Ward v. State, 3D05-1277.

• Decision Date: 16 August 2006
• Docket Number: No. 3D05-1277.,3D05-1277.
• Citation: 936 So.2d 1143
• Parties: Michael WARD, Petitioner, v. The STATE of Florida, Respondent.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

936 So.2d 1143

Michael WARD, Petitioner, v. The STATE of Florida, Respondent.

No. 3D05-1277.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, Third District.

August 16, 2006.

Bennett H. Brummer, Public Defender, and Roy A. Heimlich, Assistant Public Defender, for petitioner.

Charles J. Crist, Jr., Attorney General, and Thomas C. Mielke, Assistant Attorney General, for respondent.

Before COPE, C.J., and SHEPHERD and ROTHENBERG, JJ.

SHEPHERD, J.

The petitioner, Michael Ward, seeks a writ of prohibition to bar the lower court from commencing a trial to have him declared a "sexually violent predator" and involuntarily committed to the custody of the Florida Department of Children and Families ("the Department") for care, control, and treatment pursuant to the Jimmy Ryce Act, ("the Ryce Act"), §§ 394.910-930, Fla. Stat. (2005). The question we must answer is whether the State is authorized under the Ryce Act to seek to involuntarily commit to the Department for care and treatment, a person who has been convicted of a sexually violent crime in the past and who is brought into "total confinement," as that term is defined, after January 1, 1999, for any crime, sexual or non-sexual in nature. We hold that it is, and therefore deny the writ.¹

Facts

In 1969, Ward allegedly committed two separate acts of rape in violation of section 794.01 of the Florida Statutes (1969). In 1970, he was found incompetent to stand trial on these charges and was committed to the South Florida State Hospital. Ward escaped from this confinement in 1976 and was re-arrested after allegedly committing several other crimes, including two more rapes. On October 5, 1976, Ward pled guilty to all four rape charges. In all four cases, Ward admitted he had broken into each victim's house to commit the crime. He was sentenced to fifty years in state prison on each charge, with the sentences to run concurrently. In 1983, this court reversed the 1969 convictions on the ground that Ward was misadvised by counsel of the consequences of his plea. Ward v. State, 433 So.2d 1221, 1223 (Fla. 3d DCA 1983).² As a result, the State nolle prossed the 1969 charges.

In the intervening years, Ward mounted post-conviction challenges to his fifty-year sentence on the remaining 1976 offenses, so that by 1993 he was released from state prison. Since then, Ward has, from time to time, been re-incarcerated and sentenced for various non-sexual offenses, most recently and significantly in January 2004 to thirty-six months in state prison for burglary of an occupied conveyance and possession of burglary tools. At that time, however, no sexual offense was alleged in addition to the burglary charge. The State filed its petition to commit Ward under the Ryce Act during the course of this incarceration.

Discussion

Ward argues that the trial court lacks jurisdiction to proceed because he was not in custody for a sexually violent offense, as that term is defined under the Ryce Act, see § 394.912(9), Fla. Stat. (2004), at the time the State filed its petition. For us to properly evaluate this claim, we turn to the jurisdictional provision of the Ryce Act in effect at the time the State commenced its Ryce Act proceeding. See Hale v. State, 891 So.2d 517, 520 (Fla.2004)(applying the jurisdictional provision of the Ryce Act in effect at the time the proceeding against Hale was commenced). The provision reads as follows:

Applicability of [the][A]ct

This part applies to all persons currently in custody who have been convicted of a sexually violent offense, as that term is defined in s. 394.912(9), as well as to all persons convicted of a sexually violent offense and sentenced to total confinement in the future.

§ 394.925, Fla. Stat. (1999).³

Grammatically speaking, it is clear that this section of the Ryce Act consists of two independently acting clauses. First, the Ryce Act "applies to all persons currently in custody who have been convicted of a sexually violent offense" as that term is defined; and second, to "all persons convicted of a sexually violent offense and sentenced to total confinement in the future." It is also apparent from a cursory review of the two clauses, aided by pronouncements of the Florida Supreme Court and lower appellate courts of this state, that the clauses are possessed of parallel and complimentary features. For example, it is now settled law that the purpose of the first clause is to address sexual predators who were in custody on the Ryce Act's effective date, January 1, 1999, see State v. Atkinson, 831 So.2d 172, 173-74 (Fla.2002)(confirming that the phrase "currently in custody" in the first clause means in custody as defined by the Act on January 1, 1999), while the second clause is meant to address all other sexual predators. In addition, the use of the term "total confinement" has been interpreted to be co-extensive with "in custody" despite the employment by the legislature of different terminology in each clause. Gordon v. Regier, 839 So.2d 715, 718-19 (Fla. 2d DCA 2003)(concluding that "the word `custody' is synonymous with `total confinement'" for purposes of section 394.925). Finally, of course, the potential committee must, in either case, be possessed of a qualifying sexual offense.⁴

It is against this textual and interpretive backdrop that we examine the as yet unresolved question of the reach of the second clause incarcerative provision. If Ward were a potential "first clause" committee, the State would possess the unquestionable right to proceed. Hale, 891 So.2d at 521 (holding that although the defendant must be in custody on January 1, 1999, the custody need not be one for a qualifying sexual offense). In our case, Ward is a potential "second clause" committee. Although we admit the language of the second clause is not a model of clarity, we consider that under the better reading and interpretation of this section of the Ryce Act, potential second clause committees, like potential first clause committees, are subject to the reach of the Ryce Act whatever may have been the reason for their qualifying confinement.

We believe this conclusion is supported by a careful consideration of the text of the section of the Act that we are required to construe, applicable rules of statutory construction, and the history and purpose of the Act.

I.

We begin our explication for reaching this result with an analysis of the text of the provision in question, see Hale, 891 So.2d at 521 ("the intent of the legislature must guide [the court's] analysis, and that intent must be determined primarily from the language of the statute"), and find instructive the placement of the language added to section 916.45 as it was being renumbered and amended to assume its current form.⁵

At the time the Ryce Act was enacted, its jurisdictional provision read as follows:

Applicability of [the][A]ct

Sections 916.31-916.49 apply to all persons currently in custody who have been convicted of a sexually violent offense, as that term is defined in s. 916.32(8), as well as to all persons convicted of a sexually violent offense in the future.

§ 916.45, Fla. Stat. (Supp.1998). At its very next annual session, convened within weeks of the January 1, 1999 effective date of the Ryce Act, the legislature amended this provision to read "[t]his part applies to all persons currently in custody who have been convicted of a sexually violent offense, as that term is defined in s. 394.912(9), as well as to all persons convicted of a sexually violent offense and sentenced to total confinement in the future." Ch. 99-222, § 20, Laws of Fla. (emphasis added). Although the legislature could have made it incontestably clear that it was merely limiting the Ryce Act's scope by inserting the amending language "and sentenced to total confinement" after the word "convicted" in the second clause of the section and replacing the preposition "of" with "for," so that the clause would have read ". . . as well as to all persons convicted and sentenced to total confinement for a sexually violent offense in the future," it elected instead to insert the added language between the substantive phrase "sexually violent offense" and the prepositional phrase, "in the future." We presume the legislature understands the meaning of the language it uses and the implications of its placement in a statute. See, e.g., Rinker Materials Corp. v. City of N. Miami, 286 So.2d 552, 553 (Fla. 1973)("In statutory construction, statutes must be given their plain and obvious meaning and it must be assumed that the legislative body knew the plain and ordinary meanings of the words."); State ex rel. Bie v. Swope, 159 Fla. 18, 24, 30 So.2d 748, 751 (1947)("[t]he legislator is presumed to know the meaning of words and the rules of grammar . . ."); Sailboat Apartment Corp. v. Chase Manhattan Mortgage & Realty Trust, 363 So.2d 564, 568 (Fla. 3d DCA 1978)("[T]he legislature is presumed to know the meaning of words and the rules of grammar and the court will give the generally accepted construction to both the phraseology of the act and the manner in which it is punctuated."). In this case, we consider the legislature's placement of the amending language between the substantive phrase "sexually violent offense" and the prepositional phrase "in the future," evidence that the legislature had more in mind than a post-effective date reduction of the reach of the Ryce Act, the deductively unavoidable interpretation of the amended second clause sought by Ward.

Having thus concluded that the additional phrase "and sentenced to total confinement," as drafted and inserted into the Ryce Act by the legislature in 1999, does not ineluctably require the narrow interpretation pressed by Ward, we now turn to principles of statutory construction. Seagrave v. State, 802 So.2d 281, 286 (Fla.2001)(holding that in cases of uncertainty, courts frequently resort to traditional canons of statutory construction). We begin this examination by referring...