Coleman v. State
| Decision Date | 14 September 2020 |
| Docket Number | No. 1D17-3977,1D17-3977 |
| Parties | RONALD LEE COLEMAN, Appellant, v. STATE OF FLORIDA, Appellee. |
| Court | Florida District Court of Appeals |
On appeal from the Circuit Court for Duval County.
Ronald Coleman was found guilty and convicted of two counts of sexual battery on a person between the ages of 12 and 18. Among the State's evidence at trial was the testimony of the victim as well as two witnesses who the victim discussed these incidents with. Coleman argues that the trial court erred by failing to make specific factual findings in concluding that the victim's hearsay statements were trustworthy and reliable. However, Coleman did not make this argument in the trial court, so we affirm.1
The State filed two notices of its intent to admit child-hearsay evidence pursuant to section 90.803(23), Florida Statutes. At a pretrial hearing, two witnesses—a woman who the victim described as her godmother and a case coordinator with a child protective team—testified that the victim disclosed Coleman's sexual batteries against her to them, and discussed the circumstances surrounding these conversations. After the witnesses' testimony at the pretrial hearing, Coleman referenced his written motion to exclude this hearsay testimony and added that the victim was untrustworthy, the circumstances surrounding the statements did not demonstrate reliability, and that the victim had a motive to fabricate allegations against him. The trial court referenced the circumstances surrounding the first conversation, with the victim's godmother, found them to sufficiently indicate reliability under State v. Townsend,2 and ruled that it would allow these statements to be admitted. The trial court stated that it would review the recorded interview with the child protective coordinator before ruling on that notice. The trial court then entered an order admitting the recorded-interview statements, which referenced the factors mentioned in Townsend and section 90.803(23)(a)1., and briefly summarized why the statements were sufficiently reliable to be admitted at trial.
At the trial approximately five months later, the victim and both hearsay witnesses testified, as well as the victim's mother, a nurse practitioner, investigator, and Williams3 Rule witness who testified that Coleman similarly raped her years ago when she was a child. The jury found Coleman guilty as charged.
On appeal, Coleman argues that the trial court failed to make sufficiently detailed and specific factual findings to support the admission of child-hearsay statements. See § 90.803(23)(c), Fla. Stat. ().4 This argument was never placed before the trial court however, and is unpreserved. In Elwell v. State, 954 So. 2d 104, 109 (Fla. 2d DCA 2007), the defendant argued that the victim's statements were unreliable during the pretrial hearing and, prior to appeal, "never raised any objection concerning the sufficiency of the trial court's findings under section 90.803(23)." Because the "trial court was never placed on notice of any error with respect to its findings and thus was never given an opportunity to correct the deficiency in the findings," the "issue of the sufficiency of the findings was clearly unpreserved." Id. We ruled similarly in McCloud v. State, 91 So. 3d 940 (Fla. 1st DCA 2012):
Although the appellant claims that the written order lacks sufficiently detailed findings, the appellant did not make that argument in the trial court and did not otherwise raise any issue then as to the adequacy of the written findings. Instead, the appellant let the case go to trial without raising the issue, and after being convicted he now attempts to interject this issue on appeal. But because the appellant did not raise the issue in the trial court, where a claimed deficiency in the written order could be corrected, the issue has not been preserved for appeal.
Id. at 940-41; see also Cowan v. State, 165 So. 3d 58 (Fla. 1st DCA 2015).5
Coleman argued pretrial that the victim's statements to the two hearsay witnesses were unreliable, and later renewed this argument and made general objections to hearsay. But Coleman never asserted that the trial court's findings were legally insufficient, which would permit the court to review and correct its findings if necessary. Therefore, his argument is unpreserved, and we affirm the judgment and sentence.
AFFIRMED.
Not final until disposition of any timely and authorized motion under Fla. R. App. P. 9.330 or 9.331.M.K. THOMAS, J., concurs with opinion.
I agree with the majority opinion. However, I write to address precedent on the issue of preservation in this context. This court has consistently applied the precedents of Hopkins v. State, 632 So. 2d 1372 (Fla. 1994), and State v. Townsend, 635 So. 2d 949 (Fla. 1994), and the subsequent Legislative enactment of section 924.051(3), Florida Statutes (1996), when determining preservation for purposes of appeal of claims that an order or ruling admitting child hearsay testimony is insufficient. Accordingly, Appellant's judgment and sentence must be affirmed. Respectfully, I do not regard Hopkins and Townsend as establishing preservation for purposes of appeal of sufficiency challenges under section 90.803(23)(c), Florida Statutes. Instead, Hopkins and Townsend require an appellate court's "whole record review" to determine whether, following a ruling on a defendant's objection to the reliability of child hearsay testimony, the defendant adequately placed the trial court on notice of a sufficiency challenge under section 90.803(23)(c). Under this approach, each case turns on its unique factual and procedural backdrop.
In Hopkins, after a lengthy hearing on the matter, the trial court orally denied Hopkins' motion to suppress, and the trial immediately began. 632 So. 2d at 1376. Thus, no written order was entered. When the witnesses were called to testify at trial, Hopkins continued to raise objections to "the admission of the hearsay statements" and requested that the trial court recognize a continuing objection. Id. The trial court denied the request. Id. In reaching its decision, the supreme court focused on whether sufficient notice was provided to the trial court under the circumstances. Id. Despite it opining that "it would have been preferable for defense counsel to object each time the hearsay testimony was introduced," the supreme court determined that, under the facts, "[t]he trial court was put on notice of the potential error by the pretrial hearing and by defense counsel's request for a continuing objection during trial." Id.
Just two months after Hopkins, the supreme court again addressed preservation of sufficiency challenges under section 90.803(23)(c). See Townsend, 635 So. 2d 949. In Townsend, thetrial court failed to provide an explanation or factual findings to support its conclusion that the child-hearsay statements were reliable. Id. at 958. However, the supreme court unanimously declared that an objection to the lack of sufficient findings by the trial court was necessary for Townsend to raise the issue on appeal, stating, "It is questionable . . . whether Townsend properly preserved . . . issues, such as the failure of the trial judge to make specific factual findings regarding the reliability of the child's statements." Id. at 959. Reiterating that "the failure of a trial judge to make sufficient findings under the statute, in and of itself, does not constitute fundamental error," the court turned to whether Townsend had preserved the sufficiency challenge for appeal. Id. at 959. The court noted that it reached its conclusion by considering the "errors as a whole," and explained as follows:
Consequently, were we not reviewing these errors as a whole, we might find that some of the errors to which no objection was made were procedurally barred. When, however, we consider the errors in this case as a whole, we must conclude that Townsend was denied the fundamental right to due process and the right to a fair trial.
Id. at 959-60 (citations omitted).
In Townsend, the supreme court cited Jones v. State, 610 So. 2d 105, 105-06 (Fla. 3d DCA 1992), which held that a challenge to the factual findings under section 90.803(23) "should have been made in more detail" and was "not preserved for appellate review, because no contemporaneous objection was made to the sufficiency of the trial court's findings." Id. at 959. The supreme court applied a whole record review, not a quest for specific magic words, to determine whether the trial court was placed on notice. Townsend clearly dispelled any interpretation of Hopkins that the supreme court adopted an automatic preservation rule for sufficiency challenges once a defendant objects to the reliability of the child hearsay statements.
In the wake of Townsend, a "whole record review" has been applied by this Court to determine preservation of subsection (23)(c) sufficiency challenges. See Mathis v. State, 682 So. 2d 175,178 (Fla. 1st DCA 1996) (); In the Interest of R.L.R., 647 So. 2d 251 (Fla. 1st DCA 1994) ().
Two years after Townsend, the Legislature enacted section 924.051(3) as part of the Criminal Appeal Reform Act of 1996. Subsection (3) incorporated the "whole record review" analysis and fortified preservation requirements. The statute provides as follows:
An appeal may not be taken from a judgment or order of a trial...
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