In the matter of State v. Bowers, the supreme court resolved a conflict between the between the Second and Fourth District Courts of Appeal concerning the application of the fellow officer rule to testimony in a suppression hearing wherein defendant challenged the legality of the traffic stop. The court ruled that the fellow officer rule does not allow an officer who does not have personal knowledge of the traffic stop and wasn't personally involved in the initial investigation at the time to testify as to hearsay concerning what the initial officer who conducted the stop told him or her outside of court for purposes of establishing a violation of a traffic law in order to validate the initial traffic stop. In the Bowers matter, the defendant filed a motion to suppress which} was granted by the circuit court, & in the matter of Ferrer vs. State of Florida, the Fourth District Court of Appeal affirmed the circuit court's denial of a defendant's motion to suppress on very similar factual scenarios in its application of the fellow officer rule.

In the Bowers matter, the defendant was initially stopped by an officer for a suspected DUI. A second officer, who was not present at the scene at the time of the initial stop and who had no personal knowledge of defendant's driving pattern, responded to at the scene, conducted a DUI investigation and arrested the defendant for DUI as well as drug/drug related crimes. At the hearing on the defendant's motion to suppress regarding the traffic stop, only the police officer who performed the DUI investigation & arrested defendant appeared to testify. In reviewing the fellow officer rule, the Supreme Court of Florida stated that the fellow officer rule permits an officer to rely on the representations of another police officer to justify the police officer's conduct, but it does not permit "an officer to testify as to knowledge that another officer possessed in order to justify the other officer.s conduct." The court agreed with the circuit court in the Bowers case that the suppression hearing wasn't about the probable cause to perform the DUI investigation & arrest the defendant, but was related to probable cause to make the stop in the first place. Accordingly, only the police officer who made the stop could establish the basis for the probable cause of the traffic stop.

The court affirmed the Second District Court of Appeal opinion in the Bowers matter, & disapproved the decision of the Fourth District Court of Appeal in the Ferrer case.

The dissent discusses Bowers not in terms of the fellow officer rule, but in terms of second-tier certiorari review given in the majority opinion in the case of Nader v. DHSMV.

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