S.H. v. State, 3D18-365
| Decision Date | 30 January 2019 |
| Docket Number | No. 3D18-365,3D18-365 |
| Citation | 264 So.3d 1042 |
| Parties | S.H., a Juvenile, Appellant, v. The STATE of Florida, Appellee. |
| Court | Florida District Court of Appeals |
Carlos J. Martinez, Public Defender, and Susan S. Lerner, Assistant Public Defender, for appellant.
Ashley Brooke Moody, Attorney General, and Marlon J. Weiss, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.
Before LOGUE, and MILLER, JJ., and SUAREZ, Senior Judge.
S.H., a juvenile, appeals from an order withholding adjudication of delinquency and placing him on probation for violation of sections 790.115(2), Florida Statutes (2016) (), and 790.22(3), Florida Statutes (). S.H. contends that the trial court erred in: (1) allowing testimony as to the contents of photographs allegedly depicting S.H. and others with a firearm in the school; (2) admitting S.H.'s extrajudicial confession, over objection, in violation of the corpus delecti rule; and (3) overruling hearsay objections to the contents of an anonymous tip that S.H. possessed a firearm on school property. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.
On May 26, 2017, S.H. was a 14-year old student attending American Senior High School in Hialeah, Florida. Paul Torres, a discipline administrator at the school, was working on campus when another student approached him and School Resource Officer Jose Perez to report an issue. Although the student was known to Mr. Torres, his identity was not reported at trial.
Despite a contemporaneous hearsay objection at trial, Mr. Torres was permitted to testify that the student contended S.H. was in possession of a firearm on school grounds. Mr. Torres further testified that the student informed him that S.H. had the firearm in the school bathroom. The student then showed Mr. Torres photographs depicting S.H. and other students in the bathroom with the firearm. However, Mr. Torres was not certain as to whether S.H. was holding the firearm in the photographs.
Officer Perez made efforts to locate S.H. on the campus, but discovered that his mother had signed him out of school. The principal of the school directed Mr. Torres to contact S.H.'s mother. Mr. Torres made contact with S.H.'s mother and informed her of the report regarding the firearm. He further requested that she return S.H. to the school. S.H. and his mother returned to the school within fifteen or twenty minutes of receiving the telephone call. Mr. Torres and Officer Perez went to the office and observed S.H. seated near his mother. Mr. Torres observed a backpack on a nearby chair. Officer Perez immediately opened the backpack and discovered a semi-automatic firearm in the main compartment. He also observed various books and folders in the backpack. S.H. confirmed ownership of the backpack. Officer Perez secured the firearm by removing both the magazine clip and a bullet from the chamber of the firearm. He then extracted six additional rounds from the magazine. Mr. Torres observed the firearm "matched" the firearm depicted in the bathroom photographs. S.H. was placed under arrest.
Officer Perez read S.H. his Miranda 1 rights, per card. S.H. waived his rights and told Officer Perez he had been bullied at school previously, thus he brought the firearm to school for protection. He further stated that he acquired the firearm from his father. School attendance records were moved into evidence and reflected that S.H. attended school that day, but was excused early by his mother.
S.H. claims error with regard to testimony concerning the contents of the photographs. In order "[t]o meet the objectives of any contemporaneous objection rule, an objection must be sufficiently specific both to apprise the trial judge of the putative error and to preserve the issue for intelligent review on appeal." Castor v. State, 365 So.2d 701, 702 (Fla. 1978) (citing Rivers v. State, 307 So.2d 826 (Fla. 1st DCA 1975), cert. denied, 316 So.2d 285 (Fla.1975) ); see also York v. State, 232 So.2d 767 (Fla. 4th DCA 1969). As the Florida Supreme Court has explained:
This requirement is "based on practical necessity and basic fairness in the operation of a judicial system." The rule "not only affords trial judges the opportunity to address and possibly redress a claimed error, it also prevents counsel from allowing errors in the proceedings to go unchallenged and later using the error to a client's tactical advantage."
Insko v. State, 969 So.2d 992, 1001 (Fla. 2007) (internal citations omitted).
In the instant case, the transcript reveals the following exchange with regard to the contents of the photographs:
Thus, the only contemporaneous objection made during the testimony regarding the contents of the photographs was that the interrogatory in question was leading. It was not until after the State fully elicited testimony regarding the contents of the photographs and moved on to other areas of inquiry that S.H. interposed a best evidence objection. As such, the objection was not specific and contemporaneous, as required, and we conclude the issue has not been properly preserved for appellate review. See Steinhorst v. State, 412 So.2d 332, 336 (Fla. 1982) ().
S.H. further claims error in the admission of his statements, without sufficient alternative proof, as required pursuant to the common law doctrine of corpus delecti, or the "corroboration rule." We review the trial court's admission of a confession over a corpus delicti objection for an abuse of discretion. See Tanzi v. State, 964 So.2d 106, 116 (Fla. 2007) ; Hathaway v. State, 228 So.3d 620 (Fla. 1st DCA 2017) ; J.B. v. State, 166 So.3d 813, 816 (Fla. 4th DCA 2014).
The term corpus delecti has been defined as "[t]he corroborating evidence that shows that a crime has been committed, other than a confession or an alleged accomplice's statement." Corpus Delecti , The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th Ed. 2016). Gonzales v. State, No. AP75540, 2009 WL 1684699 (Tx.Crim.App. June 17, 2009) (Cochran, J., concurring), cert. denied, 559 U.S. 942, 130 S.Ct. 1504, 176 L.Ed.2d 118 (2010).
"Early versions of the rule developed in 17th-century England when a series of suspects confessed to murders, only to have their alleged victims turn up—alive and well—long after the suspects were imprisoned (or, worse, executed) for the fictitious crimes." U.S. v. Brown, 617 F.3d 857, 860 (6th Cir. 2010) ). "Many times such confessions were induced by fear of the multitude, sometimes by a sense of grandeur, the desire to attract attention and the like." State v. Cosby, 110 Ohio App. 222, 228, 162 N.E.2d 126, 130 (8th Dist. 1959).
One oft-reported seventeenth-century English decision known as "Perry's Case" involved a false confession culminating in multiple executions. Perry's Case and the genesis of the corroboration rule under the English common law have been described by the Virginia Supreme Court in the following manner:
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