Taylor v. State

• Decision Date: 23 January 2002
• Docket Number: No. 2D01-1751.,2D01-1751.
• Citation: 818 So.2d 544
• Parties: Rebecca TAYLOR, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

818 So.2d 544

Rebecca TAYLOR, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. 2D01-1751.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, Second District.

January 23, 2002.

Rehearing Denied April 23, 2002.

James Marion Moorman, Public Defender, and Allyn M. Giambalvo, Assistant Public Defender, Bartow, for Appellant.

Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Susan D. Dunlevy, Assistant Attorney General, Tampa, for Appellee.

NORTHCUTT, Judge.

On May 9, 2000, Rebecca Taylor trafficked in 14 or more but less than 28 grams of methamphetamine, violating section 893.135(1)(f)(1)(a), Florida Statutes (1999). She was charged with the crime, and in January 2001 she entered an open plea of no contest. At her sentencing hearing, she argued that the court should not impose a three-year minimum mandatory prison term because chapter 99-188, Laws of Florida, which amended section 893.135 to impose that penalty for her crime, violated the single subject rule contained in Florida's constitution. The circuit court rejected Taylor's assertion and sentenced her to forty months' imprisonment, including the minimum mandatory term. On appeal Taylor again challenges her sentence by attacking the constitutionality of chapter 99-188.¹ We agree that this law violated the single subject rule, and we reverse Taylor's sentence.

The single subject rule provides, in pertinent part, that "[e]very law shall embrace but one subject and matter properly connected therewith, and the subject shall be briefly expressed in the title." Art. III, § 6, Fla. Const. In State v. Thompson, 750 So.2d 643 (Fla.1999), our supreme court reiterated the three purposes of the rule:

(1) to prevent hodge podge or "log rolling" legislation, i.e., putting two unrelated matters in one act; (2) to prevent surprise or fraud by means of provisions in bills of which the titles gave no intimation, and which might therefore be overlooked and carelessly and unintentionally adopted; and (3) to fairly apprise the people of the subjects of legislation that are being considered, in order that they may have opportunity of being heard thereon.

Id. at 646 (quoting State ex rel. Flink v. Canova, 94 So.2d 181, 184 (Fla.1957)). The Thompson court also quoted its previous decision in State v. Lee, 356 So.2d 276 (Fla.1978), to the effect that the single subject rule is designed "to prevent `logrolling' where a single enactment becomes a cloak for dissimilar legislation having no necessary or appropriate connection with the subject matter." Thompson, 750 So.2d at 646-47.

Chapter 99-188 has thirteen sections, the first of which provides that the act may be cited as the "Three Strikes Violent Felony Offender Act." In fact, only sections 3 and 6 actually relate to "three strikes" provisions: section 3 amends section 775.084, Florida Statutes (Supp.1998), to define a "three-time violent felony offender" and to impose minimum mandatory prison terms for felons sentenced as such; section 6 changes a reference to section 775.084 in section 790.235, Florida Statutes (1997), to conform to the "three-strikes" amendment. Ch. 99-188, § 1, at 1040; § 3, at 1042-50; § 6, at 1051-52, Laws of Fla.

Most of the remaining sections address sentences, primarily those to be imposed on violent or repeat felony offenders. Section 2 amends the prison releasee reoffender portion of section 775.082, Florida Statutes (Supp.1998); section 4 amends section 784.07, Florida Statutes (Supp. 1998), to add minimum mandatory terms for assault and battery on certain public employees; section 5 adds a minimum mandatory term for a conviction of assault or battery on a person sixty-five years of age or older under section 784.08, Florida Statutes (1997); section 9, which affected Taylor's sentence, amends section 893.135, Florida Statutes (1997), to require minimum mandatory sentences for trafficking in certain amounts of illegal drugs; section 10 conforms numerous statutes to the amendment made in section 9 of the act; and section 12 requires the governor to place announcements in local media explaining the penalties provided in the act. Ch. 99-188, § 2, at 1040-42; § 4, at 1050-51; § 5, at 1051; § 9, at 1056-62; § 10, at 1062-81; § 12, at 1081, Laws of Fla.

Three sections in the act involve substantive criminal provisions. Section 7 creates the new offense of repeat sexual batterer, section 794.0115, Florida Statutes (1999), and section 8 amends section 794.011, Florida Statutes (1997), to conform to the new crime created in section 7. Section 13 amends the definition of a conveyance in the burglary statute, section 810.011, Florida Statutes (1997). Ch. 99-188, § 7, at 1052-53; § 8, at 1053-56; § 13, at 1081, Laws of Fla.

Finally, section 11 amends section 943.0535, Florida Statutes (1997), concerning the administrative duty of the clerk of court to provide criminal records to United States immigration officers. Ch. 99-188, § 11, at 1081, Laws of Fla.

Our task is to decide whether these thirteen provisions address a single subject as required by the constitution. We recognize that "[t]he subject of an act `may be as broad as the legislature chooses as long as the matters included in the act have a natural or logical connection.'" Chenoweth v. Kemp, 396 So.2d 1122, 1124 (Fla.1981) (quoting Bd. of Pub. Instruction v. Doran, 224 So.2d 693, 699 (Fla.1969)), receded from on other grounds, Sheffield v. Superior Ins. Co., 800 So.2d 197 (Fla. 2001)

. When searching for the natural or logical connection between an act's provisions, courts often look to its preamble, in which the legislature may have identified a crisis or stated a broad purpose that ties the sections together. See Burch v. State, 558 So.2d 1, 2-3 (Fla.1990) (holding that even though chapter 87-243, Laws of Florida, addressed three separate areas—criminal regulations and procedures, money laundering, and safe neighborhoods—it did not violate the single subject rule because the preamble identified a general crisis resulting from a rapidly increasing crime rate that reached beyond the criminal justice system to cause deterioration of businesses, schools, communities, and families); Smith v. Dep't of Ins., 507 So.2d 1080 (Fla.1987) (explaining that chapter 86-160, Laws of Florida, did not violate the single subject rule because the legislature identified a crisis in the insurance industry, to which the tort system contributed, thus provisions addressing insurance regulation and tort reform were properly contained in the same act).

Chapter 99-188 contains a lengthy preamble² that evinces the legislators' concern with the crime rate in Florida and the fact that felons, particularly violent and repeat offenders, are not being sentenced to the maximum prison terms allowed under Florida law. Unlike the preamble to the legislation in Burch, this one does not identify a crisis involving the general crime rate. If any crisis can be inferred, it concerns sentencing. Indeed, most of the sections in this act address sentencing and impose minimum mandatory terms. See ch. 99-188, §§ 2, 3, 4, 5, 9.

The sections do not all concern both violent and repeat offenders, as implied in section 1, but they clearly deal with one subject and are logically connected. Further, although section 7 is not strictly a sentencing provision, it does create an offense involving repeat crimes of violence, punishable by a minimum mandatory prison term. Additionally, sections 6, 8, 10, and 12 merely implement the changes made in the act. We have no difficulty finding that these mentioned sections address a single subject because they are naturally and logically related to each other and to the legislatively stated purpose of the act.

In contrast, section 13 is not naturally or logically connected to the act's other sections. It is not a sentencing provision, nor is it concerned with violent or repeat offenders. Rather, it simply amends the definition of a "conveyance" for purposes of the burglary statute to include a "railroad vehicle" as well as a railroad car. This slight expansion of a substantive criminal offense has only an attenuated relationship to sentencing or to the other sections of the act, in that it might be argued that under the broader definition of a conveyance more felons could be convicted of "armed burglary," one of the qualifying crimes for three-strikes sentencing. See ch. 99-188, § 3. But that relationship is so tenuous, so dependent on the happenstance of individual cases, that it simply cannot be characterized as natural or logical.

Moreover, the legislative history of the act reveals that the amendment to the conveyance definition occurred under circumstances that often lead to problems with the single subject rule. The bill that was eventually enacted as chapter 99-188 began in March 1999 as House Bill 121. It essentially contained what became sections 2 through 7 of the act. Fla. H.R. Jour. 27-28 (Reg.Sess.1999). After making several amendments on April 23, 1999, the House passed Committee Substitute for House Bill 121 on April 26, 1999. Id. at 1128-29, 1403. At that point, the bill contained all the sections in the present act, other than section 13. The House bill then met the Committee Substitute for Senate Bill 1746, which also contained all the sections in the present act other than the amendment to the burglary statute. The bill was referred to the Committee on Fiscal Policy, which recommended the amendment that became section 13 of the act. Fla. S. Jour. 351, 364-65 (Reg.Sess.1999). The bill, as amended, passed the Senate on April 28, 1999. Id. at 1276-92. Thus, it appears the addition of section 13 was an afterthought. This is exactly the type of "log rolling" legislation that the single subject rule was intended to prevent. The inclusion of section 13 in chapter 99-188 violated the single subject rule and rendered the entire chapter unconstitutional.

If anything, section 11 bears even less relationship to the act's other provisions. Chapter 99-188...