State v. Jones

• Decision Date: 01 November 2019
• Docket Number: Case No. 2D18-3535
• Parties: STATE of Florida, Petitioner, v. Ruben Allen JONES, Respondent.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

283 So.3d 1259

STATE of Florida, Petitioner,

v.Ruben Allen JONES, Respondent.

Case No. 2D18-3535

District Court of Appeal of Florida, Second District.

Opinion filed November 1, 2019

Ashley Moody, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Elba Martin-Schomaker, Assistant Attorney General, Tampa; and Brian W. Haas, State Attorney, Tenth Judicial Circuit of Florida, and Victoria J. Avalon, Assistant State Attorney, Bartow, for Petitioner.

Philip Averbuck of Highland City, for Respondent.

SALARIO, Judge.

Ruben Allen Jones has been charged in the county court with driving on a suspended license. Relying on Florida's statutory accident-report privilege, § 316.066(4), Fla. Stat. (2017), the county court suppressed statements of identity Mr. Jones made to police at the scene of an accident. The State took an appeal to the circuit court, which affirmed the county court's order. The State now seeks review in this court by way of second-tier certiorari of the circuit court's affirmance. Although the rationale underlying the circuit court's decision is not entirely clear, under any interpretation of its reasoning its affirmance departed from the essential requirements of law and results in a miscarriage of justice. We therefore grant the State's petition.

I.

A.

It is helpful to know a little statutory background before diving into the specifics of this case. Sections 316.062 and .066 impose a duty upon a driver involved in an automobile accident involving damage to another vehicle to provide, among other things, information that identifies the driver for use in preparing a crash investigation report. See also State v. Marshall, 695 So. 2d 719, 721 (Fla. 3d DCA 1996). The legal question in this case arose because the State wants to use a driver's statement of his identity made pursuant to this statutory duty to give information relevant to an accident in an otherwise unrelated criminal prosecution of the driver, who appears to have had no valid driver's license when the accident happened. The answer derives in part from section 316.066(4), which creates the accident-report privilege. It provides, in relevant part, as follows:

Except as specified in this subsection, each crash report made by a person involved in a crash and any statement made by such person to a law enforcement officer for the purpose of completing a crash report required by this section shall be without prejudice to the individual so reporting. Such report or statement may not be used as evidence in any trial, civil or criminal. However, subject to the applicable rules of evidence, a law enforcement officer at a criminal trial may testify as to any statement made to the officer by the person involved in the crash if that person's privilege against self-incrimination is not violated.

§ 316.066(4) (emphasis added). Under the statutory privilege, then, statements made by a person involved in a crash for purposes of completing a crash investigation report are generally inadmissible in any trial, subject to a specific exception that law enforcement officers can testify about such statements in criminal cases if doing so does not violate the person's privilege against self-incrimination. See also Vedner v. State, 849 So. 2d 1207, 1213 (Fla. 5th DCA 2003).

B.

In this case, there was a multivehicle accident during which a car Mr. Jones was driving was rear-ended. A deputy arrived at the scene and began a crash investigation. He did not administer Miranda ¹ warnings. He asked Mr. Jones for his license. Mr. Jones said he did not have one. The deputy then asked for his name, date of birth, and social security number. Mr. Jones complied.

The deputy used that identifying information to check on the Driver and Vehicle Information Database (DAVID) maintained by the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. He learned that Mr. Jones's license had been revoked. He asked Mr. Jones whether he knew that his license was revoked, and Mr. Jones responded affirmatively. Mr. Jones was arrested and, after further questioning not relevant here, charged with driving on a suspended license. The case proceeded in the county court for Polk County.

Mr. Jones moved to suppress his statements of identity arguing, among other things, that their admission would violate his privilege against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution and the accident-report privilege under section 316.066(4).² The State opposed the motion, arguing that under the Supreme Court's decision in California v. Byers, 402 U.S. 424, 91 S.Ct. 1535, 29 L.Ed.2d 9 (1971), statements of identification made pursuant to a statutory duty to provide such information after an automobile accident are not subject to the privilege against self-incrimination. It also argued that the statutory accident-report privilege did not apply because section 316.066(4) authorizes law enforcement officers to testify to any statement during a crash investigation so long as the privilege against self-incrimination is not violated.

At a hearing on the motion, Mr. Jones agreed with the State that under Byers, the Fifth Amendment did not require suppression of his statements of identity, telling the county court that "it's quite true that there's no Fifth Amendment right to remain silent at a traffic crash investigation." He clarified that he was not basing Mr. Jones's argument on the Constitution but rather on the statutory accident-report privilege, asserting that the statute protects the constitutional privilege against self-incrimination in crash investigations by prohibiting statements made during such investigations in court. He argued (1) that under the accident-report privilege, when a law enforcement officer "switches hats" from conducting an accident investigation to conducting a criminal investigation, the driver must be Mirandized and (2) that the statute contains no exception for statements of identity.

The county court suppressed the statements. It expressly found that "at no time did [the deputy] ‘change hats’ and begin to conduct a criminal investigation." (Emphasis added.) But it nonetheless concluded that the statements should be suppressed:

[T]he State has argued that the Defendant ... "merely provided his identity" to [the deputy] and such is neither testimonial or incriminating under the Fifth Amendment. See California v. Byers, 402 U.S. 424, 91 S.Ct. 1535, 29 L.Ed. 2d 9 (1971). Consistent with our Supreme Court's reasoning in Byers, the State argued that providing one's identity is not an incriminating statement and therefore should not be protected under the Accident Report Privilege. This court disagrees. The Accident Report Privilege is created by statute. Section 316.066(4), Florida Statutes, provides a privilege to individuals who are questioned by officers conducting an accident investigation, and the statute (after an amendment in 1989) does not provide an exception to this privilege for information given about identity if the identity of the driver is in question. State v. Evans, 692 So. 2d 305, 306 (Fla. 4th DCA 1997).

This passage seems to recognize that there is no constitutional self-incrimination problem with the admission of Mr. Jones's statement of identity under Byers and to hold that the statutory privilege under section 316.066(4) for statements made in connection with an accident investigation barred its admission. But the county court then said that "to allow [Mr. Jones] to be criminally prosecuted for Driving While License Suspended or Revoked based entirely upon information the Defendant was compelled to provide to law enforcement pursuant to a statutorily created duty, would render his constitutional privilege against self-incrimination meaningless."

C.

The State appealed to the circuit court. As it did in the county court, the State argued that under Byers, there is no self-incrimination issue in this case, and that section 316.066(4) authorizes law enforcement officers to testify as to statements made at the scene. Mr. Jones argued that Byers was irrelevant because his argument was based on section 316.066(4), which contains no exception for statements of identity.

The circuit court affirmed. In a written opinion, the circuit court first quoted in full the text of section 316.066(4) and then stated that the statute "prohibits a statement obtained during an accident investigation from being used as evidence in any trial." It concluded by stating that "the trial court properly relied on State v. Evans, 692 So. 2d 305, 306 (Fla. 4th DCA 1997), which found that there is no longer an exception to the privilege for statements made if the identity of the driver is in question." The court did not explicitly address any issue concerning the privilege against self-incrimination.

Because the Fourth District's decision in Evans was central to the circuit court's decision, it is important to understand what Evans says. Evans held that section 316.066(4) precluded the State from having a driver's statements of identity during an accident investigation admitted at trial. 692 So. 2d at 306. Its analysis of the question reads as follows:

We affirm the trial court's order granting suppression of appellee's statements made at the scene of an automobile accident. Section 316.066(4), Florida Statutes (1993), as amended in 1989, provides for a privilege to individuals who are questioned by officers conducting an accident investigation. Contrary to the state's contention, there is no longer an exception to the privilege for statements made if the identity of the driver is in question.

Id. at 306 (emphasis added). The decision in Evans did not say that the admission of a statement of identity made at the scene of an accident during an accident investigation violates the privilege against self-incrimination.

II.

The State has timely petitioned this court for a writ of certiorari quashing the circuit court's decision. "When reviewing a decision of a circuit court sitting in its appellate...