Baugh v. State

• Decision Date: 26 April 2007
• Docket Number: No. SC04-21.,SC04-21.
• Citation: 961 So.2d 198
• Parties: Raymond BAUGH, Petitioner, v. STATE of Florida, Respondent.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

961 So.2d 198

Raymond BAUGH, Petitioner, v. STATE of Florida, Respondent.

No. SC04-21.

Supreme Court of Florida.

April 26, 2007.

Rehearing Denied July 10, 2007.

J. Marion Moorman, Public Defender, Tenth Judicial Circuit, Bartow, FL, and James T. Miller, Special Assistant Public Defender, Jacksonville, FL, for Petitioner.

Bill McCollum, Attorney General, Tallahassee, FL, Robert J. Krauss, Bureau Chief, Tampa Criminal Appeals and Richard Michael Fishkin, Assistant Attorney General, Tampa, FL, for Respondent.

QUINCE, J.

We have for review Baugh v. State, 862 So.2d 756 (Fla. 2d DCA 2003), in which the Second District Court of Appeal certified the following question as a matter of great public importance:

IF A CHILD VICTIM OF SEXUAL ABUSE TOTALLY REPUDIATES HER OUT-OF-COURT STATEMENTS AT TRIAL, AND THE PROSECUTION ADDUCES NO EYEWITNESS OR PHYSICAL EVIDENCE OF ABUSE, MUST THE TRIAL COURT GRANT A JUDGMENT OF ACQUITTAL EVEN IN THE FACE OF OTHER EVIDENCE CORROBORATING THE OUT-OF-COURT STATEMENTS AND THE DICTATES OF THE CONFRONTATION CLAUSE?

Id. at 767. We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(4), Fla. Const.

As worded, we conclude that the certified question does not accurately reflect the circumstances of the instant case. The "corroborating" evidence offered in support of repudiated out-of-court statements by a child sexual abuse victim must corroborate the facts of the sexual act stated by the victim. Accordingly, we reword the question as follows:

If a child victim of sexual abuse totally repudiates her out-of-court statements at trial, and the prosecution adduces no eyewitness or physical evidence of abuse, must the trial court grant a judgment of acquittal when the other evidence presented by the prosecution does not corroborate the facts alleged in the victim's repudiated statement?

For the reasons discussed below, we answer the reworded question in the affirmative and quash the decision of the Second District.

STATEMENT OF THE CASE AND FACTS

On the evening of January 13, 2002, Raymond Baugh's girlfriend, Rachel, was on the phone ordering food for dinner. When her seven-year-old daughter, C.P., persisted in interrupting her conversation, Rachel sent C.P. to her bedroom. Baugh, who lived with Rachel, followed C.P. into the bedroom and closed the door. When Rachel ended her conversation, she attempted to enter C.P.'s room but found that the door was locked. C.P. testified that she had been playing with the lock earlier and the door accidentally locked when Baugh closed it behind him. Rachel proceeded to bang on the door and demand that it be opened. When the door was opened thirty seconds later, Rachel saw Baugh standing in the bedroom wrapped in a towel and holding two white mice in his hands. C.P. was standing behind him. Apparently, Baugh entered the bedroom after bathing and was only wearing a towel. Baugh intended to feed the mice to a pet snake in the bedroom. Baugh, 862 So.2d at 757.

After separating C.P. from Baugh, Rachel asked C.P. what had happened. C.P. responded that Baugh made her perform fellatio on him. Rachel accosted Baugh with this information, hit him several times, and demanded that he leave her house. Baugh denied doing what C.P. claimed. As the argument between Rachel and Baugh progressed, Baugh stated that he wanted C.P. to perform fellatio on him, have Rachel watch, and then have sex with Rachel. Thereafter, Rachel called the police and Baugh went into the bathroom where he attempted to slash his wrists and arms.

C.P. recounted the incident to a police detective the next day. C.P. told the detective that "it happened," that she had performed the same act on Baugh twelve times previously, and that "white stuff came out, which tasted bad." Baugh, 862 So.2d at 758. She also told investigators that Baugh had shown her pictures to teach her how to perform oral sex. C.P. repeated this story to the state attorney and the detective on January 24 and to the child protection team nurse on January 28. However, according to Rachel, sometime in late February, C.P. voluntarily recanted her story and told her mother that she had lied about what happened with Baugh.

At Baugh's trial for capital sexual battery, C.P. testified that her original story was a "fib" which she made up to get Baugh in a "`little, but not that much trouble,' because sometimes he made her mad." Id. at 757-58. C.P. also stated that she learned the details of the sexual act from her older brother who had been assaulted by a different individual in a manner identical to what she had described to the detective. C.P. explained that she maintained her story about Baugh because she was afraid of what her mother might do if she found out that C.P. had lied. C.P. stated that she ultimately decided to tell the truth because she was sad that her family had been broken apart. C.P. also stated that Baugh had never shown her the pornographic pictures that the police recovered from their house; she had found them while snooping in her mother's bedroom. C.P. also testified about new house rules instituted by Rachel after the incident, including a rule regarding proper clothing in the house and a prohibition on locking the interior doors of the house. The State argued that these rules showed that Rachel believed C.P.'s original story.

At the conclusion of C.P's testimony, the State had demonstrated that the child had first accused Baugh of molesting her, repeated that story to a number of people, and then changed her story. During their testimony, the detective, the child protection team nurse, and Rachel repeated C.P.'s prior statements about the incident. Thereafter, the State introduced testimony from an inmate imprisoned with Baugh and a former friend¹ of Rachel's in order to rebut the testimony of C.P. and Rachel concerning the child's decision to change her story. The inmate claimed that he overheard Baugh telling female visitors that "they had to get the little girl to `recamp' [sic] her story because otherwise he was looking at life in prison." Id. at 761. The family friend testified that C.P. told her "`it really did happen' but [Rachel] wanted her to change her story." Id. The State failed to produce physical or direct evidence to support C.P.'s original story of abuse.

At the conclusion of the State's case, Baugh moved for a judgment of acquittal, contending that the State had adduced no direct evidence that C.P. had been sexually abused. The trial court denied the motion. Baugh was subsequently convicted of capital sexual battery on C.P. and sentenced to life in prison.

On appeal, Baugh asserted that C.P.'s prior out-of-court statements were insufficient to sustain his conviction. The Second District agreed and held that C.P.'s out-of-court hearsay statements alone could not sustain Baugh's conviction for capital sexual battery. However, the Second District concluded that "there was some other evidence that would give rise to the inference that Mr. Baugh committed the crime of which he was accused." Baugh, 862 So.2d at 757. The Second District described the following "corroborating" evidence: "the spontaneous statement from [the child] to her mother immediately after the event; the defendant's `admission' ("I want her to s[-]ck my d[-]ck while you watch"); the defendant's consciousness of guilt as evidenced by his suicide attempt; and the suggestion that the defendant engaged in `witness tampering,' adduced from the testimonies of the prison inmate and the mother's former friend." Id. at 766. The Second District admitted its "hesitation to say that any one piece of `corroboration' would be sufficient" in conjunction with the out-of-court statements to sustain Baugh's conviction. Id. at 767. However, the Second District concluded that, based on the inferences that the jury could draw from all of the evidence, the trial court correctly denied Baugh's motion for judgment of acquittal. Id. In light of this corroborative evidence, the Second District affirmed the conviction. Additionally, the Second District certified the original question above to this Court based on a perceived "need for clarification of some of these issues." Id.²

ANALYSIS

The instant case is similar to Beber v. State, 887 So.2d 1248 (Fla.2004), because like Beber this case involves the admission of pretrial statements as substantive evidence under the child victim hearsay exception in section 90.803(23), Florida Statutes (2001), after the child recanted the pretrial statements during her in-trial testimony. In Beber, the Fifth District concluded that an out-of-court videotaped statement by the child victim, which had been admitted pursuant to section 90.803(23), was sufficient to sustain Beber's conviction of capital sexual battery for fellatio, even though there was no corroborating evidence other than the child's in-court testimony that Beber perpetrated other sexual crimes on him,³ and even though the child contradicted his videotaped statement in court. Beber v. State, 853 So.2d 576 (Fla. 5th DCA 2003), quashed, 887 So.2d 1248 (Fla.2004). In our review, we quashed the decision of the Fifth District and reaffirmed our previous holding in State v. Green, 667 So.2d 756 (Fla.1995), and State v. Moore, 485 So.2d 1279 (Fla.1986), that prior inconsistent statements are insufficient by themselves to sustain a criminal conviction. Beber, 887 So.2d at 1253.

The Second District's analysis in Baugh is consistent with our reasoning in Beber. The Second District recognized that the child's out-of-court hearsay statements, which directly conflicted with her in-court testimony, were not sufficient by themselves to sustain Baugh's conviction and that "there must be other corroborating evidence to support the conviction." Baugh, 862 So.2d at 765.

The Second District acknowledged that none of the alleged corroboration carried much evidentiary weight and that when considered individually "each of these grounds . . . would fail as sufficient corroboration of...