D.L.B. v. State, 96-01814
| Citation | 707 So.2d 844 |
| Decision Date | 27 February 1998 |
| Docket Number | No. 96-01814,96-01814 |
| Court | Court of Appeal of Florida (US) |
| Parties | 23 Fla. L. Weekly D592 D.L.B., a child, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee. |
James Marion Moorman, Public Defender, and Robert H. Dickinson, Jr., Assistant Public Defender, Bartow, for Appellant.
Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Susan D. Dunlevy, Assistant Attorney General, Tampa, for Appellee.
Appellant, a juvenile who was found to be delinquent under the affray statute (§ 870.01(1), Fla. Stat. (1995)), challenges the statute as unconstitutionally vague. He also maintains that the court erred by failing to conduct his delinquency disposition hearing properly, by imposing an indefinite term of community control and by imposing a fine after orally announcing that a fine would not be imposed. While we conclude that the affray statute is not impermissibly vague and that the delinquency disposition hearing was not properly conducted, we also conclude that the sentence imposed must be clarified and the $50 fine must be stricken.
Florida has adopted the common law meaning of affray, which is that affray is fighting in a public place to the terror of the people. See O.A. v. State, 312 So.2d 202 (Fla. 2d DCA 1975). See also D.J. v. State, 651 So.2d 1255 (Fla. 1st DCA 1995). In order to overcome a void-for-vagueness challenge, a criminal statute must define the offense "with sufficient definiteness that ordinary people can understand what conduct is prohibited and in a manner that does not encourage arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement." See Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352, 357, 103 S.Ct. 1855, 1858, 75 L.Ed.2d 903 (1983). Given the fact that readily available dictionaries define "affray" as a public fight or brawl, we conclude that the term "affray" is defined with sufficient definiteness that ordinary people can understand what conduct is prohibited. Moreover, we can conceive of no manner in which the affray statute would be arbitrarily or discriminatorily enforced due to the definition of the term "affray." We conclude that the affray statute is not impermissibly vague.
The statute provides that, before committing the juvenile, the court must consider the restrictiveness level recommended by the Department. Here, after the court rejected the Department's community control recommendation, it proceeded to impose a level six restrictiveness commitment, despite appellant's counsel's objection that the court had not requested a restrictiveness level recommendation from the Department. The First District has consistently held that it is error for a court to reject the Department's non-commitment (community control) recommendation and commit a juvenile without considering a restrictiveness level recommendation from the Department. The court has held in this regard that community control is not a "restrictiveness level." See R.A.M. v. State, 695 So.2d 1308 (Fla. 1st DCA), reh'g granted, 698 So.2d 1225 (Fla.1997); J.P.M. v. State, 688 So.2d 458 (Fla. 1st DCA 1997); S.R. v. State, 683 So.2d 576 (Fla. 1st DCA 1996).
We disagree, however, with the First District's interpretation of the statute. We do not believe the statute requires the court, once it has...
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State v. EDP
...level recommended by the department. Id. (emphasis added). The Second District Court of Appeal addressed this issue in D.L.B. v. State, 707 So.2d 844 (Fla. 2d DCA 1998), wherein the trial court rejected the DJJ's community control recommendation and imposed a level-six restrictiveness commi......
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