Hill v. State, (3th District Court of Appeals, June 30th, 2010)

In the early morning of May 31, 2008, an Officer of the Key West Police Department responded to an anonymous call that a black male wearing a shirt, jeans, and nice sneakers was sitting with a nicely dressed white female and selling narcotics.  The Officer did not observe anything that indicated that a crime had occurred, was occurring, or was about to occur. He called four other Officers who arrived at the scene. 

The Officer testified that Hill was free to decline the search and leave. Although Hill felt that the officer did not have a right to search him, Hill proceeded to empty his pockets. As Hill removed his keys from one of his pockets, the Officer noticed a clear plastic bag with a white powdery substance inside. Recognizing the substance to be cocaine, the Officer placed Hill under arrest. A field test yielded positive for cocaine.

There are three types of "police-citizen" encounters: Consensual, Investigatory Detention, and formal arrest.  In this case the Court said that a reasonable person in Hill's position would not have felt free to leave or to decline the officers' requests in light of the surrounding circumstances immediately preceding Hill's arrest.  Additionally, the officers asked Hill for his consent to a search while one officer retained his license to run a warrants check.  The Florida Supreme Court has found that “the retention of identification during the course of further interrogation or search certainly factors into whether a seizure has occurred.” Golphin, 945 So.2d at 1185.

The Court granted the Defense's Motion to Suppress and the charges were thrown out.