In Re Antonio B.

Two teenagers are walking side by side down a street at around 2:30 in the afternoon. One of them is smoking a marijuana cigarette. Three plainclothes police officers approach them and identify themselves as police officers. The teenager who is smoking immediately throws his cigarette down on the ground, where one of the officers retrieves it and identifies it by smell as marijuana. The teenager who threw down the cigarette is arrested. Appellant, his companion, is handcuffed, after which one of the officers asks for permission to search him. He consents, and the officer finds illegal drugs. The question presented in this appeal is whether handcuffing appellant under these circumstances constituted a de facto arrest without probable cause, such that the illegal drugs found as a result of the search must be suppressed as the product of an unlawful arrest.

We hold that the conduct of the police officers exceeded a reasonable detention under the circumstances, and that appellant was under arrest at the time the officer asked for permission to search him. Because there was no probable cause to arrest him at that time, his consent to the search was not voluntary, and the…