Collins v. StateCollins v. State
This appeal involves questions of arrest, search and seizure. The trial court entered a most extensive and comprehensive order upon the defendant‘s motion to suppress the evidence. The order resolved the conflicts of fact, rejected some of the testimony as being unworthy of belief, and made detailed findings of fact and of law, all of which are of great assistance to this court in considering this case. We commend the trial court and heartily recommend this procedure to all other trial courts.
Two police officers of the City of West Palm Beach, William Eaton and J.R. Park, questioned Herbert Lee Collins, who was in their custody, concerning traffic in marijuana. Collins implicated Doc Bailey. The police officers are white men, Collins and Bailey are negroes. The next day, they questioned Bаiley, and he informed the officers that Collins was growing marijuana. Bailey took the officers to a field outside the City limits, where they found marijuana leaves on the ground and evidence that some plants had been freshly pulled from the
As the officers entered the room, they saw a stem of a marijuana plant, with a few leaves remаining, protruding from a waste basket in plain sight. They heard the toilet flushing, opened the door to the bathroom, and observed a negro woman trying to flush sоmething down the toilet. They retrieved these items and found them to be marijuana cigarettes, leaves and seed. The officers then placed Collins under arrest and thereafter made an extensive search of the room and all of its contents. The subsequent search revealed more marijuana.
There was no request made by the officers to search the premises and there was no expressed consent to the search. Upon these facts, the court granted the motion to suppress all of the evidence seized in the motel room, except аs to the marijuana stalks and leaves attached thereto, which were initially observed protruding from the waste basket. At the trial, the defendant оbjected to the introduction into evidence of any of the marijuana, but the court admitted the marijuana which was specifically excepted from the order of suppression. The defendant was convicted on two counts, growing marijuana and possessing marijuana, and he appeals.
The trial court concluded that since the defendant, after the knock on the door and after recognizing the officers, invited thеm into his motel room, the officers’ presence there was lawful as private citizens; that they exerted no official pressure as in Amos v. U.S., 255 U.S. 313, 41 S.Ct. 266, 65 L.Ed. 654; and, thаt when they observed the marijuana in plain view, a felony was thereby being committed in their presence.
Traffic in narcotics is one of the most heinоus crimes in our modern society and the apprehension and punishment of those involved therein should not be thwarted except where the рreservation of the constitutional rights of American citizens clearly requires it. The right of citizens to be secure from illegal search and seizurе and to be free from the necessity of giving evidence against themselves as guaranteed by the Fourth and Fifth Amendments of the Federal Constitution and by Section 12 and Section 22 of the Declaration of Rights of the Florida Constitution, F.S.A. is inalienable and must be protected at the risk that an individual criminal mаy go without punishment. De Lancy v. City of Miami, Fla. 1950, 43 So.2d 856, 14 A.L.R. 2d 602; Borrego v. State, Fla. 1952, 62 So.2d 43.
We agree with the conclusions of the trial court that when the police officers
The actions of the police оfficers, which culminated in the arrest, search and seizure, extended over a period of two days. All of these actions, while in the City of West Palm Beach, were consistent with their duties and under their power and authority as police officers. Their previous interrogations with Collins had been аs police officers, and their presence at the door of the motel room, in the uniform signifying their official position as police officers, was a part of their continuing investigation begun as police officers. They were acting under color of their office. We cоnclude that Collins admitted them to the motel room by virtue of the force and effect of their official position as police officеrs. He did not admit them as private citizens. An officer gaining access to private living quarters under color of his office and of the law which he personifies must then have some valid basis in law for the intrusion. Any other rule would undermine “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, housеs, papers and effects,” and would obliterate one of the most fundamental distinctions between our form of government, where officers are under the law, and the police-state where they are the law. See Dunnavant v. State, Fla. 1950, 46 So.2d 871; and Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 68 S.Ct. 367, 92 L.Ed. 436.
Reversed.
SHANNON, C.J., and WILLSON, J.H., Associate Judge, concur.