State v. Bruno
| Decision Date | 30 July 1958 |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
| Parties | The STATE of Florida, Appellant, v. Louis A. BRUNO, Appellee. |
Richard E. Gerstein, Miami, for appellant.
Dan Chappell, Miami, for appellee.
The appellee, Louis A. Bruno, by information filed December 10, 1957, was charged with the crime of grand larceny. The information alleged that the larceny occurred on July 28, 1953, while appellee was a municipal officer; that the offense was committed during the appellee's term of office and was connected with the discharge of the duty of his office; and that appellee had continuously held his office to the date of filing of the indictment.
The appellee-defendant filed a motion to quash the information which was granted as evidence by the following entry in the Minute Book of the court:
'Dan Chappell, Counsel for the Defendant, Louis A. Bruno, presented a Motion to Quash the Information filed on December 10, 1957, which motion the Court granted.'
The court gave no reasons or grounds for granting the motion to quash.
The motion to quash filed by appellee contained five grounds. The first charged that the information showed on its face that the statute of limitations had run. The second claimed that Sec. 932.06, F.S.A., discussed below, was unconstitutional in that it denied the defendant equal protection and due process of law. The third and fourth grounds attacked the sufficiency of the allegations of the information. The fifth ground, labelled a 'speaking motion' by the State, asserted that prosecution for the offense charged is barred because more than two years had elapsed between the end of the term of office in which the offense is alleged to have occurred and the filing of the information.
Under the provisions of Sec. 932.05, F.S.A., the statute of limitations for all crimes other than those punishable by death is two years. However, the State contends that the provisions of Sec. 932.06 control this case. This latter section provides that:
'All offenses by state, county or municipal officials, committed during their term or terms of office, in any way whatsoever connected with the discharge of the duties of their different offices, shall be prosecuted within two years after the said officer shall retire from such office.'
(2) 'final judgments or decrees directly passing upon the validity of a state statute or a federal statute or treaty, or construing a controlling provision of the Florida or federal constitution,' and
(3) 'from final judgments or decrees in proceedings for the validation of bonds and certificates of indebtedness.'
It is obvious that this Court could have jurisdiction of this cause only on the ground that it is an appeal from a judgement 'directly passing upon the validity of a state statute.'
The burden is on the appellant to shown that this Court has jurisdiction to act in the cause which it presents.
In an effort to meet this requirement the State urges that this Court has jurisdiction because the trial court, in granting the motion to quash, 'must have decided that the Statute (Sec. 932.06 F.S.A.) was unconstitutional.' However, in candor, the State concedes that The appellee-defendant is his brief says that the trial court did not hold the statute unconstitutional, arguing that the motion to quash could have been granted on any of the four other grounds of the motion.
In this jurisdiction it is the duty of a court not to pass upon the validity of a statute if the case can be properly decided on other grounds. See 6 Fla.Jur., Const. Law, Sec. 52 and cases therein cited. Where the contrary is not made evident we must assume that the trial court observed this rule. This leads to the conclusion that we cannot and must not assume that the trial court, in this case, directly passed on the validity of Sec. 932.06 in order to reach his decision to quash the information.
Had the motion to quash urged only the unconstitutionality of the subject statute as its basis we might well be entitled to come to the conclusion that the trial court had necessarily directly passed on the validity of the statute in granting the motion, but where there are other grounds on which the court might have acted, even though erroneously, this court under its limited appellate jurisdication has no right to act.
We must therefore conclude that where...
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