PANAMA CITY — Prosecutors are appealing a judge’s decision to suppress evidence against a man police described as perhaps the biggest distributor of crystal meth in Bay County on the grounds deputies violated his right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.
Deputies seized more than 100 grams of meth from the Panama City Beach home of Paul Smith and Audrey Landee on Feb. 15 after arresting the couple.
Smith was arrested on an invalid warrant for driving with a suspended license; Landee was arrested for resisting an officer without violence after she put her hands on an investigator who was trying to enter her house despite her forceful objections. Both were later charged with trafficking in methamphetamines, a first-degree felony, and other charges.
Judge Elijah Smiley found members of the Bay County Sheriff’s Office Special Investigations Division (SID) had no probable cause to search the home and no justification to conduct a warrantless search. In a seven-page order issued Sept. 6, Smiley methodically outlined the circumstances in which deputies can enter a home without a warrant and found that none applied in this case.
Prosecutor Christa Diviney filed an appeal to the 1st District Court of Appeals Thursday. She didn’t return a call seeking comment Tuesday.
According to court records, Smith was known as Whiskey to SID investigators who suspected he was involved in trafficking high quality methamphetamine known as ice. Investigators said they conducted surveillance on the house to try and arrest Smith on a warrant they said they believed was active but had actually been recalled 11 days earlier.
When Smith drove up to his house that morning he was arrested outside. When Landee, a war veteran diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder, came outside to see what was going on Smith yelled to her to prevent investigators from going inside the house.
Landee said she told investigators they could not go inside without a warrant. In a hearing she said she had her back to the door and she was approached on her porch by several deputies and began to feel stress that triggered symptoms of PTSD. A search warrant application says she started yelling incoherently when deputies said she was not allowed back in the house.
She initially said there was no one in the house, but several minutes later she told them her infant was sleeping inside and that she was going inside to check on her.
The deputies prevented her from going inside because they said they were worried she might destroy evidence or arm herself. They wouldn’t let her in unless one of them went inside with her. She refused.
In the hearing, Landee said she tried to open the door and one of the deputies grabbed her. She turned, grabbed him back and was arrested. Deputies brought her inside and put her in the living room, where they saw a pipe used to smoke meth.
Based on the pipe they saw, deputies applied for a warrant to search the home, which was granted. They found drugs and paraphernalia.
She argued in a written response to the motion to suppress that Landee created exigent circumstance, one of the legal exceptions to the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable search and seizure, when she said she wanted to check on the child but refused to allow deputies to escort her.
Smiley found that the exigent circumstance exception didn’t justify the warrantless search, and he wrote that the only probable cause in the search warrant application, the meth pipe, was not discovered until after deputies entered the home without a warrant or probable cause.
Rusty Shepard and Jean Marie Downing, attorneys representing Landee and Smith, have filed a motion to dismiss the charges against the couple, but the proceedings in the case have been stayed until the appeals court returns a ruling on prosecutors’ appeal, Shepard said.
It’s not clear when the appeals court will decide, but Downing, who didn’t return a call Tuesday seeking comment, has filed a motion to allow Smith and Landee to communicate, which Smiley has prohibited.
Smith was released on his own recognizance in this case Monday, but he remained in the Bay County Jail pending resolution of felony charges arising from another incident.
