State v. Worsham
Florida District Court of Appeal
227 So. 3d 602 (2017)
- Written by Tiffany Hester, JD
Facts
Charles Worsham, Jr. (defendant) drove and crashed a vehicle in which the passenger died. Police impounded Worsham’s vehicle and later, without a search warrant, downloaded information from the vehicle’s event data recorder (EDR), which functions like a black box. The EDR in Worsham’s vehicle continuously collected information regarding speed, brake usage, steering, seat belt usage, airbag warning lights, velocity changes, and vehicle orientation during hard turns. Extracting and understanding the information contained in any EDR required an expensive retrieval kit and interpretation by a trained specialist. Eventually, the State of Florida charged Worsham with driving under the influence, manslaughter, and vehicular homicide. Worsham moved to suppress the evidence police downloaded from the vehicle’s EDR without a warrant, alleging a Fourth Amendment violation. The trial court granted Worsham’s motion, and the state appealed, asserting that no Fourth Amendment violation had occurred because Worsham had no privacy interest in the information contained within the EDR.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Gross, J.)
Dissent (Forst, J.)
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