IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE SIXTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT
OF
THE STATE OF
JEFFREY FEIGLEY
Appellant,
v. Appeal No. CRC 03-35 APANO
UCN522002CF018909XXXXNO
STATE
OF
Appellee.
___________________________/
Opinion filed __________________.
Appeal from a judgment and sentence
entered by the Pinellas County Court
J.S. Lucas Fleming, Esq.
Attorney for appellant
Susan Crosby, Esq.
Assistant State Attorney
THIS MATTER is before the Court on Jeffrey Feigley’s appeal from a judgment and sentence entered by the Pinellas County Court. The defendant entered a guilty plea to DUI charges, reserving his right to appeal the trial court’s denial of his motion to suppress. After reviewing the briefs and record, this Court affirms the decision of the trial court.
The defendant claims that his motion to suppress should have been granted because the officer should not have stopped his motorcycle. A review of the record, however, reveals that there was sufficient testimony to support the stop. The officer testified that the defendant failed to come to a complete stop at a stop sign. This is a traffic infraction, and it entitled the officer to stop the defendant. Although there were conflicts in the evidence (the defendant testified that he came to a complete stop), the trial court was free to select the officer’s testimony over that of the defendant. See e.g., Ringling v. State, 678 So.2d 1339 (Fla. 2d DCA 1996).
The second issue raised by the defendant is that there was no evidence presented during the motion to suppress that showed that the defendant was impaired. Therefore, the defendant argues that the arrest was illegal and any evidence arising out of that arrest should have been suppressed.
The feature of the motion to suppress hearing, however, was the stop. Defense counsel, although mentioning it in the last sentence of his motion to suppress, never really made an issue of the lack of evidence of impairment until the latter portion of the closing argument during the motion to suppress. In fact, the record shows that defense counsel actually objected several times --- one time on the grounds of relevance and another on the grounds that the questioning was outside the scope of the motion --- when the State attempted to elicit information about the defendant’s impairment. See R. 54. The objections were generally overruled and the State did elicit some information relevant to the issue of the defendant’s impairment, but any deficiency in that information, however, was in part invited by defense counsel. Therefore, the decision of the trial court to deny the defendant’s motion to suppress is affirmed.
IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED that the judgment and sentence are affirmed.
DONE AND ORDERED in Chambers at
________________________
James R. Case
Circuit Judge
________________________
Nancy Moate Ley
Circuit Judge
________________________ John A. Schaefer
Circuit Judge
cc: State Attorney
J.S. Lucas Fleming, Esq.
Judge Overton