Caraballo v. State

• Citation: 762 So.2d 542
• Decision Date: 09 June 2000
• Docket Number: No. 5D99-2542.,5D99-2542.
• Parties: Juan CARABALLO, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
• Court: Court of Appeal of Florida (US)

762 So.2d 542

Juan CARABALLO, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. 5D99-2542.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fifth District.

June 9, 2000.

Rehearing Denied July 28, 2000.

James B. Gibson, Public Defender, and John M. Selden, Assistant Public Defender, Daytona Beach, for Appellant.

Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Patrick W. Krechowski, Assistant Attorney General, Daytona Beach, for Appellee.

PLEUS, J.

Juan Caraballo was convicted of tampering with physical evidence and possession of drug paraphernalia. The trial court denied his motions for judgment of acquittal and for a new trial which were based mainly upon improper comments by the prosecutor during closing argument. We conclude the cumulative effects of the prosecutor's improper conduct constitute fundamental error and reluctantly reverse for a new trial.

Deputy Sheriff Sherry and Deputy Sheriff Cruz responded to a complaint from a business establishment. It was night when they arrived on the scene. Caraballo was in front of the business. Sherry spoke to Caraballo and noticed an odd odor emanating from his clothing. It was an odor which Sherry had smelled on an "unknown number of occasions" and which he recognized as crack cocaine residue. Sherry then asked Caraballo if he had any drug paraphernalia. Sherry told him if he gave the deputy any paraphernalia he might have, he would send him on his way. Caraballo accepted the offer and gave Sherry his crack pipe. Sherry told him to go home. A presumptive test on the pipe residue tested positive for crack cocaine.

Later that night, Sherry again saw Caraballo with three black males near the same area where he had seen him earlier. It was a location which Sherry knew was prominent for narcotics sales. As the deputies approached Caraballo, defendant raised his right hand towards his mouth, took a couple more steps, stopped, turned around and walked towards them. He was extremely nervous, refused to make eye contact, looked down, shifted from one leg to the other, looked around and fidgeted with his hands. He was reluctant to answer Sherry's questions.

Sherry asked Caraballo to open his mouth and stick out his tongue to see if he had hidden any cocaine. Defendant complied and Sherry saw a one eighth-inch by one eighth-inch waxy substance on his tongue which, based upon his training and experience, he recognized as crack cocaine. Sherry asked Caraballo to spit out the object whereupon, he closed his mouth and turned away from the deputies as if to leave. Sherry again asked appellant to open his mouth. Sherry testified that he saw Caraballo swallow. When he finally opened his mouth, there was nothing there.

Deputy Cruz testified that he did not see what, if anything, was inside defendant's mouth, but in his written report, he indicated that he had "observed an off-white square-like substance in his [Caraballo's] mouth."

To understand the issue of fundamental error which this case presents, we need to examine the following remarks made by the prosecutor during his closing argument:

... And it is to the evidence that's been brought forth in this trial that you are to look in determining your verdict.

I think what that means is that you don't look to [defense counsel's] imagination or speculation in determining your verdict. In fact, he's told you that there are some things in police reports that are not even in evidence.¹ You are not going to get to go back and take them in the back room. I wanted them in evidence. It's not my fault they're not.

[Defense Counsel] has made this attack on the police officers here without giving you the benefit of reading what those reports really said in their entirety. He picked and chose. In fact, during his closing argument, he read to you from a police report. He didn't read you the whole sentence. He left out stuff. I can't—you know, I'm the prosecutor here. If I do something wrong, then his conviction won't hold up.² I can't argue the police reports as substantive evidence because they're not going in the back with you. I don't know why [defense counsel] thinks that he can do that, but he's done that.³

* * *

If you are annoyed with Deputy Cruz, we understand that, but your verdict is not to send a message to Deputy Cruz or to Deputy Sherry. Believe me, I already took care of that out in the hall after you folks were excused.⁴

* * *

But you are not going to—your verdict is not to send a message to anybody, not my office.⁵

* * *

[Defense counsel] asks you to take his word about what's in the police reports and what's important about the police reports, but he doesn't want you to have the whole police reports. They're not in evidence.⁶

* * *

Why didn't [defense counsel] want you to know that he wrote mouth in the other report? Why did he only tell you half the story?⁷ Let's see if he explains that when he gets up here. Does he create a reasonable doubt in your minds with that kind of attack on the deputies.

Let's look at it. Oh, he read you the part about eye contact saying Steve Sherry didn't say that the defendant made eye contact with him in his report. Yeah. He didn't read you the other report. I'm going to read it to you right now if he doesn't not —

* * *

He asked you at the beginning of this to judge the evidence and not the area. Let's talk about that. The defendant was caught on South Orange Blossom Trail in a vacant lot, vacant building or vacant business with nobody there, nothing happening lawfully at that time of the night.⁸

* * *

Let's talk about the credibility. This is not a credibility dispute between kids about who took the last cookie. This is a credibility question for you as to whether you can believe the testimony of the deputies who testified under oath.⁹ Deputy Sherry said he saw it on the defendant's tongue, asked him to spit it out. He explained to you why he never was able to recover it.

Now, if he saw nothing, would he want to be bothered by coming in here and spending the morning with us?¹⁰

* * *

The deputy had an accurate memory about what he saw. He testified and truthfully when there were things that he couldn't remember or in fact, that brings us to something else.¹¹

The judge is going to tell you to consider whether the witness was honest and straightforward in answering the lawyers' questions. Now, if deputy Sherry were going to make something up, he would have done a better job of it.¹²

* * *

The judge will tell you whether they have an interest in the outcome, and if there was any evidence, they would get a bonus for making his arrest or for that matter, for your verdict, or that they were going to get a gold star on the chart back at the station house, you would have heard about that.

Do they have an interest in seeing people who are innocent convicted of crimes? There's no evidence that they do. I submit to you that the only interest they have in the outcome is seeing justice, seeing the guilty convicted and that's all. If there was evidence to the contrary, you would have heard it.¹³

* * *

He knew the law enforcement officers were investigating him. They were uniformed patrol officers, and they had just—he had just seen him a few hours earlier and had given up the pipe. They gave him a break, and what did he do with it? Why didn't he go home? Well, what do we know about crack? What does common sense tell us about crack? The guy with the pipe needed more crack.¹⁴ Why didn't he go home? Because he needed more crack.¹⁵ Did he get it? You bet you. Did he want to give it up? Of course not.

* * *

Now, you say, well, we know he did it but you haven't proven it, Mr. [Prosecutor]. But if you listen closely to the judge's instructions on the law, the judge is going to tell you, if you have an abiding conviction of guilty, then the case is proven beyond a reasonable doubt. What that means is that if deep down, wherever it is, your heart and your head, or wherever you figure that happens, if you're convinced the defendant destroyed something that the police—knowing that the police wanted to have it, to have it to test it, you know, if you're convinced that he tampered with evidence, you can't go in the back and say, we know he did it but the state didn't prove it. Because if you know he did it and your conviction doesn't waiver or vacillate, then the case is proven beyond a reasonable doubt and you should find him guilty as we've charged.¹⁶

Caraballo contends that the trial court erred by denying his motion for new trial based on the cumulative effect of the improper prosecutorial comments. He contends that the severity of the comments, in which his defense attorney and the theory of his defense were caustically attacked, were so inflammatory as to have denied him a fair trial. He contends additionally that the prosecutor improperly bolstered his witnesses and inferred that there was other evidence of his guilt which was not presented at trial.

Caraballo relies on Ruiz v. State, 743 So.2d 1 (Fla.1999) in which the supreme court recently reiterated the standard for attorneys in closing arguments:

... A criminal trial is a neutral arena wherein both sides place evidence for the jury's consideration; the role of counsel in closing argument is to assist the jury in analyzing that evidence, not to obscure the jury's view with personal opinion, emotion, and nonrecord evidence:

A criminal trial provides a neutral arena for the presentation of evidence upon which alone the jury must base its determination of a defendant's innocence or guilt. Attorneys for both sides, following rules of evidence and procedure designed to protect the neutrality and fairness of the trial, must stage their versions of the truth within that arena. That which has gone before cannot be considered by the jury except to the extent it can be properly presented at the trial and those things that cannot properly be presented must not be considered at all.

The role of the attorney in closing argument is "to assist the jury in

...