J.T.B. v. Florida

• Decision Date: 29 June 2022
• Docket Number: 3D21-0537,3D21-1549,3D21-0577,3D21-2038
• Parties: J.T.B., a Juvenile, and D.S., a Juvenile, and F.L., a Juvenile and W.B., a Juvenile, Appellants, v. The State of Florida, Appellee.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

J.T.B., a Juvenile, and D.S., a Juvenile, and F.L., a Juvenile and W.B., a Juvenile, Appellants, v. The State of Florida, Appellee.

Nos. 3D21-0577, 3D21-0537, 3D21-2038, 3D21-1549

Florida Court of Appeals, Third District

June 29, 2022

Not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing.

Appeals from the Circuit Court for Miami-Dade County, Lower Tribunal Nos. 20-1026 & 20-0544 & 21-0108 &amp 20-1344 Dawn Denaro and Orlando A. Prescott, Judges.

Carlos J. Martinez, Public Defender, and Deborah Prager and John Eddy Morrison, Assistant Public Defenders, for appellants.

Ashley Moody, Attorney General, and Asad Ali and Kayla Heather McNab, Assistant Attorneys General, for appellee.

Before EMAS, MILLER, and BOKOR, JJ.

MILLER, J.

In these consolidated appeals, we are called upon to determine whether the trial court was required to render case-specific findings of necessity before ordering delinquency adjudicatory hearings to proceed via a videoconferencing platform. Each of the juveniles objected to remote witness appearances and requested to appear in court. The objections were overruled, and the requests were denied on the grounds that the COVID-19 pandemic presented an ongoing threat to the public health. Concluding that due process considerations require case-specific findings of necessity in such circumstances, we reverse.

BACKGROUND

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Florida Supreme Court issued a series of administrative orders directed at maintaining the operability and efficiency of the court system. See In re Comprehensive COVID-19 Emergency Measures for Florida Trial Courts, Fla. Admin. Order AOSC20-23, Amend. 8 (Nov. 23, 2020). By the time of each adjudicatory hearing, the courts were in Phase 2 of the Miami-Dade Courts' Emergency Operations protocol, which began on September 23, 2020.^[1] As relevant to these proceedings the operative administrative order at that time mandated juvenile delinquency cases "be conducted remotely if ordered by the chief judge or the presiding judge or, if not, . . . be conducted in person." Id. at § III.E. (2)b. In conformity with this prerogative, the adjudicatory hearing of each juvenile, with the exception of D.S., was ordered to occur fully remotely via the Zoom videoconferencing platform. At D.S.'s hearing, the prosecutor and lead witness were permitted to appear in court, while the juvenile and his sole witness, his mother, appeared via the Zoom platform on a shared cell phone. Each of the juveniles objected, and each presiding judge relied upon the pandemic and the Florida Supreme Court's administrative order to justify the remotely conducted proceeding. Delinquency findings were rendered, and the instant appeals ensued.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

We review a claim of deprivation of procedural due process de novo. VMD Fin. Servs., Inc. v. CB Loan Purchase Assocs., LLC, 68 So.3d 997, 999 (Fla. 4th DCA 2011).

LEGAL ANALYSIS

Under the United States and Florida Constitution, "[n]o person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law." Art. I, § 9, Fla. Const.; see Amend. XIV., U.S. Const. In crafting the contours of the right, the Supreme Court has found that the due process protections afforded to criminal defendants, including "notice, counsel, confrontation, crossexamination, and standard of proof," are similarly extended to juveniles in delinquency proceedings. McKeiver v. Pennsylvania, 403 U.S. 528, 543 (1971). These rights are implicit in achieving the laudatory goal of "fundamental fairness" in adjudications of delinquency. Id.

As discussed by the United States Supreme Court in an early decision, the primary objective of confrontation is to

prevent depositions or ex parte affidavits . . . being used against the prisoner in lieu of a personal examination and cross-examination of the witness, in which the accused has an opportunity, not only of testing the recollection and sifting the conscience of the witness, but of compelling him to stand face to face with the jury in order that they may look at him, and judge by his demeanor upon the stand and the manner in which he gives his testimony whether he is worthy of belief.

Mattox v. United States, 156 U.S. 237, 242-43 (1895). In this regard, "face- to-face confrontation enhances the accuracy of factfinding by reducing the risk that a witness will wrongfully implicate an innocent person." Maryland v. Craig, 497 U.S. 836, 846 (1990).

Neither the United States Supreme Court nor the Florida Supreme Court has directly addressed whether conducting an adjudicatory hearing by a videoconferencing platform, absent case-specific findings, violates a juvenile's due process right to confrontation. A trilogy of United States Supreme Court decisions, however, have carefully examined the confrontation rights of criminal defendants in circumstances where witness testimony falls short of in-person, face-to-face confrontation. See Coy v. Iowa, 487 U.S. 1012 (1988); Maryland v. Craig, 497 U.S. 836 (1990); Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004).

All three decisions emphasize that confrontation rights are not only symbolic but also enhance reliability by furthering the truth-seeking function of the adjudicatory process. See Coy, 487 U.S. at 1019 (quoting Jay v. Boyd, 351 U.S. 345, 375-76 (1956) (Douglas, J., dissenting)) ("A witness 'may feel quite differently when he has to repeat his story looking at the man whom he will harm greatly by distorting or mistaking the facts.' . . . [E]ven if [a] lie is told, it will often be told less convincingly."); Craig, 497 U.S. at 846 ("[T]he Confrontation Clause . . . ensur[es] that evidence admitted against an accused is reliable and subject to the rigorous adversarial testing that is the norm of Anglo-American criminal proceedings [F]ace-to-face confrontation enhances the accuracy of factfinding by reducing the risk that a witness will wrongfully implicate an innocent person."); Crawford, 541 U.S. at 61 ("[T]he [Confrontation] Clause's ultimate goal is to ensure reliability of evidence, but it is a procedural rather than a substantive guarantee. It commands, not that evidence be reliable, but that reliability be assessed in a particular manner: by testing in the crucible of cross-examination."); see also California v. Green, 399 U.S. 149, 158 (1970) (internal quotations and footnote omitted) ("Confrontation: (1) insures that the witness will give his statements under oath-thus impressing him with the seriousness of the matter and guarding against the lie by the possibility of a penalty for perjury; (2) forces the witness to submit to cross-examination, the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth; (3) permits the jury that is to decide the defendant's fate to observe the demeanor of the witness in making his statement, thus aiding the jury in assessing his credibility."); Lee v. Illinois, 476 U.S. 530, 540 (1986) ("The right to confront and to crossexamine witnesses is primarily a functional right that promotes reliability in criminal trials.").

In the first decision, Coy, the Supreme Court found a violation of confrontation rights when, as authorized by an Iowa statute, a large screen was placed between the defendant and minor witnesses testifying about alleged sexual abuse. 487 U.S. at 1014, 1022. Iowa argued there was no constitutional violation because the statute created a legislatively imposed presumption of trauma. Id. at 1021. After exploring the historical significance of the right to confrontation, the Court stated, "[w]e have never doubted . . . that the Confrontation Clause guarantees the defendant a face-to-face meeting with witnesses appearing before the trier of fact." Id. at 1016. This guarantee "relate[s] both to appearances and to reality," id. at 1017, and "[t]he perception that confrontation is essential to fairness has persisted over the centuries because there is much truth to it." Id. at 1019.

The Court further observed that physical confrontation "ensure[s] the integrity of the fact-finding process," id. at 1020 (quoting Kentucky v. Stincer, 482 U.S. 730, 736 (1987)), by allowing the trier of fact to view the witness and "draw its own conclusions." Id. at 1019. This observation was tempered, however, by the caveat that confrontation rights are "not absolute" and, instead, "may give way to other important interests." Id. at 1020.

The Court ultimately found that the procedure employed violated the defendant's confrontation rights because there were "no individualized findings that these particular witnesses needed special protection," and "something more than the type of generalized finding underlying such a statute is needed." Id. at 1021.

In the second decision, Craig, the Supreme Court rejected a Confrontation Clause challenge to a Maryland statute authorizing child abuse victims to testify by one-way closed-circuit television in certain delineated circumstances. 497 U.S. at 857. In order to invoke the statutory procedure, the trial judge was first required to "determin[e] that testimony by the child victim in the courtroom [would] result in the child suffering serious emotional distress such that the child cannot reasonably communicate." Id. at 841 (alteration in original) (quoting Md.Cts. &Jud.Proc.Code § 9-102(a)(1)(ii) (1989)). Once the procedure was invoked, the child, prosecutor, and defense attorney were directed to a separate room, while the judge, jury, and defendant remained in the courtroom. Id. The child was then examined and cross-examined in the separate room, while a video monitor contemporaneously recorded and displayed the testifying child to those in the courtroom. Id. The child could not see the defendant, but the defendant remained in communication with counsel, and...