In the matter of Jenkins v. State, the appellate court granted the defendant's appeal challenging the defendant's convictions following pleas of guilty to the charges of cocaine possession with the intent to sell, drug paraphernalia possession, & altering a license tag, & remanded for further proceedings consistent with its ruling. The court held the defendant's arrests on account of altering a license tag were unlawful because he did not commit the crime within the presence of law enforcement, as required by Florida Statute Section90.15(1) and pursuant to the holding in Baymon vs. State. The details of this case were that police officers pulled over defendant's auto for the reason that he was playing loud music, defendant had a tinted plastic cover over his license tag, and failed to make a full stop at a red light. The officers arrested defendant for altering a license tag, which is a 2nd-degree misdemeanor in violation of Florida Statute 320.061. Incident to lawful arrest, they searched defendant and the car. The officers located cocaine inside the defendant's wallet and bags containing cocaine residue & a digital scale in the auto trunk of the car. Less than a month later, police officers again spotted Mr. Jenkins' vehicle and defendant's car still had a tinted plastic cover over the license tag.. The police conducted a traffic stop and arrested the defendant yet again due to obscuring a license tag. An inventory search of the defendant's auto exposed seven hundred counterfeit music and video Compact discs and DVDs. The defendant submitted motions to suppress in all cases. He contended that his arrests had been against the law as altering a license tag was a misdemeanor under Florida law that must be committed in the presence of a law enforcement officer for an arrest to be lawful. The Second District Court of Appeal agreed with defendant ruling that since the arrests had been against the law, "the law required suppression of the evidence seized in any search carried out incident to that arrest." The court cited to the cases of Baymon, 933 So. 2d at 1270 (citing Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471 (1963)).

The district court reversed the defendant's convictions for possession with intent to sell cocaine and also possession of drug paraphernalia, his conviction for possession of counterfeit goods, and remanded those cases for resentencing on defendant's convictions for altering a license tag. The appellate court additionally reversed defendant's revocation of probation and remanded for consideration of whether or not to revoke, modify, or continue defendant on probation predicated simply on altering a license tag.

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