State of Florida v. Gerson Contreras Saravia

DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA

FOURTH DISTRICT

STATE OF FLORIDA,

Appellant,

v.

GERSON CONTRERAS SARAVIA,

Appellee.

No. 4D2024-0371

[February 26, 2025]

Appeal from the County Court for the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit,

Broward County; Kenneth A. Gottlieb, Judge; L.T. Case No. 23-007751-

MU10A.

James Uthmeier, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Anesha Worthy,

Senior Assistant Attorney General, West Palm Beach, for appellant.

Michael G. Salazar, Jr. of The Salazar Law Firm, P.A., Fort Lauderdale,

for appellee.

DAMOORGIAN, J.

The State of Florida appeals the county court’s order granting Gerson

Contreras Saravia’s (“Defendant”) motion to suppress all evidence relating

to his DUI arrest. The county court granted the motion to suppress after

finding that law enforcement lacked probable cause to arrest Defendant.

For the reasons outlined below, we reverse.

By way of background, Defendant was arrested and charged with four

misdemeanor DUI-related offenses arising out of a crash involving a motor

vehicle registered to Defendant. Defendant moved to suppress all evidence

relating to his arrest, arguing that law enforcement lacked probable cause

to arrest him because: (1) none of the officers at the scene had observed

Defendant driving the vehicle; (2) law enforcement had not named any

witnesses to the crash; (3) the unnamed witnesses’ statement to law

enforcement constituted inadmissible hearsay; and (4) no other evidence

established Defendant as the driver of the vehicle at the time of the crash.

At the hearing on the motion to suppress, the State presented the

testimony of the three officers who had responded to the scene, along with

the officers’ bodycam videos. The State’s evidence established that during

the early morning hours on the date of Defendant’s arrest, a vehicle

registered to Defendant had crashed into a pet grooming business located

in a shopping plaza. Earlier that evening, Defendant had driven the vehicle

to a bar located in the same shopping plaza. The manager of the bar called

911 to report the accident. Ultimately, the three officers arrived on the

scene. By the time the officers arrived, Defendant’s vehicle had been

moved from its location where the accident occurred. Defendant was

standing near the vehicle with two other individuals. The officers did not

witness the accident or observe Defendant behind the wheel of the vehicle.

The officers in combination testified that when they arrived at the

scene, the bar manager identified himself as the person who had reported

the accident and identified Defendant as the owner of the vehicle involved

in the accident. The bar manager also told the officers that he had not

witnessed the accident and that his security guard was the person who

had reported the accident to him. The officers did not have the bar

manager’s name, although one of the officers was acquainted with the

manager and represented that he could, if given the opportunity, provide

the manager’s name and telephone number. The bar manager’s

interaction with the officers was recorded on the bodycam videos.

After speaking with the bar manager, the officers commenced an

accident investigation to determine the cause of the crash. Defendant told

the deputies that he did not know how the crash happened and could not

remember whether he was driving the vehicle at the time of the crash.

Defendant had the keys to the vehicle in his pocket, and the vehicle was

registered in his name. The officers also spoke to the security guard who

reported that he had heard the crash and saw Defendant initially attempt,

unsuccessfully, to drive the vehicle away. Thereafter, the security guard

saw Defendant exit the driver’s side of the vehicle, while two companions

got out of the front passenger side and backseat of the vehicle, respectively.

The security guard declined to provide his name. Based on the foregoing,

the officers determined that Defendant was the driver of the vehicle at the

time of the crash. One of the officers administered field sobriety test

exercises upon Defendant and, after detecting numerous signs of

impairment, arrested Defendant for DUI.

At the conclusion of the hearing, the county court granted Defendant’s

motion to suppress, concluding that the officers relied exclusively on the

hearsay statements of unnamed witnesses to establish that Defendant was

driving the vehicle at the time of the crash. The court also concluded that

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the accident report privilege precluded the officer, who had arrested

Defendant for DUI, from relying on information gathered during the

accident investigation to establish probable cause to arrest him for DUI.

This appeal follows.

The State argues the county court erred in granting Defendant’s motion

to suppress because: (1) the bar manager’s and security guard’s out-of-

court statements were sufficiently reliable and admissible to assess

whether the officer investigating the DUI had probable cause to arrest

Defendant; (2) the arresting officer did not rely solely on the witnesses’

statements to conclude probable cause existed to arrest Defendant for

DUI; (3) the accident report privilege did not apply because the information

indicating that Defendant was driving was received in both the accident

and DUI investigations and, in any event, Defendant did not raise this

argument as a ground in support his motion to suppress; and (4) the

security guard, who had identified Defendant as the driver, should have

been considered a citizen informant and his statement deemed sufficiently

reliable for probable cause determination.

Defendant counters law enforcement had not identified any witnesses

to the accident, any surveillance video, or any admission by Defendant

that he was the driver. He argues the State’s evidence from unidentified

witnesses allegedly claiming Defendant as the driver was properly

excluded as hearsay.

We agree with the State’s arguments.

Probable Cause

“Probable cause to arrest exists when facts and circumstances within

an officer’s knowledge and of which he had reasonably trustworthy

information are sufficient to warrant a person of reasonable caution to

believe that an offense has [been] or is being committed.” McCarter v.

State, 463 So. 2d 546, 548–49 (Fla. 5th DCA 1985); see also Mathis v.

Coats, 24 So. 3d 1284, 1288 (Fla. 2d DCA 2010) (“The existence of

probable cause requires an examination of the totality of the

circumstances.”) (citation omitted).

The record reflects the officers did not rely on hearsay evidence in

concluding probable cause existed to arrest Defendant for DUI. For

instance, the security guard personally heard Defendant’s vehicle crash

into a nearby business, observed Defendant attempting to drive away from

the scene, and, when unable to do so, watched Defendant exit the vehicle

from the driver’s seat. Additionally, the bar manager identified Defendant

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as the owner of the subject vehicle. The security guard’s and the bar

manager’s out of court statements were not introduced at the suppression

hearing for the truth of the matter asserted, but to show what information

the officers had at the scene when making their probable cause

determination. See State v. Littles, 68 So. 3d 976, 978 (Fla. 5th DCA 2011)

(holding the officer’s statements were not hearsay because they were not

being offered for the truth of the matter asserted, “[i]nstead, the statements

were offered to show what information the arresting officer had when

making his probable cause determination” (citing Mathis, 24 So. 3d at

1288 (“The facts [bearing on a probable cause determination] are to be

analyzed from the officer’s knowledge . . . ”) (citation omitted))). The

security guard’s and bar manager’s statements were also not objectively

hearsay, as they merely recounted what they had personally observed. See

Linic v. State, 80 So. 3d 382, 391 (Fla. 4th DCA 2012) (holding that a

witness’s testimony ‘‘was not hearsay because it was based on her

personal observations and not on what anyone told her’’).

The foregoing information gathered during the accident investigation

was compounded with the fact that Defendant admitted he had driven the

vehicle earlier that evening to the shopping plaza where the bar was

located; he admitted he had been drinking at the bar in the shopping plaza;

he was found with the vehicle’s keys in his pocket during the initial

encounter with police; police confirmed that the vehicle was registered in

Defendant’s name; and Defendant had signs of impairment. 1 Under the

totality of the circumstances, this established the existence of probable

cause to arrest Defendant for DUI.

Accident Report Privilege

Turning to the accident report privilege, section 316.066(4), Florida

Statutes (2023), provides:

Except as specified in this subsection, each crash report made

by a person involved in a crash and any statement made by

1 We note that in Wagner v. State, 361 So. 388, 390–91 (Fla. 4th DCA 2023), we

held that suppression was warranted and a defendant’s arrest for DUI was

unlawful where no officer witnessed the DUI offense, the public service aide, who

witnessed the elements of the DUI, was not a deputized police officer, and no

officer investigated the scene of the crash. Here, the facts are largely

distinguishable from that in Wagner, as sufficient information was gathered

during the accident investigation—the car keys were found in Defendant’s pocket

and Defendant admitted to driving to the plaza and drinking at the bar—to

establish probable cause for his DUI arrest.

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such person to a law enforcement officer for the purpose of

completing a crash report required by this section shall be

without prejudice to the individual so reporting. Such report

or statement may not be used as evidence in any trial, civil or

criminal. However, subject to the applicable rules of evidence,

a law enforcement officer at a criminal trial may testify as to

any statement made to the officer by the person involved in

the crash if that person’s privilege against self-incrimination

is not violated.

§ 316.066(4), Fla. Stat. (2023).

First, the accident report privilege is not a basis for granting

Defendant’s motion to suppress, as that privilege was not raised in

Defendant’s motion or specifically argued by Defendant at the suppression

hearing, and the State objected when the trial court raised the privilege at

the hearing. In response to the State’s objection, the court acknowledged

that the accident report privilege “was not the root of [the] motion.” See

State v. Christmas, 133 So. 3d 1093, 1096 (Fla. 4th DCA 2014) (holding

that the trial court’s suppression exceeded the scope of defendant’s

request and did so without adequate notice to the State); State v. Laveroni,

910 So. 2d 333, 335 (Fla. 4th DCA 2005).

Also, the accident report privilege is not applicable substantively, as

neither the bar manager nor the security guard were involved in the

accident, and therefore their statements to the officers are not protected.

See Sottilaro v. Figueroa, 86 So. 3d 505, 508 (Fla. 2d DCA 2012) (noting

that “the statutes requiring an accident report and the case law

interpreting those statutes demonstrate that the privilege only applies to

a driver, owner, or occupant of a vehicle because those are the only people

compelled to make a report under the statutes.” (citations omitted)).

Further, to the extent the court found the security guard’s statement—

that he had seen Defendant exit the driver’s side of the vehicle—could not

be relied on as part of the DUI investigation because it was said to the

officer conducting the accident investigation, the officers’ body cam footage

reflects that the security officer’s statement was said in both officers’

presence. Therefore, under the fellow officer rule, the officer conducting

the DUI investigation could rely on the security officer’s statement in

making his probable cause determination for DUI. See, e.g., State v.

Bowers, 87 So. 3d 704, 710–11 (Fla. 2012).

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Witnesses’ Identities

Regarding the unnamed witnesses’ identities, the record reflects the

security guard and bar manager were easily identifiable as the officers

were familiar with both witnesses and had prior dealings with them.

Moreover, as to the bar manager, the officers said they could easily obtain

his information, and the bar manager’s face was clearly visible on the

bodycam videos. Further, the two witnesses provided the information

face-to-face with the officers. Based on these circumstances, the

information provided was not from an anonymous tip. Rather, the

witnesses qualified as citizen informants and the information was

sufficiently reliable. See Milbin v. State, 792 So. 2d 1272, 1274 (Fla. 4th

DCA 2001) (holding that witness providing information through face-to-

face communication is not an anonymous tipster and is deemed

sufficiently reliable to be classified as a citizen informant).

The totality of the circumstances gave the officers probable cause to

arrest Defendant for DUI. See State v. Kliphouse, 771 So. 2d 16, 22 (Fla.

4th DCA 2000) (holding that “[p]robable cause for a DUI arrest must be

based upon more than a belief that a driver has consumed alcohol; it must

arise from facts and circumstances that show a probability that a driver is

impaired by alcohol or has an unlawful amount of alcohol in his system”).

Accordingly, we reverse the county court’s order granting Defendant’s

motion to suppress and remand for further proceedings consistent with

this opinion.

Reversed and remanded.

MAY and GERBER, JJ., concur.

* * *

Not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing.

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