In the matter of State of Florida v. Bowers, the supreme court resolved a conflict with decisions of the 2nd & 4th Districts regarding application of the fellow officer rule to the testimony of a police officer during a hearing on a motion to suppress where the defendant contested the validity of the initial traffic stop. The court ruled that the fellow officer rule doesn’t allow a police officer who does not have first hand knowledge of the events surrounding a traffic stop and wasn’t involved in the initial investigation at the time to testify as to hearsay concerning what the initial officer who conducted the stop told him or her outside of court for the purpose of proving a violation of the traffic law so as to establish the legality of the initial stop. In Bowers, a motion to suppress} was granted by the trial court, and in the case of Ferrer v. State, the Fourth District Court of Appeal upheld the circuit court’s denial of a defendant’s motion to suppress on similar facts applying the fellow officer rule.
In the Bowers case, defendant was initially stopped by an officer for suspected DUI. A second officer, not present at the initial traffic stop & who did not have any personal knowledge of the defendant’s driving pattern, arrived at the location of the traffic stop, conducted a DUI investigation & arrested the defendant for DUI & drug/drug related offenses. At the hearing on the defendant’s motion to suppress regarding the traffic stop, only the officer who conducted the DUI investigation & made the arrest appeared & testified. In reviewing the fellow officer rule, the supreme court stated that the fellow officer rule permits a police officer to rely on the representations of another officer to justify the officer’s conduct, however, it does not allow "an officer to testify as to knowledge that another officer possessed in order to justify the other officer.s conduct." The Supreme Court of Florida agreed with the trial court in Bowers that the suppression hearing was not about probable cause to perform the DUI investigation & make an arrest, but concerned the probable cause to make the stop in the first place. Accordingly, only the police officer who made the initial traffic stop could provide the basis for the probable cause of the stop.
The Supreme Court of Florida affirmed the 2nd District Court of Appeal opinion in the Bowers case, and reversed the holding of the Fourth District Court of Appeal in Ferrer.
In the dissenting opinion, the dissenting justice focuses on second-tier certiorari review given in the majority opinion in Nader v. The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.
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