Huggins v. State

• Decision Date: 07 June 1984
• Docket Number: No. 83-321,83-321
• Citation: 453 So.2d 835
• Parties: William D. HUGGINS, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

Page 835

453 So.2d 835

William D. HUGGINS, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. 83-321.

District Court of Appeal of Florida Fifth District.

June 7, 1984.

Rehearing Denied July 11, 1984.

Lawrence L. Lidfeldt, Maitland, for appellant.

Jim Smith, Atty. Gen., Tallahassee, and Mark C. Menser, Asst. Atty. Gen., Daytona Beach, for appellee.

DAUKSCH, Judge.

This is an appeal from a conviction of sexual battery. Because our disposition of the first point is decisive of the entire matter we do not treat the other two points on appeal.

Appellant was convicted of a sexual battery upon a seven year old girl. The offense occurred in a state park during daylight hours after the child and her mother became separated during a picnic and swimming outing.

While the child was walking across a boardwalk she encountered a man whom she followed a short way into the woods. After asking her name the man grabbed her, covered her mouth with his hand and took her further into the woods. He told her to lie down on her towel, performed sex acts on her, then allowed her to take her towel and leave. She found her mother and immediately reported the assault and the rangers and sheriff deputies were summoned.

Upon arrival at the park Deputy Kelley, the road patrol deputy assigned to the area, talked with the child and her mother and had the child lead him to the scene of the attack. At the scene a Marlboro cigarette pack was found and taken by the deputy. A latent fingerprint testing procedure conducted later on the pack proved negative. The child gave Deputy Kelley a description of the rapist and said he was a white male, approximately 145 pounds, 5'10"', blond hair, blue eyes, possibly the beginning of a beard which the deputy interpreted as meaning he had not shaved for a couple of days, and a moustache. He was wearing a gray bathing suit, possibly had red stripes going down the side of the trunks or around the legs, either lateral or vertical. No shirt, no shoes. He had a round, dark spot, birthmark or mole underneath his lower lip with hair growing out of it but no other scars or tattoos. The victim did not speak of any speech impediments regarding the attacker.

The police converged on the area and approximately 20 of them and their bloodhound dogs tried to track down the assailant. No one could be found, so a systematic investigation over a period of months ensued. During this time a deputy met the appellant at the park and because he was an habitue of the park, and thus a suspect, a Field Interrogation Report Card was filled out. This card is filled out from information obtained from the interviewee and observations of the interviewer. This deputy testified at trial that the appellant was cooperative, seemed to be anxious to help out in any way he could and did not seem to be hiding anything from him. The description of the appellant was stocky, not thin, 175 pounds, not 145 pounds, dark brown almost black hair, not blond, brown eyes, not blue. No dark spot or mole under the lip. It was established at trial that appellant had burn scars on his arms and legs and prominent tattoos on his hands.

A detective later interviewed appellant and he was again cooperative and non-evasive. The detective had also interviewed the child and obtained a similar description of the perpetrator, including the brown spot under the lip, and medium blond hair.

The detective obtained a picture of appellant from the state division of driver licenses and sent it along with seven others to a detective in Cobb County, Georgia who took them to the child who now lived in Marietta, Georgia. She selected appellant from the array of photos. With that information and the fact that appellant smoked Marlboro cigarettes, the same as what was found at the scene, an indictment was obtained.

Although scientific tests were used to help build a case against appellant, the results were negative. The child testified that although she hadn't seen it there before there was some "pure white and sick" substance on the towel when she took it from the scene. No semen was examined from the towel, but hair was. It was blond hair. It did not match either the child or appellant. The state crime lab technician testified the hair did not "originate from (appellant)." No fingerprints were gotten from the cigarette pack. There was no evidence regarding footprints in the record and although appellant had been previously convicted of crimes they involved marijuana and larceny, not sex or violence related crimes. Appellant was married for six or seven years at the time of trial and had two children with whom he and his wife lived. In summary, based upon the identification of appellant from the photograph and the fact that he smoked Marlboro cigarettes and a Marlboro pack was found at the scene, the jury found him guilty; this notwithstanding the fact that no identification of appellant was made at trial, no inculpatory scientific evidence of any kind was obtained, no one placed the accused at or near the scene at the time of the attack, no inculpatory statements, no past history. The jury found the appellant guilty also notwithstanding the fact that a much different description of the attacker was consistently given the police by the only eyewitness, who did not identify appellant at trial and said her attacker was not in the courtroom. One other problem, not mentioned earlier, the accused has a pronounced lisp, the record says, and the child did not remember her attacker having any speech problem.

The question for us to decide is whether there was evidence legally sufficient to sustain the judgment; or, did the trial judge err in failing to grant a judgment of acquittal. The evidence was legally insufficient and...