Many drug cases in Florida are the result of police suspecting that a suspect has drugs and requesting that the defendant consent to a search of his/her vehicle, home, person or other belongings. People always have the right to refuse a police officer’s request to search, but people often allow…
It is pretty clear in Florida that a police officer cannot search a suspect for drugs or other evidence of illegal activity without a proper legal basis such as consent, probable cause or a valid arrest. A police officer might be able to do a quick pat down of a…
In Florida, the police have a right to stop a person driving a vehicle if the driver commits a traffic violation and detain that driver for a relatively short period of time to write a traffic citation. If during that time the police officer develops reasonable suspicion that the driver…
In Florida, a person who is on probation for a crime does lose some of his/her constitutional rights. For instance, any other person has the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures in his/her home. This means that a police officer or other agent of the state cannot…
When a person in Florida gets arrested for a crime, the police are generally permitted to search him/her. This is considered a search incident to an arrest, and it allows the police officer to search the suspect to make sure the suspect does not possess anything that could harm the…
In Florida, the police are not generally allowed to enter a person’s residence without a valid search warrant or consent to enter and search by the owner or someone with authorization to give the consent to the police. Perhaps the strongest privacy rights and right to be free from unreasonable…
In Florida, the police are limited in what and when they can search items that belong to you. Obvious examples include your house, your vehicle and your person. The police are not permitted to search any of those things unless they have a search warrant, they have consent from someone…
In Florida, an owner of property has strong constitutional privacy rights in his/her property. This means that, with few exceptions, the police cannot enter to search that property with consent from the homeowner or a valid search warrant. If the police knock on a property owner’s door and request to…
There is a search and seizure rule in Florida that many people are not aware of that can be quite onerous, depending on how it is applied. It is called the inevitable discovery rule. To understand the rule, it is important to first understand your rights. The Constitution guarantees a…
In Florida, there are fairly strict rules that address when police can search your residence, your vehicle, yourself and your belongings. Essentially, if you have a reasonable expectation that the thing to be searched is private, then the police are limited in when and how they can search it. Certainly,…