Pitts v. State
| Decision Date | 20 June 2008 |
| Docket Number | No. 2D07-99.,2D07-99. |
| Citation | 989 So.2d 27 |
| Parties | Robert Eugene PITTS, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee. |
| Court | Florida District Court of Appeals |
James Marion Moorman, Public Defender, and Tosha Cohen, Assistant Public Defender, Bartow, for Appellant.
Bill McCollum, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Joseph Hwan-Yul Lee, Assistant Attorney General, Tampa, for Appellee.
Robert Eugene Pitts appeals a judgment for burglary of a conveyance with an assault or battery, see § 810.02(2)(a), Fla. Stat. (2005), and the resulting sentence of life imprisonment. Mr. Pitts' conviction for this first-degree felony, punishable by life imprisonment, arises out of an altercation in which he reached into the open door of a commercial truck to grab the driver, initiating a fight that resulted in rather severe injuries to the driver. Because Mr. Pitts testified that his entry into the open door of the vehicle and initial contact with the driver was done in self-defense, the trial court erred when it refused to instruct the jury on the justifiable use of nondeadly force with respect to the charged offense. This error was compounded when the court provided a circular jury instruction on self-defense as to the lesser-included crime of battery. We therefore reverse the judgment and remand for a new trial.
On January 9, 2006, Mr. Pitts went to a truck yard to try to find his father, who apparently performed odd jobs for the trucking company. When Mr. Pitts arrived, he approached one of the truckers, who was seated in the cab of his tractor-trailer rig with his door open, getting ready to leave for a scheduled run. Mr. Pitts climbed onto the sideboard of the truck to speak with the trucker, who indicated he did not know where Mr. Pitts could find his father. The trucker agreed to call the owner of the trucking company on his cell phone to see if the owner knew where to find Mr. Pitts' father.
Mr. Pitts spoke with the owner on the cell phone and then returned the cell phone to the trucker while the owner was still on the line. The owner instructed the driver to leave on his scheduled run, but the trucker replied that he could not leave because Mr. Pitts refused to get off the side of the truck. At this time, according to the trucker, Mr. Pitts reached into the open door of the truck and grabbed the trucker's shirt, pulling and ripping the shirt. This angered the trucker, who told the owner to come to the truck yard. The trucker decided to get out of the truck. He testified at trial:
As the trucker was getting out, Mr. Pitts grabbed him and pulled him off the side of the truck. Both men fell to the ground wrestling, but Mr. Pitts was quickly able to pin the trucker by the sleeves of his jacket and began to hit him repeatedly in the face. The men were pulled apart by other men who arrived and saw the altercation. The trucker sustained serious injuries to his nose, jaw, and his left eye, resulting in two surgeries and a week-long hospital stay.
Based upon these events, the State charged Mr. Pitts with burglary of a conveyance with an assault or battery, a first-degree felony punishable by life imprisonment. § 810.02(2)(a). Initially, it is important to understand this rather technical charge and the narrow time frame in which this particular offense may have occurred. To support the charge of burglary of a conveyance with an assault or battery, the State maintained that Mr. Pitts committed a burglary when his hands entered the cab of the truck through the open door. See § 810.02(1)(b)(1) (); see also Barton v. State, 797 So.2d 1276, 1278 (Fla. 4th DCA 2001) (); Braswell v. State, 671 So.2d 228, 229-30 (Fla. 1st DCA 1996) (). The State argued that the entry was made with the intent to commit an assault or battery therein. Although burglary of an occupied conveyance is normally a second-degree felony punishable by no more than fifteen years' imprisonment, see §§ 775.082(3)(c), 810.02(3)(d), Fla. Stat. (2005), the offense becomes a first-degree felony punishable by life imprisonment if in the course of committing the offense, the offender "[m]akes an assault or battery upon any person." See § 810.02(2)(a). The State contended that a battery occurred when Mr. Pitts grabbed the trucker's shirt. See § 784.03(1)(a)(1), Fla. Stat. (2005) ().
If one merely considered the facts presented at trial in this case and did not read the information, it would seem that Mr. Pitts would be charged with aggravated battery for the fight on the ground. In fact, the State did not charge Mr. Pitts with aggravated battery, a second-degree felony, § 784.045(1)(a)(1), (2), even though it presented extensive evidence of the beating that occurred after the trucker left the truck, including evidence of the severe injuries the trucker sustained in that subsequent fight. When Mr. Pitts asked that the court instruct the jury on the offense of aggravated battery as a permissive lesser-included offense and provide that option on the verdict form, the State successfully objected because the elements of aggravated battery were not charged in the information.1 Nevertheless, the State made the events occurring after the trucker voluntarily stepped out of the truck a feature of this trial.
Focusing on the offense charged, however, that offense took place within the span of a few seconds when Mr. Pitts' hand crossed the threshold of the open truck door and touched the trucker's shirt. The State sought to prove that at this moment, both a burglary and a battery occurred.2 If the battery element was not proven, or if Mr. Pitts was successful in proving that the battery was justifiable self-defense, the conviction for this first-degree felony could not stand. Indeed, because there was no evidence that Mr. Pitts intended to commit any offense within the conveyance other than an assault or battery, the failure to prove an assault or battery may have been fatal to any conviction based upon this charge.
A person is justified in committing a battery when that person believes the battery is necessary to defend himself against another's imminent use of unlawful force. See § 776.012, Fla.Stat. (2005). In his defense, Mr. Pitts asserted that his actions in reaching into the truck and grabbing the trucker's shirt were done in self-defense. Mr. Pitts testified that he was standing on the side of the truck speaking with the trucker when it appeared the trucker was going to strike him with his cell phone. According to Mr. Pitts, he lost his balance while seeking to avoid the blow and reached through the open door of the truck and grabbed the trucker's shirt only to regain his balance and avoid injury from a fall off the truck. Thus both the entry and battery, according to Mr. Pitts, were necessitated by self-defense.
At the jury charge conference, the parties agreed that pursuant to the standard jury instructions, the jury would first be instructed on the elements of burglary, and then told:
The punishment provided by law for the crime of burglary is greater if the burglary was committed under aggravating circumstances. Therefore if you decide that the defendant is guilty of burglary you must then consider whether the State has further proved those circumstances. If you find that in the course of committing the burglary the defendant made an assault or battery upon any person, you should find him guilty of burglary during which an assault or a battery has been committed.
See Fla. Std. Jury Instr. (Crim) 13.1 (Burglary). The instructions then continued to define assault and battery.
Counsel for Mr. Pitts asked the trial court to instruct the jury on the...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
State v. White
...defense was not available if defendant was committing or fleeing from the commission of a burglary"); see also Pitts v. State , 989 So.2d 27, 31 n.3 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2008) ("[I]f a defendant enters a conveyance or dwelling to commit an offense other than battery, but then commits a batt......
-
St. Pierre v. State
...necessitated by his need to defend himself from an attack that had begun outside and continued unabated inside. See Pitts v. State, 989 So.2d 27, 30 (Fla. 2d DCA 2008) (failure to provide a self-defense instruction was error where defendant was charged with burglary with assault or battery ......
-
City of Bradenton v. Johnson
... ... Smith v. State, 696 So.2d 814, 815 (Fla. 2d DCA 1997); Plymel v. Moore, 770 So.2d 242 (Fla. 1st DCA 2000). Mandamus may only be employed to enforce a right by ... ...
-
Pretrial motions and defenses
...court errs in refusing to give the instruction as a defense to the main offense, instead of merely the lesser of battery. Pitts v. State, 989 So. 2d 27 (Fla. 2d DCA 2008) Self-defense is a defense to property crimes. Thus, where defendant states that he used force to defend himself against ......