Reynolds v. State, Case No. 5D17-3820
| Decision Date | 30 October 2019 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 5D17-3820 |
| Citation | 283 So.3d 885 |
| Parties | Edward REYNOLDS, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee. |
| Court | Florida District Court of Appeals |
W. Charles Fletcher, of Law Office of W. Charles Fletcher, P.A., Jacksonville, for Appellant.
Ashley Moody, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Deborah A. Chance, Assistant Attorney General, Daytona Beach, for Appellee.
We affirm the order finding Appellant, Edward Reynolds, in violation of his probation for committing the new law violations of domestic battery based upon our supreme court's decision in Russell v. State , 982 So. 2d 642, 646–48 (Fla. 2008), and for resisting an officer without violence, e.g. , N.H. v. State , 890 So. 2d 514, 516–17 (Fla. 3d DCA 2005) ().1
However, we write to observe three points in response to the dissent. First, some of the arguments relied on by the dissent were either not preserved or were not raised on appeal. For instance, Appellant did not argue below that the officer's observation of the victim's wound
was insufficient corroboration because of the temporal break between the battery and observation by law enforcement. Likewise, Appellant did not argue below or in his initial brief that the State was required to present non-hearsay evidence to directly establish the identity of the batterer. Rather, Appellant argued below that there was no direct evidence that a battery occurred at all, implying that the victim might have received the laceration from some conduct other than a battery.
Second, while the officers in this case did not arrive at the scene in temporal proximity to the battery, in our view, this goes to the weight of the evidence, not to its sufficiency to corroborate the hearsay evidence presented at a violation of probation hearing. To that end, we observe that the trial court made specific findings regarding credibility, and thoroughly explained why, given the totality of the evidence, it believed Appellant committed the battery. While the dissent seems to disagree with the trial court's factual and credibility findings, and we acknowledge that Appellant argued many reasons why the trial court should disbelieve the victim, we will not reweigh the evidence from the appellate bench.
Third, in our view, the dissent casts the evidence in a light most favorable to the Appellant. The evidence and permissible inferences in our record demonstrate that officers arrived at Appellant's residence, parked on the street, and entered the property through an open gate. The victim told them that she had not called 911 that day, but eventually admitted that Appellant previously struck her, telling officers on one occasion that the battery was a week earlier and at another time indicating that it was two weeks earlier.
The victim showed the officers a laceration along her gumline, which did not appear fresh. She also showed them pictures of the cut that she had taken right after the battery occurred. The officer testified that he observed the victim's demeanor change when she admitted Appellant hit her, and that she was almost crying.2
Appellant then returned to the residence while officers were still on the scene. Appellant admitted that he saw the police car parked along the road near his property. Appellant then drove into his driveway and stopped to allow his girlfriend to get out and lock the gate while the officers were still on the property. The arresting officer testified that Appellant's headlights were directly illuminating him and his partner when Appellant pulled into the driveway and stopped. Appellant then continued down the driveway, rolled down his window, and started speaking to the officers—all the while driving his truck "uncomfortably close" to the officers.
Appellant put the truck in park, but when the officers instructed him to get out of his vehicle, he initially refused, telling the officers, "I'm not going to step over there." Rather than promptly comply with the officers' instructions, Appellant continued asking why the officers were there, and ordered them to get off his property.
When Appellant finally stepped out of his vehicle, the officers placed Appellant under arrest. After adjusting Appellant's handcuffs for his comfort, the officers walked Appellant down the driveway and toward the locked gate. Appellant said On the way there, Appellant became increasingly belligerent and confrontational, and threatened to "kick [the officers'] asses."
Thereafter, Appellant's girlfriend informed the officers that they could not leave without a key to unlock the gate. However, the officers had to "ask several questions" before they located the key in Appellant's left side pocket and were able to unlock the gate in order to exit the property.
Finally, and notably, after Appellant was in the patrol car, he began yelling, screaming, and kicking the back of the front passenger seat.
At the conclusion of the hearing, and after receiving live testimony, a partial recording of the actual arrest, and the recorded interviews with the victim and her daughter, the trial court found, in part, that:
Based on our record, we simply cannot say that the trial court abused its discretion in finding that Appellant violated his probation by committing two new law violations.
AFFIRMED.
Appellant, Edward Reynolds, was found to have violated his probation by committing two new law violations, namely domestic battery and resisting arrest without violence.3 The trial court revoked Appellant's probation and sentenced him to serve five years in prison. I disagree with my colleagues' decision to affirm and submit that the violation of probation order and resulting sentence should be reversed and remanded for a second revocation hearing for two reasons. First, the trial court erred when it relied completely and only upon stale hearsay evidence to solve the "whodunit" mystery in the domestic battery portion of the underlying violation of probation proceeding. Second, the trial court also erred in finding that Appellant resisted arrest without violence, as there was no evidence that Appellant did anything other than exit his vehicle slowly, cuss at the arresting officers, loudly beg for relief regarding the extreme discomfort a secured handcuff caused to his surgically repaired wrist, and thrash around a bit in the patrol car after being arrested. For the reasons which are explained in further detail below, I respectfully dissent.
In 2013, Appellant pled no contest to two counts of aggravated battery upon a law enforcement officer and one count of leaving the scene of a crash with property damage, resulting in a sentence that included thirteen years of probation, which he was serving at the time of the incident described below. He had purposefully plowed his car into two police vehicles, making him unpopular with local law enforcement.
Jessica Reynolds is Appellant's biological, adult daughter who spent a couple of nights at Appellant's home in May 2017. According to evidence adduced at the violation of probation hearing, Jessica was upset with Appellant because she believed that his complaints to Jessica's probation officer led to the revocation of her own probation and a 90-day stint in jail. According to Appellant's proffered but excluded testimony, he did not want Jessica staying at his house because she was dealing drugs.
On May 28, 2017, Brevard County Deputy Sheriff Daugirda and his field training officer responded to a 911 call advising that Jessica had been elbowed in the mouth, not by Appellant, but by her husband, Robert Reynolds. That 911 call resulted in dispatching the deputies to respond to an address on Pine Street in Merritt Island; however, the deputies were unable to locate the dispatched address. By cross-referencing Jessica's name in one or more databases, the deputies identified a different address and drove more than ten miles to Appellant's house on North Road in Cocoa, Florida. They hoped their search would lead them to the supposed victim, Jessica.
The deputies parked their marked patrol vehicle near the road, between Appellant's and his next-door neighbor's property. The deputies entered Appellant's property on foot without either a search or arrest warrant.4 After passing through a gated entrance, the deputies approached Appellant's house where they encountered Jessica. She denied calling 911 and also denied that a battery, the underlying reason for the 911 call, had occurred. Jessica told the deputies that perhaps her probation officer had placed the 911 call regarding an earlier incident during which her father yelled and spit at her.5 When she went inside to locate her identification card, she allowed the deputies to enter her father's house. In this initial portion of the encounter, Jessica was calm as she spoke with the deputies. Her attitude or demeanor changed only after she relayed that her father turned her in to her probation officer.
During their discussion, Jessica showed Deputy...
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