State of Florida v. Christopher L. Carpenter

IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL
FIRST DISTRICT, STATE OF FLORIDA
STATE OF FLORIDA, NOT FINAL UNTIL TIME EXPIRES TO
FILE MOTION FOR REHEARING AND
Appellant, DISPOSITION THEREOF IF FILED
v. CASE NO. 1D13-6199
CHRISTOPHER L.
CARPENTER,
Appellee.
_____________________________/
Opinion filed February 5, 2015.
An appeal from the Circuit Court for Bay County.
James B. Fensom, Judge.
Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, and Justin D. Chapman, Assistant Attorney
General, Tallahassee, for Appellant.
Ross A. Keene of Ross Keene Law, P.A., Pensacola, for Appellee.
ROWE, J.
The State of Florida appeals the trial court’s order granting Christopher
Carpenter’s motion to suppress evidence found during a warrantless search of his
cell phone at the time of his arrest. The trial court concluded, relying on Smallwood
v. State, 113 So. 3d 724 (Fla. 2013) (Smallwood II), that law enforcement was
required to obtain a search warrant before searching the data and contents of
Carpenter’s cell phone. However, at the time of the search, Smallwood v. State, 61
So. 3d 448 (Fla. 1st DCA 2011) (Smallwood I), was binding appellate precedent and
expressly permitted the warrantless search of a cell phone incident to arrest. Because
the search of Carpenter’s cell phone was conducted in objectively reasonable
reliance on binding appellate precedent, it falls under the good-faith exception to the
exclusionary rule. Accordingly, we hold that the trial court erred in granting
Carpenter’s motion to suppress evidence obtained from the search.
FACTS
Carpenter was charged with traveling to meet a minor, solicitation of a minor,
and transmission of harmful material to a minor. At the time of his arrest, law
enforcement officers searched Carpenter and removed a cell phone from his person.
Without a warrant, law enforcement officers retrieved from the cell phone images
and data, including text messages with sexual content and explicit photos sent by
Carpenter to an undercover officer posing as a 14-year-old.
Carpenter filed a motion to suppress, arguing that pursuant to the Florida
Supreme Court’s opinion in Smallwood II, the warrantless search of Carpenter’s cell
phone violated the Fourth Amendment. The state argued in response that when
Carpenter was arrested, the binding legal precedent in this jurisdiction was this
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Court’s decision in Smallwood I, and the law enforcement officer acted in good faith
and under binding appellate precedent when he searched Carpenter’s cell phone.
At the suppression hearing, Investigator Williams testified that he was
working undercover as an online “chatter” on Craigslist, and Carpenter responded
by email to the ad. Investigator Williams’ testified that he told Carpenter by e-mail
that he was 14 years old, and Carpenter continued to communicate with him by email
and text messaging. Investigator Sconiers, the officer who conducted the search of
Carpenter’s cell phone, testified that the search was based on a concern about the
destruction of evidence, explaining that there is a risk that evidence can be lost from
a cell phone even if the defendant cannot personally put his hands on the phone itself.
Investigator Sconiers also testified that at the time of the search of Carpenter’s cell
phone he was operating under the authority of this Court’s Smallwood I decision.
Following the hearing, the trial court granted Carpenter’s motion to suppress the cell
phone evidence, citing the opinion in Smallwood II.
ANALYSIS 1
In Smallwood I, this court held, “[T]he search of appellant’s cell phone
incident to his arrest was not a violation of the Fourth Amendment.” In June 2012,
the time of the search in this case, Smallwood I was binding appellate precedent on
1
The issue presented in this case is reviewed de novo. See Connor v. State, 803 So.
2d 598, 605 (Fla. 2001).
3
the issue of cell phone searches. Following the search, however, the Florida
Supreme Court quashed Smallwood I, and held in Smallwood II that law
enforcement officers are required to obtain a search warrant before searching the
contents of a cell phone that has been seized incident to a lawful arrest.
Although Carpenter correctly challenges the legality of the warrantless search
of his cell phone based upon Smallwood II, 2 determining the legality of the search
does not address the question of whether he is entitled to the remedy of exclusion of
evidence obtained from the search. In Davis v. United States, 131 S. Ct. 2419
(2011), the United States Supreme Court held that “searches conducted in
objectively reasonable reliance on binding appellate precedent are not subject to the
exclusionary rule.” Id. at 2423-24. Under Davis, where a good-faith exception to
the exclusionary rule applies, a defendant is not entitled to the remedy of exclusion
of evidence simply because of retroactive applicability of a new law. In Davis, the
Court emphasized that the exclusionary rule is not a personal constitutional right,
but is instead a “judicially created sanction” to “deter future Fourth Amendment
2
After Smallwood II, the United States Supreme Court in Riley v. California, ---
U.S. ---, 134 S. Ct. 2473 (2014), also held that police officers may not, without a
warrant, search digital information on cell phones seized from defendants incident
to an arrest. Both Riley and Smallwood II must be applied retroactively “to all cases,
state or federal, pending on direct review or not yet final” because those cases set
forth new rules of constitutional criminal procedure. See Griffith v. Kentucky, 479
U.S. 314, 328 (1987); Smiley v. State, 966 So. 2d 330 (Fla. 2007). However, Riley
does not address the application of the exclusionary rule at issue here.
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violations.” Davis, 131 S. Ct. at 2433-34 (quoting Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465
(1976)). The Court stated, “[W]hen binding appellate precedent specifically
authorizes a particular police practice, well-trained officers will and should use that
tool to fulfill their crime-detection and public-safety responsibilities.” Id.
Accordingly, the question presented in this case is not whether the evidence obtained
from the warrantless search of Carpenter’s cell phone should have been suppressed
under the exclusionary rule, but whether the evidence was admissible based on the
application of the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule.
At the time of Carpenter’s arrest, Smallwood I was the only Florida district
court decision addressing the legality of warrantless cell phone searches incident to
arrest. In Pardo v. State, 596 So. 2d 665 (Fla. 1992), the Florida Supreme Court
held that decisions of a district court of appeal constitute binding appellate precedent
and “represent the law of Florida unless and until they are overruled by this
Court.” Id. at 666. Accordingly, under Pardo, this Court’s decision in Smallwood I
was binding on all Florida trial courts until it was later reversed in Smallwood II. In
conducting the search of Carpenter’s phone, the officers acted pursuant to the
authority set forth in this Court’s decision in Smallwood I. Thus, under Pardo
and Davis, it was objectively reasonable for the officers to rely on the binding
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appellate precedent of Smallwood I when conducting the warrantless search of
Carpenter’s cell phone. 3
Notwithstanding the principles set forth in Davis and Pardo, Carpenter urges
this Court to follow the Second District’s decision in Willis v. State, 148 So. 3d 480
(Fla. 2d DCA 2014), where the court held that the good-faith exception to the
exclusionary rule did not allow for the admission of evidence seized from the
warrantless search of the defendant’s cell phone. In Willis, as in this case, the search
occurred in 2012 after Smallwood I, but before Smallwood II.
Despite the Florida Supreme Court’s holding in Pardo that “in the absence of
interdistrict conflict, district court decisions bind all Florida trial courts” id. at 666,
the majority in Willis questioned whether this Court’s Smallwood I decision was
binding on law enforcement acting in the Second District. The court added that it
was “not convinced that our supreme court intends for one recent decision from
another Florida district court of appeal on such a controversial issue to create
‘binding precedent,’ at least in other districts, for purposes of the good-faith
exception as announced in Davis.” Willis, 148 So. 3d at 483. Observing
3
Contrary to Carpenter’s argument that there was insufficient evidence that law
enforcement officers here were actually relying on Smallwood I, the investigator
who conducted the search of Carpenter’s cell phone testified that he was relying on
the law under Smallwood I at the time of the search. Regardless, law enforcement
officers are expected to know the law in their jurisdiction and to act in accord with
that law.
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that Smallwood I was pending review in the Florida Supreme Court at the time of
the search at issue in that case, the Willis majority opined that:
when a Fourth Amendment issue is rapidly evolving, it is hard to justify
an approach to the good-faith exception that allows the first defendant
to reach the United States Supreme Court to receive the benefit of the
exclusionary rule while other defendants in the legal pipeline do not.
The equal application of the rule of law would seem to be a principle of
our legal system calling for a cautious use of the good-faith exception
in situations like the one we face today.
Id. at 483.
This assertion by the Willis majority is unsupported by any authority and is
completely at odds with the rule established in Pardo. Indeed as the Willis majority
acknowledges,“[t]he rule in Pardo was created to establish consistency within
Florida law in light of our unique system in which the intermediate appellate courts
are intended to be the normal final courts of review.” Id. at 483. If there were any
serious doubt as to statewide application of the rule in Pardo, the Florida Supreme
Court’s reaffirmation of the rule in System Components Corp. v. Florida
Department of Transportation, 14 So. 3d 967 (Fla. 2009), settles the question
entirely: “In the absence of inter-district conflict or contrary precedent from this
Court, it is absolutely clear that the decision of a district court of appeal is binding
throughout Florida.” Id. at 967 (emphasis in original).
Further, the Willis majority’s assertion that the good-faith exception should
not apply “when a Fourth Amendment issue is rapidly evolving” finds no foundation
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in Florida law. As discussed at length by Judge Morris in his dissenting opinion
in Willis, the majority in essence “carves out an exception to Pardo for cases
involving Fourth Amendment issues.” Id. at 488. We agree with Judge Morris’s
analysis and find nothing in Pardo or in any controlling authority to preclude its
application in a Fourth Amendment case. 4 Accordingly, we decline to follow Willis
or apply its reasoning to this case.
CONCLUSION
Because Smallwood I was binding appellate precedent at the time of the
search of Carpenter’s cell phone, it was objectively reasonable for law enforcement
to rely on the authority of that decision. The search of Carpenter’s cell phone falls
within the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule, and thus, the trial court
erred in granting the motion to suppress.
REVERSED.
4
Willis is also readily distinguished on the facts. In Willis, the cell phone was
discovered pursuant to an inventory search incident to a traffic stop. Here,
Carpenter’s phone was actually used in the commission of the crime for which he
was arrested. Carpenter’s arrest was based on an undercover investigation where
Carpenter was caught communicating via email and text messaging with someone
he believed was 14 years old, and then he arranged through the same electronic
means to travel to meet that person. The sexual content of the text messages and the
explicit photos sent by Carpenter’s phone to the undercover officer formed the basis
of the charges in this case. Further, unlike in Willis, here there was testimony that
the officer searched the phone based on an imminent concern about the destruction
of evidence, in addition to the officer’s expressed belief that his search of the cell
phone was legal.
8
THOMAS and OSTERHAUS, JJ., CONCUR.
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