Appeals court says Manatee deputy made bad stop. Judge should have tossed evidence
A Manatee sheriff’s deputy did not have the right to pull over the car that led to a Palmetto woman being arrested on drug charges in 2017 and a local judge should have thrown out all the evidence that came from the subsequent search of her car, the Second District Court of Appeals has ruled.
In a six-page opinion released earlier this month, a three-judge panel reversed former Circuit Judge Brian Iten’s April 18, 2018, ruling and said he should have granted Jamie Lee Bauman’s motion to have evidence suppressed.
“We agree with Bauman that law enforcement lacked a lawful justification for stopping the car in which she was riding,” Judge Stevan T. Northcutt said in the opinion.
The panel also remanded the case back to the circuit court, instructing that Bauman be discharged from her sentence.
Bauman, 36, pleaded no contest to possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia on April 18, 2018, after Iten denied her attorney’s motion to suppress evidence in the case. She was sentenced to two years of drug offender probation.
A week later, her attorney, Assistant Public Defender Amanda Davy appealed Iten’s ruling.
Just before 4:30 a.m. on Feb. 15, 2017, the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office received a call from an anonymous 911 caller saying that a woman in a “dark SUV” at McDonald’s, 3631 Cortez Road West, had yelled out for someone to “call the police,” according to court records.
According to the probable cause affidavit he wrote, Deputy John Jones Jr. said he got to the McDonald’s and saw a blue Chrysler PT Cruiser leaving the parking lot so he stopped the car “to ensure nobody was injured.” Jones thought the driver and passenger were acting nervously or as if they were hiding something. He also saw a white bottle on the floor, he noted.
Bauman’s purse was sitting open between her and the passenger side door, but Jones said he could see there was a needle and spoon. Jones asked Mauman to get out of the car and she was handcuffed before he searched the car. But Jones later admitted it was not based on what he saw in her purse.
“I searched the rest of the vehicle based on the furtive movements,” Jones later said during a deposition.
During a search of the car, deputies found a silver container on car keys that had meth in it. Without being asked, Bauman admitted that it was hers, but later when they had already been taken to a sheriff’s district office.
The driver, Willard Hutson Jr., was also arrested and later pleaded no contest to possession of meth and possession of a controlled substance, cyclobenzaprine, better known as brand-name Flexeril, without having a prescription. His case has not been appealed, however.
That the facts were not disputed by Bauman were irrelevant to the legal ruling made by the district court.
Jones had not corroborated anything with witnesses at the scene nor did he witness any criminal activity or traffic infractions.
“Relying on two case authorities, the State maintains that the independent corroboration requirement applicable to anonymous-tip cases should not apply here because the stop was justified by the need to conduct a welfare check. But that argument is unpersuasive,” Northcutt said, referring to the prosecution’s arguments during the hearing.
The anonymous tip with “vague request for police assistance” was not sufficient to stop the car “that only faintly matched the scant description,” the district court ruled.
Bauman’s case is currently assigned to Circuit Judge Frederick Mercurio. Iten lost his seat on the bench in the November 2018 election to now Circuit Judge Maria Ruhl.
