Greenwade v. State

• Decision Date: 17 October 2013
• Docket Number: No. SC12–598.,SC12–598.
• Citation: 124 So.3d 215
• Parties: Baron GREENWADE, Petitioner, v. STATE of Florida, Respondent.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

124 So.3d 215

Baron GREENWADE, Petitioner,

v.STATE of Florida, Respondent.

No. SC12–598.

Supreme Court of Florida.

Oct. 17, 2013.

Nancy A. Daniels, Public Defender, and Diana L. Johnson, Assistant Public Defender, Tallahassee, FL, for Petitioner.

Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, Trisha Meggs Pate, Tallahassee Bureau Chief, and Therese A. Savona, Assistant General, Tallahassee, FL, for Respondent.

LEWIS, J.

This case is before the Court for review of the decision of the First District Court of Appeal in Greenwade v. State, 80 So.3d 371 (Fla. 1st DCA 2012). The district court certified that its decision is in conflict with the decision of the Third District Court of Appeal in Ross v. State, 528 So.2d 1237 (Fla. 3d DCA 1988), as well as the decisions of the Second District Court of Appeal in Sheridan v. State, 850 So.2d 638 (Fla. 2d DCA 2003), and Safford v. State, 708 So.2d 676 (Fla. 2d DCA 1998). We have jurisdiction. Art. V, § 3(b)(4), Fla. Const.

FACTS

On April 29, 2009, Detective Donald Bishop and other officers from the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office executed a search warrant at a Jacksonville residence. As the officers walked up the driveway of the residence toward the garage, they observed Baron Greenwade sitting in a chair behind a table inside the garage. In an attempt to elude arrest, Greenwade fled into the house, where he was eventually captured and placed in custody. After he was detained, Greenwade told Detective Bishop, “I know why you're here. I have been set up. What you are looking for is in the garage.” Greenwade then led Detective Bishop to the table in the garage behind which the officers had observed him sitting when they had initially arrived. On the table was a digital scale, and beside the table was a green bag with a spoon on top covered with a white residue. Greenwade admitted to Detective Bishop that the green bag contained cocaine. Inside the bag, Detective Bishop found nine one-ounce baggies that contained a white powder.¹ After the officers read Greenwade his Miranda² rights, he admitted that the contents of the green bag were his.

All nine baggies were individually field tested before they were transferred to the Sheriff's Office property room where each baggie was emptied into nine individual envelopes.³ Dr. Katherine Warniment, a Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) forensic chemist, testified during trial that she received one sealed Ziploc bag containing a quantity of off-white powder and was asked to identify any controlled substances in the powder.⁴ Dr. Warniment's chemical testing revealed that the commingled powder contained cocaine. Dr. Warniment also determined that the contents of the Ziploc bag weighed 234.5 grams. Greenwade, 80 So.3d at 372.

Greenwade was charged by information with trafficking in cocaine in an amount more than 200 grams but less than 400 grams, possession of controlled substance paraphernalia, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and resisting an officer without violence. Greenwade pled guilty to all of the charges except trafficking. After a jury trial, Greenwade was found guilty of trafficking in cocaine and was sentenced to fifteen years' incarceration with a mandatory minimum of seven years. The sole issue asserted by Greenwade on appeal was whether the trial court erred by denying his motion for judgment of acquittal on the trafficking charge because the State had combined, tested, and weighed the contents of all of the nine individual baggies found in his possession together instead of chemically testing each baggie for cocaine before commingling and weighing their contents. See Greenwade, 80 So.3d at 372.

The reasoning and conclusion of the decision below can be best explained by first examining our decision in State v. Yu, 400 So.2d 762 (Fla.1981). In Yu, we upheld the constitutionality of section 893.135(1)(b), Florida Statutes (1979)—the trafficking statute relevant to this appeal—against a claim that “penalizing possession of a certain amount of ‘any mixture containing cocaine’ without regard to the percentage of cocaine in the mixture [was] arbitrary, unreasonable, and a violation of due process and equal protection.” Id. at 764. In upholding the constitutionality of the statute, we stated that:

The legislature has broad discretion in determining necessary measures for the protection of the public health, safety, and welfare, and we may not substitute our judgment for that of the legislature as to the wisdom or policy of a legislative act. Section 893.135(1)(b) bears a reasonable relationship to the legitimate state objective of protection of the public health, safety, and welfare. The legislature reasonably could have concluded that a mixture containing cocaine could be distributed to a greater number of people than the same amount of undiluted cocaine and thus could pose a greater potential for harm to the public.

Id. (emphasis supplied; citation omitted).

The First District framed its analysis based upon the emphasized language above, and stated “[k]eeping in mind this policy decision by the Legislature, we consider whether the State produced evidence that Appellant possessed between 200 and 400 grams of cocaine sufficient to survive a motion for judgment of acquittal.” Greenwade, 80 So.3d at 372 (emphasis supplied). The First District acknowledged that other district courts have held that when law enforcement officers discover what is believed to be a controlled substance in a series of separately wrapped packets, the State must first establish that each individual packet contains the controlled substance before combining the packets and weighing the aggregate to determine if the controlled substance meets the requisite statutory weight for trafficking. Id. at 372–73;see also Sheridan, 850 So.2d at 640;Safford, 708 So.2d at 677; and Ross, 528 So.2d at 1239. The First District, however, declined to follow the holdings in Ross,Safford, and Sheridan for two related reasons. See Greenwade, 80 So.3d at 373–74.

First, the district court concluded that the rule delineated in Ross,Safford, and Sheridan “creates an untenable distinction between cases involving multiple packages of suspicious white powder and cases involving just one package.” Greenwade, 80 So.3d at 373. To illustrate the basis for its disagreement with Ross and its progeny, the First District explained:

if in this case Detective Bishop had found one large plastic bagful of powder inside the green bag Appellant led him to, there would be no question that testing a sample and weighing the powder would yield sufficient evidence to prove Appellant possessed more than 200 grams of cocaine or a mixture of cocaine. But take that same bagful of powder and split it into nine small saleable packets, and [Ross and its progeny] hold that to prove the weight element of trafficking, the State now must test a sample from each packet, determine which contain cocaine, and weigh only those—even if presumptive field testing detects cocaine in every packet ... and other circumstances, such as the way the packets are bundled together [ ] or an admission by the defendant [ ] would permit a jury to reasonably infer all the packets contain an illegal substance.

Id. (citations omitted).

Second, the district court recognized that the rationale behind requiring each individual packet of white powder to be chemically tested is to prevent law enforcement from combining and weighing the contents of bags that are similar in appearance, but do not contain controlled substances, with bags that do contain controlled substances. Id. at 374. Unpersuaded by this rationale, the First District reasoned that this Court's interpretation of legislative policy in Yu warranted the development of a new standard to evaluate whether the State may commingle bags that are suspected to contain a controlled substance before chemically testing the aggregate for the presence of that controlled substance. Id. Specifically, the district court held:

Th[e legislative] policy [delineated in Yu ], we believe, legitimizes the practice of commingling multiple packets for chemical testing and weighing, where the circumstances attending the discovery and seizure of the packets permit the reasonable conclusion that they contained contraband, and perhaps other substances, to be used in illegal drug distribution.

Id.

Under this standard, the First District concluded that the contents of the nine individually wrapped baggies were properly commingled before they were chemically tested and weighed due to the following circumstances that surrounded the discovery of the bags: (1) Greenwade told Detective Bishop that “What you are looking for is in the garage”; (2) a green bag was located inside the garage which contained nine individually wrapped baggies of white powder; (3) Greenwade admitted that the green bag contained cocaine; (4) on top of the green bag was a spoon with a white powder residue on it; (5) on the table next to the green bag was a digital scale; and (6) all nine baggies were field tested. Id. This evidence, the First District concluded, together with the fact that the commingled powder tested positive for cocaine, was sufficient for the jury to find that Greenwade possessed more than 200 grams of cocaine. Id.

Consequently, the First District affirmed Greenwade's conviction for trafficking in cocaine and certified conflict with Ross,Safford, and Sheridan “to the extent those cases hold that the lab's failure to test each package before commingling to determine weight renders insufficient the State's evidence of trafficking, notwithstanding other circumstantial evidence of the offense.” Id.

ANALYSIS

Greenwade was convicted under section 893.135(1)(b) 1., Florida Statutes (2009), which provides:

Any person who knowingly sells, purchases, manufactures, delivers, or brings into this state, or who is knowingly in actual or constructive possession of, 28 grams or more of cocaine, as described in s....