UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. TIMOTHY DONAIL KNIGHT (2026)

ORDER DENYING MOTION TO SUPPRESS

This case is before the Court based on Defendant's motion to suppress (Doc. 29). Upon due consideration of the motion, the Government's response (Doc. 32), and the evidence presented at the suppression hearing, the Court finds that the motion is due to be denied.

Background

On January 13, 2026, a little after 6:00 a.m., law enforcement officers went to 154 Wildflower Lane in Pensacola to arrest Defendant on an outstanding felony warrant. That residence was linked to Defendant's girlfriend, Lashanay Unique Hogges, and Defendant had been seen coming and going from that residence.

The officers knocked and announced their presence, and after waiting several minutes, they breached the front door. The officers did not enter the residence immediately after the front door was breached (as they could have) because Defendant and other occupants of the residence (two women and four children) came to the front door and exited the house within a minute of the door being breached. Defendant and Ms. Hogges were taken into custody without incident after they exited the residence.¹

The last person to exit the residence, Ms. Hogges, told the officers that there was no one else inside. About a minute later, the officers entered the residence to conduct a “protective sweep.” As the officers were clearing the master bedroom, bathroom, and closet, they observed drugs and an AK-47 style rifle in plain view. Based on those observations, and the “strong odor of [raw] marijuana that emitted from within” the residence when the front door was breached, law enforcement applied for and received a search warrant for the residence.

The search pursuant to that warrant located fentanyl, multiple firearms, and a digital scale. Based on that evidence, Defendant was indicted for possession with the intent to distribute fentanyl, possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Defendant filed an untimely ² motion to suppress, arguing that the protective sweep was unlawful and that, under the “fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine,” all evidence stemming from the protective sweep should be suppressed. The Government responded that the protective sweep was lawful and, even if it wasn't, the evidence found in the subsequent warrant-based search should not be excluded under the “independent source exception” to the exclusionary rule.³

Analysis

Under the Fourth Amendment, law enforcement generally may not enter a residence without a warrant.⁴ One recognized exception to the warrant requirement is the “protective sweep” exception. See Maryland v. Buie, 494 U.S. 325, 334–37 (1990).

“A protective sweep ‘is a quick and limited search of a premises, incident to an arrest and conducted to protect the safety of police officers or others. It is narrowly confined to a cursory visual inspection of those places in which a person might be hiding.’ ” United States v. Rodgers, 924 F.2d 219, 222 (11th Cir. 1991) (quoting Buie, 494 U.S. at 327). A protective sweep is only justified “if the searching officer ‘possessed a reasonable belief based on specific and articulable facts which, taken together with the rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warranted the officer in believing,’ that the area swept harbored an individual posing a danger to the officer or others.” Buie, 494 U.S. at 327 (quoting Michigan v. Long, 463 U.S. 1032, 1049–50 (1983)) (cleaned up).

Here, there is no indication that law enforcement had reason to believe that anyone else was in the residence when they entered it. The fact that there was an unknown vehicle at the residence when law enforcement arrived to execute the arrest warrant is not enough to justify a protective sweep because the most reasonable inference under the circumstances is that the unknown vehicle belonged to the unknown woman who exited the house before Ms. Hogges and Defendant.⁵

The circumstances might be different if law enforcement knew whose vehicle it was and that person did not exit the residence with the others. Likewise, if only Defendant and Ms. Hogges exited the residence, it might have been reasonable for law enforcement to believe that someone else might be in the house based on the presence of the unknown vehicle since they were not known to have a vehicle. But, here, simply because law enforcement did not know whose vehicle it was did not provide them a reasonable belief that there might still be someone in the residence that was a danger to them or others after Defendant, Ms. Hogges, and others exited the residence.

The fact that law enforcement's entry into the residence cannot be justified by the protective sweep exception does not necessarily mean that the evidence discovered in the subsequent warrant-based search must be suppressed. Indeed, under the independent source exception to the exclusionary rule, evidence obtained in an unlawful search is admissible if officers independently acquired the evidence from a separate, independent source. See Utah v. Strieff, 579 U.S. 232, 238 (2016); United States v. Noriega, 676 F.3d 1252, 1260 (11th Cir. 2012).

The Eleventh Circuit has explained that the determination as to whether the independent source exception applies is a two-step process:

First, we “excise from the search warrant affidavit any information gained during the arguably illegal initial search and determine whether the remaining information is enough to support a probable cause finding.” Second, if the remaining information establishes probable cause, we determine “whether the officer's decision to seek the warrant was prompted by what he had seen during the arguably illegal search.” If the officer would have sought the warrant even without the preceding illegal search, the evidence seized under the warrant is admissible.

United States v. Bush, 727 F.3d 1308, 1316 (11th Cir. 2013) (cleaned up) (quoting Noriega, 676 F.3d at 1260–61).

Here, the search warrant affidavit included information about things observed in plain view by officers during the initial protective sweep, including marijuana and marijuana cigars in the master bedroom, clear plastic baggies with white powdery residue in the master bathroom, an AK-47 style rifle in a walk-in closet, and men's clothes throughout the master bedroom and bathroom. However, even without that information, the search warrant affidavit still provides probable cause for the search of the residence because it explained that Defendant was a known drug trafficker; that he posted a video of himself on social media with a firearm; that he had been seen coming and going from the residence on a regular basis; that the “strong odor of marijuana” was smelled coming from the residence when the door was breached in the course of executing the arrest warrant; and that neither Defendant nor Hogges possessed a medical marijuana card.

Thus, the applicability of the independent source exception boils down to whether law enforcement would have sought the search warrant even without what was seen during the protective sweep. On that issue, the case agent, Detective Troy Tuesburg, testified at the suppression hearing that he was going to seek a search warrant based on what he knew about Defendant's history and what he smelled when the front door was breached irrespective of what was observed during the protective sweep. The Court finds his testimony on that issue to be credible and sufficient to establish the second prong of the independent source exception.

Conclusion

In sum, for the reasons stated on the record at the conclusion of the suppression hearing and summarized above, the Court finds that the evidence discovered in the warrant-based search of Ms. Hogges' residence is admissible under the independent source exception to the exclusionary rule. Accordingly, it is ORDERED that:

1. Defendant's motion to suppress (Doc. 29) is DENIED.

2. The Clerk shall re-notice the trial for the September 2026 trial week.

DONE and ORDERED this 14th day of July, 2026.

FOOTNOTES

1.   Ms. Hogges also had active warrants and was “a seven-time convicted Florida felon.”

2.   Defendant did not file the motion to suppress until May 1, more than two months after the deadline established in the February 10 trial order. See Doc. 21 at ¶7(a) (requiring pretrial motions to be filed within 14 days of the date of that order). The Court can consider an untimely pretrial motion if the movant establishes “good cause,” Fed. R. Crim. P. 12(c)(3), but Defendant's motion does not mention the good cause standard or attempt to show why he waited until two weeks before trial to file the motion. Nevertheless, because the Government did not argue that the motion should be denied on timeliness grounds, the Court will consider the motion on its merits. Cf. United States v. Crespo, 178 F.4th 1250, 1267–68 (11th Cir. 2026) (affirming denial of motion to suppress filed after pretrial deadline even though the defendant had not received information necessary to file the motion until after deadline because the motion did not acknowledge the good cause standard or show good cause for the motion's untimeliness).

3.   The Government also argued that law enforcement's entry into the residence after Defendant was taken into custody was justified by the “exigent circumstances exception” to the warrant requirement, but the Government abandoned its reliance on that exception at the suppression hearing—and properly so because the body camera videos do not show any exigency that would justify the officers entering the home to prevent the destruction of evidence. For example, no movement or other sounds could be heard on the body camera videos that might have supported an inference that someone was still in the residence hiding or destroying the marijuana that officers smelled when the door was breached.

4.   Law enforcement may enter a residence to execute an arrest warrant on someone they reasonably believe to be inside, but that does not help the Government here because the body camera videos showed that the officers did not enter the residence until after Defendant exited the home and was taken into custody. See United States v. Neel, 2024 WL 4942494, at *2 (N.D. Fla. Dec. 3, 2024) (citing United States v. Yeary, 740 F.3d 569, 580 (11th Cir. 2014)), aff'd, 2026 WL 1195899 (11th Cir. May 1, 2026).

5.   The fact that Ms. Hogges told law enforcement that no one else was inside the home is not necessarily dispositive because law enforcement was not required to believe her—and they had good reason not to because she is a convicted felon. See United States v. Evans, 958 F.3d 1102, 1107 (11th Cir. 2020); United States v. Lugo, 2024 WL 4651878, at *3 (M.D. Fla. Nov. 1, 2024). However, given the time of day and the fact that there is no indication that law enforcement had observed numerous individuals coming and going from the residence, there does not appear to be any reason for law enforcement to disbelieve what Ms. Hogges told them about no one else being in the house.

T. KENT WETHERELL, II UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE