Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

706 So. 2d 100

Docket No. 97-1142.

Butler v. State

Jamie BUTLER, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.

District Court of Appeal of Florida

Decided February 19, 1998.

District Court of Appeal of Florida · decided 1998-02-19

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“Review of a Florida motion to suppress is a mixed question of law and fact, yoked to federal law.”

quoted by 3 later decisions, including 764 So. 2d 663 - State v. Leonard, 754 So. 2d 746 - Lester v. State

“[t]he standard of review for the trial judge's factual findings is whether competent substantial evidence supports the judge's ruling” and the “standard of review for the trial judge’s application of the law to the factual findings is de novo.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including Curtis Hall v. State of Florida

Relies on Ornelas v. United States · 524 So. 2d 422 - Caso v. State · Perez v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1998-02-19

How this case has been cited

Cited by 22 later decisions — most recently June 2018

22 state decisions

120199820002010decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

¶1*101 Nancy A. Daniels, Public Defender; David P. Gauldin, Assistant Public Defender, Tallahassee, for Appellant.

¶2Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General; Stephen R. White, Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, for Appellee.

¶3LAWRENCE, Judge.

¶4Jamie M. Butler (Butler) appeals his conviction and sentence, imposed after a jury found him guilty of possession of cocaine and cannabis.[1] Butler raises one issue, the denial of his motion to suppress. We affirm.

¶5Review of a Florida motion to suppress is a mixed question of law and fact, yoked to federal law. Art. I, § 12, Fla. Const.; Perez v. State,620 So.2d 1256 (Fla. 1993). The standard of review for the trial judge's factual findings is whether competent substantial evidence supports the judge's ruling. Caso v. State,524 So.2d 422 (Fla.1988). The standard of review for the trial judge's application of the law to the factual findings is de novo. Ornelas v. U.S.,517 U.S. 690, 116 S.Ct. 1657, 134 L.Ed.2d 911 (1996).

¶6The instant trial judge denied Butler's motion to suppress, finding that Butler consented to be searched. The evidence is as follows. Officer Folsom testified at the suppression hearing:

We went to that area [of a complaint of drug sales], found four people. Like the judge mentioned there, two of them walked off, Mr. Butler and another one stayed.
Detective Goodman, who was working with me that day, walked to the other one. I walked up to Mr. Butler and made contact with him, made small talk about the guys that left must have been the drug dealers, and asked him if he had any narcotics on him. He said he did not. I said, do you mind if I take a look in your pockets? He said no, as in, no I don't mind.

¶7Competent substantial evidence supports the trial judge's finding that Butler consented to be searched. We therefore affirm Butler's judgment and sentence.

¶8KAHN and MICKLE, JJ., concur.

NOTES

¶9[1] Butler committed these crimes on February 12, 1996, in Leon County. The trial judge sentenced Butler on count one to forty months in prison followed by eighteen months of felony drug-offender probation, and to time served on count two.

/706/so2d/100 · .json · Public domain