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Dobrin v. Florida Dep't of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles2/19/2004
pension.
It is so ordered.
PARIENTE, LEWIS, QUINCE, and BELL, JJ., concur.
CANTERO, J., concurs in part and dissents in part with an opinion. ANSTEAD, C.J., recused.
CANTERO, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I agree with the majority that the district court, by failing to apply Holland v. State, 696 So. 2d 757 (Fla. 1997), applied the wrong law. Unlike the majority, however, I believe that the circuit court, too, applied the wrong law. I would remand to the district court to reconsider the case in light of Holland.
Our decision in Holland applied the then-recent decision of the United States Supreme Court in Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 (1996). In that case, the Supreme Court held that the constitutional reasonableness of a traffic stop does not depend on the motivations of the individual officers involved. Instead, the Court applied a simple objective test based on the common law rule that probable cause justifies a search and seizure. Id. at 813, 819. The question is not what the officer did and why he did it, or even what a "reasonable officer" would have done. As we stated in Holland, applying Whren, "When applying the objective test, generally the only determination to be made is whether probable cause existed for the stop in question." 696 So. 2d at 759.
The majority is correct that the district court in this case failed to apply that standard. Instead, it analyzed "whether the established facts would have caused a reasonable officer under the same circumstances to make the stop." Dep't of Highway Safety & Motor Vehicles v. Dobrin, 829 So. 2d 922, 922 (Fla. 5th DCA 2002). This Court articulated the reasonable officer standard in 1995, before the Supreme Court decided Whren. See State v. Daniel, 665 So. 2d 1040, 1046 (Fla. 1995). In Holland, we acknowledged that Whren rejected that standard in favor of a strict objective test.
Nevertheless, at least the district court attempted to apply some type of objective test, and I am not sure the test it applied differs much from the strict objective test. Whether a reasonable officer under the same circumstances would make the stop is not much different from whether probable cause existed for the stop: by definition, a reasonable officer would only stop a vehicle when probable cause exists. I can envision no circumstances where the result will depend on which objective test is used.
On the other hand, the circuit court rejected an objective test altogether. As the district court noted, the circuit court used a much different analysis. As quoted in the district court's opinion, it stated the issue as follows: "This court finds that it cannot uphold the stop on a basis of what the officer could have done, rather it must only analyze what in fact the officer did and why he did it." 829 So. 2d at 922 (emphasis added). This is a subjective test.
Therefore, I do not agree that the circuit court applied the proper test and would not reinstate that order. Instead, I would remand to the district court for application of the correct standard as stated in Holland.
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