White v. State
| Decision Date | 04 January 2012 |
| Docket Number | No. 3D09–1403.,3D09–1403. |
| Citation | 76 So.3d 335 |
| Parties | Charles E. WHITE, Appellant, v. The STATE of Florida, Appellee. |
| Court | Florida District Court of Appeals |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Eugene F. Zenobi, Jr. Criminal Conflict and Civil Regional Counsel, Third Region, for appellant.
Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, and Timothy R.M. Thomas, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.
Before RAMIREZ and SHEPHERD, JJ., and SCHWARTZ, Senior Judge.
Charles E. White appeals his convictions for two counts of first-degree murder (Count 1 and 2), burglary with an assault or battery while armed (Count 3), robbery while armed with a firearm or deadly weapon (Count 4), two counts of kidnapping with a weapon (Count 5 and 6), use or display of a firearm in the commission of a felony (Count 7), and possession of a short-barreled rifle (Count 8). White says a number of issues mandate reversal. On the following analysis, we affirm.1,2
On February 22, 1999, police were called to the home of Leonard Mayers. In the northeast bedroom of the home, police found the bodies of Mayers and Leon Gray. The home's back door and door jamb were damaged. A pickax was found on the ground near the back stoop, a sawed off shotgun in a neighboring yard, and a black bandana in another backyard.3 The victims each died of close range gunshot wounds, their wrists and portions of their heads bound with duct tape. Mayers was a drug dealer and narcotics and drug-related paraphernalia were found in the home. On the walls inside one of the bathrooms was written “I want wartime, next time someone will die.”
On December 29, 1999, investigating the double homicide, and following a lead from a fellow officer, Detectives Chris Stroze and Steven Paar went to White's home. White gave a detailed, innocent account of his actions some ten months earlier. This story of his activities did not include anything involving his friend Armond Davis (later to be his co-defendant) or going to Leonard Mayers' house. To the contrary, White said that he had never been to Mayers' home and had never worked for him. Stroze asked White if he would be willing to take a polygraph test, but White refused saying that the test proved nothing. Stroze then recounted to White certain information told to him by Davis, to which White gave the incongruous response, “You mean the person I was in the house with was a killer?” Stroze ended the forty-five-minute interview at that point, but did not arrest White.
The next day, after receiving an additional lead pointing to White's involvement in the crimes, Stroze put a notification into police computers asking that he be alerted if any officer came into contact with White. A year later, on December 30, 2000, at 2:00 p.m., White was arrested for possession of marijuana.4 Rather than take him to the magistrate for a plea or bond disposition as would have been the usual course after a marijuana arrest, the officers took White to Stroze for questioning on the crimes at issue here, for which, it was admitted, there was then no probable cause to arrest. Toward the end of some thirteen hours of questioning on that subject, however, White finally admitted his participation in the crimes for which he was subsequently charged and convicted. An account of the twenty-four hours following the arrest reveals the following:
Saturday, December 30, 2000:
2:00 p.m. White is arrested on the possession charge.
2:05 p.m. Detective Stroze is called and informed of the arrest, Stroze asks that White be transported to the Homicide office immediately.
White is held approximately five hours prior to transport.5
6:55 p.m. White arrives at Stroze's office, possibly after other detainees have been dropped off at TGK.6,7 7:05 p.m. until 9:00 p.m. White is questioned; he denies any involvement in the crimes.
9:30 p.m. until 11:30 p.m. White is questioned; he denies any involvement in the crimes.
Sunday, December 31, 2000:
12 a.m. until 1:30 a.m. White is questioned; he denies any involvement in the crimes.
2:30 until 7:50 am White is questioned; he admits his involvement in the crimes.
7:56 a.m. until 8:39 a.m. White gives a formal recorded account of the crimes.
11:07 a.m. The hired stenographer completes typing out White's statement. White is shown the statement, he makes two corrections and signs it.
12:30 p.m. (twenty-two and one-half hours after White's initial arrest) White is taken to TGK (which Stroze estimates to be approximately three miles from the homicide offices.) (Computer records show that White pleaded guilty to the possession charge on January 1, 2001, at his first appearance hearing.)
White moved to suppress his statements. Among other arguments, he contended, as he does here, that because he was questioned for an extended period time rather than taken directly before a judicial officer, Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.130 mandates suppression. The trial judge rejected this argument, as do we.
Rule 3.130, provides:
Except when previously released in a lawful manner, every arrested person shall be taken before a judicial officer, either in person or by electronic audiovisual device in the discretion of the court, within 24 hours of arrest.
On numerous occasions, our courts have concluded that suppression was not required notwithstanding the fact that a defendant was not brought before a judicial officer within twenty-four hours of the arrest. Rather, “when a defendant has been advised of his rights and makes an otherwise voluntary statement, the delay in following the strictures of [Rule 3.130] must be shown to have induced the confession.” Globe v. State, 877 So.2d 663, 671–72 (Fla.2004) (quoting Chavez v. State, 832 So.2d 730, 752 (Fla.2002); Keen v. State, 504 So.2d 396, 400 (Fla.1987), disapproved in part on other grounds by Owen v. State, 596 So.2d 985, 990 (Fla.1992)); Woods v. State, 755 So.2d 810, 813 (Fla. 3d DCA 2000).
As Conde v. State, 860 So.2d 930, 951–53 (Fla.2003), instructs, any prejudice due to the delay “must be proven on a case-by-case basis.” See Globe, 877 So.2d at 671–72 (same); Keen, 504 So.2d at 400, disapproved in part on other grounds by Owen, 596 So.2d at 990 (). This approach is in keeping with the majority view nationwide. See Commonwealth v. Rosario, 422 Mass. 48, 661 N.E.2d 71, 76 n. 4 (1996) ( ); see generally Romualdo P. Eclavea, Annotation, “ Admissibility of confession or other statement made by defendant as affected by delay in arraignment-modern state cases,” 28 A.L.R.4th 1121 (1984 & Supp. 2011) (§ 5, identifying Florida and a number of other states as rejecting a per se rule, in favor of some form of a “[q]ualified view that delay does not render confession inadmissible unless delay induced or caused, or was used to extract confession”); but see id. ().8
Acceptance of White's position would, in effect, require the addition of language to Rule 3.130 to require that he should have been taken ‘directly’ or ‘without unnecessary delay’ to a magistrate, as required in a number of other states. However, that is not what Rule 3.130 provides and we are simply not at liberty to add language to the rule as written. See Browning v. Sarasota Alliance for Fair Elections, Inc., 968 So.2d 637, 651 (Fla. 2d DCA 2007) (),9 rev'd on other grounds, 28 So.3d 880 (Fla.2010). Moreover, our Supreme Court has instructed that a showing of prejudice is a condition precedent to the strict enforcement of its procedural rules, again barring any per se rule for suppression. See Lackos v. State, 339 So.2d 217, 219 (Fla.1976) ().
As part of this analysis, it is appropriate to consider whether the claimed fact that White's presentation to the magistrate was delayed for the quite obvious, perhaps improper purpose of obtaining information on unrelated crimes mandates a different result. Essentially because the resolution of these issues turns on whether the officers' actions are objectively lawful and subjective motivations are irrelevant, we conclude that it does not.
We know that in the context of “pretextual stop” cases, “the subjective knowledge, motivation, or intention of the individual officer involved [is] wholly irrelevant [to the determination of the legality of the stop].” Dep't of Highway Safety & Motor Vehicles v. Jones, 935 So.2d 532, 534 (Fla. 3d DCA 2006) ( ); see Holland v. State, 696 So.2d 757, 759 (Fla.1997) (). This objective standard also has been applied to suppression questions where an arrest has been made for one crime, and the defendant claims that the motivation...
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