defendant complied. He did not know he had the right to say no. The officer asked|then instructed the defendant to go to the back of the police car & turn around. Then he just started searching defendant. Prior to that, the police officer never informed the defendant what he was doing. The defendant believed the officer might give him a sobriety test. Defendant testified that the officer didn’t ask for consent to search him.
The lower court held that, even though defendant was lawfully stopped for exceeding the speed limit, defendant didn’t give the officer consent to conduct a search of his person. The circuit court found that any consent given was a submission to the officer’s authority & was not voluntary. The District Court of Appeal concluded that the trial court’s ruling finding that consent was simply an involuntary submission to authority was established by comptent and substantial evidence.
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