Malden v. State
The First District affirmed denial of a motion to suppress evidence from a home search, rejecting the defendant's argument that a 90-day-old controlled buy rendered the warrant's probable cause 'stale.' The court expressly criticized prior Florida case law's reliance on arbitrary day-based 'rules of thumb' (e.g., the 30-day guideline from Pilieci and Hamelmann), holding instead that staleness must be assessed under a totality-of-the-circumstances inquiry grounded in the original meaning of 'probable cause.'
Key facts
- Defendant was charged with drug offenses following a search of his home pursuant to a warrant based on controlled buys and surveillance.
- A controlled buy occurred approximately 90 days before the warrant was issued; a second controlled buy occurred about 10 days before the warrant, and surveillance showed defendant traveled from his home to the second buy location.
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Why it matters
This opinion pushes back against the widely cited 30-day 'rule of thumb' for staleness analysis used by Florida courts (including the 2nd DCA's Pilieci decision and the 1st DCA's own older precedent), instead directing… — full analysis with a trial
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