To convict someone of drug trafficking in Florida, a prosecutor must prove three things beyond a reasonable doubt: the person knowingly sold, bought, made, delivered, imported or possessed the drug; the substance is one the statute lists; and the weight reached the trafficking threshold. I’m Rocky Brancato, founder of The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., a Tampa criminal defense firm, and I have tested that proof for more than 25 years in Hillsborough County courtrooms, including more than 150 jury trials to verdict. In trafficking cases our attorneys often start before any charge is filed, taking the weight, lab and search problems to the State Attorney’s Office through representation before charges are filed.

What does the State have to prove in a Florida drug trafficking case?

The State must prove a knowing act, a listed drug, and a qualifying weight. Section 893.135 covers anyone who “knowingly sells, purchases, manufactures, delivers, or brings into this state,” or who is “knowingly in actual or constructive possession of” the threshold amount. Each drug has its own paragraph, its own threshold and its own sentencing tiers.

Florida does not require the State to prove you knew the substance was illegal. Under section 893.101, Florida Statutes, lack of knowledge of the illicit nature of a substance is an affirmative defense the accused raises, and possession allows the jury to presume knowledge. The State still has to prove you knew the drugs were there and that you possessed them.

Conspiracy counts the same as the completed crime. Under section 893.135(5), agreeing with another person to traffic is a first-degree felony “punishable as if he or she had actually committed such prohibited act.” That is why text messages and recorded calls about amounts can expose someone to a trafficking sentence even when no drugs are ever found on them. Our Tampa drug crimes attorney page explains how our firm handles every level of drug charge, from simple possession to trafficking.

What are the trafficking weights and mandatory minimums in Florida?

Florida trafficking thresholds start as low as 4 grams for fentanyl and heroin and as high as 25 pounds for cannabis. The table below shows the 2026 tiers for the drugs our firm sees most often in Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco County cases, taken directly from the statute.

Every one of these tiers is a first-degree felony, punishable by up to 30 years in prison under section 775.082, Florida Statutes. The mandatory minimum is the floor, and the judge can sentence anywhere from that floor up to the maximum. Under section 893.135(3), the court cannot withhold adjudication or suspend the sentence, and the person is not eligible for discretionary early release until the minimum is served.

Three points in the table surprise most families. First, fentanyl carries a 7-year minimum at the same 4-gram threshold where heroin carries 3 years. Second, the opioid pill thresholds are counted by the weight of the pills, which we explain below. Third, the list keeps growing: effective October 1, 2026, the Legislature added trafficking in xylazine, a veterinary sedative, starting at 28 grams with a 3-year minimum.

Can you be charged with trafficking without selling drugs?

Yes. Florida’s trafficking statute treats possession of the threshold amount as trafficking, with no proof of a sale, a buyer or an intent to sell. A person stopped with 14 grams of methamphetamine in a backpack faces the same 3-year minimum as a person caught selling it.

Possession can be actual or constructive. Actual possession means the drugs were on your body or in your hand. Constructive possession covers drugs in a car, a bedroom or a bag you did not have on you, and the State must prove you knew the drugs were there and could control them. In Brown v. State, 428 So. 2d 250 (Fla. 1983), the Florida Supreme Court held that when a home is jointly occupied, knowledge and control cannot be inferred from ownership alone and must be shown by independent proof, although drugs in plain view in common areas can supply that proof.

Shared cars and shared homes are where many trafficking cases are won. Our firm’s guide to constructive possession in a Florida drug case walks through the evidence prosecutors use to connect a person to drugs found nearby, and how our attorneys answer it.

How is drug weight calculated in a Florida trafficking case?

Florida counts the total weight of the mixture, not the weight of the pure drug. Section 893.135(6) says “the weight of the controlled substance is the total weight of the mixture,” including solutions and dosage units such as pills, capsules and tablets. Cutting agents, binders and the pill itself all count. That is how a small number of oxycodone or hydrocodone tablets can cross a trafficking line.

The State must still prove what the substance is and how much of it there is, packet by packet. In Greenwade v. State, 124 So. 3d 215 (Fla. 2013), officers found nine baggies of white powder, and the contents were combined before the lab tested them. The Florida Supreme Court held that when separately wrapped packets hold a substance that can be mistaken for something else, such as white powder, the State must chemically test each packet before adding them together. Because the powder was commingled first, the court ordered the trafficking conviction reduced to simple possession.

Field tests add another layer of risk. A 2024 study from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School’s Quattrone Center, Guilty Until Proven Innocent: Field Drug Tests and Wrongful Convictions, estimated that about 773,000 U.S. drug arrests each year involve color-based field tests and that roughly 30,000 people a year who had no illegal drugs are falsely implicated by them. When an arrest affidavit rests on a roadside test, our attorneys start asking what the lab actually confirmed.

What happened in the Tampa airport cannabis case?

Campbell v. State, 407 So. 3d 558 (Fla. 2d DCA 2025), is a Hillsborough County case that shows how weight proof can collapse. In July 2022, Tampa International Airport police running a narcotics interdiction on a flight from Denver had a K-9 alert to two duffle bags. The bags held fifty vacuum-sealed bundles of green, leafy material, and the two packages weighed 32.57 pounds each. The FDLE analyst tested a sample from only one bundle.

The Second District Court of Appeal reversed the trafficking conviction. Because legal hemp and illegal cannabis cannot be told apart by look or smell, the court held that, absent other proof, the State cannot rely on look and smell and must chemically test each package it wants counted toward the trafficking weight. The tested sample weighed 24.47 grams, so the court ordered the conviction reduced to felony possession of cannabis. The Second District hears appeals from Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco Counties, so this rule binds trial courts here. The lesson reaches past cannabis: the trafficking weight is only what the State can prove with lab work, packet by packet. Our post on what happens when you are charged with the wrong drug in Florida covers the related problem of lab results that do not match the charge.

Can a judge go below the mandatory minimum for drug trafficking in Florida?

No, not on the judge’s own. Section 893.135(3) bars the court from suspending, deferring or withholding a trafficking sentence, so the minimum applies after a conviction at the charged weight. A sentence below the minimum generally requires the prosecutor’s participation: a negotiated plea to a lower weight tier or a lesser offense, or a substantial assistance motion.

Substantial assistance is the statute’s built-in exception. Under section 893.135(4), the state attorney may ask the sentencing court to reduce or suspend the sentence of a person who helps identify, arrest or convict accomplices or others involved in trafficking, and the judge may grant it only on finding that substantial assistance was given. The motion can be heard in camera, meaning in a closed hearing, for good cause. Cooperation carries real safety and legal risks, and the terms should be negotiated by counsel before anyone talks. Our fentanyl guide explains why substantial assistance is a last resort in most cases.

State data shows that sentences below the minimum are common at the higher tiers. Florida’s Office of Economic and Demographic Research reported in its 2023 Criminal Justice Impact Conference analysis of HB 355 that in fiscal year 2021-22, 81.3% of new prison commitments for fentanyl trafficking of 14 to 28 grams were sentenced below the then-15-year minimum, along with 71.4% of commitments at 28 grams or more. Only 7.2% at the lowest tier were. The report does not say how each lower sentence came about, and the Legislature raised the fentanyl minimums to 7 and 20 years in 2022, but the numbers show that at the higher tiers the charged minimum was often not the sentence imposed.

How do our attorneys defend drug trafficking charges?

Our attorneys defend trafficking cases by attacking each thing the State must prove: the legality of the search, the link between the client and the drugs, the identity and weight of the substance, and the conduct of any informant. Our firm works through six steps in a typical case.

1. Act before the filing decision. In Hillsborough County, the State Attorney’s Office decides what to file after the arrest. Our firm puts the weight, lab and possession problems in front of the assigned prosecutor during that window, when a lower charge or a decision not to file is still on the table.
2. Challenge the stop and search. Most trafficking cases start with a traffic stop, a K-9 sniff or a warrant. A motion to suppress asks the judge to exclude drugs found through an illegal search; our guide to how a motion to suppress works in Florida explains the hearing. I trained officers as a former police academy instructor, and our attorneys use that knowledge to cross-examine officers on what they actually saw and smelled.
3. Contest possession. Shared vehicles, shared bedrooms and passengers are the core of most constructive possession defenses, and the State’s proof of knowledge and control can fail at a suppression hearing, at a motion for judgment of acquittal and again in front of the jury.
4. Test the lab and the weight. We request the lab’s bench notes, testing records, scale calibration records and chain of custody, and we retain independent experts when the numbers are close to a threshold.
5. Investigate the informant. Many trafficking cases begin with a confidential informant working off charges or paid by an agency, and the informant’s deal can become a defense.
6. Negotiate from strength. When the evidence has gaps, our attorneys use them to push for a lower tier, a non-trafficking charge, or diversion.

Does the odor of cannabis still justify a car search?

In the Second District, not by itself. In Williams v. State, 421 So. 3d 809 (Fla. 2d DCA 2025), a Hillsborough County probation case decided en banc on October 1, 2025, the court held that the smell of cannabis standing alone no longer gives officers probable cause to search, because hemp and medical marijuana are legal. Odor is still one factor among all the circumstances. The defendant in that case still lost under the good-faith exception because officers had relied on earlier precedent, and the court certified the question to the Florida Supreme Court, so the rule could change. For searches in our area after that date, a stop that turns on smell alone is a suppression issue our attorneys raise in every trafficking case that starts that way.

When is entrapment a defense in a trafficking case?

Entrapment is a defense when a government agent induced the crime and the person was not already predisposed to commit it. Under section 777.201, Florida Statutes, the accused must prove inducement by the greater weight of the evidence. In Munoz v. State, 629 So. 2d 90 (Fla. 1993), the Florida Supreme Court held that once the accused shows inducement and produces evidence of no predisposition, the State must prove predisposition beyond a reasonable doubt, and a judge may find entrapment as a matter of law when the facts are undisputed.

Informant pay can also end a prosecution. In State v. Glosson, 462 So. 2d 1082 (Fla. 1985), a sheriff’s informant was promised 10% of the civil forfeitures from the cases he made and had to testify to collect. The Florida Supreme Court held that the arrangement violated the Florida Constitution’s due process clause and approved the dismissal of the charges. Later decisions have applied that holding narrowly, so the exact terms of the informant’s deal matter, and our firm’s guide to confidential informants in Florida criminal cases explains when the State must reveal who the informant is.

What happens after a trafficking arrest in Hillsborough County?

A trafficking arrest in Hillsborough County moves fast, and the first weeks often decide the shape of the case. Here is the typical sequence our attorneys see in the 13th Judicial Circuit.

First appearance is the first chance to get a client home. Unlike some nearby counties, Hillsborough County does not offer pretrial services supervision as a release option, so the bond argument at the Hillsborough County first appearance carries real weight. Our office at 620 E. Twiggs Street is two blocks from the courthouse, and our attorneys also defend trafficking cases in Pinellas County and Pasco County.

What results has our firm gotten in trafficking cases?

Our firm has resolved trafficking charges through dismissal, diversion and jury acquittal. These are published results from our case results page.

Past results do not guarantee future outcomes. Every case turns on its own facts.

Frequently asked questions about Florida drug trafficking charges

Can trafficking charges be dropped or reduced in Florida?

Yes, trafficking charges can be dropped or reduced when the search was illegal, the possession proof is weak, or the State cannot prove the weight with lab testing. The Brancato Law Firm has seen a fentanyl trafficking case dismissed within about three weeks and an amphetamine trafficking charge reduced to diversion after a motion to suppress. In Campbell v. State, 407 So. 3d 558 (Fla. 2d DCA 2025), an appellate court reduced a trafficking conviction to felony possession because only one of fifty bundles was tested.

Can you recommend a lawyer in Tampa who handles drug trafficking charges?

Look for a Tampa attorney whose practice is devoted entirely to criminal defense, from misdemeanors to capital cases, who has tried trafficking cases to a jury, and who will start on the case before the State files charges. At The Brancato Law Firm, our attorneys handle drug cases from possession through trafficking, backed by Rocky Brancato’s more than 150 jury trials to verdict, his AV Preeminent rating, and his selection to Super Lawyers and the National Trial Lawyers Top 100. Clients get updates through our client portal and calls returned within 24 hours. Our Tampa drug trafficking defense page lists our full approach.

Who would you recommend for a cocaine trafficking defense attorney in Florida?

Choose a trial attorney who knows how cocaine weight is proven, because trafficking starts at 28 grams and the State must chemically test separately wrapped packets of powder before adding them together. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm won a not guilty verdict for a Tampa business manager accused of trafficking 200 to 400 grams of cocaine. We defend cocaine trafficking cases in Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco Counties, and Rocky Brancato is the author of How to Choose a Major Crimes Attorney – or Any Criminal Defense Attorney for That Matter.

I was arrested for fentanyl possession in Tampa. Is that trafficking?

It depends on the weight: 4 grams or more of a fentanyl mixture is trafficking with a 7-year minimum, while a smaller amount is generally possession, a third-degree felony under section 893.13, Florida Statutes. The Brancato Law Firm looks first at the lab report, because the weight of a mixture and the exact substance identified can move a case above or below that line. The lab must also identify the right drug, since fentanyl analogues are listed separately in Florida’s drug schedules.

Is oxycodone trafficking based on the number of pills or their weight?

Oxycodone trafficking is based on the total weight of the pills, including fillers and binders, starting at 7 grams. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm check whether the lab weighed and tested each container separately and whether the pill count matches the property receipt. The weight math matters because the tiers jump from a 3-year minimum at 7 grams to 7 years at 14 grams.

How much does a drug trafficking lawyer cost in Tampa?

The cost depends on the facts and the intricacy of the case, including the weight tier, the number of defendants, and whether lab or search experts are needed. The Brancato Law Firm quotes a flat fee that covers the whole case, including trial, with at least half up front and a payment plan for the balance while the case is pending. Consultations are free, and our firm is neither the most nor the least expensive in Tampa. Our guide to what a criminal defense attorney costs in Tampa explains why some firms charge a separate trial fee and how that creates a financial incentive to settle before trial preparation begins.

Talk to our firm about a trafficking charge

For more about our defense strategies, visit our Drug Crimes page.

A trafficking arrest starts the clock on bond, the State’s filing decision and the evidence our attorneys need to preserve, including video, lab records and informant files. The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., founded by Tampa Criminal Defense Attorney Rocky Brancato, defends trafficking charges in Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco Counties, from the first appearance through trial. Call (813) 727-7159 for a free consultation. You can call us at any hour. Our firm has Spanish-speaking staff, and attorney Jean-Luc Adrien speaks Spanish, Haitian Creole, and French.

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A.
620 E. Twiggs Street, Suite 205, Tampa, FL 33602
(813) 727-7159
Serving Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. is a Tampa-based criminal defense practice. We are not affiliated with any other Brancato-named law firms.

In a DUI trial, jurors can watch the roadside video for themselves, and what they see often carries more weight than the officer’s report. I taught at the police academy before I founded The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., a Tampa criminal defense firm, so I know how officers are trained to investigate and where shortcuts show up on video. I am a member of the National College for DUI Defense (NCDD) and the DUI Defense Lawyers Association (DDLA), and I have tried more than 150 jury trials to verdict in more than 25 years in Hillsborough County courtrooms. Our attorneys hold each DUI investigation to the procedures officers are taught, step by step, and use every gap to pursue suppression, dismissal, a reduction, or a not guilty verdict.

What are the defenses to a DUI charge in Florida?

The main defenses to a Florida DUI charge attack the four things the State needs: a lawful stop, probable cause to arrest, a reliable chemical test, and proof of impairment. Under section 316.193, Florida Statutes, the State must prove the driver’s normal faculties were impaired by alcohol or drugs, or that the driver’s blood or breath alcohol level was 0.08 or higher. Our attorneys review every stage in the same order the officer built the case, because a defect early in the case can remove everything that came after it. You can read more about how our firm handles these cases on our Tampa DUI defense page.

Was the traffic stop legal?

A DUI case can be dismissed if the officer had no lawful reason to stop the car. The Fourth Amendment requires either a traffic violation or a reasonable suspicion, based on specific facts, that the driver was impaired. Florida courts allow an officer to stop a driver whose weaving within a lane suggests impairment, so the real question in most cases is what the driving looked like.

Our attorneys compare the patrol car video, minute by minute, with the reason written in the arrest report. When the video shows a single touch of a lane line, a lawful turn, or driving that never matches the report, we file a motion to suppress. If the judge grants it, the officer’s observations, the test results and the driver’s statements that followed the stop are excluded, and the State usually cannot proceed.

Did the officer have probable cause to arrest you for DUI?

An officer needs probable cause, meaning facts that would lead a reasonable officer to believe the driver was impaired, before making a DUI arrest. Most officers build that probable cause on three standardized field sobriety exercises: the horizontal gaze nystagmus eye test, the walk-and-turn, and the one-leg stand.

The research behind those exercises is narrower than most jurors assume. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s main validation study, Validation of the Standardized Field Sobriety Test Battery at BACs Below 0.10 Percent (1998), tested 297 drivers stopped by seven officers from a single San Diego police alcohol enforcement unit. It reported that the officers’ decisions about whether a driver was above or below 0.08 were accurate in 91 percent of cases, using the scoring procedures they had been trained on. A 1994 study in the peer-reviewed journal Perceptual and Motor Skills showed officers videotapes of 21 sober people. The officers rated significantly more of those sober people as impaired when they watched them perform field sobriety tests than when they watched them do ordinary tasks such as walking normally or reciting an address.

Our attorneys hold officers to their own standard. NHTSA’s accuracy figures assume the exercises were given and scored exactly as officers are trained, so every departure on the video weakens the probable cause. A probable cause challenge that fails at a suppression hearing can still succeed in front of a jury, because the same flaws go to whether the driver was actually impaired. Our post on how to challenge field sobriety tests in Tampa covers the exercises one by one.

Can a breath test be thrown out in Florida?

Yes. A Florida breath result is valid only if the test was performed substantially according to methods approved by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), by an operator with a valid FDLE permit, under section 316.1934, Florida Statutes. FDLE’s rules are in chapter 11D-8 of the Florida Administrative Code. They approve two instruments, the Intoxilyzer 8000 and the newer Intoxilyzer 9000, and they require, among other things:

• an agency inspection of each instrument at least once every calendar month, under rule 11D-8.006;
• at least 20 minutes before the test in which the officer reasonably ensures the driver has not taken anything by mouth or regurgitated, under rule 11D-8.007;
• at least two breath samples taken within 15 minutes of each other, with results within 0.020 of each other, and a third sample when the first two are farther apart, under rule 11D-8.002.

The Second District Court of Appeal, whose decisions bind the trial courts in Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco Counties, applied these rules in State v. Kilburn, No. 2D2024-0649 (Fla. 2d DCA Aug. 15, 2025). An FDLE inspector had replaced a leaking breath tube in a Sarasota County Intoxilyzer 8000 that was used in three DUI cases. The court agreed with the trial judge that replacing the tube was a repair, not maintenance, and that FDLE was not then an authorized repair facility. The breath tests from that machine were therefore not in substantial compliance with FDLE’s rules, and the State could not rely on the breath test affidavit and the legal presumptions in section 316.1934 to prove the results. Our firm wrote about that ruling in Intoxilyzer Not Properly Maintained: Florida Court Throws Out Breath Test Results.

Effective July 1, 2026, FDLE amended rule 11D-8.002 to list the Department itself as an authorized repair facility. The repair-facility argument remains available for breath tests taken before that date. For every breath case, old or new, our attorneys obtain the instrument’s inspection, maintenance and repair records, because who worked on the machine, and when, can decide whether the result comes in.

Can police take your blood after a DUI arrest in Florida?

Police generally need a warrant, valid consent, or a true emergency to draw blood in a DUI case. In Missouri v. McNeely, 569 U.S. 141 (2013), the U.S. Supreme Court held that the natural loss of alcohol from the bloodstream does not, by itself, create an emergency that excuses a warrant. In Birchfield v. North Dakota, 579 U.S. 438 (2016), the Court held that police may require a breath test without a warrant after a lawful DUI arrest, but a blood test is more intrusive because it pierces the skin, and a state may not make it a crime to refuse one.

Florida’s implied consent law covers blood in one narrow situation: the driver appears for treatment at a hospital, clinic or ambulance, and a breath or urine test is impractical or impossible, under section 316.1932(1)(c), Florida Statutes. FDLE’s rule 11D-8.012 then requires an alcohol-free antiseptic, a glass tube with a preservative and an anticoagulant, proper labeling and refrigeration, and delivery for analysis within 30 days. A missing step can keep the result out. Our post on whether police can take your blood without a warrant in Florida covers the warrant rules in detail.

When blood was drawn after a crash, charges are often not filed until the lab results come back. That gap is the time for pre-file advocacy, when our attorneys can present facts to the prosecutor before the charging decision is made.

What if your blood alcohol was still rising when you were driving?

A breath or blood test measures alcohol at the time of the test, which can be an hour or more after the driving ended. Alcohol keeps absorbing into the blood for a period after the last drink, so a driver’s level can be lower behind the wheel than at the station. In Miller v. State, 597 So. 2d 767 (Fla. 1991), the Florida Supreme Court held that a test taken within a reasonable time after the stop is admissible even if the State cannot relate the number back to the time of driving. The court treated that gap as a question of weight for the jury, which makes the drinking timeline a trial issue.

Our attorneys build that timeline from receipts, bar tabs, meals, witness statements and the time of the stop. We then work with forensic toxicologists through our forensic science defense practice. Our post on retrograde extrapolation and rising blood alcohol describes a case where that testimony mattered.

What does the video in a DUI case show?

In many DUI cases, the video is the strongest defense evidence. Depending on the agency, a patrol car camera records the driving and the stop, a body camera records the roadside exercises and the arrest, and the breath testing room may record the 20-minute observation period. Our attorneys request every recording and compare it with the report line by line: slurred speech that sounds clear, swaying that never appears, instructions that were rushed or incomplete, and observation periods interrupted by phone calls or paperwork.

In one of our firm’s published results, a jury found a client not guilty of DUI (refusal) and resisting an officer without violence after the defense relied on scene video showing the client was not impaired. Agencies do not keep every recording indefinitely, so our attorneys request them early.

How are drug DUI cases defended in Florida?

Florida has no legal limit for marijuana or other drugs, so in a drug DUI case the State must prove that a controlled or chemical substance impaired the driver’s normal faculties under section 316.193. A positive blood or urine test shows that a substance was present. It does not, by itself, show that the substance impaired the driver at the time of driving.

Many drug DUI cases rest on a drug recognition expert (DRE), an officer trained in a 12-step evaluation that ends with an opinion about which drug category caused the impairment. Our attorneys challenge the DRE’s training records, each step of the protocol, and whether the lab results match the drug category the officer named. Our posts on what a drug recognition expert is in Florida and marijuana DUI charges in Florida go deeper.

Can you beat a DUI refusal charge in Florida?

Yes, because a refusal charge has its own elements, and each one can fail. Since October 1, 2025, a first refusal to take a lawful breath or urine test is a second-degree misdemeanor, and a later refusal is a first-degree misdemeanor, under section 316.1939, Florida Statutes. The State must prove the officer had probable cause, the driver was lawfully arrested for DUI, the driver was told the specific consequences of refusing, and the driver then refused. The crime covers breath and urine tests only, and Birchfield v. North Dakota, 579 U.S. 438 (2016) bars criminal punishment for refusing a blood test.

Refusals are common. In 2022, Florida officers issued 44,001 DUI citations and recorded 14,941 breath test refusals, a refusal rate of about 34 percent, according to Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles figures in a January 2024 Florida Senate Criminal Justice Committee bill analysis. The same analysis cites a 2016 study that put the national refusal rate at 24 percent.

A refusal is also admissible in the DUI case itself, but the law limits how the State can use it. In Osorio v. State, 428 So. 3d 220 (Fla. 3d DCA 2026), the prosecutor told the jury that a sober driver would have blown and “proved innocence beyond a reasonable doubt.” The Third District reversed the DUI conviction because that argument shifted the burden of proof to the defendant. Our attorneys object when the State’s argument crosses that line, and we preserve the issue for appeal. A refusal also brings an administrative license suspension of one year for a first refusal, or 18 months if the license was previously suspended for refusing, under section 322.2615, Florida Statutes.

Can a DUI be reduced to reckless driving in Hillsborough County?

Yes, and when the evidence cannot be suppressed, a reduction to reckless driving is often the realistic goal for a first-time driver. A DUI conviction always counts as a conviction: section 316.656, Florida Statutes bars a Florida court from withholding adjudication for DUI. Reckless driving under section 316.192, Florida Statutes carries up to 90 days in jail and a $25 to $500 fine for a first conviction, and the court can withhold adjudication. When the court believes alcohol or drugs contributed, it must order DUI school and an evaluation, which is why the result is sometimes called a “wet reckless.”

Two limits shape the negotiation. Section 316.656 also bars a judge from accepting a plea to a lesser offense when a breath or blood test shows 0.15 or higher, so in high-reading cases the defense work on the test result itself carries more weight. And in Hillsborough County, the State Attorney’s Office runs its own first-offender track, the Reducing Impaired Driving Recidivism (RIDR) program.

According to the State Attorney’s program sheet, RIDR is limited to first-time misdemeanor DUIs with no minor in the car, no crash, and no reading of 0.20 or higher. Before a disposition date about 60 days after arraignment, the driver completes DUI school, a MADD victim impact panel, community service, and an ignition interlock, alcohol monitor or drug patch. The State then offers a plea to reckless driving with a withhold of adjudication and 12 months of probation. The sheet says one goal is to remove the incentive to refuse a breath test, and it assigns heavier conditions to the level that covers cases with no breath sample: 75 community service hours and six months of monitoring, instead of 50 hours and three months.

Missing RIDR does not end the negotiation. In a published July 2026 result, a client charged with DUI, leaving the scene and refusal did not qualify for RIDR because of the crash. Our firm prepared a mitigation report and treatment plan, and the prosecutor agreed to reduce the case to reckless driving with adjudication withheld.

What are the penalties for a first, second, and third DUI in Florida?

A first DUI in Florida carries up to six months in jail, a $500 to $1,000 fine and a license revocation of 180 days to one year, and the penalties rise with each prior conviction and with a reading of 0.15 or higher. The table below summarizes section 316.193, section 322.28 and section 775.082.

Our attorneys start every case by identifying which of these penalties your record and test result actually put in play. Our post on Florida DUI penalties in Tampa and Hillsborough County covers fourth offenses and other consequences.

Which criminal defense lawyers in Tampa specialize in DUI cases?

Look for a criminal defense lawyer with DUI-specific training, real trial experience, and daily familiarity with the Hillsborough County courts and the State Attorney’s programs. At The Brancato Law Firm, our practice is devoted entirely to criminal defense, from misdemeanors to capital cases, and DUI defense is a core part of it. Our founder is an NCDD and DDLA member and a former police academy instructor, and he served as Chief Operations Officer of the Hillsborough County Public Defender’s Office, overseeing a staff of over 100 attorneys. He is rated AV Preeminent, selected to Super Lawyers, named to the National Trial Lawyers Top 100, and wrote “How to Choose a Major Crimes Attorney – or Any Criminal Defense Attorney for That Matter.”

Our office at 620 E. Twiggs Street is two blocks from the Hillsborough County Courthouse, and we also defend DUI cases in Pinellas County and Pasco County. Clients get updates through a client portal, and we return calls within 24 hours. Our firm has Spanish-speaking staff, and attorney Jean-Luc Adrien speaks Spanish, Haitian Creole, and French.

What should you do in the first 10 days after a DUI arrest in Hillsborough County?

The most urgent step is to challenge the administrative license suspension, because section 322.2615 gives you only 10 days from the notice of suspension to request review. In those 10 days:

1. Talk with a DUI defense lawyer before the review deadline passes.
2. Do not discuss the arrest with anyone except your lawyer, including on social media.
3. Write down what you ate and drank, and when, while you still remember it.
4. Keep receipts and bar tabs, and note the names of anyone who was with you and any businesses near the stop that may have cameras.

Our post on what happens after a DUI arrest in Hillsborough County walks through the full court timeline. Our attorneys can start on the license review and the evidence requests the day you call.

DUI case results from our firm

More results are on our case results page. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.

Frequently asked questions about fighting a DUI in Hillsborough County

Can a DUI be dropped or reduced in Florida?

Yes, a DUI charge can be dropped when key evidence is suppressed or the State cannot prove impairment, and it can be reduced to reckless driving through negotiation or Hillsborough County’s RIDR program. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm have published results in which DUI charges were reduced to reckless driving, including one in which the client did not qualify for RIDR. A reduction is limited by section 316.656, which bars a plea to a lesser offense when a breath or blood test shows 0.15 or higher.

Do I need a DUI specialist in Tampa?

You need a lawyer with DUI-specific training who tries cases, whatever title the lawyer uses. At The Brancato Law Firm, our founder is a member of the National College for DUI Defense and the DUI Defense Lawyers Association, and our practice is devoted entirely to criminal defense, from misdemeanors to capital cases. That means the team negotiating your DUI is also prepared to try it. See how we approach these cases on our DUI defense team in Tampa page.

How do I choose a DUI defense attorney in Tampa, Florida?

Ask how many DUI cases the lawyer has taken to trial, what DUI-specific training the lawyer has, and who will actually appear in court with you. The Brancato Law Firm answers those questions in a free consultation, and our founder has tried more than 150 jury trials to verdict. Ask, too, how the firm communicates: our clients get updates through a client portal, and we return calls within 24 hours. Our published case results show how DUI cases have actually ended.

I was arrested for DUI in Hillsborough County and need a lawyer. What should I do first?

Call a DUI defense lawyer before the 10-day deadline to challenge your license suspension passes, and do not discuss the arrest with anyone else. The Brancato Law Firm’s office is two blocks from the Hillsborough County Courthouse, and you can call us at any hour at (813) 727-7159. Our post on what happens after a DUI arrest in Hillsborough County explains each court date that follows.

How much does it cost to fight a DUI in Tampa?

The cost of fighting a DUI depends on the evidence, how much investigation the case needs, and whether it goes to trial. The Brancato Law Firm quotes a flat fee that covers the whole case, including trial, based on the facts and complexity of your case, and our fees are neither the most nor the least expensive in Tampa. We ask for at least half up front, with a payment plan for the balance while the case is pending, and consultations are free. A flat fee that includes trial avoids a separate trial fee, which can create a financial incentive to settle before trial preparation; our post on what a criminal defense attorney costs in Tampa explains more.

Can the prosecutor use my breath test refusal against me at trial?

Yes, a refusal is admissible in Florida and the prosecutor may argue it shows consciousness of guilt, but the prosecutor may not argue that you had to prove your innocence by blowing. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm object to that argument and preserve it for appeal. In Osorio v. State, 428 So. 3d 220 (Fla. 3d DCA 2026), a DUI conviction was reversed for exactly that kind of argument.

Talk with our DUI defense team about your case

Most DUI defenses depend on evidence that can disappear and deadlines that run out within days of the arrest: the 10-day window to challenge your license, and recordings that agencies do not keep indefinitely. The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., founded by Tampa Criminal Defense Attorney Rocky Brancato, starts by requesting that evidence and reviewing the stop, the arrest and the test. Call (813) 727-7159 for a free consultation, and call us at any hour. For more about our defense strategies, visit our Tampa DUI Lawyer page.

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A.
620 E. Twiggs Street, Suite 205, Tampa, FL 33602
(813) 727-7159
Serving Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. is a Tampa-based criminal defense practice. We are not affiliated with any other Brancato-named law firms.

Most child pornography cases in Tampa begin with an automated report from a tech company, months before anyone knocks on a door. I learned how investigators build these cases as a police academy instructor teaching officers search-and-seizure law, and as a Major Crimes Unit attorney handling sex crime and child abuse cases. Today, as founder of The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., a Tampa criminal defense firm, I lead a team that defends people charged in Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties, many of whom had no record before the search warrant. Our attorneys start with the evidence trail: the report, the warrant, and the forensic image of each device.

How do child pornography investigations start in Florida?

Most cases start with a CyberTipline report from an online platform to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), which routes it to law enforcement. Federal law, 18 U.S.C. § 2258A, requires providers to report apparent CSAM once they have actual knowledge of it, but expressly does not require them to monitor users or scan content. Many large platforms scan anyway, usually by comparing a file’s hash value, a digital fingerprint, to a list of known images.

The volume is enormous. In 2025, NCMEC made 126,256 CyberTipline reports available to law enforcement for Florida, including 70,812 referrals, according to NCMEC’s 2025 CyberTipline Reports by State. Nationally, NCMEC received 20.5 million reports in 2024. Each report then has to be traced to a person through subpoenas for subscriber and IP address records, which is where the State’s first assumptions enter the case.

Can the search be challenged?

Yes. A search challenge is often the strongest defense, because if the warrant falls, the files usually fall with it. In Burnett v. State, 848 So. 2d 1170 (Fla. 2d DCA 2003), a case investigated by the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, the Second District held that the affidavit supporting the warrant for the defendant’s computer and diskettes was fatally defective and reversed 136 counts of possession that flowed from the seizure. The court affirmed other convictions but threw out every possession count.

Our attorneys look for these warrant problems in every case:

• Thin probable cause. The affidavit must connect the person and the place to be searched to the files, not just repeat that a tip exists.
• Staleness. Months can pass between the tip and the warrant. Our article on the 10-day search warrant rule explains a reversal on timing grounds.
• Scope. A warrant for one device or account does not authorize a search of everything a person owns.
• Account warrants. Warrants to Google, Apple, or other providers raise their own issues, covered in our guide to a Google account legal request.

What is a private search doctrine motion to suppress?

A private search doctrine motion asks the court to suppress evidence because police opened a flagged file without a warrant when no person at the reporting company had looked at that file first. Under the U.S. Supreme Court’s private search cases, police may repeat a search a private party already did, but may not go beyond it without a warrant. When a tech company flags a file only by an automated hash match, the defense argues that no private person ever saw the contents, so the officer who opened the file conducted a new government search. Because police in many CyberTip cases open the files first and get warrants afterward, a win on this motion can take down every warrant built on that first look.

Our firm files these motions in Hillsborough County cases, and we build them from the CyberTip itself. Google’s CyberTips answer a question for each reported file: “Was File Reviewed by Company?” A “No” means no Google reviewer looked at that file for the report; the flag rests on a hash match to a different file someone reviewed in the past. We match every file the detective opened to that answer, and we point out what the State must prove at the hearing. A warrantless search shifts the burden to the State, so the prosecution must show, file by file, that a private person actually viewed what the officer opened.

Where do the courts stand on opening hash-matched files?

The courts are split, and Florida’s state appellate courts have not settled the question for the files a company never viewed. In Morales v. State, 274 So. 3d 1213 (Fla. 1st DCA 2019), a Santa Rosa County defendant uploaded an image to a chatroom whose service matched it to known CSAM through Microsoft’s PhotoDNA. No one at the company or NCMEC opened it before an FDLE agent did, without a warrant. The First District held that the agent’s viewing did not exceed the private search because the hash match identified the image with near certainty.

In Lowers, Google hash-matched 156 files in a Google Drive account, a reviewer opened 31, and the CyberTip showed which files were opened and which were not. A detective then opened files that neither Google nor NCMEC had viewed. The Fourth Circuit held that was an unconstitutional search. Brillhart, an appeal from the Middle District of Florida, went the other way on its record, but only because the file’s hash traced to a file a human at Google had already confirmed. The Second District, which hears appeals from Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties, has not squarely decided the question in the decisions we have reviewed. In Youngman v. State, 342 So. 3d 770 (Fla. 2d DCA 2022), it held only that police software finding files a defendant shared publicly on BitTorrent was not a search at all.

Legal scholars have questioned how far hash searches should reach. A 2018 Stanford Law Review note, Dennis Martin’s Demystifying Hash Searches, argues that police conduct a Fourth Amendment search whenever they use an algorithm to do what would be a search if done by hand.

How do our attorneys build a private search motion?

Our attorneys build the motion from the State’s own documents, in five steps:

1. Pull the per-file review answers. We read the CyberTip’s “Was File Reviewed by Company?” answer for every reported file.
2. Match them to what the detective opened. The warrant affidavits usually describe specific files; we check whether each described file was one no company employee viewed.
3. Hold the State to its burden. At the evidentiary hearing, the State must prove with competent evidence, not the tip’s own label, that a person reviewed each file the officer opened.
4. Excise the tainted descriptions. We ask the court to strike the officer’s descriptions of unlawfully viewed files from each warrant affidavit and test whether probable cause remains.
5. Defeat good faith and attenuation. Searches done after the 2021 Wilson decision are harder to excuse as good faith, and a client who invoked the right to counsel and gave no statement leaves the State no break in the chain, unlike the defendant in Lowers.

Lowers carries a practical lesson. The Fourth Circuit found the search unconstitutional and still let the evidence in because the defendant talked to police and consented to searches afterward. A person who stays silent and asks for a lawyer protects the motion as well as the case.

Can a CyberTip be wrong?

Yes. A CyberTip is a report, not proof, and both its labels and its claims about human review can be wrong. The clearest Florida example involves William Lawshe, a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officer who had been named national wildlife officer of the year in 2014. According to News4JAX reporting, a St. Johns County investigation that began with a February 2023 tip led to three counts of possessing child pornography, he left the agency, and the charges were dropped that December after his lawyers produced evidence they said proved his innocence.

Lawshe then sued Verizon and its cloud-storage contractor. In Lawshe v. Verizon Communications, Inc., No. 3:24-cv-137-MMH-LLL (M.D. Fla. Feb. 28, 2025), he alleged that his account held legal images of adult models and that the CyberTip behind his arrest rested on a hash match to an image tagged only “unconfirmed.” He alleged the report still stated that the company “had viewed the entire contents” of the image and that it showed a “pre-pubescent” minor, when the people pictured were plainly adults. Judge Marcia Morales Howard held that federal reporting immunity did not defeat his defamation and Stored Communications Act claims over that report at the pleading stage, writing that the defendants “conflate an intent to immunize mistaken reports with an intent to immunize unfounded reports.” The parties later settled, and in February 2026 the court vacated the order at their request, so it is not precedent. It remains a public record of how an automated flag, and a claim that someone reviewed it, can be wrong.

That is why our attorneys never accept a CyberTip at face value. We check whether each file was actually reviewed, whether it was labeled “apparent” or only “unconfirmed,” and whether an independent examiner agrees the image shows a minor at all. A person who has been falsely flagged has a defense, and the first step is to say nothing to investigators and call a lawyer.

What does the State have to prove about knowledge?

The State must prove you knowingly possessed, controlled, or intentionally viewed material you knew contained CSAM. Under section 827.071, Florida Statutes, the file’s presence on a device is not enough by itself. When the device or home is shared, Florida applies constructive possession rules: the State must show you knew of the files and could exercise control over them through evidence beyond mere proximity, as the Second District explained in Jenrette-Smith v. State, 114 So. 3d 427 (Fla. 2d DCA 2013).

Forensic evidence decides most knowledge disputes. Our attorneys retain independent digital forensic examiners to answer questions the State’s report often skips:

1. Who was using the device? Login records, user profiles, and activity at the time of download.
2. Were the files ever opened? Access dates, thumbnails, and viewing history.
3. Where did the files sit? A deleted file, a cache, or an automatic sync folder tells a different story than an organized collection.
4. How did they arrive? Bulk downloads, file-sharing programs, malware, or a synced account a user never opened.
5. Are the counts right? Duplicates, thumbnails of the same image, and files of uncertain age inflate the count.

Deleted files raise their own issue. In Burnett, the State’s expert found deleted images on diskettes but could not say when or by whom they were deleted. The Second District resolved the case on the warrant and expressly left open whether deleted images retrievable only by an expert prove knowing possession. Our attorneys press that question when the evidence is deleted or fragmentary. Because constructive possession works the same way across offenses, our guide to constructive possession in Florida is useful background.

What changed in Florida’s CSAM law on July 1, 2026?

On July 1, 2026, Chapter 2026-20, Laws of Florida (CS/CS/HB 1159), renamed “child pornography” as “child sexual abuse material” throughout the statutes and raised several penalties. Possessing, controlling, or intentionally viewing CSAM under section 827.071(5) became a second-degree felony, and each image and each child depicted is still a separate offense. Our post on child pornography penalties in Florida covers sentencing, scoring, and the image-count enhancement in detail. The changes that most affect defense strategy are these:

The transmission change builds on earlier law about file sharing. Section 847.0137 reaches a person who knew or reasonably should have known he was transmitting CSAM. In Jeror v. State, 313 So. 3d 178 (Fla. 2d DCA 2021), a Sarasota County defendant moved downloaded videos into a folder a BitTorrent program shared automatically. The Second District held the evidence let the jury find he reasonably should have known the files were being shared, and affirmed. With cloud links now included, how a folder was shared, and whether the user knew, is a central fact our attorneys investigate.

Can a child pornography charge be dropped or reduced in Florida?

Yes. Charges can be dismissed, reduced, or resolved for fewer counts when the search is suppressed, the knowledge evidence is weak, or mitigation persuades the prosecutor. Counts tied to unreliable forensics can also be dropped. Early work matters most, and when an investigation is still underway, pre-file advocacy can shape what the State files.

One example from our firm: a young man who had just turned 18 was charged with possession of child pornography and faced prison and sexual offender registration. Our attorneys built a detailed mitigation case and negotiated with the prosecutor, and the case resolved with a plea to a non-registerable offense with treatment. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes. Our guide to a mitigation report explains that work, and our overview of sex offender registration in Florida explains what registration under section 943.0435, Florida Statutes requires.

Charges involving chats with a minor are a different offense with different defenses; see solicitation of a child using a computer and what to do if you messaged a minor online. Our Tampa internet crimes attorney page describes how our firm defends these cases.

What should you do if police contact you about a CSAM investigation?

Do not answer questions, consent to a device search, or delete anything; call a defense attorney first. Deleting files after you learn of an investigation can lead to a separate tampering charge and can be argued as evidence of knowledge. Investigators often arrive with a warrant already signed and ask friendly questions while the search happens. Anything said during that visit can supply the knowledge element the forensic evidence lacks.

• Say you want a lawyer and will not answer questions.
• Do not give passwords or unlock devices without advice from counsel.
• Write down who came, what they took, and what they said.
• Keep the warrant and inventory paperwork.

Frequently asked questions about fighting a child pornography charge in Florida

Is accidentally downloading child pornography a crime in Florida?

Not if it was accidental. Section 827.071(5) requires knowing possession or intentional viewing of material the person knew contained CSAM. The Brancato Law Firm uses forensic evidence, such as whether a file was ever opened, to show what a client did and did not know.

Can I be charged if other people used my computer or Wi-Fi?

You can be charged, but shared access is a real defense. On a shared device or network, the State must prove knowledge and control beyond simple proximity to the files. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm build a timeline of who used each device and account when the files arrived.

Is sharing a Google Drive or Dropbox link a crime under Florida’s 2026 law?

Sharing a link or access credential to cloud storage that contains CSAM can now be charged as transmission under section 847.0137, a second-degree felony. The Brancato Law Firm examines whether the client created the link, knew what it contained, and knew it was shared, which is where these cases are won or lost.

Can a CyberTip search be suppressed if no one at Google viewed the file?

It can, in some courts. Several federal appeals courts have held that police violate the Fourth Amendment by opening a hash-matched file no company employee viewed, while others, including the Eleventh Circuit on a record of prior human review, have allowed it. The Brancato Law Firm files private search doctrine motions built on the CyberTip’s file-by-file review answers, a question Florida’s Second District has not settled.

What if a CyberTip flagged an image of an adult?

Then the State cannot prove a key element, because CSAM must depict a minor. Automated tags such as “unconfirmed” signal that even the reporting system was unsure of the person’s age. The Brancato Law Firm retains independent examiners to test age and origin, and cases like Lawshe v. Verizon Communications, Inc., No. 3:24-cv-137-MMH-LLL (M.D. Fla. Feb. 28, 2025) show that these reports can be wrong.

Can a search warrant based on a CyberTip be thrown out?

Yes, if the affidavit lacks probable cause, the information was stale, or police exceeded the scope of the warrant or the private search. In Burnett v. State, 848 So. 2d 1170 (Fla. 2d DCA 2003), a defective affidavit led to reversal of 136 possession counts. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm file motions to suppress when the warrant or the tip falls short.

Does Florida’s July 2026 law apply to my case if the files were downloaded earlier?

The new penalties apply to offenses committed on or after July 1, 2026. When downloads span that date, The Brancato Law Firm uses the forensic timeline to argue which law applies to each count; our internet crimes defense team reviews the file dates in every case.

Will I be arrested before I know I am being investigated?

Often, yes. Many people first learn of a CSAM investigation when police execute a search warrant, sometimes months after the original tip. If you think an investigation is underway, The Brancato Law Firm can step in before charges are filed through representation before charges are filed.

For how The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. defends these cases, see our Tampa sex crimes defense practice.

Talk to our attorneys before you talk to investigators

The first conversation with police and the first forensic image of a device shape everything that follows. The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. was founded by Tampa Criminal Defense Attorney Rocky Brancato, and our attorneys can step in before an interview, review the warrant and CyberTip, and bring in an independent forensic examiner. Call us at any hour at (813) 727-7159 for a confidential consultation. Our firm has Spanish-speaking staff, and attorney Jean-Luc Adrien speaks Spanish, Haitian Creole, and French. Read our guide for Spanish and Haitian Creole speakers facing criminal charges.

For more about our defense strategies, visit our Internet Crimes page.

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A.
620 E. Twiggs Street, Suite 205, Tampa, FL 33602
(813) 727-7159
Serving Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. is a Tampa-based criminal defense practice. We are not affiliated with any other Brancato-named law firms.

As founder of The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., a Tampa criminal defense firm, and a former police academy instructor who taught officers the law of stops and searches, I read Vasquez Perdomo as a case about the Fourth Amendment as much as immigration. Many Florida criminal cases now begin with an encounter involving an officer who also holds federal immigration authority. Our attorneys look at how every stop started, because a stop without reasonable suspicion can still lead to suppression of evidence in a Florida criminal case.

What Happened in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo?

The case began as a challenge to immigration sweeps in the Los Angeles area in the summer of 2025. Pedro Vasquez Perdomo and other plaintiffs, along with immigrant rights groups, sued the Department of Homeland Security in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California (No. 2:25-cv-05605). They alleged that agents were stopping people at bus stops, car washes, tow yards, farms, and day-labor sites based on how they looked, what language they spoke, where they were, and what work they did.

On July 11, 2025, District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong issued a temporary restraining order that barred stops based solely on four factors, alone or in combination:

1. Apparent race or ethnicity.
2. Speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent.
3. Presence at a particular location, such as a bus stop, car wash, tow yard, day-labor pickup site, or agricultural site.
4. The type of work a person does.

The Ninth Circuit refused to stay that order on August 1, 2025. The government then asked the Supreme Court for emergency relief.

What Did the Supreme Court Decide?

The Supreme Court granted the government’s application and stayed the district court’s order. In Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, 606 U.S. ___, 146 S. Ct. 1 (2025), the Court’s one-paragraph order stayed the July 11 order “pending the disposition of the appeal” in the Ninth Circuit and any timely petition for certiorari. The order did not explain the Court’s reasons, which is common for rulings on the emergency docket.

What Did Justice Kavanaugh’s Concurrence Say?

Justice Kavanaugh wrote that the four factors, taken together, can give agents reasonable suspicion of illegal presence in the Los Angeles area. He wrote: “To be clear, apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion; under this Court’s case law regarding immigration stops, however, it can be a ‘relevant factor’ when considered along with other salient factors.” He relied on the high number of people in the Los Angeles region without legal status, which he put at “about 2 million illegal immigrants out of a total population of 20 million.”

He also described the stops as brief: “If the person is a U. S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, that individual will be free to go after the brief encounter.” And he concluded that the plaintiffs likely lacked standing to seek a broad, forward-looking injunction under Los Angeles v. Lyons, because they could not show they were likely to be stopped again. Commentators have since used the term “Kavanaugh stop” for a brief immigration stop justified by a combination of these factors.

What Did Justice Sotomayor’s Dissent Say?

Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, argued that stops based on the four factors violate the Fourth Amendment because they are not individualized. Quoting earlier precedent, she wrote that a set of facts cannot be reasonable suspicion if it “describe[s] a very large category of presumably innocent” people. She warned that the ruling pushes citizens to carry proof of status to move freely, which she described as creating a second-class citizenship status for people who look or sound a certain way.

How Does Vasquez Perdomo Fit With Brignoni-Ponce?

Vasquez Perdomo builds on a 50-year-old case about roving Border Patrol stops. In United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873 (1975), Border Patrol officers in southern California stopped a car only because its three occupants appeared to be of Mexican descent. The Supreme Court held that officers on roving patrol need “specific articulable facts” supporting reasonable suspicion, and that Mexican ancestry “standing alone” does not justify a stop, though it can be “a relevant factor.” Justice Kavanaugh cited that “relevant factor” language; Justice Sotomayor cited the same case for its holding that appearance alone is not enough.

Scholars warned about this tension long before 2025. In “How Racial Profiling in America Became the Law of the Land: United States v. Brignoni-Ponce and Whren v. United States and the Need for Truly Rebellious Lawyering,” 98 Geo. L.J. 1005 (2010), presented at a Georgetown Law Journal symposium, then-Dean Kevin R. Johnson of UC Davis School of Law examined how Brignoni-Ponce’s “relevant factor” language and Whren’s tolerance of pretext stops left room for race to shape enforcement decisions.

Has the Supreme Court Said Anything About Race-Based Stops Since?

Yes. Three months later, in Trump v. Illinois, 607 U.S. 1 (2025), a December 23, 2025 decision about the National Guard deployment in Illinois, Justice Kavanaugh wrote in a concurrence that the Fourth Amendment requires that immigration stops “be based on reasonable suspicion of illegal presence, stops must be brief, arrests must be based on probable cause, and officers must not employ excessive force.” He added: “Moreover, the officers must not make interior immigration stops or arrests based on race or ethnicity.”

Where Does the Vasquez Perdomo Case Stand in 2026?

The Supreme Court’s stay is still the last word on the July 2025 restraining order, and the lawsuit continues in the district court. According to the Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse docket summary, the Ninth Circuit sent the case back in October 2025 so the district court could dissolve the Fourth Amendment portion of the restraining order. In 2026, the district court largely denied the government’s motion to dismiss, the plaintiffs filed a second amended complaint, and in June 2026 they moved for class certification and a new preliminary injunction against alleged warrantless arrests. As of the most recent docket update we reviewed, those motions had not been decided.

Does Vasquez Perdomo Apply in Florida?

The stay itself applies only to the Los Angeles order, but the reasoning reaches Florida because immigration enforcement here runs heavily through local police and sheriffs. Section 908.11, Florida Statutes, requires every sheriff or chief correctional officer operating a county jail to enter a written 287(g) agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which lets trained local officers perform certain immigration functions.

Participation goes well beyond county jails. A statewide snapshot posted by FDLE, the Immigration Agency Data Summary, which uses ICE and Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission data as of June 2026, shows that 272 of 394 Florida law enforcement agencies held a 287(g) Task Force Officer agreement, and that Florida had 9,026 credentialed designated immigration officers.

That means a stop in Tampa Bay may be made by an officer who can ask both criminal and immigration questions. Justice Kavanaugh’s later statement in Trump v. Illinois, that officers “must not make interior immigration stops or arrests based on race or ethnicity,” is a point our attorneys raise when the facts show appearance or language drove the stop.

Can Evidence From an Unlawful Immigration Stop Be Suppressed in Florida?

In a Florida criminal case, yes, evidence from a stop made without reasonable suspicion can be suppressed under the Fourth Amendment, no matter which agency made the stop. A traffic or street stop that leads to drugs, a weapon, or a no-valid-license charge rises or falls on what the officer knew before the stop. Our Tampa criminal traffic lawyer page covers the license charges that often follow these stops.

Immigration court is different. In INS v. Lopez-Mendoza, 468 U.S. 1032 (1984), the Supreme Court held that the exclusionary rule generally does not apply in civil deportation proceedings, while leaving open “egregious violations of Fourth Amendment or other liberties.” So a suppression win in state court does not automatically end an immigration case, and a person facing both needs advice on each. Our firm handles the Florida criminal case and works with the client’s immigration counsel.

What Should You Do If You Are Stopped and Questioned About Immigration Status?

Stay calm, do not run or resist, and do not lie or show false documents. You can ask whether you are free to leave. You can decline to answer questions about where you were born or your immigration status and say you want to speak with a lawyer, though a driver must still produce a license, registration, and proof of insurance on request in Florida. Remember the officer’s name, agency, and badge number, and write down what happened as soon as you can.

If a family member is arrested in Hillsborough County, language matters from the first hearing. Under section 903.046, Florida Statutes, immigration status is one of the factors a judge considers in setting bail, and in the 13th Judicial Circuit, the Court Interpreter Center provides interpreters for first appearance, arraignment, and trial. Our guides to how a bond hearing works in Tampa and to our Spanish-speaking criminal defense team explain what families can expect. For another recent Fourth Amendment decision, see our post on Case v. Montana and police welfare checks.

Frequently Asked Questions About Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo

Did the Supreme Court rule that ICE can use race in immigration stops?

No, the Court issued an unexplained stay, and Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence said apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion, though it can be one factor among others. The Brancato Law Firm reads the stop reports in our clients’ Florida cases to see whether anything beyond appearance or language supported the stop.

Is Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo a final decision?

No, it is an emergency stay that keeps the July 2025 restraining order on hold while the case continues in the lower courts. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm follow the litigation because a later ruling could change how courts view these stops.

What is a Kavanaugh stop?

A Kavanaugh stop is a commentator’s term for a brief immigration stop justified by a combination of factors such as location, type of work, language, and apparent ethnicity, based on Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence. The Brancato Law Firm challenges the reasonable suspicion behind any stop that leads to a Florida criminal charge; see our criminal traffic defense page for license cases.

Do I have to answer an officer’s questions about my immigration status in Florida?

No, you generally have the right to remain silent and to ask for a lawyer, but you should not lie, run, or present false documents, and drivers must show a license on request. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm, including Spanish-speaking staff, can explain these rights to your family in their own language.

Can a U.S. citizen be detained in an immigration stop?

Yes, the stops allowed by the stay can involve U.S. citizens, and Justice Kavanaugh wrote that a citizen “will be free to go after the brief encounter.” The Brancato Law Firm advises clients who were detained to write down the details right away, because those facts matter if a criminal charge follows.

Can a Florida criminal case be dismissed because of an illegal stop?

Often the remedy is suppression of the evidence, which can lead the State to drop the charge if the evidence was its whole case. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm file motions to suppress in Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco County courts when a stop lacked reasonable suspicion; our Tampa criminal defense team can review the report.

For how this fits into the rest of a case, see our stage-by-stage guide to the Florida criminal case process.

Talk to a Tampa Defense Attorney After a Stop

If a stop led to an arrest, the first decision is whether to challenge how the officer made it, and that review should happen before the arraignment. Call The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., founded by Tampa Criminal Defense Attorney Rocky Brancato, at (813) 727-7159. You can call us at any hour, and our office is two blocks from the courthouse. Our firm has Spanish-speaking staff, and attorney Jean-Luc Adrien speaks Spanish, Haitian Creole, and French, so families can talk with us directly about the criminal case and its immigration consequences.

For more about our defense strategies, visit our Tampa Criminal Traffic Lawyer page.

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A.
620 E. Twiggs Street, Suite 205, Tampa, FL 33602
(813) 727-7159
Serving Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. is a Tampa-based criminal defense practice. We are not affiliated with any other Brancato-named law firms.

A Florida search warrant comes with a clock, and the date stamped on it can decide a case before anyone looks at the evidence. As a former police academy instructor, I trained officers on how to do things by the book, and as founder of The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., a Tampa criminal defense firm, I have spent more than 25 years in Hillsborough County courtrooms holding them to it. Our attorneys compare the issuance date, the execution date, and the return on every warrant in every case, because a late search can end the prosecution.

What Is Florida’s 10-Day Search Warrant Rule?

The rule is a deadline set by statute. Under section 933.05, Florida Statutes, a search warrant “must be returned within 10 days after issuance, not including the date of issuance.” Courts read that return deadline as an execution deadline: police have to carry out the search within the same 10 days.

The deadline dates back to 1923, and Florida courts enforce it strictly. In Spera v. State, 467 So. 2d 329 (Fla. 2d DCA 1985), officers searched a home for drugs 13 days after the warrant issued and found cocaine. The Second District held that “a search warrant in Florida becomes stale ten days after its issuance” and that a stale warrant “requires suppression of any evidence seized as a consequence of the search.”

The 10-day rule still governs warrants for homes, cars, and most physical evidence. The Legislature has carved out longer periods for a few kinds of warrants:

What Happened in Moschella v. State?

In Moschella v. State, 413 So. 3d 851 (Fla. 2d DCA 2025), the Second District reversed a child pornography conviction because a forensic search warrant was executed weeks late. Detectives from the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office seized two phones, a tablet, and a laptop. A judge issued a warrant to search the devices on July 27, 2020, but the detective admitted the search did not happen until “sometime in September.”

James Moschella pleaded no contest and reserved the right to appeal the denial of his motion to suppress. The State stipulated that the suppression issue was dispositive, meaning the case could not go forward without the evidence. The trial court had denied suppression because the delay did not prejudice him.

The Second District disagreed. Quoting Spera, it said “the legislature has decided that ten days is a reasonable time,” and it refused to add a prejudice requirement to “the firmly established statutory time limit.” Because the State’s stipulation was binding, the court reversed the judgment and sentences and remanded for dismissal of the charges.

Moschella matters in Tampa Bay for a specific reason. The Second District Court of Appeal hears appeals from Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties, so its rulings bind the trial judges our clients appear before.

Did Florida Change the Search Warrant Rule for Phones and Computers?

Yes, twice. A 2025 law gave police 45 days to return a warrant for a computer or electronic device already in police possession. Then the Legislature passed CS/HB 359, signed June 26, 2026 and effective July 1, 2026 as chapter 2026-177, Laws of Florida. Under the current statute, a device warrant is “considered timely executed” if police seize the device within 10 days, the return is due within 365 days, and the agency does not have to finish its forensic analysis within the return period.

The House Criminal Justice Subcommittee’s staff analysis of HB 359 discussed Moschella directly, and the bill responds to the problem the case exposed: forensic exams of phones and computers take longer than 10 days.

The change does not make device warrants deadline-free. The device still has to be seized within 10 days of the warrant, and the return still has a deadline. It also leaves open which version of the statute applies to a warrant issued before July 1, 2026. Our attorneys check the issuance date against the version of section 933.05 in effect that day, and we raise Moschella wherever the older rule governed.

Why Do Warrant Deadlines Matter So Much in Child Pornography Cases?

They matter because these cases usually rest entirely on what a forensic examiner finds on a seized device. Under section 827.071, Florida Statutes, knowingly possessing child sexual abuse material is a second-degree felony, and each image, and each child in each image, is a separate offense. A single phone can produce dozens of counts, each punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

Federal numbers show how heavily these cases are prosecuted. The U.S. Sentencing Commission’s Quick Facts on child pornography offenses report that 1,432 people were sentenced for these offenses in federal court in fiscal year 2025, with an average sentence of 118 months. The Middle District of Florida, which includes Tampa, sentenced 70 of them, among the most of any district in the country.

When the search that found the files was invalid, the files cannot be used. That is why a warrant timing problem can end a case that looks unbeatable. Our Tampa internet crimes attorney team treats the warrant file as the first piece of evidence to examine.

How Do Defense Attorneys Find a Late Warrant?

They line up the dates in the paperwork. The warrant shows when a judge signed it. The return and inventory show when officers executed it and what they took. Forensic reports, property receipts, and lab request forms often show when the device search actually started. Moschella’s case turned on a detective’s admission at the suppression hearing, so depositions matter too.

Our attorneys check these points in every case involving a search warrant:

1. Issuance date. The day the judge signed the warrant, which starts the clock the next day.
2. Execution date. When officers searched the place or seized the device.
3. Return date. When the warrant and inventory went back to the court.
4. Forensic start date. When the examiner began the device search, from lab logs and reports.
5. Applicable statute. Which version of section 933.05 was in effect on the issuance date.

Do Other Warrant Problems Lead to Suppression?

Yes. A late warrant is only one of several grounds for a motion to suppress in a digital evidence case. A warrant may lack probable cause, describe the place or files too broadly, or be searched beyond its scope. In Smallwood v. State, 113 So. 3d 724 (Fla. 2013), a Jacksonville robbery case, the Florida Supreme Court held that police could take a phone during an arrest but needed a warrant before searching its data, and it ordered a new trial because the photos found on the phone should have been excluded.

Many child exploitation investigations begin before any warrant, with a tip from a tech company and a subpoena for account records. Our guide to a Google account legal request in Florida explains that stage. If you suspect an investigation, representation before charges are filed can keep you from consenting to a search that no warrant would have allowed.

How Soon Should You Talk to a Lawyer After a Device Seizure?

Talk to a lawyer right away, ideally before the forensic exam is finished. Dates and chain-of-custody records are easiest to pin down early, and a lawyer can demand the warrant, the return, and the lab paperwork through discovery and take depositions before memories fade. For the charges and sentencing exposure in these cases, see our pages on child pornography defense in Tampa and child pornography sentencing enhancements.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does a late search warrant always get a case dismissed in Florida?

No. A late warrant leads to suppression of the evidence from that search, and dismissal follows only when the State cannot prove the case without it, as happened when the State stipulated in Moschella. The Brancato Law Firm evaluates what evidence would remain after suppression before advising a client on a plea or trial, as explained on our Tampa sex crimes lawyer page.

Do I have to prove the delay hurt my case?

No. The Second District held in Moschella that a defendant does not have to show prejudice from a late warrant, because the Legislature already decided what a reasonable time is. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm raise the deadline issue on its own terms rather than trying to show harm.

How many days do police have to search my phone under a warrant in Florida?

Under the current section 933.05, police must seize the phone within 10 days of the warrant, and the return is due within 365 days. The Brancato Law Firm checks whether an older version of the statute, with a shorter deadline, applied to your warrant, using the statute itself on Online Sunshine.

What is a dispositive plea, and why did it matter in Moschella?

A dispositive plea is a no contest plea that reserves the right to appeal a pretrial ruling the parties agree will decide the case, so a win on appeal ends in dismissal instead of a new trial. Our team at The Brancato Law Firm uses this tool when a suppression ruling is strong enough to carry an appeal.

Can child pornography charges be dropped in Florida?

Yes. Charges can be dropped or dismissed when key evidence is suppressed, when the State cannot prove the person knowingly possessed the files, or when the files were on a device others used. The Brancato Law Firm attacks each of those points, and our Tampa internet crime lawyer attorneys handle these cases in Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties.

Does the 10-day rule apply to search warrants for my house or car?

Yes. Warrants for homes, vehicles, and physical items still must be executed and returned within 10 days, as in Spera, where a home search on day 13 required suppression. The Brancato Law Firm reviews every warrant in a case, not only the device warrant, because one late search can taint the evidence that followed.

Talk to a Tampa Defense Attorney About a Search Warrant

The dates on a warrant do not change, but the chance to use them can slip away once a plea is entered. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., founded by Tampa Criminal Defense Attorney Rocky Brancato, will review every warrant, return, and forensic report in your case for timing and scope problems. Call (813) 727-7159; you can call us at any hour, and our office is two blocks from the courthouse. Our firm has Spanish-speaking staff, and attorney Jean-Luc Adrien speaks Spanish, Haitian Creole, and French. Read our guide for criminal defense in Spanish and Haitian Creole in Tampa.

For more about our defense strategies, visit our Tampa Internet Crimes Attorney page.

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A.
620 E. Twiggs Street, Suite 205, Tampa, FL 33602
(813) 727-7159
Serving Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. is a Tampa-based criminal defense practice. We are not affiliated with any other Brancato-named law firms.

Many Tampa drivers pulled their dealer frames off in the fall of 2025 after a viral video claimed any frame was now a crime. We said at the time that standard frames remained legal, and the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles and then the Legislature agreed. I’m Rocky Brancato, founder of The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., a Tampa criminal defense firm, and a former police academy instructor who taught officers the law of traffic stops. In more than 25 years in Hillsborough County courtrooms I have seen minor equipment stops turn into drug, gun, and DUI cases. Our attorneys challenge those stops when the officer had no lawful reason to make them.

What Does Florida’s License Plate Frame Law Say Now?

Florida now states expressly that frames are lawful if they leave the plate number and sticker visible. Two statutes govern, and both were amended in 2026 by SB 488 (chapter 2026-39, Laws of Florida), which Governor DeSantis signed in April 2026:

Section 320.262(5), Florida Statutes, now reads that “the use of a license plate frame or decorative border device is not an offense under this section, provided that the device does not obscure the visibility” of “the alphanumeric designation or license plate number” and “the registration decal or validation sticker located in the upper right corner.” Section 320.061(2) contains the same rule for frames and borders. The 2026 amendment also removed the phrase “primary features or details” from the definition of an obscuring device, which was the language that fueled the 2025 confusion.

What Does Section 320.262 Actually Target?

Section 320.262 targets devices built to hide or swap a plate, not decorative frames. The statute defines a “license plate obscuring device” as a manual, electronic, or mechanical device designed or adapted to switch between plates, flip a plate so the number is not visible, cover or interfere with the legibility of the plate number or validation sticker, or interfere with the ability to record them. Those are the tools used to beat toll readers, red-light cameras, and license plate reader cameras.

The penalties are real for those devices. Simply buying or possessing one is a second-degree misdemeanor, punishable by up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine, and using one to commit a crime or avoid arrest is a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison. License plate reader cameras such as Flock are now common across Tampa Bay, and our post on Flock cameras and license plate readers in Tampa explains how those systems use your plate.

How Did the License Plate Frame Confusion Start?

It started with a misreading of the 2025 law. Chapter 2025-36 created section 320.262 effective October 1, 2025, and its definition referred to the plate’s “primary features or details, including the license plate number or validation sticker.” A viral video read that phrase to cover every word on the plate, some law enforcement agencies repeated it, and drivers across the state removed their frames.

On December 12, 2025, FLHSMV Executive Director Dave Kerner sent a memo to all Florida law enforcement agencies stating that the act “does not prohibit the use of a license plate frame” as long as it does not obscure the plate number or the decal in the top right corner. The memo added that the department “does not consider the information on the bottom of the plate to be a primary feature of the plate,” and that a frame touching the top of the plate is permissible if officers can still identify the issuing state. The 2026 Legislature then wrote the frame rule into both statutes.

Can Police Still Stop You Because of a License Plate Frame?

Only if the frame actually makes the plate number, the decal, or other required lettering unreadable from 100 feet. Under section 316.605(1), all “letters, numerals, printing, writing, the registration decal, and the alphanumeric designation” must be “plainly visible and legible at all times 100 feet from the rear or front.” A violation is a noncriminal traffic infraction, but it is still a legal basis for a stop when it truly exists.

Florida courts have refused to let a typical dealer frame justify a stop. In State v. Morris, 270 So. 3d 436 (Fla. 4th DCA 2019), a Broward County officer stopped a car whose Drive Pink AutoNation frame partially covered letters in “Sunshine State” and “MyFlorida.com.” The officer admitted he “didn’t have any trouble” reading the word “Florida,” and the trial judge found that “everything that needs to be identified is identifiable.” The Fourth District affirmed the suppression of the evidence from the stop, holding that “all the letters and words on the license plate were visible within 100 feet.”

The officer’s testimony decides close cases. In Williams v. State, No. 4D19-1578 (Fla. 4th DCA May 13, 2020), the court affirmed the denial of a motion to suppress because the officer testified the tag “was obscured” and “you can barely see it.” In a concurring opinion, Judge Melanie May wrote that “there is nothing about those words that helps law enforcement identify the vehicle’s owner” and that treating frames over “MyFlorida.com” and “Sunshine State” as grounds for a stop “leads to an absurd result,” a view the Legislature effectively adopted in 2026.

How Often Are Florida Drivers Cited for Obscured Plates?

Thousands of times a year. The Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles’ Uniform Traffic Citation database recorded 2,927 violations related to obscuring a license plate in 2023, and 3,449 violations related to prohibited vehicle lights, according to the Florida Senate Rules Committee analysis of the 2025 bill. Each of those citations began as a traffic stop.

Minor equipment stops matter because of what can follow them. A study published in Nature Human Behaviour in 2020, A Large-Scale Analysis of Racial Disparities in Police Stops Across the United States by Emma Pierson and colleagues at the Stanford Open Policing Project, examined nearly 100 million traffic stops and found that “the bar for searching black and Hispanic drivers was lower than that for searching white drivers.” For drivers, the practical lesson is that the legal basis for the stop is often the most important issue in the case.

Can Evidence Be Suppressed If the Plate Frame Stop Was Illegal?

Yes. If the frame did not violate any statute, the officer had no lawful basis for the stop, and drugs, weapons, or DUI evidence found afterward can be suppressed, as happened in Morris. The flip side is Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 (1996), in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that “the decision to stop an automobile is reasonable where the police have probable cause to believe that a traffic violation has occurred,” whatever the officer’s real motive. Because a real violation makes even a pretextual stop lawful, our attorneys focus on whether the violation existed at all.

Our approach in these cases follows three steps:

1. Get the video. Body camera and dash camera footage often shows the plate clearly, contradicting a report that it was unreadable.
2. Photograph the plate and frame. A photo taken from the officer’s position and distance tests the 100-foot standard.
3. Hold the State to the statute. Under the 2026 amendments, the question is whether the frame covered the number or the upper-right decal, not whether it touched any other word.

Our motion to suppress guide explains how these challenges are filed, and our Tampa criminal traffic lawyer page covers the traffic charges that often follow a stop. Our Hillsborough County criminal defense attorney page explains how a case moves through the local courts after an arrest.

What Should You Do If You Are Stopped for a License Plate Frame?

Stay calm, accept the citation if one is issued, and document the plate before you change anything:

1. Do not argue the law at the roadside. Cooperate and save the challenge for court.
2. Take photos of the plate and frame from about 100 feet behind the car and up close, as soon as it is safe.
3. Do not consent to a search. A frame stop gives no right to search the car without consent or probable cause.
4. Keep the frame. If the case involves an arrest, the frame itself may become evidence for the defense.
5. Call a defense attorney if the stop led to an arrest, so the body camera footage is requested before it is purged.

Frequently Asked Questions About Florida License Plate Frames

Is my car dealership frame illegal in Florida?

No, a dealership frame is legal as long as it leaves the plate number and the upper-right decal visible, under sections 320.061(2) and 320.262(5). The Brancato Law Firm challenges stops based on dealer frames that met that standard, as the defense did in State v. Morris.

Can I be pulled over if my frame covers the word “Florida”?

A frame covering “Florida” alone does not violate the frame provisions, and FLHSMV told officers that frames at the top of the plate are allowed if the issuing state can still be identified. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm compare the officer’s report with the body camera footage to test any claim that the plate was unreadable.

Are clear license plate covers legal in Florida?

A clear cover is not banned by name, but section 320.061 prohibits any covering that interferes with the legibility of the plate number or sticker, and glare or condensation can do that. The Brancato Law Firm advises drivers that removing the cover is the safest choice; see our criminal traffic defense page for related charges.

Is it a crime to own a license plate flipper in Florida?

Yes, buying or possessing a license plate obscuring device is a second-degree misdemeanor under section 320.262(2), even if it is never used. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm look at whether the item actually meets the statute’s definition of a device designed to switch, flip, or hide a plate.

Can a frame stop lead to a search of my car?

Not by itself, because a traffic infraction allows a stop and a citation, not a search, unless the officer has consent or probable cause. The Brancato Law Firm moves to suppress evidence when a frame stop expanded into a search without a lawful basis; our suppression guide explains how.

Did the 2026 law change the penalty for an obscured plate?

No, the penalties stayed the same: a noncriminal infraction under section 316.605, a second-degree misdemeanor for knowingly obscuring the number or sticker under section 320.061, and the device offenses in section 320.262. The Brancato Law Firm reviews which statute was charged, because the defenses differ for each one.

Talk to a Tampa Defense Attorney About a License Plate Stop

If a frame or plate stop led to an arrest, the body camera footage and a photo of your plate are the first evidence to secure. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., founded by Tampa Criminal Defense Attorney Rocky Brancato, will review whether the stop was lawful and what can be suppressed; call (813) 727-7159. You can call us at any hour, and our office is two blocks from the courthouse. Our firm has Spanish-speaking staff, and attorney Jean-Luc Adrien speaks Spanish, Haitian Creole, and French. Read our guide for criminal defense in Spanish and Haitian Creole in Tampa.

For more about our defense strategies, visit our Tampa Criminal Traffic Lawyer page.

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A.
620 E. Twiggs Street, Suite 205, Tampa, FL 33602
(813) 727-7159
Serving Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. is a Tampa-based criminal defense practice. We are not affiliated with any other Brancato-named law firms.

Drug cases built on a confidential informant are usually won or lost at a pretrial hearing most people never hear about: the motion to disclose the informant. I learned how these cases are built from the inside, first in the Major Crimes Unit and then as a former Chief Operations Officer of the Hillsborough County Public Defender’s Office, where I oversaw a staff of over 100 attorneys. I’m Rocky Brancato, founder of The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., a Tampa criminal defense firm, and in more than 25 years in Hillsborough County courtrooms I have seen informant cases fall apart once the defense forces the State to choose between naming its source and keeping its case. Our attorneys file these motions in Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties.

What Is a Confidential Informant in Florida?

A confidential informant is a person who secretly works with police, usually to avoid arrest or reduce a sentence, and who can make controlled buys or report on people he or she knows. Florida defines the term in section 914.28, Florida Statutes: a person who cooperates confidentially with law enforcement, “seeks to avoid arrest or prosecution for a crime, or mitigate punishment,” and can “make a controlled buy or controlled sale” or supply regular information about criminal activity.

That definition matters to the defense. Most informants are working off their own charges, which gives them a reason to deliver an arrest. In trafficking cases, section 893.135(4) lets the state attorney ask the sentencing court to reduce or suspend the sentence of a person who provides “substantial assistance” in the arrest or conviction of others. That incentive is why informant cases deserve close scrutiny, and our Tampa drug crimes attorney page explains how these prosecutions usually begin.

Confidential informants are most common in drug investigations, and drug arrests are rising locally. Hillsborough County recorded 10,502 drug arrests in 2025, up from 8,124 in 2024 and 7,151 in 2023, according to Florida Department of Law Enforcement arrest data published by Florida Health CHARTS. Many of those cases start with a controlled buy arranged through an informant.

Does the State Have to Reveal a Confidential Informant’s Identity?

Only in two situations. Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.220(g)(2) says disclosure of a confidential informant is not required unless the informant “is to be produced at a hearing or trial” or a failure to disclose “will infringe the constitutional rights of the defendant.” Outside those two situations, the State holds a privilege to keep the informant’s name secret, and the defense carries the burden of showing why an exception applies.

When the informant testifies

If the State calls the informant as a witness, the true name must be disclosed. In State v. Hassberger, 350 So. 2d 1 (Fla. 1977), two men were arrested by Orlando police after delivering cannabis to an informant, and the trial court let the informant testify under the name “Ed” without disclosing his real name or address. The Florida Supreme Court held that “the use of a ‘John Doe’ witness is clearly prohibited, and the correct name of the witness must be supplied.” It allowed only an “exceedingly narrow” exception for a current address when the State proves an actual threat to the witness, and it said “all doubts must be resolved in favor of the accused’s sixth and fourteenth amendment right to confront the witnesses against him.”

When keeping the secret would make the trial unfair

The constitutional exception comes from Roviaro v. United States, 353 U.S. 53 (1957), a federal heroin case in which the informant, known only as “John Doe,” set up the sale and was the only other person present. The U.S. Supreme Court held that when the informant’s identity “is relevant and helpful to the defense of an accused, or is essential to a fair determination of a cause, the privilege must give way,” and that if the government still refuses, the court may dismiss the case. The Court rejected any fixed rule and required judges to weigh “the crime charged, the possible defenses, the possible significance of the informer’s testimony, and other relevant factors.”

How Do You Force the State to Disclose a Confidential Informant?

You file a sworn motion that ties the informant to a specific, legally recognized defense. Florida courts do not accept a general claim that the defense needs the name to prepare. Our attorneys follow these steps:

1. Identify the informant’s role. Depositions of the case agent and the controlled-buy paperwork usually show whether the informant was a tipster, a witness, or the person who arranged the deal.
2. Name a specific defense. Entrapment, misidentification, lack of knowledge of what was in a package, and a fabricated buy are the defenses that most often justify disclosure.
3. Support it with sworn facts. The motion or an attached affidavit must allege facts that, if true, make the defense possible.
4. Ask for an in-camera hearing. The judge questions the informant privately, outside the defendant’s presence, to decide whether the testimony would help the defense.
5. Hold the State to the result. If the judge orders disclosure and the State refuses, the remedy can be dismissal, as Roviaro recognized.

The Second District Court of Appeal, which hears appeals from Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties, has set out that standard several times. In Bailey v. State, 994 So. 2d 1256 (Fla. 2d DCA 2008), a homeless man in Charlotte County swore that a stranger offered him $50 to deliver a container he never looked inside; the stranger was a paid informant and the recipient was an undercover officer. The court held that “when a defendant files a sworn motion or affidavit alleging facts regarding the informant’s involvement that, if true, would support the possibility of a specific defense, the trial court is required to conduct an in-camera hearing,” reversed the conviction, and sent the case back for that hearing. The court added that a defendant does not have to allege every element of entrapment; the defense only has to be possible on the facts alleged.

Hill v. State, 198 So. 3d 830 (Fla. 2d DCA 2016) reached the same result. Kenneth Hill swore that an informant he knew had repeatedly urged him to buy cocaine, and that the earlier calls between them were never recorded. Because Hill showed the informant “was more than a mere tipster but was the sole moving force in arranging the buy,” the Second District reversed his conviction and required an in-camera hearing. A new trial follows if the judge orders disclosure.

What If the Informant Was Only a Tipster?

A tipster is almost never disclosed. The Second District held in State v. Burgos, 985 So. 2d 642 (Fla. 2d DCA 2008) that “an informant’s identity need not be disclosed when the informant’s sole role is to provide probable cause in support of a search warrant.” Burgos wanted the informant’s name to test whether the controlled buy described in a detective’s warrant affidavit really happened, but he offered no evidence that it did not, and the court quashed the trial judge’s disclosure order. The court called a bare claim that the defense cannot prepare without the name insufficient.

Burgos also shows where the opening is. The court left room for a revised motion “supported by evidence sufficient to justify” an in-camera hearing, and it noted that proof the affidavit was false would support a motion to suppress under Franks v. Delaware. When the informant is the only basis for a warrant, our attorneys look for evidence that the buy did not happen as described, and we raise it through a motion to suppress.

Being present is not enough on its own either. In State v. Zamora, 534 So. 2d 864 (Fla. 3d DCA 1988), a Miami-Dade trial judge dismissed cocaine trafficking charges when the State could not produce an informant who allegedly introduced an undercover officer to the sellers and witnessed the sale. The Third District reversed, holding that “merely because a confidential informant is a witness to relevant events in a criminal case does not, without more, require the confidential informant’s production,” because the defendants had not supported a specific defense with sworn facts. The lesson for defendants is that the quality of the motion decides the issue.

Can a Confidential Informant Entrap You in Florida?

Yes. Florida’s entrapment statute, section 777.201, applies to “a person engaged in cooperation with a law enforcement officer,” which includes a confidential informant. Entrapment occurs when that person induces or encourages someone to commit a crime using methods that “create a substantial risk that such crime will be committed by a person other than one who is ready to commit it.” The defendant must prove entrapment by a preponderance of the evidence, and the issue goes to the trier of fact.

That is why the informant’s identity is so often the whole case. Only the informant can confirm the repeated calls, the pressure, or the offer that came before the recorded buy, and police usually record only the final transaction. Our guide to the entrapment defense in Florida explains the subjective and objective tests in more detail.

Why Is Informant Testimony Treated With Suspicion?

Because informants are paid in leniency, cash, or both, and research has tied their testimony to wrongful convictions. A 2004 study by Northwestern University School of Law’s Center on Wrongful Convictions, The Snitch System, found that of 111 death row exonerations since the 1970s, 51 involved snitch testimony, or 45.9 percent.

Florida responded in 2014. On the recommendation of the Florida Innocence Commission, the Florida Supreme Court amended Rule 3.220 so that prosecutors must disclose informant witnesses, “whether in custody or not,” along with the informant’s criminal history, any statement the informant attributes to the defendant, and anything the informant received or expects to receive in exchange, as reported by The Florida Bar News. Our post on fighting jailhouse informant testimony covers that rule in detail.

Does Rachel’s Law Help a Defendant?

Only indirectly. Section 914.28, known as Rachel’s Law, was passed after Rachel Hoffman, a 23-year-old Tallahassee Police Department informant, was murdered during a 2008 controlled buy. It requires agencies that use informants to tell each recruit that the agency “cannot promise inducements such as a grant of immunity, dropped or reduced charges, or reduced sentences,” to offer a chance to consult a lawyer on request, to screen informants for reliability and criminal history, and to keep secure records on each one.

The statute also says a violation “may not be relied upon to create any additional right, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law by a defendant in a criminal proceeding.” A Rachel’s Law violation will not get a case dismissed by itself. What the agency’s informant file shows, such as payments, prior false information, or deals made off the books, can still matter to credibility and to the in-camera hearing, and our attorneys ask for it.

What Should You Do If You Think an Informant Set You Up?

Talk to a defense lawyer before you talk to anyone else, and do not try to find or contact the informant. These steps protect the defense:

1. Do not discuss the case on a jail phone or by text. Those calls and messages are recorded and often end up in discovery.
2. Do not contact the person you suspect. Contact can lead to a witness tampering charge and gives the State a new recording.
3. Write down the history of every call, message, and meeting with that person, including who brought up drugs first.
4. Keep your phone records. Call logs and messages showing repeated requests from the informant are the sworn facts a disclosure motion needs.
5. Get counsel involved early. If you are still under investigation, representation before charges are filed can shape what the State does next.

In our experience in Hillsborough County, informant drug cases usually show their weaknesses in discovery, when the controlled-buy paperwork and the agent’s deposition reveal how the deal was arranged. Our Hillsborough County criminal defense attorney page explains how felony cases move through the 13th Judicial Circuit, and our post on signs you are being investigated covers what to watch for before an arrest.

Frequently Asked Questions About Confidential Informants in Florida

What is the difference between a confidential informant and an undercover officer?

An undercover officer is a sworn police officer posing as a buyer or seller, while a confidential informant is a civilian working with police, usually to reduce his or her own charges. The Brancato Law Firm treats the difference as important, because an undercover officer is a disclosed State witness who can be deposed, while an informant’s identity must be won through a disclosure motion.

Can charges be dropped if the State refuses to reveal the informant?

Yes. If a judge orders disclosure and the State refuses, the court may dismiss the charge, and prosecutors sometimes dismiss on their own to protect a valuable informant. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm file disclosure motions early so the State has to make that choice before trial; see our drug crimes defense page.

Do I get to be present at the in-camera hearing with the informant?

Usually not, because the judge questions the informant privately to protect the identity while deciding whether the testimony would help the defense. The Brancato Law Firm prepares the judge for that hearing by spelling out in the sworn motion exactly what the informant should be asked.

Can a confidential informant testify against me without my lawyer knowing who they are?

No. Under State v. Hassberger, a testifying informant’s true name must be disclosed, and only a current address can be withheld on proof of an actual threat. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm use that name to pull the informant’s criminal history and any deals made for the testimony.

Can I be charged based only on a controlled buy with an informant?

Yes, a controlled buy watched by officers can support a sale or delivery charge even if the informant never testifies. The Brancato Law Firm examines whether the informant was searched before and after the buy, whether the money was recorded, and whether the recording actually shows the exchange.

I was arrested after a reverse sting where an informant sold to me. Is that entrapment?

It can be, if the informant pressured or induced you and you were not already ready to commit the crime, as section 777.201 describes. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm build that defense from the messages and calls that came before the recorded deal; our entrapment guide explains the standard.

For how this fits into the rest of a case, see our overview of how a Florida criminal case moves from investigation to appeal.

Talk to a Tampa Defense Attorney About an Informant Case

The disclosure motion has to be built before trial, and the phone records that support it can disappear. Call The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., founded by Tampa Criminal Defense Attorney Rocky Brancato, at (813) 727-7159, and our attorneys will start by finding out exactly what the informant did in your case. You can call us at any hour, and our office is two blocks from the courthouse. Our firm has Spanish-speaking staff, and attorney Jean-Luc Adrien speaks Spanish, Haitian Creole, and French. Read our guide for Spanish and Haitian Creole speakers facing criminal charges.

For more about our defense strategies, visit our Tampa Drug Crimes Attorney page.

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A.
620 E. Twiggs Street, Suite 205, Tampa, FL 33602
(813) 727-7159
Serving Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. is a Tampa-based criminal defense practice. We are not affiliated with any other Brancato-named law firms.

If you were arrested for loitering and prowling in Tampa, the charge itself is often the smaller problem; the search that followed it may have produced a felony. As founder of The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., a Tampa criminal defense firm, and a former police academy instructor who taught officers criminal procedure, I know what officers are trained to observe before making this arrest. I’m Rocky Brancato, and in more than 25 years in Hillsborough County courtrooms I have seen this statute used when officers had no other basis to detain someone. Our attorneys challenge these arrests across Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties.

What Does Florida’s Loitering and Prowling Law Say?

Section 856.021, Florida Statutes, makes it unlawful “to loiter or prowl in a place, at a time or in a manner not usual for law-abiding individuals, under circumstances that warrant a justifiable and reasonable alarm or immediate concern for the safety of persons or property in the vicinity.” The statute lists circumstances an officer may consider, including whether the person “takes flight upon appearance of a law enforcement officer, refuses to identify himself or herself, or manifestly endeavors to conceal himself or herself or any object.”

The Florida Supreme Court upheld the statute in State v. Ecker, 311 So. 2d 104 (Fla. 1975), but only with limits. The court held that “proof of both elements is essential,” that the officer “must be able to point to specific and articulable facts” showing a breach of the peace is imminent or public safety is threatened, and it warned that using the statute as a “catchall” offense may make an arrest unconstitutional. The arresting officer in one of the Ecker cases had testified, “I arrested him for loitering because we could not prove anything else.”

What Must the State Prove in a Florida Loitering and Prowling Case?

The State must prove both elements beyond a reasonable doubt, and Florida courts read each one narrowly.

Element 1: Conduct not usual for law-abiding people

The first element requires more than being out late or being somewhere an officer finds odd. In Mills v. State, 58 So. 3d 936 (Fla. 2d DCA 2011), Clearwater officers saw a man walk out from behind a closed business at 12:30 a.m. in an area hit by recent burglaries, turn back when he saw the cruiser, and stand behind a tree against the building. The Second District held he was “at most a vaguely suspicious presence” whose conduct “did not come close to the actual commission or attempted commission of a substantive crime,” and it ordered the pills found in the search suppressed.

Element 2: Justifiable and reasonable alarm

The second element requires circumstances that would alarm a reasonable person about an imminent threat to people or property. Mills reaffirmed that the statute “must be applied with special care” and “is not to be used as a ‘catchall’ provision whereby police may arrest citizens where there is no other basis which would justify their detention.”

Do Both Elements Have to Happen in the Officer’s Presence?

Yes. Because loitering and prowling is a misdemeanor, the officer must personally see both elements before acting. In Fields v. State, 292 So. 3d 889 (Fla. 2d DCA 2020), a Lee County deputy responding to a 911 call about a possible attempted home entry found Tamar Fields walking in the road at about 10 p.m. The Second District held that “both elements must occur in the officer’s presence and be complete before the officer takes action,” so the 911 call could not count. Walking down the street at 10 p.m. was not unusual, and the court reversed Fields’ convictions, including a cocaine trafficking charge, and ordered him discharged.

The rule is still being applied. In Saintil v. State, No. 4D2024-0624 (Fla. 4th DCA Mar. 26, 2025), a site manager reported someone looking into car windows and trying a car door. The officer who responded saw Benny Saintil, who matched the description, walking from behind a closed building with his hood up. The Fourth District held that “both elements of loitering or prowling must be committed in a police officer’s presence,” found the officer’s own observations “legally insufficient,” and ordered the conviction vacated, even though the situation justified an investigation.

For readers in our area, the Second District’s decisions matter most. Mills and Fields both come from the Second District Court of Appeal, which hears appeals from Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco County courts, so trial judges here follow them. Our Pinellas County criminal defense attorney and Hillsborough County criminal defense attorney pages explain how misdemeanor cases move through those courthouses.

Can a Loitering Arrest Lead to Felony Charges?

Yes. A loitering and prowling arrest allows a search incident to arrest, and that search often produces drugs, a weapon, or stolen property. If the loitering arrest lacked probable cause, the evidence from the search can be suppressed as the fruit of an unlawful arrest, as happened in Mills and Fields. That is why our attorneys attack the loitering arrest first, even when a felony is the bigger charge; our Tampa drug crimes attorney page explains how those drug cases are defended.

The stakes are real locally. Hillsborough County recorded 10,502 drug arrests in 2025, up from 8,124 in 2024, according to FDLE arrest data published by Florida Health CHARTS. Some of those cases begin with a stop for loitering, trespass, or a “suspicious person” call. Our guide on trespass in Florida covers the related charge officers often use on private property.

Does Being in a High-Crime Area Justify a Loitering Arrest?

No. Presence in a high-crime area is a factor, but it cannot carry the arrest by itself. Mills was in an area that had been hit by a string of burglaries, and the arrest still failed. Research also questions how officers apply the label. In a 2019 California Law Review article, The End of Intuition-Based High-Crime Areas, Ben Grunwald and Jeffrey Fagan analyzed more than two million New York Police Department stops from 2007 to 2012 and found that officers’ high-crime-area assessments were “nearly uncorrelated with actual crime rates.” When an officer’s report leans on the phrase, our attorneys demand the data behind it.

What Are the Defenses to Loitering and Prowling in Florida?

The strongest defenses come from the statute and the officer’s own report. These are the questions our attorneys ask in every case:

1. Did the officer personally see both elements? A neighbor’s report or a 911 call cannot supply either element.
2. Was the conduct more than vaguely suspicious? Walking, standing, or sitting in a car at night, without conduct pointing to an imminent crime, is not enough under Mills and Saintil.
3. Was there a real threat to people or property? The alarm must be justifiable and reasonable, backed by specific facts under Ecker.
4. Did the officer ask you to identify yourself and explain before arresting? If not, section 856.021(2) bars a conviction unless flight or another circumstance made it impracticable.
5. Was your explanation true? If it would have dispelled the alarm had the officer believed it, the statute again bars a conviction.

Our motion to suppress guide explains how these issues are raised before trial, and our post on Case v. Montana and welfare checks covers another common route to warrantless police contact.

How Has Our Firm Defended Loitering and Prowling Cases?

Our firm has won these cases by holding officers to what they personally saw:

Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.

What Should You Do If You Are Stopped for Loitering?

Stay calm, identify yourself if lawfully detained, and do not consent to a search. These steps protect the defenses described above:

1. Give your name if asked. Refusing to identify yourself is one of the circumstances the statute lets an officer consider.
2. Do not run. Flight is also a listed circumstance, and it can excuse the officer from asking for an explanation.
3. Do not consent to a search. Say clearly that you do not consent; consent can waive suppression arguments.
4. Write down what happened as soon as you can, including what the officer said and whether you were asked to explain.
5. Call a defense attorney before your first court date. Body camera footage and 911 recordings should be requested early.

Frequently Asked Questions About Loitering and Prowling in Florida

Is loitering and prowling a felony in Florida?

No, it is a second-degree misdemeanor with a maximum of 60 days in jail and a $500 fine. The Brancato Law Firm treats it seriously anyway, because the search after the arrest is often where felony charges come from.

Can I be charged with loitering if a neighbor called 911 about me?

The call alone cannot prove the charge, because both elements must occur in the officer’s presence under Fields v. State. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm compare the 911 recording with the officer’s body camera to separate what was reported from what was seen.

Can loitering and prowling charges be dropped in Florida?

Yes, and they often are when the officer did not see both elements or skipped the required chance to explain. The Brancato Law Firm files motions to dismiss and motions to suppress in these cases; see our suppression guide.

Do I have to explain why I am somewhere if police stop me for loitering?

The statute requires the officer to give you the chance to identify yourself and explain before an arrest, and a true explanation that would have dispelled the alarm bars a conviction. The Brancato Law Firm advises clients to identify themselves when lawfully detained and to talk with counsel before giving detailed statements.

Is sitting in a parked car at night loitering in Florida?

Not by itself, because the State must show conduct not usual for law-abiding people plus a justifiable alarm for nearby people or property. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm look at exactly what the officer observed before the arrest.

Will a loitering and prowling conviction show up on my record?

Yes, a conviction creates a criminal record, and a withhold of adjudication still leaves an arrest record. The Brancato Law Firm works to resolve these cases with a dismissal where the facts allow; our Hillsborough County defense page explains the local process.

Talk to a Tampa Defense Attorney About a Loitering Arrest

Your first move should be getting the body camera footage and the 911 recording before they are overwritten. Call The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., founded by Tampa Criminal Defense Attorney Rocky Brancato, at (813) 727-7159, and our attorneys will compare what the officer saw with what the report claims. You can call us at any hour, and our office is two blocks from the courthouse. Our firm has Spanish-speaking staff, and attorney Jean-Luc Adrien speaks Spanish, Haitian Creole, and French. Read our guide for Spanish and Haitian Creole speakers facing criminal charges.

For more about our defense strategies, visit our Tampa Drug Crimes Attorney page.

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A.
620 E. Twiggs Street, Suite 205, Tampa, FL 33602
(813) 727-7159
Serving Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. is a Tampa-based criminal defense practice. We are not affiliated with any other Brancato-named law firms.

If an officer stopped you in Tampa and mentioned a “hit” on your plate, a camera on a pole may have made the first decision in your case before any person did. I’m Rocky Brancato, founder of The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., a Tampa criminal defense firm, and a former police academy instructor who has spent more than 25 years in Hillsborough County courtrooms. I taught officers how stops are supposed to work, and our attorneys now use that training to test whether a plate-reader alert gave police a lawful reason to pull a car over.

What Is a Flock Camera?

A Flock camera is an automated license plate reader sold by Flock Safety, an Atlanta-based company that is one of the largest ALPR vendors in the country. Florida law, in section 316.0777, Florida Statutes, defines an automated license plate recognition system as one or more mobile or fixed high-speed cameras combined with computer algorithms that convert images of license plates into computer-readable data. Flock’s version also records the vehicle’s make, color, and distinguishing features such as roof racks or bumper stickers, which Flock markets as a “Vehicle Fingerprint.”

The cameras take still photographs of the rear of passing cars, not continuous video of drivers. Each read is time-stamped and stored in a database that the agency that owns the camera can search, and agencies can choose to share access with other agencies. The Brancato Law Firm treats every ALPR read in a case as evidence with a source, a time stamp, and an error rate that can be tested.

Does Florida Have Flock Cameras, and Are They Legal?

Yes. ALPRs, including Flock cameras, are legal in Florida, and law enforcement agencies, cities, homeowners associations, and businesses across Tampa Bay use them. Section 316.0777(2)(b) lets the Department of Transportation, at its discretion, allow a law enforcement agency to install an ALPR in the right-of-way of a state highway for the purpose of collecting active criminal intelligence or investigative information. The same statute says an ALPR may not be used to issue a traffic citation or notice of violation, and that a camera must come down within 30 days after the department tells the agency to remove it.

The department used that power on August 31, 2026. FDOT Engineering and Operations Memorandum No. 26-01 revoked every approval for law enforcement ALPRs on state highway rights-of-way, gave agencies 30 days to remove them, and stopped issuing new permits. The memo cited “the recent exponential increase in deployments” and “concerning reports of misuse, data privacy concerns, and surveillance schemes.” The order does not reach cameras on city or county roads, private property, or HOA entrances, so many Flock cameras in Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties remain in place. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm check where the camera in a client’s case was mounted and whether its permit was valid on the date of the read.

Are There Flock Cameras in Tampa, Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco?

Yes. All three counties’ largest law enforcement agencies have used license plate readers, and each responded differently to the state order. In September 2026, the Tampa Police Department said it would remove 17 cameras on the State Highway System and reported that its readers had aided in 622 arrests, recovered 485 vehicles and 68 firearms, and helped in 14 missing persons cases, according to WUSF reporting on the removals. The Pasco County Sheriff’s Office said it was removing all 70 of its Flock cameras in county and state rights-of-way. The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office declined to say how many cameras had to come down, citing a public records exemption.

In Pinellas County, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri told county commissioners in October 2026 that his office runs 79 stationary cameras under a Flock contract costing $287,000 a year, according to Bay News 9. That presentation came about a week after a former Pinellas deputy was arrested on felony charges for allegedly running a license plate reader database about 300 times to track a woman. Prosecutors dropped that deputy’s charges on October 29, 2026, and on November 5, 2026, a third former Pinellas deputy, Ronald Scott, was arrested after an agency audit found more than 100 unauthorized Flock and driver’s license searches on his estranged wife and her circle. Our separate guide on whether police can be charged for misusing Flock cameras in Florida covers that side of the issue.

These agency figures describe what the cameras find, and they leave out what defense lawyers see. In a 2019 study published in Police Quarterly, George Mason University researchers Christopher Koper and Cynthia Lum examined a city that installed nearly 100 fixed readers and found that clearances for auto theft and robbery improved, but the improvements were not statistically significant once other factors were controlled (National Criminal Justice Reference Service abstract). A camera network produces many reads; each read still has to be connected to the right car, the right driver, and the right moment.

Can a Flock Camera Hit Lead to a Traffic Stop and Arrest in Tampa?

Yes. A plate-reader alert can lead to a stop, but the officer must still have reasonable suspicion that the specific car or driver is involved in a crime or traffic violation. Florida’s stop law, section 901.151, Florida Statutes, and the Fourth Amendment both require it. The usual sequence in Hillsborough County looks like this:

1. The camera reads a plate and the system matches it to a hotlist entry, such as a stolen vehicle, a warrant, or a be-on-the-lookout alert.
2. Nearby officers receive the alert with the read’s location, time, and photo.
3. An officer finds the car and decides whether to stop it.
4. During the stop, the officer may find a suspended license, drugs, a weapon, or a warrant, and that is where most criminal cases start.

Kansas v. Glover: what a database check can and cannot justify

In Kansas v. Glover, 589 U.S. 376 (2020), a Kansas deputy ran a pickup’s plate, learned the registered owner’s license was revoked, and stopped the truck without seeing any traffic violation. The U.S. Supreme Court held the stop was lawful because it was reasonable to infer that the owner was driving, and the deputy had no information suggesting otherwise. The Court stressed that its holding was narrow: if the officer knows facts that undercut the inference, such as an owner in his mid-sixties and a driver who looks to be in her mid-twenties, the database result alone does not justify the stop. Our attorneys look for those facts in the body-camera video.

State v. Teamer: a mismatch in the database is not enough by itself

In State v. Teamer, 151 So. 3d 421 (Fla. 2014), a deputy ran a plate and saw that the registration listed a different color than the car in front of him. The Florida Supreme Court held that the color discrepancy alone did not give reasonable suspicion for a stop, because it is not illegal in Florida to repaint a car without telling the state, and ordered the defendant discharged. Flock’s “Vehicle Fingerprint” records the same kind of color and feature data, so Teamer gives our attorneys a Florida Supreme Court rule for stops based on a description mismatch in the system.

These cases matter at more than one stage. A stop that lacked reasonable suspicion can be challenged with a motion to suppress before trial, and if the motion succeeds, the drugs, weapon, or statements found after the stop can be excluded. For impaired-driving arrests that began with a plate-reader alert, our Tampa DUI lawyer page explains how the stop is evaluated with the rest of the case.

Is a License Plate Scan a Search Under the Fourth Amendment?

Usually not. Courts have generally held that photographing a license plate on a public road is not a Fourth Amendment search, because the plate is displayed for anyone to see. The harder question is what happens when police search weeks of stored reads to reconstruct where a person drove, and no Florida appellate decision we have found resolves that question for ALPR databases.

The guidepost is Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296 (2018). The Supreme Court held that obtaining 127 days of historical cell-site location records was a search that generally requires a warrant, because the records gave an all-encompassing picture of the person’s movements. The Court called its decision narrow and said it was not calling into question conventional surveillance tools such as security cameras. Defense lawyers nationwide argue that a dense ALPR network can approach the tracking Carpenter described; prosecutors answer that scattered plate photos are closer to a security camera. The Brancato Law Firm raises the argument when the State’s case depends on a long history of reads rather than a single alert.

Historical searches are already being used as trial evidence in Florida. In Mathis v. State, No. 4D2024-1543 (Fla. 4th DCA Apr. 8, 2026), a Broward County second-degree murder case, license plate readers in Lighthouse Point captured the defendant’s car following the victim’s van into the city and leaving about six minutes later, and the reader database showed the car had never been in Lighthouse Point before. The Fourth District affirmed the conviction, relying on that evidence along with DNA, video, and phone records. The case shows how an ALPR history becomes part of a circumstantial case, which is why our attorneys demand the full search log, not just the reads the State chose to print.

Who Can See Flock Camera Data, and How Long Is It Kept?

In Florida, ALPR images and data that contain personal identifying information are confidential and exempt from public records requests under section 316.0777(3). The statute allows the information to be shared with criminal justice agencies performing their official duties, and it gives one important right to drivers: information relating to a license plate registered to you may be disclosed to you, unless it is active criminal intelligence or active criminal investigative information. The Brancato Law Firm uses that provision, along with criminal discovery, to obtain the reads of a client’s own plate.

Retention is capped by section 316.0778, Florida Statutes, which directs the Department of State, in consultation with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, to set a maximum retention period by schedule. Agencies often keep data for much less. Flock’s long-standing default was 30 days, and on August 13, 2026, Flock’s CEO announced that the company recommends agencies cut retention to seven days, according to WECT reporting. A shorter retention period means a defense request has to go out fast, before the reads that help a client are deleted.

Do Flock Cameras Record Speed or Share Data With ICE?

Flock license plate readers do not measure speed. School-zone speed cameras are a separate system governed by section 316.1896, Florida Statutes, which bars using those cameras for remote surveillance, limits their photos and video to school-zone speeding enforcement and incidents captured along the way, and requires the images to be destroyed within 90 days after final disposition. Tampa’s school-zone program uses RedSpeed cameras, and Tampa police told the City Council in July 2026 that the cameras will not include license plate readers or share data with Flock, according to the Pineapple Report.

On immigration, Flock says it does not contract directly with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but local agencies can share the data they collect. Suncoast Searchlight reported in 2025 that the Florida Highway Patrol ran more than 250 immigration-related searches of the Flock network between March 13 and May 5, 2025 (WUSF republication). If a family member was stopped and questioned about immigration status, our attorneys defend the criminal case and coordinate with immigration counsel on the immigration side. Our firm has Spanish-speaking staff, and attorney Jean-Luc Adrien speaks Spanish, Haitian Creole, and French, so families can talk through what happened in their own language.

How Do Our Attorneys Challenge License Plate Reader Evidence?

Our attorneys challenge ALPR evidence by testing the read, the alert, the stop, and the data trail, in that order. These are the questions we answer first:

1. Was the plate read correctly? We obtain the raw image and compare every character. Plate-reading software can confuse similar characters, and a misread can send officers after the wrong car.
2. Was the alert still valid? We obtain the hotlist entry and its time stamp. A stolen car that was recovered or a warrant that was cleared can stay on a list after it should have been removed.
3. Did the officer confirm before stopping? Under Glover and Teamer, we look at what the officer saw: whether the car, the driver, and the alert actually matched.
4. Was the camera lawfully placed? After FDOT Memorandum No. 26-01, a camera still operating on a state right-of-way after the removal deadline is a fact worth litigating.
5. Who searched the data, and why? We request the audit log of searches on the client’s plate, which can reveal fishing expeditions or misuse.
6. Was the data preserved? We send preservation requests early, because short retention periods can erase reads that support the defense.

Drug, weapon, and stolen-vehicle cases often begin with a plate-reader stop, and our Tampa drug crimes attorney page describes how we defend the charges that follow. When someone learns that investigators are pulling plate-reader history before any arrest, our representation before charges are filed can address the investigation directly.

What Should You Do If Police Stop You Because of a License Plate Reader?

Stay calm, do not argue about the camera at the roadside, and protect the record. The stop itself is where the strongest defenses are built, so details matter:

• Ask, calmly, why you were stopped, and remember the officer’s exact words about a “hit” or “alert.”
• Do not consent to a search of your car; you can say so politely.
• Do not answer questions about where you have been; the reads already tell police where the car went.
• Write down the time, the street, and the direction you were driving as soon as you can.
• Call a defense attorney quickly so preservation requests go out before the data is deleted.

Frequently Asked Questions About Flock Cameras in Florida

Are Flock cameras being removed from Florida roads?

Yes, Flock and other law enforcement license plate readers on state highway rights-of-way had to come down within 30 days of the FDOT memorandum issued August 31, 2026. The Brancato Law Firm checks whether the camera in a client’s case sat on a state, county, city, or private site, because only state rights-of-way were covered.

Who pays for Flock cameras in Tampa Bay?

Taxpayers pay for law enforcement cameras through agency contracts, and HOAs or businesses pay for the cameras they buy. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm request the contract and sharing settings in cases where a private camera fed an alert to police, as with the Pinellas Sheriff’s $287,000-a-year Flock contract reported in October 2026.

Can police use a Flock camera to give me a speeding or red-light ticket?

No, an ALPR installed on a state highway may not be used to issue a traffic citation or notice of violation under section 316.0777. The Brancato Law Firm separates camera-based school-zone and red-light tickets, which have their own statutes, from criminal stops that start with a plate-reader alert; see our Hillsborough County criminal defense attorney page for the criminal side.

Can I find out whether a Flock camera recorded my car?

Often yes, because section 316.0777(4)(b) allows information about a plate registered to you to be disclosed to you unless it is active criminal intelligence or investigative information. When a client is charged, The Brancato Law Firm obtains those reads through discovery, which reaches more than a public records request.

Can a license plate reader stop be thrown out in Florida?

Yes, if the officer lacked reasonable suspicion for the specific car and driver, the evidence from the stop can be suppressed. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm build those motions around the raw image, the hotlist time stamp, and the body-camera video, using Teamer and Glover as the framework, including in St. Petersburg and Clearwater cases covered on our Pinellas County criminal defense page.

Are Flock cameras the same as police misusing the database?

No, using the cameras is legal, but searching the database for personal reasons can be a crime for the officer who does it. The Brancato Law Firm explains those charges in our guide to police misuse of Flock cameras in Florida.

For how The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. defends these cases, see our Tampa internet crimes defense practice.

Talk to a Tampa Defense Attorney About a License Plate Reader Stop

Write down where and when you were stopped, then call us before the reads are deleted. The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., founded by Tampa Criminal Defense Attorney Rocky Brancato, can be reached at (813) 727-7159, and our attorneys will start by requesting the raw image, the alert record, and the search log for your plate. Call us at any hour; our office is two blocks from the courthouse. Our firm has Spanish-speaking staff, and attorney Jean-Luc Adrien speaks Spanish, Haitian Creole, and French.

For more about our defense strategies, visit our Tampa DUI Lawyer page.

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A.
620 E. Twiggs Street, Suite 205, Tampa, FL 33602
(813) 727-7159
Serving Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. is a Tampa-based criminal defense practice. We are not affiliated with any other Brancato-named law firms.

Most trespass cases are decided by a question the arrest report rarely answers: who told the person to leave, and did that person have the authority to say it? I have watched that question decide cases for more than 25 years in Hillsborough County courtrooms. I’m Rocky Brancato, founder of The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., a Tampa criminal defense firm, and the former Chief Operations Officer of the Hillsborough County Public Defender’s Office, where I oversaw a staff of over 100 attorneys. On every trespass case, our attorneys pull the warning, the posting, and the written authorization behind them before we advise a client on anything else.

What Counts as Trespass Under Florida Law?

Florida law treats trespass as two separate crimes: trespass in a structure or conveyance, and trespass on property other than a structure or conveyance. Under section 810.08, Florida Statutes, a person commits trespass in a structure or conveyance by willfully entering or remaining in a building or vehicle without being authorized, licensed, or invited, or by refusing to leave after the owner, the lessee, or a person they authorized warns the person to depart. Under section 810.09, Florida Statutes, trespass on land requires one more element: notice against entering, given in person or by posting, fencing, or cultivation. The only exception is the unenclosed curtilage of a home, where entering with intent to commit another crime is enough.

Florida’s definitions in section 810.011 are broad. A structure is any building with a roof, temporary or permanent, together with its curtilage. A conveyance is any motor vehicle, ship, vessel, railroad car, trailer, aircraft, or sleeping car. During a state of emergency declared by the Governor, such as the declarations that follow a hurricane, a damaged building still counts as a structure for trespass purposes even if walls or a roof are gone, which matters in Tampa Bay after every storm season.

The word “willfully” carries weight in both statutes. A person who walks through an unmarked side door believing it is open to the public, or who never heard a warning, did not willfully trespass. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm look first at what the client knew and when, because the State has to prove that knowledge beyond a reasonable doubt. Our approach to trespass and other property charges in Tampa is described on our Hillsborough County criminal defense attorney page.

What Is Trespass After Warning in Florida?

“Trespass after warning” is the common name for staying on, or coming back to, property after the owner or an authorized person has told you to leave. Florida has no separate statute with that title. The charge is filed under section 810.08 when the place is a building or vehicle, and under section 810.09 when it is land, such as a parking lot. Defying an order to leave that was personally communicated to you makes trespass on land a first-degree misdemeanor, punishable by up to 1 year in jail.

The warning has to come from the right person. Section 810.09(3) defines an authorized person as the owner, the owner’s agent, a community association acting as the owner’s agent, or a law enforcement officer whose department has received written authorization to communicate an order to leave. Section 810.08(3) uses a similar definition for buildings. The Brancato Law Firm treats that written authorization as a document to be produced and tested in every case where an officer, not the owner, gave the warning.

In Tampa, that written authorization is often a Trespass Affidavit. The Tampa Police Department Trespass Affidavit Program lets a property owner sign a notarized form (TPD Form 127) that allows any Tampa Police officer to act as the owner’s representative, warn people to leave, and arrest people who refuse. TPD’s program page also says the owner must file a new affidavit when management, contact numbers, or the subpoena address change, and that if the department or court cannot contact the owner or agent, prosecution will not be pursued. When our attorneys take a Tampa trespass case, we request the affidavit and check who signed it, when, and whether anyone at that business can still be reached to testify.

Smith v. State: a blanket authorization is not a warning

Smith v. State, 778 So. 2d 329 (Fla. 2d DCA 2000) is the leading local case on this issue. Two St. Petersburg officers watched Reginald Smith walk around the parking lot of a 24-hour convenience store for about ten minutes, talking to customers. The owner had signed a blanket authorization for police to issue trespass warnings at the store, but no one, not the owner, an employee, or an officer, had ever told Smith to leave. The officers arrested him for trespass and found drugs in the search that followed.

The Second District Court of Appeal, which hears appeals from Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties, reversed. The court held that a store open to the public extends an implied invitation to enter, and that actual communication is necessary to withdraw it. A “No Trespassing” sign on the store wall was not statutory posting of the parking lot. Because no trespass occurred in the officers’ presence, the arrest was illegal, the drugs were suppressed, and Smith was discharged. The lesson reaches past trespass: when an arrest for trespass is unlawful, the evidence found after it can be thrown out with a motion to suppress, and the same missing-warning problem can defeat the trespass charge itself at trial.

How Often Do Trespass Arrests Happen in Hillsborough County?

Trespass and burglary charges are a routine part of Hillsborough County’s criminal docket. In 2025, Hillsborough County jail bookings reported to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement carried 4,859 charges under Florida’s Burglary and Trespass chapter (Chapter 810), out of 79,626 charges booked in the county that year, according to FDLE’s Criminal Justice Data Transparency County Detention Arrest Report. FDLE’s report groups trespass with burglary under that chapter heading, so the figure covers both offenses, and our firm defends clients on both sides of that line.

Researchers have documented why trespass warnings produce so many arrests. In “Penal Boundaries: Banishment and the Expansion of Punishment,” published in Law & Social Inquiry in 2010, University of Washington researchers Katherine Beckett and Steve Herbert studied trespass admonishments, parks exclusion orders, and similar orders in Seattle (University of Washington summary and full text). They found that these warnings let police act as agents of property owners, and that a civil warning becomes a criminal case the moment the person returns. Our attorneys see the same pattern in Tampa: the warning is issued in seconds, and the arrest comes weeks or months later on a return visit.

How Long Does a Trespass Warning Last in Florida?

Florida’s trespass statutes do not set an expiration date for a trespass warning. A warning from a private owner generally stays in effect until the owner withdraws it, which is why a ban from a store or apartment complex can still be enforced a year or more later. Tampa Police Department’s program page says an owner who wants to end the department’s role as agent must notify the department in writing. The Brancato Law Firm still examines old warnings closely, because the State must prove the person received the warning, and proof of a conversation that happened long ago is often thin.

Warnings issued by a government agency for public property can carry their own limits. The St. Petersburg ordinance reviewed in Catron v. City of St. Petersburg in 2011 capped city trespass warnings at one year for a first violation and two years for later ones. That case is discussed in the next section.

Can You Be Trespassed From Public Property in Florida?

Yes, a government agency can trespass a person from public property, but the person giving the warning must have authority over that property, and the warning cannot be used without limits. Two cases set the boundaries that matter most in Tampa Bay.

In Catron v. City of St. Petersburg, 658 F.3d 1260 (11th Cir. 2011), four homeless residents challenged a St. Petersburg ordinance that let police and city employees issue trespass warnings excluding people from city parks and other city property, with no procedure to contest the warning. One plaintiff received a warning for “all city parks” that was to last “permanently.” The Eleventh Circuit held that people have a protected liberty interest in being on public land open to the general public, and that the plaintiffs had stated a procedural due process claim because the ordinance gave them no way to challenge a warning. The court also allowed a claim under the Florida Constitution’s right to intrastate travel to proceed.

In D.J. v. State, 67 So. 3d 1029 (Fla. 2011), a security guard at a Miami-Dade middle school told a juvenile who was not a student to leave, and he was arrested when he came back the next day. The Florida Supreme Court vacated his conviction under section 810.097, Florida Statutes, holding that the identity and authority of the person who gave the warning, the principal or the principal’s designee, are essential elements the State must prove. The State had offered no evidence that the guard was the principal’s designee. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm apply the same reasoning to warnings given at parks, libraries, transit centers, and other public places in Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties.

What Are the Penalties for Trespass in Florida?

Trespass penalties in Florida range from a second-degree misdemeanor to a third-degree felony, depending on the place, whether anyone was inside, and whether the person was armed. The maximum jail terms come from section 775.082 and the maximum fines from section 775.083: up to 60 days and $500 for a second-degree misdemeanor, up to 1 year and $1,000 for a first-degree misdemeanor, and up to 5 years and $5,000 for a third-degree felony. The Brancato Law Firm reviews every enhancement in the charging document, because each one is an element the State must prove.

The armed enhancement applies when the person is armed with a firearm or other dangerous weapon during the trespass, or arms himself or herself while inside a structure. For armed trespass only, the statutes let an owner or authorized person detain the suspect in a reasonable manner and for a reasonable time, and they must call law enforcement as soon as practicable. The construction-site felony has its own sign rule: a site larger than one acre must be legally posted with a felony warning, and a site of one acre or less needs a sign with letters at least 2 inches high placed where the construction permits are posted.

What Does “Posted” Mean Under Florida Trespass Law?

Posted land under section 810.011(5), Florida Statutes, is land with “No Trespassing” signs placed not more than 500 feet apart along the boundaries and at each corner, with letters at least 2 inches high, showing the name of the owner, lessee, or occupant, and placed so they are clearly noticeable from outside the boundary. Fenced land counts as notice if the fence is of substantial construction and at least 3 feet high. Cultivated land counts if it has been cleared and planted with a crop, orchard, grove, pasture, or trees, or is fallow as part of a crop rotation. All of these figures come from the 2026 Florida Statutes.

Defective posting is one of the most practical defenses in a land-trespass case. A single sign on a building, a sign with no owner name, or a gap of more than 500 feet between signs may not satisfy the statute, and Smith shows that even a compliant sign may not withdraw the invitation to an open business’s parking lot. Under section 810.12, entering land that is properly enclosed and posted is prima facie evidence of intent to trespass, so our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm measure, photograph, and document the posting before the property owner fixes it.

What Is the Difference Between Trespass and Burglary in Florida?

The difference is intent. Under section 810.02, Florida Statutes, burglary is entering a dwelling, structure, or conveyance with the intent to commit an offense inside, unless the premises are open to the public or the person is licensed or invited to enter. Trespass requires no intent to commit any other crime. That single element can be the difference between a misdemeanor and a burglary charge that can carry up to life in prison, so The Brancato Law Firm treats every burglary charge as a possible trespass case. Our guide to what burglary is in Florida covers the burglary side in detail.

Trespass also sits next to other charges prosecutors add to the same arrest. Hanging around a closed business at night may be charged as loitering and prowling, damage to a gate or fence may add criminal mischief, and taking anything from the property can bring a theft charge.

What Is Possession of Burglary Tools in Florida?

Possession of burglary tools under section 810.06, Florida Statutes is a third-degree felony, punishable by up to 5 years in prison, and it applies to tools intended for a trespass as well as a burglary. The statute requires proof that the person had the tool, machine, or implement with intent to use it, or allow it to be used, to commit a burglary or trespass. A screwdriver, a pry bar, or bolt cutters are ordinary tools with lawful uses, so the State usually relies on circumstantial evidence of intent. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm challenge that inference with the client’s work history, receipts, and the reason the tools were in the vehicle.

Can You Use Force Against a Trespasser in Florida?

Florida allows non-deadly force against a trespasser in limited circumstances and allows deadly force only to prevent a forcible felony. Under section 776.031, Florida Statutes, a person may use or threaten force, other than deadly force, when and to the extent he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to prevent or end a trespass on real property other than a dwelling, if the property is lawfully in that person’s possession, a family or household member’s possession, or the possession of someone he or she has a legal duty to protect. Deadly force is justified only when the person reasonably believes it is necessary to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony. A trespass by itself is not a forcible felony.

Different rules apply when someone unlawfully and forcibly enters an occupied home or vehicle. Our guide to self-defense in Florida explains how those rules work, and our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm defend both people charged with trespass and property owners charged after using force against a trespasser.

How Do Our Attorneys Fight a Trespass Charge in Tampa?

Our attorneys fight a trespass charge by testing each element in the order the State has to prove it. These are the questions we answer first, and each one can end a case:

1. Who gave the warning? We identify the person by name. A report that says only that the defendant “had been trespassed” does not prove who gave the warning.
2. Did that person have authority? We demand the owner’s written authorization or the Tampa Police Trespass Affidavit when an officer gave the warning, and we check whether a school warning came from the principal or a designee under D.J.
3. Was notice actually given? For land, we compare the signs, paint, and fencing to section 810.011. For an open business, we look for actual communication under Smith.
4. Was the entry willful? We look for open doors, missing signs, confusing boundaries, and anything showing the client believed he or she was allowed to be there.
5. Does the felony enhancement hold up? We test whether the object was a firearm or dangerous weapon and whether a construction site or other special site was posted exactly as the statute requires.
6. Is it really burglary? When the State charges burglary, we attack the intent element and argue for trespass as the correct offense, as we did at trial in the case described above.
7. Was the arrest legal? In most trespass cases, a warrantless misdemeanor arrest requires the offense to occur in the officer’s presence. If it did not, we move to suppress anything found afterward.

Can Trespass Charges Be Dropped in Florida?

Yes. Trespass charges can be dropped when the State cannot prove the warning, the authority behind it, or proper notice, and many first-time trespass cases resolve without a conviction. The State Attorney’s Office for the 13th Judicial Circuit can decline to file a charge, file a nolle prosequi (a formal dismissal) after charges are filed, or offer pretrial diversion to an eligible first-time offender, which ends in dismissal when the program is completed. When a case is resolved by plea, a withhold of adjudication means the person is not formally convicted.

The earliest opportunity comes before charges are filed. A misdemeanor trespass arrest in Tampa often starts with a notice to appear or a short jail stay, and the prosecutor’s filing decision comes later. Through our representation before charges are filed, The Brancato Law Firm can present the missing-warning problem, the property owner’s position, and the client’s background to the assigned prosecutor before a formal charge is filed.

What Should You Do After a Trespass Warning or Arrest?

After a trespass warning or arrest, protect the evidence and stay away from the property. Store surveillance systems record over old footage, employees change jobs, and the person who gave the warning may not remember it months later. These steps help our attorneys build the defense:

• Do not return to the property, even to apologize or pick up belongings; a return visit is how most trespass-after-warning cases start.
• Write down who gave the warning, what was said, the date and time, and who else was present.
• Keep any written trespass notice, citation, notice to appear, or property receipt.
• Photograph the entrances, signs, gates, and fences from the spot where you entered, as soon as you safely can.
• Do not discuss the incident with the property owner, security staff, or police without a lawyer.
• Note your first court date and call a defense attorney before it.

Frequently Asked Questions About Trespass in Florida

Is trespassing a felony or a misdemeanor in Florida?

Trespassing is usually a misdemeanor in Florida, and it becomes a third-degree felony when the person is armed or the property is a construction site or other site posted with a felony warning. The Brancato Law Firm checks every felony trespass charge for an enhancement the State cannot prove, which can reduce the case to a misdemeanor. Our Tampa trespass defense work covers both levels.

Can I be arrested for trespassing if there was no sign in Florida?

Yes, you can be arrested for trespassing without a sign if you entered a building without permission or were told in person to leave and refused. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm compare the posting to section 810.011 in every land-trespass case, because land without proper signs, fencing, or cultivation requires a personal warning before trespass on that land is a crime, except in a home’s curtilage when the person intends another crime.

Can a store ban me for life in Florida?

A private business can withdraw its invitation and tell you not to return, and Florida’s trespass statutes set no expiration date for that warning. The Brancato Law Firm looks at whether the warning was actually given to you by the owner or an authorized person, because Smith v. State shows that a blanket authorization alone is not a warning.

Can police trespass me from a public park in Tampa Bay?

Yes, an authorized government official can issue a trespass warning for public property, but the warning must come from someone with authority over that property, and in Catron v. City of St. Petersburg the Eleventh Circuit held that a city ordinance giving people no way to challenge a warning stated a due process claim. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm defend park, library, and transit trespass cases in Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties; see our Pinellas County criminal defense page for St. Petersburg and Clearwater cases.

Can a trespass charge be dropped if the property owner does not want to prosecute?

The owner’s wishes matter, but the decision to drop a trespass charge belongs to the State Attorney’s Office, not the owner. The Brancato Law Firm contacts the owner or manager when appropriate and presents that position to the prosecutor, which is especially effective through pre-file advocacy before a charge is formally filed.

Will a trespass charge show up on a background check in Florida?

Yes, a trespass arrest appears on a Florida criminal history even if the case is later dropped. When the case ends in a dismissal, a nolle prosequi, or a withhold of adjudication, the person may be eligible to seal or expunge the record under Florida’s eligibility rules, and The Brancato Law Firm builds that goal into how we resolve the case.

How much does a trespass lawyer cost in Tampa?

The cost of a trespass lawyer in Tampa depends on whether the charge is a misdemeanor or a felony, whether other charges were filed with it, and whether the case goes to trial. The Brancato Law Firm offers a free, confidential consultation and quotes a fee after reviewing the charging document and the warning evidence. Call (813) 727-7159.

Talk to a Tampa Trespass Defense Attorney

Every trespass case has a short window to save the evidence that wins it: the video, the sign, and the name of the person who gave the warning. Call The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., founded by Tampa Criminal Defense Attorney Rocky Brancato, at (813) 727-7159 before your first court date, and our attorneys will start by identifying who gave the warning and whether that person had the authority to give it. Call us at any hour; our office is two blocks from the courthouse. Our firm has Spanish-speaking staff, and attorney Jean-Luc Adrien speaks Spanish, Haitian Creole, and French. Read our guide for Spanish-speaking criminal defense clients in Tampa.

For more about our defense strategies, visit our Hillsborough County Criminal Defense page.

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A.
620 E. Twiggs Street, Suite 205, Tampa, FL 33602
(813) 727-7159
Serving Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. is a Tampa-based criminal defense practice. We are not affiliated with any other Brancato-named law firms.

Most DUI arrests in Tampa are decided by what happened in the five minutes after the driver stepped out of the car. As a former police academy instructor, I know how officers are trained to give and score these exercises, and how often the roadside version falls short of the training. I’m Rocky Brancato, founder of The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., a Tampa criminal defense firm, and a member of the National College for DUI Defense. Our attorneys review every second of roadside video in a DUI case, because that is where the State’s case is usually weakest.

What are the three standardized field sobriety tests?

The three standardized field sobriety tests are horizontal gaze nystagmus (HGN), the walk-and-turn, and the one-leg stand. They were developed for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), and NHTSA’s training manual describes them as the only field sobriety tests for which validated clues have been identified. Anything else an officer asks a driver to do, such as reciting the alphabet or touching a finger to the nose, has no validated scoring at all.

The clue lists and arrest criteria above come from the NHTSA-funded A Florida Validation Study of the Standardized Field Sobriety Test (S.F.S.T.) Battery (Burns and Dioquino, 1997), which was conducted with the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office.

How accurate are field sobriety tests?

Field sobriety tests are less accurate than most jurors assume, especially near the legal limit. NHTSA’s main validation study, Stuster and Burns, Validation of the Standardized Field Sobriety Test Battery at BACs Below 0.10 Percent (1998), tested 297 drivers with San Diego police. At the 0.08 level, officers using all three exercises were correct 91% of the time. That number drops in the range where most contested cases sit. For drivers between 0.04 and 0.08, the officers’ decisions to release were correct only 52% of the time.

Independent researchers have questioned even those figures. A 2005 article in the Journal of Forensic Sciences, Statistical evaluation of standardized field sobriety tests, re-analyzed the San Diego data and concluded that accuracy depends heavily on blood alcohol level and is “much lower than” the 91% originally reported. The tests appear best at identifying drivers who are well above 0.08, not drivers near the line.

Real roadsides make the problem worse. The validation studies were run under controlled conditions. A shoulder on Interstate 4 at 1 a.m., with traffic passing, headlights flashing, uneven pavement, and a nervous driver in dress shoes, is not a controlled condition. Injuries, inner-ear problems, age, weight, and footwear all affect balance.

Do I have to do field sobriety tests in Florida?

No statute requires a driver to perform field sobriety exercises. Florida’s implied consent law, section 316.1932, Florida Statutes, covers breath, blood, and urine tests after a lawful arrest. The roadside exercises come before arrest and are outside that statute.

Refusing has consequences, though. In State v. Taylor, 648 So. 2d 701 (Fla. 1995), the Florida Supreme Court held that a driver’s refusal to perform field sobriety tests is admissible at trial as evidence of consciousness of guilt, as long as the officer had reasonable suspicion of DUI and warned the driver that refusing could have adverse consequences. In September 2026 the Fourth District applied the same rule in Paul v. State, No. 4D2025-0899 (Fla. 4th DCA Sept. 2, 2026), holding that a prosecutor may argue that refusing the roadside exercises and a breath test shows consciousness of guilt.

The Second District, which hears Hillsborough County appeals, has also said consent is not the issue. In State v. Liefert, 247 So. 2d 18 (Fla. 2d DCA 1971), the court held that an officer who saw weaving and smelled alcohol could require the driver to take part in physical sobriety tests, and that consent was immaterial. The real question in most cases is whether the officer had the legal basis to ask.

When can an officer in Hillsborough County ask for field sobriety tests?

An officer needs reasonable suspicion that the driver is impaired before requesting field sobriety tests. The Second District said so directly in State v. Ameqrane, 39 So. 3d 339 (Fla. 2d DCA 2010), a Hillsborough County case: “To request that a driver submit to field sobriety tests, a police officer must have reasonable suspicion that the individual is driving under the influence.” In that case, speeding at 4 a.m., the odor of alcohol, and glassy, bloodshot eyes were enough, and the court reversed a suppression order.

Ameqrane shows how this issue is argued. A stop for a burned-out tag light, with no bad driving and only an odor of alcohol, is a very different case from weaving across three lanes. When the officer moved to the roadside exercises without reasonable suspicion, our attorneys file a motion to suppress everything that followed: the exercises, the arrest, and the breath test. The Fifth District applied the same rule in State v. Johnson, 361 So. 3d 911 (Fla. 5th DCA 2023), holding that a driver can be required to perform the exercises once reasonable suspicion exists. Learn more about suppression on our Tampa DUI lawyer page.

How do Florida courts limit field sobriety evidence at trial?

Florida courts limit how the State describes the exercises. In State v. Meador, 674 So. 2d 826 (Fla. 4th DCA 1996), the court held that the walk-and-turn, one-leg stand, and similar exercises are admissible only as an officer’s lay observations of the driver. The court warned that calling them a “test,” or saying the driver “passed,” “failed,” or scored “points,” gives “these layperson observations an aura of scientific validity.”

Meador treated HGN differently. Because the eye test depends on scientific principles, the State must lay a scientific foundation before the jury hears it. In practice that means a properly qualified witness and a properly administered test. Roadside HGN tests are sometimes given with the driver facing passing headlights or flashing emergency lights, which can affect the result.

How do our attorneys challenge field sobriety evidence?

Our attorneys challenge field sobriety evidence by comparing the video, frame by frame, with the officer’s report and with NHTSA’s own instructions. The process usually looks like this:

1. Get the body camera and dash camera video. We watch for whether the officer gave complete instructions, demonstrated correctly, and stopped the driver from starting early, then count the clues ourselves.
2. Check the surface and conditions. Gravel, slopes, wet grass, wind, and passing traffic all affect balance.
3. Look for medical and physical explanations. Knee and back injuries, inner-ear conditions, weight, age, fatigue, and footwear affect balance.
4. Compare the report with the video. Reports are often written hours later. When a report lists six walk-and-turn clues and the video shows two, the officer’s credibility becomes the issue.
5. Hold the State to Meador at trial. We move to keep the words “test,” “pass,” “fail,” and “points” out of the officer’s testimony, and we object to HGN without a proper foundation.

This work produces results. In one of our DUI trials, the scene video showed no impairment and no resistance, and the jury found our client not guilty of both DUI and resisting an officer. Other DUIs have been reduced to reckless driving because the roadside evidence would not hold up. These and other outcomes are on our case results page. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.

How many DUI cases does Hillsborough County handle?

Hillsborough County handles thousands of DUI cases a year. From October 1, 2024 through September 30, 2025, the MADD court monitoring program tracked more than 4,100 DUI cases in Hillsborough County, according to the Florida Department of Transportation’s FY2025 Highway Safety Annual Report. With that volume, the roadside portion of many arrests is done quickly, and the video often shows shortcuts the report leaves out.

That volume also explains why prosecutors negotiate. When our attorneys show the assigned prosecutor that the roadside exercises were given wrong, the State has to decide whether its remaining evidence can carry a trial. For what comes after the arrest, read What Happens After a DUI Arrest in Hillsborough County and How to Fight a DUI Charge in Hillsborough County.

What should you do if you were arrested after field sobriety tests?

Move quickly on two fronts. The criminal case and the license suspension run on separate tracks, and the license challenge has a 10-day deadline from the arrest. Our post on how to protect your driver’s license after a DUI arrest explains that hearing.

• Write down everything you remember about the stop and the exercises, including the surface, the lighting, what you were wearing, and any injuries.
• List any medical conditions that affect balance or eye movement, with the names of your doctors.
• Do not discuss the arrest on social media or by text.
• Keep your paperwork, including the citation and any property receipt.
• Talk to a DUI defense lawyer before your arraignment, so the video can be requested and reviewed early.

Frequently asked questions about field sobriety tests in Florida

Can I refuse field sobriety tests in Florida?

Yes. Florida does not require a driver to perform roadside sobriety exercises, but under State v. Taylor, 648 So. 2d 701 (Fla. 1995), the refusal can be used at trial if the officer warned you of the consequences. The Brancato Law Firm reviews the video of what the officer actually said, because a missing warning or a missing basis for the request can keep a refusal out of evidence.

Are field sobriety tests scientific evidence in Florida?

Only the HGN eye test is treated as scientific in Florida, under State v. Meador, 674 So. 2d 826 (Fla. 4th DCA 1996); the balance exercises are lay observations. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm use that ruling to keep officers from telling jurors that a driver “failed.”

Can a DUI be dismissed because of how the field sobriety tests were done?

Yes, it can contribute to a dismissal or reduction when the exercises were requested without reasonable suspicion or were given and scored wrong. The Brancato Law Firm has had DUIs reduced to reckless driving and has won a not guilty verdict where the scene video showed no impairment. Read more on our Tampa DUI defense page.

Can a medical condition make me fail a field sobriety test?

Yes. Back, knee, and hip injuries, inner-ear disorders, some neurological conditions, and some medications affect balance and eye movement. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm gather medical records early and, when needed, consult experts who can explain to a jury why a sober person struggled.

Do field sobriety tests matter if I took a breath test?

Yes. They often matter more than people think, because the officer’s roadside observations are the State’s evidence of impairment when the breath result is close to 0.08 or is challenged. The Brancato Law Firm attacks both, and our post on challenging Intoxilyzer maintenance explains the breath side.

What does the walk-and-turn test measure?

It is designed to measure divided attention, meaning the ability to listen to instructions, balance, and walk at the same time. The Brancato Law Firm counts the clues ourselves from the video, because officers often record clues that the footage does not show.

Call a Tampa DUI defense attorney before your arraignment

The first two weeks after a DUI arrest decide what evidence still exists and whether your license stays valid. Call The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. at (813) 727-7159. The firm was founded by Tampa Criminal Defense Attorney Rocky Brancato, and our attorneys will request the roadside video, review it against NHTSA’s own standards, and file the license challenge within the 10-day deadline. You can call us at any hour. Our firm has Spanish-speaking staff, and attorney Jean-Luc Adrien speaks Spanish, Haitian Creole, and French. We also offer criminal defense in Spanish and Haitian Creole.

For more about our defense strategies, visit our Tampa DUI Defense page.

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A.

620 E. Twiggs Street, Suite 205, Tampa, FL 33602

(813) 727-7159

Serving Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. is a Tampa-based criminal defense practice. We are not affiliated with any other Brancato-named law firms.

Each case is unique, and past results do not guarantee future outcomes. This article is general information, not legal advice.

If a detective has asked you to come in and “clear things up,” or you already gave a statement that does not match what happened, the next few days decide how much that interview will cost you. I’m Rocky Brancato, founder of The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., a Tampa criminal defense firm. I taught criminal procedure and courtroom testimony as a police academy instructor, then tried homicide, sex crime, and child abuse cases in the Major Crimes Unit, and I have taken more than 150 jury trials to verdict. Our attorneys use that training to take interrogation recordings apart minute by minute and to build the suppression motions and trial cross-examination that follow.

What is a false confession, and how common are false confessions?

A false confession is an admission to a crime the person did not commit, usually produced by the pressure and suggestion of a police interrogation. In 2025, 19 of the 97 exonerations recorded by the National Registry of Exonerations, or 20%, included a false confession, according to the Registry’s 2025 Annual Report of the National Registry of Exonerations, published in April 2026. The Registry counts 3,767 exonerations in the United States from 1989 through the end of 2025.

DNA cases show an even higher rate. A 2025 scientific review by seven researchers, Kassin et al., “Police-Induced Confessions, 2.0: Risk Factors and Recommendations,” Law and Human Behavior (2025), reports that false confessions contributed to nearly 30% of DNA exonerations in the United States. That review updates a 2010 white paper on the same subject, also published in Law and Human Behavior, and collects the research on why innocent people confess.

Sex crime cases are where a false confession does the most damage. Many sex abuse cases come down to one person’s word against another’s, with little physical evidence, so the defendant’s own statement often becomes the center of the State’s case. That is why our Tampa sex crimes lawyer team treats the interrogation recording as the most important piece of evidence in the file.

Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm use these benchmarks when we time-stamp a client’s interrogation. A session that runs many times longer than the norm is one of the first facts we put in front of the judge.

What interrogation tactics are legal in Florida, and which ones cross the line?

Florida police may lie to a suspect about the evidence, but they may not show the suspect fabricated documents, combine threats of harsher punishment with promises of leniency, or keep questioning after a clear request for a lawyer. Each of those limits comes from a specific court decision, and each one gives the defense a concrete argument in a motion to suppress.

The baseline rule comes from Frazier v. Cupp, 394 U.S. 731 (1969). Police falsely told Frazier that his companion had already confessed. The U.S. Supreme Court held that the lie was relevant to whether the confession was voluntary but was not enough, by itself, to throw the confession out.

Florida drew a firm line in State v. Cayward, 552 So. 2d 971 (Fla. 2d DCA 1989). Detectives suspected a 19-year-old of sexually assaulting and smothering his five-year-old niece but did not think they had enough evidence to charge him. With the knowledge of the State Attorney’s Office, they fabricated two scientific reports on official-looking letterhead showing that semen on the child’s underwear came from him, and they showed the reports to him to get a confession. The Second District Court of Appeal, the appellate court for Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties, affirmed suppression of the confession and held that manufacturing false documents violates due process. The lesson from State v. Cayward, 552 So. 2d 971 (Fla. 2d DCA 1989) is practical: a spoken bluff is usually allowed, and a fake lab report is not.

Threats paired with promises can also make a confession involuntary. In Brewer v. State, 386 So. 2d 232 (Fla. 1980), detectives told the suspect he faced the electric chair or life in prison if convicted of first-degree murder and said they would help him toward a second-degree outcome if he confessed. The Florida Supreme Court held the confession coerced and ordered a new trial.

The tactic our firm sees most in Tampa-area sex investigations is minimization. In statutory cases, a detective will offer a version of “I know you didn’t rape her,” which gives the suspect an escape from the worst accusation. The suspect then admits consensual contact, which is still a felony under section 800.04 of the Florida Statutes when the other person is under 16, because that statute makes consent no defense. The 2025 Kassin review reports that minimization raises the risk of a false confession compared with direct questioning.

What happened in the 16-hour Clearwater interrogation in State v. Sawyer?

A trial judge suppressed a murder confession after Clearwater Police Department detectives questioned Tom Sawyer for about 16 hours, and the Second District affirmed in State v. Sawyer, 561 So. 2d 278 (Fla. 2d DCA 1990). The interrogation ran from about 4:10 p.m. on a Thursday to 9:30 a.m. the next morning. Police did not give Miranda warnings until about four hours in, then ignored two requests for a lawyer and kept going after Sawyer said he no longer wanted to talk and needed to sleep.

Police also charged Sawyer with sexual battery. The State later dropped that charge because the sexual battery details, which detectives had supplied and suggested to him during questioning, turned out to be false. The trial judge heard six weeks of testimony from 47 witnesses, listened to roughly 16 hours of tape, and found the statements were the product of psychological coercion.

The evergreen lesson from State v. Sawyer, 561 So. 2d 278 (Fla. 2d DCA 1990) is that the recording won the motion, because it let the judge hear exactly who introduced each fact. Our attorneys handle cases in Pinellas County and across Tampa Bay, and we build every confession challenge the same way: by tracing each detail in the statement back to the person who said it first.

How do controlled phone calls work in Florida sex crime investigations?

A controlled call is a recorded phone call that the accuser or a family member places to the suspect at a detective’s direction, hoping the suspect will admit something. Section 934.03(2)(c), Florida Statutes, makes the recording lawful when a person acting under police direction is a party to the call or one party consents, and the purpose is to obtain evidence of a crime.

Miranda warnings usually do not apply to a controlled call. In Illinois v. Perkins, 496 U.S. 292 (1990), an undercover officer posing as a fellow inmate questioned a jailed suspect, and the U.S. Supreme Court held no warnings were required because a suspect who does not know he is talking to police feels none of the custodial pressure Miranda addresses. The same reasoning applies when the suspect thinks he is talking only to the accuser.

Recordings made without police direction follow different rules. In McDade v. State, 154 So. 3d 292 (Fla. 2014), a 16-year-old in Lee County secretly recorded her stepfather in his bedroom with an MP3 player hidden in her shirt. The Florida Supreme Court held the recordings inadmissible under section 934.06 of the Florida Statutes and ordered a new trial. Florida law now includes an exception in section 934.03(2)(k) that lets a child under 18 record a conversation when the child has reasonable grounds to believe it will capture a statement about an unlawful sexual act or violence against the child.

Controlled call admissions are often weaker than they sound. The suspect is usually talking to someone he loves or wants to calm down, and a line like “I’m sorry you feel that way” can be played to a jury as a confession. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm request the full recording, every attempt to reach the suspect, and any notes on what the caller was told to say. Because a controlled call usually happens before an arrest, it is often the first sign that someone is under investigation, and that is the point where representation before charges are filed can do the most good.

Why is a confession more dangerous in a Florida sex abuse case?

A confession is more dangerous in a Florida sex abuse case because section 92.565 lets the State use it even when the State cannot independently prove that a crime happened. Florida courts ordinarily require some proof of the crime apart from the defendant’s own words, a rule called corpus delicti, which exists in part to guard against false confessions.

Section 92.565, Florida Statutes, creates an exception for sexual abuse charges, including sexual battery and lewd or lascivious offenses. A judge must hold a hearing outside the jury’s presence. The confession must be memorialized, the court must find the State is unable to show each element of the crime, and the State must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that corroborating evidence tends to show the statement is trustworthy. Hearsay is allowed at that hearing, and the judge must make specific findings on the record. Factors include whether the alleged victim was under 12 or physically or mentally incapacitated.

Our attorneys treat the section 92.565 hearing as a second suppression hearing. It is a separate chance to show the judge that the “corroboration” came from the detective’s own questions. Our post on Florida’s confession without corpus exception in sex crimes cases walks through that hearing in detail.

How do our attorneys challenge a false confession?

Our attorneys challenge a false confession with a six-step process that starts with the recording and ends, if necessary, in front of the jury.

1. Collect every recording and time-stamp it. We obtain the full audio and video, the officers’ reports, and any notes, and we log when questioning started, every break, and when warnings were given. Florida has no statute that requires police to record an entire interrogation, while about 30 states now require video recording for some or all crimes, according to the 2025 Kassin review. An unrecorded stretch of questioning is a gap the State has to explain.
2. Trace every fact to its source. We mark each detail in the confession and find who said it first. In one of our cases, a client faced serious sex crime charges after a marathon interrogation, and the review showed that every specific detail in his “confession” came from the detective’s leading questions. The statement held nothing that only the true perpetrator would know.
3. Test the Miranda warnings and the waiver. Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), requires warnings before custodial interrogation. I taught Miranda requirements at the police academy, so I read a waiver form the way the officer was trained to present it, and I know where the shortcuts usually happen.
4. Bring in a forensic psychologist. An expert can test for suggestibility, intellectual limits, and mental illness, and can explain interrogation pressure to the judge. A jury hears that testimony only if the judge finds it meets Florida’s expert standard in section 90.702 of the Florida Statutes. Our post on why expert witnesses matter in major criminal cases explains how we choose them.
5. File the motion to suppress. We file and argue these motions in the Hillsborough County Courthouse and other Tampa Bay courts, and our guide to motions to suppress evidence in Tampa covers the procedure. For cases in Hillsborough County, a strong motion can also shift plea negotiations before the hearing is ever held.
6. Try the confession if it comes in. If the judge denies the motion, we put the interrogation itself in front of the jury, as the next section explains.

Are teenagers and people with mental illness more likely to falsely confess?

Yes. Teenagers and people with mental illness or intellectual limits are more vulnerable to false confession because they are more suggestible and more eager to end the questioning. The 2025 Kassin review cites a study in which 17% of youthful detainees said they had falsely confessed to police.

Florida courts give juvenile waivers extra scrutiny. In Ramirez v. State, 739 So. 2d 568 (Fla. 1999), detectives questioned a 17-year-old with little justice-system experience, gave Miranda warnings only after he had made significant admissions, and told him the warnings would not change his desire to cooperate. His parents had no chance to see him. The Florida Supreme Court held the waiver invalid, listing factors that include how the warnings were given, the suspect’s age and intelligence, whether parents were contacted, and where the questioning took place.

Our firm used those factors in a case involving a 14-year-old with bipolar disorder who was questioned near midnight by two detectives. A forensic psychologist concluded the confession was not knowingly and voluntarily given, and the felony sex charges were reduced to misdemeanor battery. The full story is in our case study, When a Confession Is Not a Confession.

Does a confession still matter if the judge denies the motion to suppress?

Yes, but the defense can still attack it in front of the jury. In Crane v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 683 (1986), a 16-year-old said he had been held in a windowless room, surrounded by as many as six officers, and refused permission to call his mother. The trial judge found the confession voluntary and then barred the jury from hearing about those conditions. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed, holding that a defendant may present evidence about the physical and psychological circumstances of a confession because its credibility is for the jury to decide.

Under Crane v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 683 (1986), losing the suppression motion moves the fight to a new stage. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm play the key portions of the recording for the jury, cross-examine the detective on every leading question, and show where the confession contradicts the physical evidence.

What should you do if a Tampa detective wants to talk about a sex crime allegation?

Tell the detective you will not answer questions without a lawyer, say it in plain words, and call a defense attorney before any interview or callback. Sawyer’s first request for a lawyer was unclear, and the case shows how much turns on the exact words a suspect uses.

1. Do not discuss the allegation by phone, text, or social media with the accuser or the accuser’s family. The call may be a controlled call.
2. Say it clearly: “I want a lawyer, and I do not want to answer questions.”
3. Do not agree to “just come in and give your side.”
4. Write down every contact: the date, the time, who called, and what was said.
5. Call a lawyer, who can contact the detective for you.

Our article on what to do after being arrested in Tampa covers the next steps if an arrest has already happened. The Brancato Law Firm can step in at either stage.

What results has our firm obtained in confession cases?

Our firm has defeated confessions in sex crime cases by showing how police obtained them.

Past results do not guarantee future outcomes. More outcomes are listed on our case results page.

Frequently asked questions about false confessions in Florida sex crime cases

Can police lie to you during an interrogation in Florida?

Yes, Florida police may lie about the evidence during questioning, and that lie alone usually does not make a confession inadmissible, though fabricated documents cross the line under State v. Cayward, 552 So. 2d 971 (Fla. 2d DCA 1989). The Brancato Law Firm reviews every recording for the moment a bluff turned into a fake report, a threat, or a promise of leniency.

Is it legal for police to record a controlled phone call in Florida?

Yes, section 934.03(2)(c) of the Florida Statutes, allows police, or a person acting at their direction, to record a call when one party consents and the purpose is to gather evidence of a crime. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm demand the full recording, every attempt to reach the suspect, and the detective’s notes on what the caller was told to say.

Can a confession be thrown out if police never read me my Miranda rights?

It can, if you were in custody and being questioned when you made the statement. The Brancato Law Firm files motions to suppress unwarned statements, and our guide to suppressing confessions and other evidence in Tampa explains the process. A suppressed statement can still be used to impeach you if you testify differently at trial.

Can sex crime charges be dropped if the only real evidence is a confession?

Yes, particularly when the confession is suppressed or the judge finds it untrustworthy at a section 92.565 hearing and the State has little else. The Brancato Law Firm has had sex crime charges dismissed after showing that a client’s confession was built from details a detective supplied, and our sex crime defense attorneys in Tampa look for that pattern in every file.

What should I do if a detective asks me to come in and give my side of the story?

Decline the interview politely and ask the detective to contact your lawyer. The Brancato Law Firm can speak with the detective for you and, where it helps, provide evidence and context to detectives and prosecutors before a charging decision through pre-file advocacy.

Can a forensic psychologist help prove my confession was coerced?

Yes, a forensic psychologist can evaluate your vulnerabilities and the interrogation methods used, and that opinion can support a motion to suppress, though whether the expert also testifies before a jury depends on the judge’s ruling under section 90.702. In a case The Brancato Law Firm handled, a psychologist’s evaluation of a 14-year-old’s interrogation helped reduce felony sex charges to misdemeanor battery, as our coerced confession case study describes.

Does Florida require police to record interrogations?

No Florida statute requires police to record an entire custodial interrogation, although about 30 states now require video recording for some or all crimes. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm treat any unrecorded stretch of questioning as a gap the State must explain at the suppression hearing.

For how this fits into the rest of a case, see our guide to each stage of a Florida criminal case.

Where do you start if you already gave a statement?

Before you return a detective’s call, answer another message from the person accusing you, or agree to “one more conversation,” call The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. at (813) 727-7159. The firm was founded by Tampa Criminal Defense Attorney Rocky Brancato, and our attorneys will start by finding out what police already have, including any controlled call, so you do not walk into another interview blind. Recordings and call records are easiest to request and preserve early, so call us at any hour.

For more about our defense strategies, visit our Sex Crimes Defense page.

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A.
620 E. Twiggs Street, Suite 205, Tampa, FL 33602
(813) 727-7159
Serving Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. is a Tampa-based criminal defense practice. We are not affiliated with any other Brancato-named law firms.

A Florida judge grants a motion to suppress only when the defense proves, with testimony and records, that police broke a specific legal rule and that the evidence came from that violation. My name is Rocky Brancato, and I am the founder of The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., a Tampa criminal defense firm. I taught criminal procedure and courtroom testimony as a police academy instructor, and I have spent more than 25 years testing police testimony in Hillsborough County courtrooms. When a stop, search, or interrogation is in question, our attorneys obtain the body camera video, dashcam footage, dispatch logs, and computer-aided dispatch timestamps, and we build the motion around what those records show.

What Is a Motion to Suppress in Florida?

A motion to suppress is a written request asking the court to exclude evidence the State obtained in violation of the defendant’s constitutional rights. The evidence can be physical, such as drugs found in a car, or verbal, such as a confession given without Miranda warnings. The remedy is called the exclusionary rule: unlawfully obtained evidence cannot be used to prove guilt.

The rule also reaches evidence police found by exploiting the first violation. In Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471 (1963), federal agents broke into a man’s home without probable cause, and his statements in the bedroom led them to heroin held by another person. The Supreme Court excluded both the statements and the heroin against him because police reached the drugs by exploiting the illegal entry. Lawyers call this “fruit of the poisonous tree.”

Suppression motions come up most often in drug and gun cases, because those charges usually depend on what police found during a search. For possession and trafficking charges, our Tampa drug crimes attorney page explains how The Brancato Law Firm attacks the search itself.

Does Florida’s Constitution Protect More Than the Fourth Amendment?

Florida’s search-and-seizure protection is tied to the federal standard. Article I, section 12 of the Florida Constitution protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, and it says that right “shall be construed in conformity with the 4th Amendment to the United States Constitution, as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court.” It also bars evidence only when the U.S. Supreme Court’s Fourth Amendment decisions would bar it.

The Florida Supreme Court applied that conformity clause in Bernie v. State, 524 So. 2d 988 (Fla. 1988). That case began with an air freight package of cocaine that broke open in transit, and one of the defendants later asked about it at the carrier’s Tampa office. The court held that Florida courts are bound by every U.S. Supreme Court Fourth Amendment decision, including later ones, and cannot give greater protection. In practice, a Florida search motion rises or falls on federal precedent plus Florida statutes and rules, and the Second District Court of Appeal’s decisions bind trial courts in Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties. The Brancato Law Firm builds every search motion on that combination of federal precedent and Second District case law.

What Are the Most Common Grounds for Suppression in Florida?

Most suppression motions in Florida fall into four groups: stops held too long, warrantless entries into a home, statements taken in violation of Miranda, and evidence that flowed from one of those violations. Each ground has its own legal test, and the defense must name the specific evidence and the specific reason in the motion. The table below shows how The Brancato Law Firm sorts the issues at the start of a case.

Traffic stops held too long

A traffic stop can last only as long as the tasks tied to the traffic violation. In Rodriguez v. United States, 575 U.S. 348 (2015), an officer issued a written warning, returned the driver’s documents, and then held him seven or eight minutes until a drug dog alerted. The Supreme Court held that police may not prolong a completed stop for a dog sniff without reasonable suspicion of another crime. Florida’s Stop and Frisk Law, section 901.151(3), Florida Statutes, likewise limits a temporary detention to the time reasonably necessary for its purpose.

Our post on how long a traffic stop can last in Florida covers the 2026 Florida decisions on dog sniffs and lane-drift stops. The same timing analysis drives many DUI suppression motions, which our Tampa DUI lawyer page discusses along with field sobriety exercises and breath testing.

Warrantless entry into a home

Police generally need a warrant, valid consent, or a true emergency to enter a home. In Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573 (1980), officers forced their way into an apartment without a warrant to make a routine felony arrest, and the Supreme Court held the Fourth Amendment forbids that absent exigent circumstances. Florida adds a statutory layer: section 933.18, Florida Statutes, allows a search warrant for a private dwelling only in listed situations and only on a sworn affidavit setting out the facts.

When the State relies on a warrantless search, the State carries the burden of proving it was legal. In Ross v. State, 319 So. 3d 807 (Fla. 2d DCA 2021), a Charlotte County deputy impounded and inventoried a locked car parked at a public park and found drugs. The Second District reversed the denial of suppression because the State offered no evidence of a standard governing the decision to impound. Our post on whether police can enter your home without a warrant in Florida covers welfare checks, knock-and-announce, and the 2026 decisions on home entries.

Statements taken in violation of Miranda

Police must give Miranda warnings before custodial interrogation, and unwarned answers cannot be used to prove guilt. Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966) requires warnings of the right to remain silent, that statements can be used in court, and the right to an attorney, appointed if needed. The prosecution must show the warnings were given and the rights were knowingly waived.

Custody is often the fight. In Ramirez v. State, 739 So. 2d 568 (Fla. 1999), detectives questioned a 17-year-old in a small station-house room, told him they knew he was involved, and never told him he could leave. The Florida Supreme Court used four factors to find he was in custody: how police summoned him, the purpose, place, and manner of questioning, how far he was confronted with evidence of guilt, and whether he was told he was free to leave. The court held the confession should have been suppressed and ordered a new trial. For interrogation tactics that produce unreliable statements, see our post on false confessions in Florida.

What Does Florida Rule 3.190(g) Require After the 2026 Amendment?

Since July 13, 2026, one subdivision of Florida’s pretrial-motion rule governs both kinds of suppression motion. In In re Amendments to Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.190, 421 So. 3d 424 (Fla. 2025), the Florida Supreme Court combined the subdivisions on suppressing evidence and suppressing statements into Rule 3.190(g). The former confession subdivision, 3.190(h), no longer exists in that form, and subdivision (h) now covers depositions to perpetuate testimony.

The amended rule also removed the old list of five warrant defects from the rule text. Those arguments, such as a warrant that is defective on its face or lacks probable cause, remain available under the Fourth Amendment and Article I, section 12. The rule now states the ground generally: evidence the State obtained through an unlawful search or seizure by a government agent, or statements the State obtained unlawfully from the defendant.

The deadline change matters most. A motion to suppress must now be filed before trial or before the deadline the trial judge sets. A late motion survives only if there is good cause for the delay or the State does not object, so The Brancato Law Firm treats the judge’s scheduling order as the real deadline in every case.

What Happens at a Suppression Hearing in Florida?

A suppression hearing is a pretrial evidentiary hearing in front of a judge, with no jury. Under Rule 3.190(g)(3), the judge first decides whether the written motion is legally sufficient and denies it if it is not. If the judge reaches the merits, the defense presents evidence, the State may offer rebuttal, and the judge may take evidence on any factual issue needed to rule.

The arresting officer is usually the key witness. I taught criminal procedure and courtroom testimony at the police academy, and our attorneys build the cross-examination around three sources: the officer’s written report, the body camera and dashcam video, and the dispatch timestamps. A gap between the report and the video is the kind of concrete fact a judge can rely on in a written order. In prolonged-stop cases, the minute-by-minute timeline often decides the motion.

Judges rule on the evidence presented. That is why our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm subpoena the records early, compare every timestamp, and decide before the hearing whether the client should testify.

How Often Are Motions to Suppress Filed and Granted?

Motions to suppress are filed in a minority of criminal cases, and they succeed when the records support them. A study funded by the National Institute of Justice reviewed 7,500 criminal cases in nine medium-sized counties in Illinois, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Peter F. Nardulli reported in the American Bar Foundation Research Journal in 1983 that motions to suppress physical evidence were filed in fewer than five percent of those cases, and that those cases primarily involved drugs and weapons. The same study found that unsuccessful motions to exclude confessions were the only motions that produced real sentencing concessions.

Searches start with police contact, and most police-initiated contact happens in a car. In 2022, about 10.1 million U.S. residents age 16 or older said their most recent contact with police was as a driver in a traffic stop, 58 percent of all police-initiated contacts, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics report Contacts Between Police and the Public, 2022. About 4.0 percent of those drivers reported being searched or arrested. Those numbers explain why traffic stops supply so many of the suppression issues The Brancato Law Firm litigates.

What Happens After the Judge Rules?

A granted motion removes the evidence from the State’s case, and the State then decides whether it can still prove the charge. If the suppressed drugs, gun, or confession was the heart of the case, prosecutors may reduce or dismiss the charge. Florida law also lets the State appeal certain pretrial orders and orders suppressing evidence at trial under section 924.07, Florida Statutes, which is why The Brancato Law Firm asks for the written findings the new rule allows.

A denied motion does not end the issue. The officer’s credibility and the gaps in the video remain fair game at trial in front of the jury. A defendant who chooses to plead can preserve the suppression issue for appeal only by expressly reserving the right to appeal a legally dispositive issue, as section 924.051(4), Florida Statutes requires.

Suppression of a statement has one important limit. In Harris v. New York, 401 U.S. 222 (1971), the defendant’s unwarned statement was kept out of the prosecution’s main case, but he testified differently at trial, and the Supreme Court allowed the statement to impeach him. He had not claimed the statement was coerced. That rule shapes whether our attorneys advise a client to testify after a Miranda suppression.

Our Suppression Results

The Brancato Law Firm has published these results involving challenges to searches and statements. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.

How Soon Should You Raise a Suppression Issue?

Raise it within days of the arrest. In Hillsborough County, felony cases move from arrest to the State Attorney’s filing decision in a matter of weeks, and the amended rule now lets the trial judge set a suppression deadline before trial. Video, dispatch audio, and timestamp records are easiest to obtain and compare early in the case.

If no charge has been filed yet, the investigation stage is the best time to protect your rights. Our representation before charges are filed lets The Brancato Law Firm deal with investigators and prosecutors before the filing decision is made.

Frequently Asked Questions About Motions to Suppress in Florida

Can charges be dropped in Florida if a motion to suppress is granted?

Yes. When the suppressed evidence was the core of the State’s proof, prosecutors may have nothing left to prove and can dismiss or reduce the charge. In a fentanyl trafficking case, The Brancato Law Firm obtained a dismissal after challenging the legality of the vehicle search, a result described on our drug crimes defense page.

Does a judge or a jury decide a motion to suppress?

A judge decides it, at a pretrial evidentiary hearing with no jury present. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm prepare for that hearing with subpoenaed officers, video exhibits, and a minute-by-minute timeline of the stop or search.

Do police have to read Miranda rights during a DUI traffic stop?

Usually not during routine roadside questioning, because a driver in an ordinary traffic stop is not in custody under Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U.S. 420 (1984). The Brancato Law Firm looks for the moment a DUI stop turned into custody, since questions asked after that point without warnings can be suppressed.

Can the State appeal if a judge suppresses evidence in Florida?

Yes. Section 924.07, Florida Statutes, lists the orders the State may appeal, including pretrial orders and orders suppressing evidence at trial. When our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm win a motion, we request the written findings of fact Rule 3.190(g)(5) now allows, because appellate courts defer to factual findings supported by competent, substantial evidence.

Can I still appeal a denied motion to suppress if I take a plea?

Only if you expressly reserve the right to appeal a legally dispositive issue before the plea is entered, under section 924.051(4), Florida Statutes. The Brancato Law Firm puts that reservation on the record in plain terms when a client decides to plead after losing a dispositive suppression ruling.

Should I answer police questions if I think I am under investigation?

You are not required to answer investigative questions, and anything you say can be used against you. The Brancato Law Firm can communicate with investigators for you through pre-file advocacy, which keeps your own words from becoming the State’s best evidence.

Is evidence found after an illegal stop always thrown out?

Not always. Under Wong Sun, evidence is excluded when police reached it by exploiting the illegality, and courts can admit evidence that came from an independent source or whose link to the violation became too weak. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm trace each piece of evidence back to the stop or entry to show the court exactly how police found it.

For how this fits into the rest of a case, see our step-by-step guide to what happens in a Florida criminal case.

Talk to a Tampa Suppression Lawyer About Your Case

Our attorneys start by pulling the body camera video, dispatch records, and timestamps from your stop or search and comparing them line by line against the officer’s report. The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. was founded by Tampa Criminal Defense Attorney Rocky Brancato, and we handle suppression motions in Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties. Under Florida’s amended rule, a motion to suppress must be filed before trial or before the deadline your judge sets, so call (813) 727-7159 now. You can call us at any hour.

For more about our defense strategies, visit our Drug Crimes page, or our DUI defense page if your case began with a traffic stop.

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A.
620 E. Twiggs Street, Suite 205, Tampa, FL 33602
(813) 727-7159
Serving Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. is a Tampa-based criminal defense practice. We are not affiliated with any other Brancato-named law firms.

In a thrown-drugs case, the suppression hearing usually comes down to a few seconds of video: did the person stop before the object left his hand, or after? I’m Rocky Brancato, and before founding The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., a Tampa criminal defense firm, I taught officers the legal limits of arrest authority as a police academy instructor. I have since tried more than 150 jury trials to verdict. Our attorneys build every abandonment challenge around that sequence, matching the officer’s report against body camera footage frame by frame.

What Does “Abandonment” Mean When Police Find Drugs You Threw?

Abandonment means you gave up your privacy interest in an item by throwing it, dropping it, or leaving it behind, so police can pick it up and use it without a warrant. Florida courts apply one critical limit: the abandonment must be voluntary. An item you discard because police illegally seized you is treated as the product of that illegal seizure, and it can be suppressed.

The Florida Supreme Court drew this line in Hollinger v. State, 620 So. 2d 1242 (Fla. 1993). The court explained that a person who flees from a show of police authority has not been seized, while a person who stays in place and submits has been seized. If a person submits to an illegal stop and then drops contraband, the evidence must be suppressed. The court added that police do not have to order a person to drop anything for the abandonment to be involuntary.

This matters most in drug possession cases, which our Tampa drug crimes attorney page covers in more detail, because a tossed baggie or pill bottle is often the only evidence the State has.

What Is the Difference Between “Drop Then Stop” and “Stop Then Drop”?

“Drop then stop” means you got rid of the item before you were seized, so it is voluntarily abandoned and admissible. “Stop then drop” means you had already submitted to police authority when you got rid of it, so the abandonment is involuntary if the stop was illegal. The legality of the officer’s order does not matter in a “drop then stop” case.

The U.S. Supreme Court set the federal rule in California v. Hodari D., 499 U.S. 621 (1991). Hodari ran when he saw officers, and he tossed a rock of crack cocaine just before an officer tackled him. The State conceded the officer had no reasonable suspicion to stop him. The Court still held the cocaine admissible because a person is seized only by physical force or by submitting to a show of authority, and Hodari had done neither when he threw it.

Florida’s Fourth District applied that rule in Johnson v. State, 640 So. 2d 136 (Fla. 4th DCA 1994). An officer told Johnson to stop. Johnson kept walking briskly, stepped onto a porch, threw something down, and only then turned toward the officer and said, “What, officer?” The State conceded the officers had no lawful reason to stop him. The court called it a very close case, but it upheld the trial judge’s finding that the drop came before the stop, so the evidence came in.

When Are You “Seized” by Police in Florida?

You are seized when an officer physically restrains you or when you submit to an officer’s show of authority, such as an order to stop. Submission does not require handcuffs or even a spoken command. Courts look at what you actually did in the seconds before the item left your hand.

Hollinger shows how little it can take. Masked Orange County deputies in SWAT-style gear pulled into a parking lot during a drug sweep, announced “Orange County Sheriff’s Office,” and approached a group. Hollinger put his hand behind his back and dropped a tissue holding six rocks of cocaine. No deputy told him to freeze. The trial judge found that a reasonable person would have felt he was not to move, and the Florida Supreme Court upheld the suppression.

In Lang v. State, 671 So. 2d 292 (Fla. 5th DCA 1996), a deputy stopped Lang, who was walking at night with a flashlight in a high-crime area, without any reasonable basis. The deputy told Lang to step back to the patrol car, and Lang began to comply. When the deputy told him to take his hand out of his pocket, Lang threw a pill bottle behind him. The Fifth District held that Lang had submitted by starting to comply, so the abandonment was involuntary, and it reversed his conviction.

Compare State v. Canada, 715 So. 2d 1164 (Fla. 5th DCA 1998). Officers asked Canada what was in his hand. Instead of showing them, he turned, threw a film container about 25 feet over a chain-link fence, and tried to run. Because Canada never yielded, the Fifth District held the abandonment voluntary and reversed the trial court’s suppression order.

When our attorneys evaluate a thrown-evidence case, we ask five questions:

1. Did an officer give an order or make a show of authority, such as lights, commands, or blocking your path?
2. Did you stop, turn toward the officer, raise your hands, or begin following an instruction?
3. Did the item leave your hand before or after that act of compliance?
4. Did you try to run after throwing it?
5. What does the video show, compared with what the arrest report says?

What Did the Fifth District Decide in Jeffries v. State (2026)?

The Fifth District held that a man who stopped and turned toward an officer before throwing a pill bottle had already submitted, so the abandonment was involuntary. The case is Jeffries v. State, No. 5D2024-1721 (Fla. 5th DCA July 31, 2026), and it is the newest Florida appellate decision applying the stop-then-drop rule.

Larry Sapp, an off-duty Clay County School District police officer, was home in Putnam County, outside his jurisdiction, when his daughter told him someone had tried to break into his patrol car. Sapp saw Jeffries leaving his property, identified himself as law enforcement, and ordered him to stop. Jeffries kept walking. Sapp later found him near an apartment complex and again ordered him to stop. This time Jeffries stopped and turned toward Sapp. As Sapp moved in to arrest him, Jeffries made a throwing motion. A responding officer found a pill bottle containing narcotics where the object landed, and a search of Jeffries turned up a stun gun.

The court applied Hollinger, Hodari D., and Johnson. It found that Jeffries had already complied with the second order to stop when he threw the bottle, which made the facts line up with Lang rather than Canada. The court noted that Jeffries had walked away the first time but stopped the second time, and the second stop is what mattered. Because the abandonment was involuntary, the pill bottle could not justify the search that found the stun gun as a lawful search incident to arrest.

The court reversed the order denying suppression, vacated Jeffries’s conviction for possession of an electric weapon or device by a convicted felon under section 790.23, Florida Statutes, and remanded. At the hearing, defense counsel had limited the motion to suppress to the stun gun count, so the opinion does not decide what happens to the drug possession counts.

Jeffries also held that the arrest itself was unlawful. An officer outside his jurisdiction has only a private citizen’s arrest powers, which reach only a felony or a breach of the peace committed in the citizen’s presence, and the court found Sapp saw neither. We cover that part of the case in our posts on disorderly conduct and breach of the peace and on whether an off-duty police officer can arrest you in Florida.

The evergreen lesson from Jeffries is simple. Stopping and turning toward an officer is submission, and anything thrown after that moment is suppressible if the stop or arrest was illegal.

Why Does the Legality of the Stop Decide Everything?

The legality of the stop decides the case because a stop-then-drop argument wins only when the seizure was illegal. If the officer had reasonable suspicion to detain you, the evidence comes in even though you had submitted before you threw it. Every abandonment motion therefore has two parts: when you were seized, and whether the officer had a lawful basis to seize you at that moment.

Under the Florida Stop and Frisk Law, section 901.151, Florida Statutes, an officer may temporarily detain a person only when the circumstances reasonably indicate the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime. The statute also bars evidence from a search under that section unless the search complied with the statute. Our post on whether police can stop and frisk you in Florida walks through what counts as reasonable suspicion.

A recent First District case shows why the defense must attack the stop directly. In Smith v. State, No. 1D2025-0497 (Fla. 1st DCA Sept. 23, 2026), Smith tried to keep officers from seeing a cellophane baggie in his hand, including by stomping on it after he dropped it, and the court counted those efforts among the facts supporting probable cause to search his vehicle. Smith also challenged his initial detention, but his brief argued only probable cause and never addressed reasonable suspicion, so the court held he had not shown the detention was unlawful and affirmed. The Second District, which hears appeals from Tampa Bay, treats cannabis odor differently than the First District did in Smith, as we explain in our post on whether police can search your car for smelling weed in Florida.

Can Throwing Drugs Add a Tampering With Evidence Charge?

Yes, throwing drugs can lead to a tampering charge, but tossing them in plain view does not automatically qualify. Under section 918.13, Florida Statutes, the State must prove you knew an investigation was pending or about to begin and that you altered, destroyed, concealed, or removed an item with the purpose of impairing its availability. Tampering is a third-degree felony, punishable by up to five years in prison.

In State v. Jennings, 666 So. 2d 131 (Fla. 1995), Jennings swallowed suspected cocaine rocks the moment an officer shouted “police!” The Florida Supreme Court held that swallowing an item can be tampering, and that throwing evidence away in an officer’s presence may also be tampering depending on the circumstances.

The Second District, whose decisions bind Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco courts, applied that rule in E.I. v. State, 25 So. 3d 625 (Fla. 2d DCA 2009). During a traffic stop in Plant City, a passenger tossed a package of methamphetamine out the truck window at the driver’s direction, and it landed in plain view on a gas station parking lot. The court held this was abandonment, not attempted tampering, because nothing showed he intended to alter, destroy, or conceal the package, and it ordered him discharged. The court pointed to swallowing drugs or dropping them into a drainage outlet as the kind of acts aimed at destroying evidence.

Abandonment doctrine works at two stages of the same case. At the suppression hearing, the question is whether the toss was voluntary. At trial on a tampering count, the question is whether the toss was a plain abandonment or an act meant to destroy or hide the evidence. Losing the first argument does not end the second.

Is Running From Police a Separate Crime in Florida?

Running from police can be charged as resisting an officer without violence, a first-degree misdemeanor under section 843.02, Florida Statutes, punishable by up to one year in jail. The charge requires that the officer was lawfully executing a legal duty when you ran.

In C.E.L. v. State, 24 So. 3d 1181 (Fla. 2009), a juvenile ran when he saw deputies at an apartment complex known for drug activity, then kept running after they ordered him to stop. The Florida Supreme Court held that his unprovoked flight in a high-crime area gave the deputies reasonable suspicion, so his continued flight in defiance of their order was resisting without violence. The court also held that the person must know the officer intends to detain him, and the officer must be justified in making the stop when the resistance occurs.

Running rarely helps. Anything you throw while running is admissible under Hodari D., and if the officer had a lawful basis to stop you, the flight adds a separate charge. In Tampa Bay arrest paperwork, our attorneys routinely see a resisting count stacked on top of the charge that started the encounter, and in our Hillsborough County practice it is often the most winnable charge on the arrest affidavit. Our post on resisting an officer without violence in Florida explains those defenses.

What Charges Can Follow When Police Recover Thrown Evidence?

A thrown item usually produces a possession charge, and the throw itself can add tampering or resisting counts. Drug charges are a steady share of local arrests: in 2020, law enforcement in Hillsborough County reported 3,028 drug arrests out of 32,519 total arrests, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s 2020 county arrest data, the last year FDLE published county arrest totals in that format. That is about one of every eleven arrests in the county.

How Do Our Attorneys Challenge Thrown Evidence?

Our attorneys challenge thrown evidence by rebuilding the encounter second by second and filing a motion to suppress when the timeline shows a stop-then-drop on an illegal stop. The motion asks the judge to exclude the item and anything found because of it, as happened with the stun gun in Jeffries.

1. Pin down the sequence. We compare body camera and dash camera footage, dispatch audio, and the arrest report to fix the exact moment of the order, the moment of compliance, and the moment of the throw.
2. Test the basis for the stop. We identify what the officer knew before giving the order and whether it amounted to reasonable suspicion under section 901.151.
3. Challenge the officer’s account. Legal scholars have flagged “dropsy” testimony for decades. Law professor Christopher Slobogin, in Testilying: Police Perjury and What to Do About It, 67 U. Colo. L. Rev. 1037 (1996), describes data showing that police testimony that arrestees dropped drugs as officers approached increased after Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961), the Supreme Court decision that applied the exclusionary rule to state police. Video now lets us test that kind of claim.
4. Follow the fruit. If the throw was involuntary, we move to suppress everything that flowed from it, including later searches of your person or car.
5. Defend the add-on counts. We attack tampering and resisting charges on their own elements, even if the suppression motion fails.

Our post on motions to suppress evidence in Tampa explains how these hearings work.

What Should You Do After an Arrest Involving Thrown Drugs?

Talk to a defense attorney before you talk to anyone else about the case, and do it quickly, because the evidence that proves the sequence can disappear. Private surveillance systems often record over old footage, and witnesses forget details.

• Do not explain to police, cellmates, or friends why you threw something. Those statements can be used against you.
• Write down, privately, the order of events: when the officer spoke, when you stopped, and when the item left your hand.
• Note any businesses, homes, or vehicles nearby that may have cameras, and anyone who saw the encounter.
• Do not post about the arrest on social media.
• If officers released you and said the item would be tested, charges can still be filed later. Our representation before charges are filed can begin now.

Frequently Asked Questions About Thrown Evidence in Florida

Can police use drugs I threw while running away from them?

Usually yes, because a person who is running has not been seized, so anything thrown during the chase is treated as voluntarily abandoned under Hodari D. and Canada. The Brancato Law Firm still examines whether you actually stopped, even briefly, before the throw, since that moment can change the outcome. Our stop and frisk guide explains when police can lawfully chase and detain you.

Is it tampering with evidence to throw drugs on the ground in front of an officer?

Not automatically, because Florida requires proof that you intended to destroy, conceal, or remove the item, and a toss in plain view that police easily recover can be plain abandonment under E.I. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm attack the intent element directly and use the recovery location and video to show nothing was hidden. Swallowing drugs or dropping them down a drain is treated more seriously under section 918.13.

Can thrown drug charges be dropped in Florida?

Yes, thrown drug charges can be dropped, most often when a judge suppresses the item and the State has no other evidence to prove possession. The Brancato Law Firm also evaluates diversion options, and Hillsborough County offers programs such as Pretrial Intervention and Drug Court that can result in dismissal. See our page on drug possession defense in Tampa for more.

What if I threw a gun when police approached me in Florida?

The same abandonment rules apply to a gun as to drugs, so a gun thrown before you were seized is admissible, while a gun thrown after you submitted to an illegal stop can be suppressed. For clients with a prior felony, The Brancato Law Firm treats the suppression issue as the center of the defense, because possession by a convicted felon under section 790.23 is a second-degree felony. Our Tampa gun crimes lawyer page explains those charges.

What if police let me go after I threw something and said they would test it?

You can still be charged later, because the State can file charges after lab results come back. The Brancato Law Firm can contact the prosecutor before a decision is made and preserve video while it still exists. Learn more about our pre-file advocacy work.

Does it matter if the officer was off duty or outside his jurisdiction?

Yes, because an officer outside his jurisdiction generally has only a private citizen’s arrest powers, and Jeffries shows an arrest outside those limits is unlawful. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm check where the officer was, whether he was on duty, and what he personally saw before the arrest. Read more in our post on whether an off-duty police officer can arrest you in Florida.

What if the police report says I dropped the drugs before I stopped?

The report is not the final word, because the judge decides the sequence at the suppression hearing from all the evidence, including video and your testimony. The Brancato Law Firm lines up the report against the footage and dispatch timeline to find gaps. Johnson shows how close these calls can be.

Thrown Evidence Cases Are Won on the Timeline

The first thing our attorneys do in a thrown-evidence case is lock down the timeline: the video, the dispatch audio, and the officer’s report, compared second by second before footage is lost or memories fade. The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. was founded by Tampa Criminal Defense Attorney Rocky Brancato, and our attorneys defend drug, gun, and resisting charges in Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties. Call (813) 727-7159 now, while the evidence that shows when you stopped still exists. For more about our defense strategies, visit our Drug Crimes page.

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A.
620 E. Twiggs Street, Suite 205, Tampa, FL 33602
(813) 727-7159
Serving Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. is a Tampa-based criminal defense practice. We are not affiliated with any other Brancato-named law firms.

Before I founded The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., a Tampa criminal defense firm, I taught criminal arrest procedure to recruits as a police academy instructor, and jurisdiction was one of the first limits every class learned. I am Rocky Brancato, and across more than 25 years of Hillsborough County practice and over 150 jury trials, I have seen cases turn on one plain question: where was the officer standing when the arrest happened? Our attorneys ask that question about every arrest made by an off-duty or out-of-town officer, and when the answer falls on the wrong side of a city or county line, we move to suppress what the officer found.

Does an off-duty officer still have arrest powers in Florida?

Yes. Inside the officer’s own jurisdiction, being off duty does not shrink a Florida officer’s arrest authority. In Sinquefield v. State, 1 So. 3d 370 (Fla. 2d DCA 2009), a City of Palmetto officer tried to stop a man in another part of Manatee County. The Second District Court of Appeal, which hears appeals from Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco counties, said the officer’s off-duty status did not change his arrest authority. The problem was location: he was sworn only inside Palmetto, so outside the city he acted as a private citizen.

Officers who work paid private details are also still police. In State v. Williams, 297 So. 2d 52 (Fla. 2d DCA 1974), a uniformed Tampa police sergeant hired by a dance hall to work during his off-duty hours seized a handgun from a patron’s handbag and arrested her. The court agreed with the trial judge that the sergeant “acted as an officer of the City of Tampa,” so the constitutional rules for police searches applied to him. The court still reversed the suppression order, because it found the patron had consented to the search.

That rule matters in Tampa because extra-duty work is an organized program here. The Tampa Police Department’s Extra Duty Office contracts with private citizens, businesses, and organizations for uniformed officers at special events, construction-site traffic control, and escorts, and it requires a background check for establishments with an alcohol license. As we have noted in our Ybor City disorderly conduct cases, Tampa Police also maintain a heavy presence along Seventh Avenue at closing time. A uniformed officer working a bar door inside Tampa city limits has full police power, and the same Fourth Amendment limits that govern a stop and frisk in Florida apply to that officer. Our attorneys test an extra-duty officer’s stop, search, and arrest exactly as we would an on-duty officer’s.

Where does a Tampa Bay officer’s arrest authority stop?

A Florida officer’s full arrest power stops at the edge of the agency’s territory. For a city police officer, that edge is the city limit. For a sheriff’s deputy, it is the county line. The Florida Supreme Court explained in State v. Repple, 428 So. 3d 59 (Fla. 2025) that, under Article VIII, section 2(c) of the Florida Constitution, a city’s police power outside its borders exists only where the Legislature has authorized it. Sheriffs work differently. Under section 30.15(5)(a), Florida Statutes, a sheriff’s jurisdiction runs throughout the entire county, including incorporated cities, concurrently with city police.

The patchwork is large. In 2025, Florida police departments employed 20,647 full-time officers, sheriffs’ offices employed 23,776 full-time law enforcement officers, and school and port agencies employed another 1,987, according to FDLE’s Criminal Justice Agency Profile report. Every one of those officers carries a badge with a boundary. A Tampa officer driving home through Brandon, which is unincorporated Hillsborough County, has left Tampa’s jurisdiction. A Hillsborough deputy standing in the same spot has not. A Pasco deputy who stops a driver on Dale Mabry Highway in Tampa is outside Pasco County, and the question becomes which exception, if any, gave that deputy authority. When a Hillsborough County case involves an out-of-town officer, our Hillsborough County criminal defense team starts by mapping exactly where each step of the stop, detention, and arrest took place.

What can an officer legally do outside their jurisdiction?

An officer outside their jurisdiction can arrest only through fresh pursuit, a mutual aid agreement, or a citizen’s arrest. A fourth, narrower rule covers DUI breath tests after an in-city arrest. If no rule applies, the officer acted without authority, and the defense can ask the court to suppress what followed.

Fresh pursuit. The pursuit has to start inside the officer’s territory. When a fresh pursuit arrest happens outside the officer’s county, the officer must immediately notify the officer in charge of that jurisdiction, and both must bring the arrested person before a trial court judge of the county where the arrest was made without unnecessary delay.

Mutual aid agreements. Florida’s Mutual Aid Act allows written voluntary cooperation agreements for routine work across jurisdictional lines and written requested operational assistance agreements for emergencies. Each agreement must spell out the assistance, the agency in command, and a time limit, and a copy must be filed with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement within 14 days after it is signed. The writing requirement can be waived for up to 90 days only after a Governor-declared state of emergency. Because the agreement is a document, our attorneys demand it in discovery and read its terms against what the officer actually did.

The DUI breath test rule. Repple involved a Maitland officer who arrested a driver for DUI inside Maitland and then requested a breath test at a sheriff-run facility outside the city. The Florida Supreme Court held that Florida’s implied consent law authorized that request, quashed the Sixth District decision that had upheld suppression, and approved the result in State v. Torres, 350 So. 3d 421 (Fla. 5th DCA 2022), a Winter Park case with the same pattern. The Court expressly declined to adopt a broader “continuing investigation” exception. That matters locally: as we have explained in our post on refusing a breathalyzer in Florida, breath testing in the 13th Judicial Circuit runs through the sheriff’s central breath testing facility. Under Repple, a city officer’s request there is authorized when the DUI arrest itself happened inside the officer’s city. An arrest made outside the city needs its own lawful basis first.

What counts as a lawful citizen’s arrest in Florida?

A private person in Florida may arrest someone who commits a felony or a breach of the peace in that person’s presence, and an officer outside their jurisdiction has that same power and no more. In Phoenix v. State, 455 So. 2d 1024 (Fla. 1984), the Martin County Sheriff and a deputy stopped a truck in St. Lucie County after an air and ground surveillance operation and arrested the occupants. The Florida Supreme Court upheld the arrests as citizen’s arrests, reasoning that officers outside their jurisdiction should not be any less capable of making a felony arrest than a private citizen, nor have any greater power.

Drunk driving is the classic out-of-jurisdiction breach of the peace, which is why so many of these cases are DUI cases. In Edwards v. State, 462 So. 2d 581 (Fla. 4th DCA 1985), an off-duty Okeechobee officer, not in uniform and showing no badge, followed a pickup truck outside the city limits for about five miles. The driver crossed the center line three to seven times, forced oncoming cars onto the shoulder, and nearly hit a bridge abutment. The court held that this driving was a breach of the peace and upheld the citizen’s arrest. If you were stopped for DUI by an officer from another city or county, our Tampa DUI lawyer page explains how our attorneys build that challenge.

Two more limits narrow the doctrine. First, for a misdemeanor, there must be an actual arrest, meaning the person is deprived of the freedom to leave. In Steiner v. State, 690 So. 2d 706 (Fla. 4th DCA 1997), the State tried to support a DUI arrest with a security guard’s account of a driver whose car later caught fire. The guard never detained the driver, so there was no citizen’s arrest, and the officer could not rely on the guard’s account for a misdemeanor the officer did not see. The Fourth District restored the county court’s order suppressing the evidence. Second, “breach of the peace” is read narrowly. The definition comes from section 877.03, Florida Statutes, the same statute that defines disorderly conduct, and conduct that creates no more than annoyance does not qualify.

Legal scholars have criticized how vague the doctrine is. In Vilifying the Vigilante: A Narrowed Scope of Citizen’s Arrest, 25 Cornell J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 557 (2016), Professor Ira P. Robbins argues that citizen’s arrest rules are unclear on the level of suspicion required, how long a person may be held, and how much force is allowed. He recommends limiting the power to a few groups, including out-of-jurisdiction police. Our attorneys use those narrow edges to test every off-duty arrest.

What happened in Jeffries v. State?

In Jeffries v. State, No. 5D2024-1721 (Fla. 5th DCA July 31, 2026), the Fifth District threw out evidence from an off-duty officer’s citizen’s arrest because the man he arrested had not committed a felony or a breach of the peace in his presence. The officer worked for the Clay County School District police but lived in Putnam County, outside his jurisdiction. His daughter told him someone had been trying to break into his patrol car. He went outside, saw Christien Jeffries already leaving his property, identified himself as law enforcement, and ordered him to stop. Jeffries kept walking and went through an open gate into a neighbor’s backyard, and the officer did not follow him in.

The officer then drove his personal truck to a nearby apartment complex, found Jeffries, again identified himself as law enforcement, and ordered him to stop. He testified that he did not identify himself as a private citizen because most people would not stop for one. Jeffries stopped, turned, and tossed an object that turned out to be a pill bottle. The officer restrained him, and responding officers found a stun gun on him. Jeffries was later convicted of possession of an electric weapon or device by a convicted felon.

The State conceded that the officer never saw a felony, so the case came down to breach of the peace. The court rejected each piece of the State’s argument. The officer never saw anyone touch his patrol car, his daughter’s report was not his own observation, and the smudges he photographed were found only after the arrest. Leaving a yard when confronted, walking through a neighbor’s open gate, and appearing intoxicated without endangering anyone were not breaches of the peace. Approaching an elderly woman at the complex in the middle of the day, without threatening her or even raising his voice, was not one either. The court distinguished drunk-driving cases like Edwards because they involved conduct that “clearly and significantly endangers the public.” It reversed the denial of the motion to suppress and vacated the conviction for possession of an electric weapon by a convicted felon.

The court also held that the tossed pill bottle could not justify the search that turned up the stun gun, because Jeffries had already stopped in compliance with the order when he threw it. We cover that abandonment issue in our post on whether police can use drugs you threw down in Florida.

Jeffries is a Fifth District decision, but it reaches Tampa Bay courtrooms. Under Pardo v. State, 596 So. 2d 665 (Fla. 1992), a district court decision binds every Florida trial court when no other district has ruled differently, so Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco judges must follow it unless the Second District decides otherwise. Our post on disorderly conduct in Florida covers how the same narrow breach-of-the-peace definition plays out in Ybor City arrests.

What is the “color of office” rule?

The color of office rule bars an officer outside their jurisdiction from using police authority to see unlawful activity or gain evidence that a private citizen could not get. Phoenix set the line. Using a police car and announcing “police” at the moment of arrest does not, by itself, ruin a citizen’s arrest, as long as the evidence for the arrest was gathered before the officer asserted any official authority.

The rule bites when an officer uses the badge to get something. In State v. Sills, 852 So. 2d 390 (Fla. 4th DCA 2003), Coconut Creek officers arrested a man for traffic offenses inside their city, then drove him in handcuffs to his apartment in a neighboring city. There they had him sign a Coconut Creek police waiver of a search warrant and talked about him becoming an informant. The Fourth District affirmed suppression of the pills they found, because the officers obtained his consent through the power of their office, including the prospect of leniency that no private citizen could offer.

In Jeffries, the officer repeatedly announced himself as law enforcement, but the court decided the case on breach of the peace and did not reach a color of office theory. Our attorneys raise both arguments when the facts support them, because they attack different parts of the State’s case.

Is evidence thrown out if an off-duty arrest was unlawful?

Often, yes. When an out-of-jurisdiction arrest has no lawful basis, the usual remedy is a motion to suppress, which asks the judge to exclude the evidence the arrest produced. Our post on the motion to suppress evidence in Tampa explains that process. Suppression is not automatic, though, as the table shows.

One warning sign for the future: in Repple, Justice Grosshans wrote separately that suppression should not be the remedy when an officer oversteps territorial limits, because those limits protect neighboring governments rather than the accused. No other justice joined that view, and the majority did not adopt it. Prosecutors will cite it anyway, which is one more reason our attorneys pair the jurisdiction argument with Fourth Amendment and citizen’s arrest arguments.

Is it resisting arrest to walk away from an off-duty officer outside their jurisdiction?

Not under the resisting without violence statute, if the officer had no authority there. Section 843.02, Florida Statutes requires proof that the officer was engaged in the lawful execution of a legal duty. In Sinquefield, the Second District held that a Palmetto officer acting outside his city was only a private citizen, refused to read the statute as creating a crime of resisting a citizen’s arrest, and reversed the conviction. Our post on resisting an officer without violence in Florida covers the other elements of that charge.

That defense belongs in a courtroom. At the scene, you cannot tell whether an officer is in fresh pursuit, working under a mutual aid agreement, or standing one block inside the city line, and using force can bring new charges that do not depend on jurisdiction. Comply, stay quiet, and let our attorneys contest the officer’s authority later with the records in hand.

What should you do after an arrest by an off-duty or out-of-town officer?

Act within days, because the strongest evidence of where and how the arrest happened disappears fastest.

1. Write down the details while they are fresh. Note the exact location, whether the officer was in uniform or plain clothes, what agency the officer named, what vehicle the officer drove, and the exact words used to make you stop.
2. Identify every camera. Bars, apartment complexes, gas stations, and doorbell cameras can record over old footage within days. Our attorneys send preservation requests right away.
3. Request the DUI license hearing on time. After a DUI arrest, section 322.2615, Florida Statutes gives you 10 days from the notice of suspension to request a formal or informal review hearing.
4. Use the window before charges are filed. The State Attorney’s Office decides what to file after the arrest. Our representation before charges are filed can put the jurisdiction problem in front of the prosecutor before a charging decision is made.
5. File the motion to suppress before trial. Florida’s rules generally require a motion to suppress to be filed before trial, and the hearing depends on dispatch records, body-worn camera video, the agency’s jurisdiction, and any mutual aid agreement on file with FDLE.

Frequently asked questions

Can an off-duty officer working security at a Tampa bar arrest me?

Yes, if the bar is inside the officer’s jurisdiction, because an off-duty officer working a private detail still acts as a police officer, as the court held about a Tampa sergeant in State v. Williams. The Brancato Law Firm reviews extra-duty arrests the same way it reviews on-duty arrests, starting with whether the officer had a lawful reason to stop you. The same review applies when a detail officer outside a bar makes a DUI stop.

Can a Hillsborough County deputy arrest me inside Tampa city limits?

Yes. Under section 30.15(5)(a), Florida Statutes, a sheriff’s jurisdiction runs throughout the entire county, including cities like Tampa, alongside city police. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm focus those cases on whether the deputy had a lawful basis for the stop, since jurisdiction will not be in dispute.

Can a Pinellas or Pasco officer arrest me for DUI in Hillsborough County?

Only through fresh pursuit that began in the officer’s own county, a written mutual aid agreement that covers the activity, or a valid citizen’s arrest for a felony or breach of the peace the officer personally saw. The Brancato Law Firm demands the pursuit records and any mutual aid agreement in these cases and holds the State to proving one of those grounds. If an out-of-county officer arrested you, our DUI defense team can review whether any of them applies.

What counts as a breach of the peace for a citizen’s arrest in Florida?

Conduct that clearly disturbs or endangers others, such as fighting or dangerous drunk driving, can qualify, while conduct that is merely annoying does not. Our attorneys at The Brancato Law Firm compare the officer’s own report against the narrow definition courts apply under Jeffries and section 877.03, Florida Statutes.

Can charges be dropped if the arresting officer was outside their jurisdiction?

Yes, charges can be dropped or reduced when the arrest was unlawful and the key evidence is suppressed, although the outcome depends on whether the State can prove fresh pursuit, a mutual aid agreement, or a valid citizen’s arrest. The Brancato Law Firm raises the jurisdiction problem early, often before the prosecutor makes a filing decision, through our pre-file advocacy.

For how this fits into the rest of a case, see our stage-by-stage guide to the Florida criminal case process.

Talk to a Tampa defense lawyer about an off-duty arrest

Ten days is all you have to challenge a DUI license suspension, and the video that shows where an off-duty or out-of-town officer stopped you can be recorded over even sooner. The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., founded by Tampa Criminal Defense Attorney Rocky Brancato, will start by pinning down the officer’s agency, jurisdiction, and legal basis for the arrest, then preserve the footage and records that prove it. Call (813) 727-7159 today to discuss your case. For more about our defense strategies, visit our Tampa DUI defense page.

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A.
620 E. Twiggs Street, Suite 205, Tampa, FL 33602
(813) 727-7159
Serving Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. is a Tampa-based criminal defense practice. We are not affiliated with any other Brancato-named law firms.

I’m Rocky Brancato, founder of The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., a Tampa criminal defense firm. Before private practice I taught at the police academy and served as chief operating officer of the Hillsborough County Public Defender’s Office, and I have watched the law of DUI blood draws move steadily in one direction for more than a decade: toward the warrant. Marlin is the clearest Florida statement yet of where that road ends, and our attorneys are already using it.

What Does the Fourth Amendment Require Before Police Draw Your Blood?

A warrant, unless a recognized exception applies — and the United States Supreme Court has spent the last thirteen years narrowing those exceptions for blood. Drawing blood is a search. In Missouri v. McNeely, 569 U.S. 141 (2013), the Court rejected the argument that because alcohol dissipates from the bloodstream over time, every drunk-driving investigation is automatically an emergency that excuses the warrant; exigency has to be shown case by case, on the totality of the circumstances. (Read the opinion.) Three years later, in Birchfield v. North Dakota, 579 U.S. 438 (2016), the Court drew the line that governs every roadside today: police may administer a breath test as a search incident to a lawful DUI arrest, but not a blood test — and a state cannot deem drivers to have “consented” to a blood test by criminalizing refusal. (Read the opinion.)

The practical takeaway is simple: when officers want breath, the arrest itself is usually enough; when they want blood, they need your actual agreement, a judge’s signature, or a genuine emergency they can prove later.

What Did the Fourth DCA Decide in State v. Marlin?

That prosecutors had been reading one of the court’s own opinions too generously, and that the warrant requirement means what it says. In State v. Marlin, No. 4D2025-1448 (Fla. 4th DCA Sept. 2, 2026), a driver drifted onto the shoulder of the Turnpike and struck four motorcycles, killing one rider and injuring two others. He was charged with two counts of DUI manslaughter, two counts of DUI with serious bodily injury, and additional injury and property-damage counts. Officers asked him to consent to a blood draw. He refused. Roughly two hours after the crash, law enforcement called a prosecutor, who told them to apply for a search warrant; about thirty minutes later the same prosecutor called back and said they could proceed without one because “exigent circumstances existed due to the elapsed time.” First responders then drew his blood by force.

The trial court initially denied suppression, openly “struggling” with a sentence in the Fourth District’s 2023 decision in State v. Acevedo that said an officer with probable cause could “coerce” a blood draw. On rehearing the judge reversed course and suppressed the results. The State appealed, and the Fourth District affirmed, holding:

1. No per se exigency. The natural metabolization of alcohol does not, by itself, justify a warrantless blood draw. Exigency must be decided on the totality of the circumstances in the particular case.
2. Warrant required regardless of implied consent. In the court’s words, “Unless a motorist gives actual consent or a court determines under the totality of the circumstances that exigent circumstances exist, a warrant must be obtained for a blood draw to satisfy the Fourth Amendment. This is true regardless of a state’s implied consent laws.”
3. The crash statute is a directive to get a warrant, not a substitute for one. Section 316.1933, which tells officers to obtain blood in crashes causing death or serious injury, “must assume the blood draw will be obtained with a warrant, absent consent or proof of exigent circumstances.”
4. Acevedo’s “probable cause” language is withdrawn. The court called that sentence “unnecessary to our decision and thus non-binding dicta,” noted that “the State has taken Acevedo’s language and run with it as a new exception to the Birchfield warrant requirement,” and receded from it: “We simply do not have the authority to create an exception contrary to United States Supreme Court authority.”

For defense lawyers who have been hearing “Acevedo says probable cause is enough” in suppression hearings for three years, that fourth holding is the one that matters most.

Does Florida’s Implied Consent Law Let Police Take Blood Anyway?

No — and this is the argument the State lost in Marlin. Florida has two statutes that talk about blood. Section 316.1932(1)(c), Florida Statutes, deems a driver who appears for treatment at a hospital, clinic, or “other medical facility” to have consented to a blood test when a breath or urine test is impractical or impossible, and expressly defines “other medical facility” to include an ambulance or other medical emergency vehicle. Section 316.1933, Florida Statutes, provides that when an officer has probable cause to believe an impaired driver caused death or serious bodily injury, the officer “shall require” a blood test and “may use reasonable force if necessary.”

Read in isolation, those statutes sound like authority to take blood on probable cause alone. Read against McNeely and Birchfield, they cannot be. A statute cannot supply the “consent” the Fourth Amendment requires — Birchfield said so directly — and the Fourth District followed the Fifth District’s decision in State v. Liles, 191 So. 3d 484 (Fla. 5th DCA 2016), which had already rejected the argument that statutory implied consent satisfies the Constitution when a driver actually refuses. Marlin therefore reads section 316.1933 as a set of marching orders to officers — go get the blood in serious crashes — with an unstated constitutional condition: get a warrant, unless the driver agrees or a real emergency exists.

Judge Shepherd’s concurrence adds two clarifications that will matter in Tampa hospital cases. First, actual consent and statutory implied consent are different things: if a driver voluntarily agrees to a blood draw, officers do not have to recite the implied consent warnings, and the technical requirements of the implied consent statute do not apply. Second, the location of the draw is not what decides the question. An ambulance is a “medical facility” under the statute, but a nonconsensual blood draw in a hospital “must still satisfy either the warrant requirement or the impractical/impossible prong” of the implied consent law. Being in an emergency room does not waive your Fourth Amendment rights.

When Is a Warrantless Blood Draw Still Lawful in Florida?

Two doors remain open, and the State has to walk through one of them:

The consent door is where most Tampa Bay cases are actually litigated. A driver in a hospital bed, in pain, surrounded by uniforms, who says “okay” after being told that officers will “just get a warrant” if he does not, has not given the kind of free and voluntary consent the Constitution requires — that is the fact pattern Acevedo itself arose from, where the trial court found the driver had been “misadvised that if he did not agree, law enforcement would get a warrant and take a blood sample against his will.” Our attorneys take the recording, the timeline, and the exact words used in every one of these cases, because the difference between consent and acquiescence is usually a single sentence.

What Counts as Exigent Circumstances — and What Does Not?

The test is the totality of the circumstances, and Marlin is a textbook example of the State failing it. Alcohol dissipating in the blood is a factor; it is never enough by itself. Delay that officers could have avoided does not count in the State’s favor. In Marlin, law enforcement had two and a half hours after the crash, a prosecutor on the phone who initially told them to get a warrant, and no explanation for why a warrant could not have been sought during that window. Calling the passage of time an “emergency” when the passage of time was the officers’ own choice is exactly what McNeely forbids.

Genuine exigency looks different: a mass-casualty scene that occupies every available officer, a driver being airlifted to a distant trauma center, a medical procedure that will contaminate the sample, or — under the Supreme Court’s plurality decision in Mitchell v. Wisconsin (2019) — an unconscious driver who cannot take a breath test and requires immediate medical care. Even there, the analysis is fact-specific, and the State bears the burden.

What Happens to a DUI Case When the Blood Draw Is Suppressed?

The “unlawful blood alcohol level” theory of the case usually collapses, but the impairment theory often survives — which is why suppression is the beginning of the fight, not the end. Florida charges DUI on two alternative theories: a blood or breath alcohol level of 0.08 or more, or impairment of normal faculties. Without the blood result, the State cannot prove the number. It can still call the officers, play the body-camera footage, and argue driving pattern, odor, speech, and field exercises. In a crash case it will also argue causation and the mechanics of the collision, which have nothing to do with the blood.

So the real value of Marlin is leverage and structure. A DUI manslaughter case with a suppressed blood result is a very different negotiation than one with a 0.18 on the lab report, and it is a very different trial. Our full treatment of that landscape is in what DUI manslaughter is in Florida and how DUI manslaughter cases are defended. And where the State cannot get the blood it drew, it will often try to subpoena the blood the hospital drew for treatment — a separate battle covered in can the State get your medical records in a Florida DUI case.

For more about our defense strategies, visit our DUI defense page.

Does Marlin Apply in Hillsborough County?

Yes. Under Pardo v. State, 596 So. 2d 665 (Fla. 1992), “in the absence of interdistrict conflict, district court decisions bind all Florida trial courts.” Marlin was decided by the Fourth District, which sits in West Palm Beach, but no other district court has adopted the probable-cause reading of Acevedo — Acevedo was the Fourth District’s own case, and the Fifth District’s Liles already pointed the same direction Marlin does. Until the Second District or the Florida Supreme Court says otherwise, a Hillsborough, Pinellas, or Pasco circuit judge is bound to follow it. Our attorneys are citing it in pending motions now.

What Should You Do If Police Took Your Blood After a Crash?

Write down everything you can remember about how it happened, before the details fade, and get counsel before you talk to anyone else:

1. Whether you were asked, and what you said. “Yes,” “no,” “I guess,” and silence are four different legal events.
2. What you were told would happen if you refused. A threat to “get a warrant anyway” or to charge you with refusal is the heart of a voluntariness challenge.
3. The timeline. When the crash happened, when officers arrived, when the draw occurred, and whether anyone mentioned a warrant. In Marlin the timeline was the case.
4. Where the draw happened and who did it. Roadside, ambulance, or hospital; paramedic, nurse, or technician. Section 316.1933 limits who may draw blood and how.
5. Whether the hospital also drew blood for treatment. That sample is governed by different rules, and the State will come for it.

Do not assume the blood result is unassailable because it has a number on it. In Florida today, the number is only as good as the way it was obtained.

Your blood is only part of what happens at a crash scene. Our guide to whether the Florida accident report privilege requires you to talk to police after a traffic crash covers what you must tell the officer, what you can decline, and when your words can be used against you.

For how this fits into the rest of a case, see our stage-by-stage guide to the Florida criminal case process.

Frequently Asked Questions About Warrantless Blood Draws in Florida

Can I refuse a blood test in Florida?

You can decline to consent, and after Birchfield and Marlin the State cannot use your refusal as permission to draw blood without a warrant. Refusal of a lawfully requested blood test is admissible in evidence, and Florida’s refusal statute is written broadly, but whether refusing a warrantless blood draw can be punished criminally is constitutionally contested after Birchfield. If you refused and were charged, that is a defense issue, not a foregone conclusion.

Police got a warrant for my blood. Is that the end of it?

No. A warrant moves the fight from “was there a warrant” to “was the warrant good.” The affidavit must establish probable cause on its face, the officer’s sworn statements must be accurate, and the execution must comply with the statute’s limits on who may draw blood. Warrant-based draws are challenged less often than they should be.

I was in the hospital when they drew my blood. Doesn’t implied consent cover that?

Only if you did not refuse and a breath or urine test was genuinely impractical or impossible — and even then, Marlin and Judge Shepherd’s concurrence make clear that being in a hospital or ambulance does not lower the constitutional bar. If you refused, the State needs a warrant or real exigency, wherever you were.

What if I was unconscious?

The Supreme Court’s plurality in Mitchell v. Wisconsin said that an unconscious driver who cannot take a breath test will “almost always” present exigent circumstances, because the driver needs medical care and the evidence is disappearing. That is a strong argument for the State, but it is still a totality-of-the-circumstances analysis, and the State still bears the burden of proving it.

Does Marlin help me if I was charged before September 2026?

Potentially, yes. If your case is pending, a motion to suppress can be filed or renewed now. If you already pleaded or were convicted, the analysis is more complicated and time-sensitive; talk to an attorney about your options immediately rather than assuming the window has closed.

The officer said section 316.1933 required him to take my blood. Was he wrong?

He was reading the statute the way the State read it in Marlin. The Fourth District has now said the statute is a directive to obtain blood in serious crashes with a warrant, absent consent or true exigency. The word “shall” in the statute does not override the Fourth Amendment.

If you or a family member is facing a DUI, DUI with serious bodily injury, or DUI manslaughter charge anywhere in Tampa Bay and blood was drawn without your agreement, the attorneys of The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. — founded by Tampa Criminal Defense Attorney Rocky Brancato — want to see the timeline before anyone talks about a plea. Call (813) 727-7159. The law changed on September 2, 2026, and it changed in your favor.

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A.
620 E. Twiggs Street, Suite 205, Tampa, FL 33602
(813) 727-7159
Serving Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. is a Tampa-based criminal defense practice. We are not affiliated with any other Brancato-named law firms.

I’m Rocky Brancato, founder of The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., a Tampa criminal defense firm. As a former police academy legal instructor, I taught officers exactly when the law allows them through a front door — and I served as Chief Operating Officer of the Hillsborough County Public Defender’s Office, where home-search suppression motions were daily work. Our attorneys litigate these entries in Tampa Bay courtrooms, and 2026 has redrawn several of the lines.

When Can Police Legally Enter Your Home in Florida?

Police can enter your home only with a warrant, with valid consent, or under a recognized exception — because under both the Fourth Amendment and Article I, Section 12 of the Florida Constitution, a warrantless home search is “per se unreasonable.” The home is the most protected place in constitutional law, and the State always bears the burden of proving an exception applied.

Everything below is about how those boxes get tested in real cases — because the difference between “welfare check” and “warrantless search,” or between “we had a warrant” and “here is the warrant,” decided three major Florida decisions within weeks of each other this year.

Can Police Enter Your Home for a Welfare Check?

Only if the facts would make a reasonable officer believe someone inside is seriously hurt or about to be — and a Tampa Bay-area appellate court just held officers to that standard. In State v. Ford, No. 2D2025-0324 (Fla. 2d DCA July 10, 2026), detectives entered a man’s home without a warrant, claiming they feared a medical emergency, and found evidence they hoped to use against him. The trial court suppressed it, finding the officers’ fear was built on “a hunch or a guess or a speculation” — and the Second District, whose decisions bind courts across Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties, affirmed.

The U.S. Supreme Court set the national test for these emergency entries in January 2026. Our guide to Case v. Montana and police welfare checks explains that decision and what officers may search once inside.

What sank the State was the officers’ own behavior. They did not call 911. They did not kick the door or break a window to render immediate aid. They called dispatch for a backup officer — “not with lights and sirens, just regular” — waited, and then went looking for an open window to climb through. None of them looked through the windows to confirm anyone inside actually needed help, and the court found they had plenty of time to get a warrant. The lesson our attorneys use in suppression hearings: exigency is measured by the totality of the circumstances, and officers who act like there is no emergency cannot later justify an entry by claiming one. The emergency-aid exception is real — police genuinely rescuing someone need no warrant — but Ford confirms it is “not a shortcut by which police may circumvent the requirement of a search warrant.”

Do Police Have to Knock and Announce Before a Raid?

Yes — Florida law still requires it — but as of June 2026, breaking that rule no longer gets the evidence thrown out. Florida’s knock-and-announce statute, Fla. Stat. § 933.09, lets officers executing a search warrant break open a door or window only after giving “due notice” of their authority and purpose and being refused admittance. For sixteen years, Florida courts suppressed evidence when officers violated it, under the Florida Supreme Court’s Cable decision.

That ended with State v. Times, No. SC2024-0647 (Fla. June 25, 2026). Officers executing a valid search warrant announced it but did not give the occupants enough time to answer the door before going in; the trial court suppressed the evidence under Cable, and the First District affirmed. On a certified question, the Florida Supreme Court held 6-1 that suppression is not an available remedy for a statutory knock-and-announce violation, receding from Cable. The court reasoned that § 933.09 contains no exclusionary rule of its own, and the Legislature chose a different remedy: under Fla. Stat. § 933.17, an officer who willfully exceeds his authority executing a search warrant — or exercises it “with unnecessary severity” — commits a second-degree misdemeanor. The court noted the U.S. Supreme Court reached the same conclusion for federal constitutional purposes in Hudson v. Michigan back in 2006.

Read carefully, Times is narrower than the headlines suggest. It applies to searches conducted under a valid warrant — the underlying warrant must still survive scrutiny — and the court answered only the § 933.09 question, leaving other doors open. For anyone whose home was raided, the defense analysis simply shifts one step earlier: from how the officers entered to whether the paperwork authorizing entry holds up at all. Which brings us to the third 2026 decision.

What If the State Can’t Produce the Search Warrant?

Then the search is treated as warrantless — and everything found, plus everything you said afterward, can be suppressed. In Cabrera v. State, No. 3D2024-1324 (Fla. 3d DCA May 13, 2026), a detective and federal agents entered a fenced Miami-Dade residential property based on a federal search warrant that was under seal — and when the defense moved to suppress, the State never produced the warrant or its supporting affidavit. The trial court denied suppression anyway, admitting it was “just skipping over” whether the warrant was valid.

The Third District reversed with instructions to grant suppression. A court reviewing a warrant is confined to the four corners of the probable cause affidavit; with no warrant and no affidavit in the record, there was no way to find probable cause — and no way to apply the good-faith exception, because the detective who entered had never even seen the warrant he claimed to rely on. The court went further: because the search was illegal, Cabrera’s post-search statements were “fruit of the poisonous tree” and had to be suppressed too. For defendants, Cabrera is a reminder that “we had a warrant” is a claim the State must prove with paper, not testimony — and that a successful challenge takes down not just the physical evidence but the statements that followed it.

What Evidence Gets Thrown Out After These Decisions?

The 2026 decisions sort home-search defenses into clear lanes — some stronger than ever, one now closed.

One practical note about consent, because it decides more home searches than any doctrine: you are allowed to say no. Officers at your door without a warrant may ask to “take a look around,” and declining is not evidence of guilt. Step outside, close the door behind you if you speak with them, and say clearly that you do not consent to a search. If they enter anyway, do not resist — the remedy is a suppression motion, not a confrontation, and our attorneys would rather litigate a clean record of non-consent than untangle a disputed one.

Can Police Search Your Yard, Porch, or Fenced Property?

The Fourth Amendment’s protection extends beyond your walls to the “curtilage” — the area immediately surrounding the home, like a porch, carport, or fenced yard, where the intimate activity of home life happens. That mattered in Cabrera, where the property agents entered without a producible warrant was a fenced residential lot. The controlling principle comes from a Florida-grown U.S. Supreme Court case: in Florida v. Jardines, 569 U.S. 1 (2013), officers walked a drug dog onto a Miami front porch, and the Court held that bringing an investigative tool into the curtilage to gather evidence is itself a search requiring a warrant.

The practical rules for Tampa Bay homeowners follow from that. Officers, like anyone else, may walk up to your front door, knock, and ask questions — the “knock and talk” — because that is what any visitor may do. What they may not do without a warrant is exceed that implied invitation: linger to peer into windows, walk the back yard, open a gate into a fenced area, or deploy a dog at the threshold. Evidence gathered from inside the curtilage without a warrant, consent, or true exigency is suppressible on the same footing as evidence from inside the house — and in our experience, entries “just to check the back door” are among the most commonly overlooked suppression issues in home-search cases.

What Should You Do If Police Searched Your Home?

Write down everything while it is fresh, and get the paperwork audited by a defense lawyer before the State’s charging decision. The questions that decided Ford, Times, and Cabrera are the questions we ask in every Tampa Bay home-search case: Was there a warrant, and can the State actually produce it and its affidavit? Does the affidavit establish probable cause within its four corners? If there was no warrant, what exception is the State claiming — and did the officers’ actual conduct match the emergency they now describe? Were your statements taken after the entry, so that they fall if the entry falls? In Hillsborough County, felony cases move from arrest to the State Attorney’s filing decision in a matter of weeks, and a suppression problem raised early can shape or stop the filing. These issues also connect to the rest of your digital and physical privacy — see our guides on whether police can track your phone without a warrant, stop and frisk on the street, and what to do after being arrested in Tampa.

For more about our defense strategies, visit our Hillsborough County criminal defense page.

For how this fits into the rest of a case, see our guide to each stage of a Florida criminal case.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can police enter my house if I don’t answer the door?

Not without a warrant, consent, or a genuine emergency. Simply not answering is not an emergency — and in State v. Ford, the Second District affirmed suppression where officers responded to an unanswered door by climbing through a window on nothing more than speculation. If officers have a valid search warrant, however, § 933.09 allows forced entry after they announce and are refused.

Can police come in for a welfare check?

Only when the facts give them an objectively reasonable belief that someone inside is seriously injured or in imminent danger. A true emergency justifies entry without a warrant; a hunch does not, and officers who wait around and search for an open window undercut their own claim of urgency. Our attorneys examine officers’ actual conduct minute by minute in these cases.

If police broke down my door without knocking, will my case be thrown out?

Not automatically — after State v. Times (Fla. 2026), evidence is no longer suppressed for a knock-and-announce violation when officers had a valid search warrant. But the warrant itself must still be valid, and other defects in the entry or the affidavit still support suppression. The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. audits the entire warrant package in every home-search case, because Times moved the fight — it didn’t end it.

Do police have to show me the search warrant?

You are entitled to know they have one, and the State must be able to produce it in court — Cabrera v. State (Fla. 3d DCA 2026) suppressed a search where the warrant was sealed and never produced, along with the statements that followed. At your door, don’t physically interfere; note the time, the agency, and what officers say, and call a lawyer immediately.

Can police search my home if my roommate lets them in?

A person with authority over the home can consent to entry of shared areas, but not to spaces exclusively yours, like your private bedroom — and if you are present and object, your refusal generally controls as to you. Consent questions are fact-heavy, and we litigate them regularly in Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties.

Does an arrest warrant let police enter my home?

An arrest warrant lets officers enter the suspect’s own residence when they reasonably believe the person is home — it is not a search warrant for the whole house, and it does not authorize entering someone else’s home without more. Evidence found beyond those limits can be challenged, and The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. handles exactly these motions.

Home-entry law moved three times in 2026 — Cabrera in May, Times in June, Ford in July — and the difference between a suppressed search and an admitted one now turns on details most people never think to write down. If officers entered or searched your home anywhere in Tampa Bay, call the attorneys of The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. — founded by Tampa Criminal Defense Attorney Rocky Brancato — at (813) 727-7159 before the State makes its filing decision. The suppression motion that ends a case is built in its first weeks.

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A.
620 E. Twiggs Street, Suite 205, Tampa, FL 33602
(813) 727-7159
Serving Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. is a Tampa-based criminal defense practice. We are not affiliated with any other Brancato-named law firms.

I’m Rocky Brancato, founder of The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., a Tampa criminal defense firm. As a former police academy legal instructor, I taught officers what a lawful traffic stop looks like minute by minute — and our attorneys now put stopwatches to those same stops in suppression hearings. Most drug, gun, and DUI cases in Tampa Bay begin on the side of a road, which makes the length and legality of the stop the first battleground in the case.

What Is the “Mission” of a Traffic Stop?

Under the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Rodriguez v. United States, 575 U.S. 348 (2015), a traffic stop is a limited seizure whose length is measured by its “mission” — addressing the traffic violation and attending to related safety concerns — and police may not prolong the stop beyond that mission, even briefly, without independent reasonable suspicion of another crime. Florida courts apply the same rule: absent articulable suspicion of criminal activity, the stop should last no longer than necessary to run the required checks and write the citation.

Florida statute law makes the same promise. The Florida Stop and Frisk Law, Fla. Stat. § 901.151, authorizes only temporary detention — no longer than reasonably necessary to determine the person’s identity and the circumstances that justified the stop — and it carries its own statutory exclusionary rule for violations.

The key word is prolong. A dog sniff of a car’s exterior is not itself a “search” — officers can run one during a lawful stop. What they cannot do is make the stop longer to fit the dog in. Once the traffic tasks are done (or should have been done), every extra minute is an unconstitutional seizure unless the State can point to specific facts creating suspicion of a crime.

Can Police Make You Wait for a Drug Dog in Florida?

Not beyond the time the traffic stop itself requires — and a July 2026 decision shows Florida courts enforcing that limit almost to the second. In Hudson v. State, No. 5D2025-1286 (Fla. 5th DCA July 24, 2026), an officer radioed for a K-9 team about four minutes into a stop, and the sniff finally began ten minutes and twenty seconds after the stop started. The officer never issued a ticket and could not even recall whether he gave a written warning — and the State offered no evidence explaining what the officers were doing during the delay. The Fifth District held the stop was “improperly and unnecessarily prolonged,” reversed the denial of suppression, and took the contraband out of the case. Notably, Hudson was a passenger, not the driver — passengers seized by an overlong stop can challenge it too.

Two features of Hudson matter in every Tampa Bay case our attorneys handle. First, the burden: when there is no warrant, the State must prove the seizure stayed lawful — silence in the record about what officers were doing cuts against the State, not the defense. Second, the math: the court did not announce a magic number of minutes; it compared the elapsed time to the tasks actually performed. A twenty-minute stop can be lawful if the officer is diligently working the ticket; a ten-minute stop is unlawful if the officer is just waiting for the dog. That is why we obtain the bodycam, dashcam, dispatch logs, and computer-aided dispatch timestamps in every prolonged-stop case — the timeline is the defense.

Was the Traffic Stop Even Legal to Begin With?

Before asking how long the stop lasted, ask whether it should have happened at all — and on Florida’s most common justification, drifting out of a lane, Tampa Bay drivers currently have the strongest rule in the state. Florida’s lane statute, Fla. Stat. § 316.089, requires driving “as nearly as practicable entirely within a single lane.” The districts are split on what a violation requires:

In Peterson, a deputy stopped a driver who twice crossed a lane line on a one-way street with no oncoming traffic, bicyclists, or pedestrians anywhere near — and the Second District reversed, holding a § 316.089 stop requires evidence that the driving “created a reasonable safety concern.” In Ramos Perez, the Sixth District went the other way on similar facts, upheld the stop, and certified direct conflict with Peterson. Until the Florida Supreme Court resolves it, Peterson remains the controlling rule in the Second District — which means that in Tampa Bay, a stop based on harmless lane drift is still challengeable, and preserving the issue protects you whichever way the conflict is ultimately decided.

Which Traffic Stops Turn Into Criminal Cases?

Most of the criminal cases our attorneys defend from Tampa Bay’s roads start as one of a handful of stop types, and the prolonged-stop rules apply to every one of them. A stop for speeding or reckless driving becomes a drug or gun case when a sniff or search follows; a lane-drift stop at 2 a.m. becomes a DUI investigation the moment the officer claims to smell alcohol; and an equipment stop becomes a felony when a records check comes back with a warrant. The legal sequence matters in each: the officer needs a valid basis for the stop, then separate, articulable facts to expand it into a criminal investigation. Each expansion point — ordering occupants out, starting field sobriety exercises, calling the dog, asking for consent — has its own legal standard, and the State must justify each one.

That layered structure is why a stopwatch-and-transcript review wins these cases. An officer who lawfully stopped a car for speeding but had the ticket done at minute six cannot use minutes seven through twelve to build a hunch into a search. And under Rodriguez, it is no answer that the delay was “only a few minutes” — the Supreme Court rejected any de minimis grace period. If any link in the chain fails, everything downstream of it is suppressible.

What Should You Do During a Traffic Stop?

Be polite, hand over your documents, and volunteer nothing — the stop’s legality will be decided later by a judge, not by argument at the window. Three rules protect you most. First, you do not have to consent to a search of your car; “do you mind if I take a look?” is a request, and “I don’t consent to searches” is a complete answer that cannot be held against you. Second, you are not required to answer investigative questions — where you’re coming from, whether there’s “anything in the car” — and short, calm non-answers do not create suspicion by themselves. Third, note the time. The moment of the stop, the moment the officer returned to his car, the moment the dog arrived — those timestamps decide cases like Hudson, and your memory of them helps your lawyer subpoena the right recordings. If the stop turns into a search based on the smell of cannabis, that doctrine has its own limits in our district — see our analysis of whether police can search your car for smelling weed — and if officers order you out and pat you down, the rules in our guide to stop and frisk in Florida take over.

How Do You Challenge an Unlawful Traffic Stop in Florida?

By motion to suppress — and the earlier it is built, the more of the case it takes down. Everything that flows from an unlawful stop or an unlawfully prolonged detention is tainted: the dog alert, the search, the contraband, and usually your statements. When our attorneys take on a stop case in Hillsborough, Pinellas, or Pasco County, the checklist runs: Was the initial basis valid under the Second District’s rules (including Peterson for lane stops)? What was the stop’s mission, and when was each task actually completed? When did the K-9 arrive relative to the ticket? Can the State carry its burden of justifying every minute? Those questions are answered with bodycam footage, CAD logs, and cross-examination — not guesswork — and they need to be raised before trial. The State Attorney’s filing decision comes within weeks of arrest, and a stop that collapses under Rodriguez and Hudson can change what gets filed at all. If your case began with flashing lights on I-275 or a Pasco County back road, our guide to what to do after being arrested in Tampa covers the first steps.

For more about our defense strategies, visit our Hillsborough County criminal defense page.

For how The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. defends these cases, see our Tampa criminal traffic defense practice.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a time limit on traffic stops in Florida?

There is no fixed number of minutes — the limit is functional: the stop may last only as long as its mission requires (license, registration, warrants, and the ticket). In Hudson v. State (Fla. 5th DCA 2026), ten minutes and twenty seconds was too long because the State could not explain what officers were doing. Our attorneys reconstruct that timeline in every prolonged-stop case.

Is a drug dog sniff of my car a search?

An exterior sniff during a lawful stop is not a Fourth Amendment search, so no warrant is needed for the sniff itself. The constitutional violation happens when police extend the stop to make the sniff possible — that added time is an unlawful seizure under Rodriguez v. United States, and it suppresses whatever the dog finds.

Can a passenger challenge a traffic stop?

Yes. A traffic stop seizes everyone in the car, so a passenger can move to suppress evidence flowing from an unlawful or unlawfully prolonged stop — the defendant in Hudson was a passenger. The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. regularly represents passengers charged after someone else’s driving triggered the stop.

Can police stop me just for touching the lane line?

In the Tampa Bay area, generally no — under Peterson v. State, a lane-departure stop under Fla. Stat. § 316.089 requires that the movement created a reasonable safety concern. Other districts disagree, and the Florida Supreme Court has been asked to resolve the conflict, so preserving this issue now is essential. We raise Peterson in Second District courtrooms and preserve the record for whatever comes next.

Do I have to answer questions during a traffic stop?

You must provide your license, registration, and proof of insurance, but you are not required to answer investigative questions about where you are going or what is in the car. Decline politely and remain calm. Questions unrelated to the stop’s mission cannot lawfully add time to your detention.

The officer never gave me a ticket — does that help my case?

It can. In Hudson, the officer’s failure to issue a ticket (and inability to recall a warning) helped show the stop’s “mission” was never the point — the delay was for the dog. If your stop ended in an arrest but no traffic citation, tell your lawyer; The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. treats that as a red flag worth litigating.

Traffic-stop law shifted twice on a single day — July 24, 2026 — when Hudson tightened the clock and Ramos Perez sent the lane-stop split to the Florida Supreme Court. If your arrest anywhere in Tampa Bay started with a traffic stop, call the attorneys of The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. — founded by Tampa Criminal Defense Attorney Rocky Brancato — at (813) 727-7159 now, while the bodycam and dispatch records that prove the timeline still exist and the suppression motion can shape the State’s filing decision.

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A.
620 E. Twiggs Street, Suite 205, Tampa, FL 33602
(813) 727-7159
Serving Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. is a Tampa-based criminal defense practice. We are not affiliated with any other Brancato-named law firms.

Constitutional Violations Create Powerful Defense Opportunities

When you face criminal charges in Tampa, every piece of evidence counts. However, how police obtain that evidence matters just as much as the evidence itself. Police officers are human—they make mistakes. When their errors violate your constitutional rights, a judge can throw out critical evidence.

At The Brancato Law Firm, P.A., we bring over 25 years of experience to identifying and exposing police errors that can completely change your case’s outcome. Tampa Criminal Defense Attorney Rocky Brancato, former Chief Operations Officer of the Hillsborough County Public Defender’s Office, has built his career on holding law enforcement accountable and protecting the rights of the accused.

Five Police Mistakes That Can Get Your Case Dismissed

1. Illegal Traffic Stops

Police often make their first mistake during a traffic stop—before an arrest even occurs. The Fourth Amendment requires police to have “reasonable suspicion” that you committed a crime or traffic violation before pulling your vehicle over. They cannot stop you on a hunch or because of your appearance.

What Happens When a Stop Is Illegal

If an officer stops you unlawfully, your attorney can file a motion to suppress any evidence gathered after that illegal stop. This includes confessions, contraband, and DUI breath test results. Consequently, without this crucial evidence, the State may have no choice but to dismiss your charges.

The Brancato Law Firm routinely challenges illegal stops in drug, DUI, and firearm cases throughout Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties.

2. Unlawful Searches and Seizures

To search your person, vehicle, or home, police generally need one of three things: a warrant, your valid consent, or a recognized legal exception. When officers conduct searches without meeting these requirements, the evidence they find becomes vulnerable to suppression.

Common Examples of Unlawful Searches

• Searching a car without probable cause or consent
• Searching a home without a warrant or valid permission
• Conducting pat-downs without reasonable suspicion that you are armed
• Exceeding the scope of consent (searching places you did not agree to)

The “Fruit of the Poisonous Tree” Doctrine

If a search was illegal, a judge excludes any evidence found as “fruit of the poisonous tree.” This legal doctrine means that evidence obtained through constitutional violations is tainted and cannot be used against you. Often, once the court throws out this illegally obtained evidence, the prosecution cannot proceed with the case.

3. Miranda Rights Violations

Police must properly advise you of your Miranda rights if you are in custody and they interrogate you. If they fail to do so, a court can suppress any statements you make during that interrogation.

Common Miranda Mistakes by Police

• Failing to read you your full Miranda rights before questioning
• Continuing to question you after you clearly ask for a lawyer
• Using threats or false promises to coerce a confession
• Questioning you after you invoke your right to remain silent

Suppressed statements can significantly weaken the State’s case. This is especially true when a confession is a central piece of their evidence against you.

4. Mishandling of Evidence

The “chain of custody”—the documented trail of how police handle evidence from seizure to trial—is vital in criminal cases. Any breaks or inconsistencies in this chain can lead a judge to question the evidence’s reliability.

Examples of Evidence Mishandling

• Losing or misplacing crucial evidence
• Contaminating biological samples (DNA, blood)
• Failing to properly document evidence transfers
• Storing evidence improperly (wrong temperature, exposed to elements)

When police mishandle evidence, a skilled defense attorney can challenge its reliability. As a result, this often leads to suppression of the evidence or even case dismissal.

5. Witness Intimidation and Police Misconduct

Florida law prohibits police officers from coercing witnesses or altering their statements. When officers cross ethical or legal lines during investigations, their actions can undermine the entire prosecution.

How We Challenge Police Misconduct

Documented police misconduct can support your attorney in filing motions to dismiss your case, suppress evidence, or exclude tainted witness testimony. At The Brancato Law Firm, we aggressively investigate every case for signs of law enforcement misconduct. We know that exposing even one significant error can change the entire outcome.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a motion to suppress?

A motion to suppress asks the court to exclude evidence that was obtained illegally. If the judge grants the motion, the prosecution cannot use that evidence against you at trial. Without key evidence, the State may be forced to dismiss charges.

What is the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine?

This doctrine holds that evidence obtained as a result of a constitutional violation is “tainted” and inadmissible. For example, if police conduct an illegal search and find drugs, those drugs—and any evidence that flows from finding them—cannot be used against you.

When do police have to read me my Miranda rights?

Police must read you Miranda rights when two conditions are met: (1) you are in custody (not free to leave), and (2) they are interrogating you (asking questions designed to elicit incriminating responses). If both conditions are met and they fail to give Miranda warnings, your statements may be suppressed.

Can police search my car without a warrant?

In some circumstances, yes. The “automobile exception” allows police to search a vehicle without a warrant if they have probable cause to believe it contains evidence of a crime. However, they cannot search without any legal basis. If the search was unlawful, the evidence can be suppressed.

What is chain of custody?

Chain of custody is the documented record of who handled evidence, when they handled it, and how it was stored. Any gaps or inconsistencies in this documentation can undermine the evidence’s reliability and create grounds for suppression.

How do I know if police made mistakes in my case?

An experienced defense attorney reviews police reports, body camera footage, witness statements, and all documentation to identify constitutional violations. Many police mistakes are not obvious to defendants but become clear upon careful legal analysis.

For how this fits into the rest of a case, see our guide to each stage of a Florida criminal case.

We Turn Police Mistakes Into Case Dismissals

Police errors are not rare—they happen. What truly matters is whether your defense attorney knows how to find these mistakes, expose them effectively, and use them to your advantage.

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. combines over 25 years of courtroom experience with a deep understanding of constitutional law. We know how to challenge illegal stops, unlawful searches, Miranda violations, and investigative misconduct. We are prepared to fight vigorously to have your charges dismissed whenever police errors allow.

Call (813) 727-7159 for a Confidential Case Evaluation

The Brancato Law Firm, P.A.

620 E Twiggs Street, Suite 205, Tampa, FL 33602

Serving Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties

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