The Second District Court of Appeals recently distinguished a legal principle that has been used to support police power for decades. According to the United States Supreme Court, a person does not have a right to privacy in objects they abandon. However, law enforcement has often claimed abandonment of items that were involuntarily dropped or separated from a person, thus giving them a basis to search, pillage, and arrest.
In T.T.N. v. State (Case No. 2D09-856, Decided July 23, 2010), a case haling from the St. Petersburg area, the Second DCA reversed a trial judge’s decision to allow evidence to be admitted that was obtained after it was dropped by a juvenile who had been ordered to put his hands up but was not under arrest or being detained as part of an investigation. The officers involved were investigating a group of juveniles who were in a vehicle that had recently fled from the police. The fleeing driver had already been found and arrested. The officers approached a home where several of the juveniles were standing near the vehicle that previously fled – one of them ran around the side of the house, the others ran inside. Despite the previous fleeing investigation being over and despite there being no evidence that these children had committed any sort of new crime, the officers followed them. After chasing the juvenile who ran around the side of the house, the officers ordered him to put his hands up and a small tube fell from his hands. Cocaine was inside.
The officers attempted to claim that the juvenile abandoned the tube. Judge Raymond Gross agreed with the officers. However, the Second DCA noted that abandonment must be an intentional act, and that mere separation of a person from an object does not mean that a person has given up all privacy interests they may have in that object. More importantly, the DCA explained that an officer’s misconduct in seizing the juvenile without any reason to believe he had committed a crime effected the analysis greatly: if the officers had not illegally detained the juvenile, the tube would have never been “dropped” or “abandoned” and the evidence found would not have later been used against him.
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