KENNETH GUFFEY, APPELLANT,
v.
STATE OF FLORIDA, APPELLEE
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Kenneth Guffey was convicted of shooting into an occupied vehicle and aggravated assault with a firearm after firing at a car containing his wife and her boyfriend. The appellate court reversed, holding that the State failed to rebut Guffey's prima facie case of self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt.
The State failed to rebut Guffey's direct testimony and eyewitness evidence of self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt. The State's only rebuttal evidence—the inability to locate Dink's alleged gun and absence of bullet holes from shots fired at Guffey—was legally insufficient. Guffey's motion for judgment of acquittal should have been granted.
[1] The State bears the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, which includes proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant did not act in self-defense.
[2] A defendant's prima facie case of self-defense is rebutted when the State presents legally sufficient evidence to disprove the elements of self-defense.
Previewing 2 of 5 headnotes on this case. FLexlaw’s editorially structured points of law — every proposition, pinpointed — are reserved for members.
Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence“The [State] has the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, which includes proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant did not act in self-defense.”
Establishes the legal standard that the State must affirmatively disprove self-defense to obtain a conviction.
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Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligenceGuffey's wife Cissy and her boyfriend Dink Murray drove into the driveway of Guffey's girlfriend's house. Dink exited the car with a pistol and, accor…
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BLUE, Chief Judge.
Kenneth Guffey presents six issues in appealing his convictions for shooting into an occupied vehicle and aggravated assault with a firearm. Because we agree the trial court erred in fading to grant Guf-fey’s motion for judgments of acquittal, it is unnecessary to discuss the other five issues.1 We conclude that the State failed to rebut the prima facie case of self-defense presented by Guffey, and thus we reverse the convictions.
The victim of the assault and the occupant of the vehicle was Kathy “Cissy” Guffey, the wife of the defendant. The incident giving rise to these charges occurred when Cissy and her boyfriend, Dink Murray, drove into the driveway of Guffey’s girlfriend’s house. According to the testimony at trial, Dink got out of the car with a pistol. Again, based on the testimony at trial, both Cissy and Dink had reputations in the community for violence and Dink had within the prior two weeks both assaulted and threatened Guf-fey several times. Guffey testified that Dink fired the pistol at him and that he was afraid for his life. Although no other witnesses saw Dink firing at Guffey, one of the defense witnesses observed Dink fire at the ground upon leaving the car. Guf-fey picked up a shotgun loaded with slugs that was on the porch and fired three or four times, not at Dink or his wife, but at the car in the driveway, hoping to frighten his wife and her boyfriend into leaving. One of the slugs struck the front fender of the car, entered the car, and struck Cissy’s ankle.
All of the above testimony came from Guffey’s taped statement played for the jury, his testimony at trial, and the defense witnesses, who were the only eyewitnesses to testify. Neither the victim nor her boyfriend Dink testified at the trial.2 The State established the charged crimes through the testimony of investigating officers, who observed the gunshot wound to the victim’s ankle and gunshot holes in the car, and Guffey’s taped statement where he admitted shooting at the car because he feared for his life. The only evidence adduced to rebut the claim of self-defense was the testimony of the investigating officers that they were unable to locate the gun allegedly possessed by Dink Murray, nor any evidence of bullet holes as the result of a gun being fired in Guffey’s direction.
As this court has previously held in Ramos v. State, 496 So. 2d 837, 838 (Fla. 2d DCA 1986), “[t]he [SJtate has the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, which includes proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant did not act in self-defense.” In this case, as in Ramos, the State’s evidence was legally insufficient to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt because the State failed to rebut Guffey’s direct testimony and that of the eyewitnesses that he acted in self-defense. See also State v. Rivera, 719 So. 2d 335 (Fla. 5th DCA 1998); Sneed v. State, 580 So. 2d 169 (Fla. 4th DCA 1991); Brown v. State, 454 So. 2d 596 (Fla. 5th DCA 1984); Diaz v. State, 387 So. 2d 978 (Fla. 3d DCA 1980).
Guffey’s motion for judgments of acquittal should have been granted. Accordingly, we reverse the convictions and remand for Guffy’s discharge.
FULMER and STRINGER, JJ., Concur. . Were it not for our reversal of both convictions for the failure to rebut self-defense, we would reverse the conviction for aggravated assault with a firearm for failure to allege and prove an essential element. See Mateo v. State, 757 So. 2d 1229 (Fla. 2d DCA 2000).
. The trial began somewhat bizarrely with the unobjected-to testimony of a paramedic that the victim had suffered a nervous seizure in the courthouse and was unavailable to testify.
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Chambers v. State, 880 So. 2d 696 (Fla. 2d DCA 2004)…COVINGTON, KELLY, CANADY, VILLANTI, and WALLACE, JJ., Concur. DAVIS, J., Dissents with opinion in which NORTHCUTT, J., Concurs. . §§ 775.087(c), 784.021, Fla. Stat. (2002). . § 918.13, Fla. Stat. (2002). .There is also dicta in Guffey v. State, 837 So. 2d 1068 (Fla. 2d DCA 2003), that might support a reversal. . We appreciate the dissent's argument that the rule announced in Ray is dicta. The supreme court itself, however, stated that it was announcing this rule as a holding of the case. See Ray, 403 So.…
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S.R. v. State, 11 So. 3d 442 (Fla. 3d DCA 2009)…nted, the State must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the actions were not taken in self-defense to uphold the conviction. S.D.G. v. State, 919 So. 2d 704 (Fla. 5th DCA 2006); S.J.C. v. State, 906 So. 2d 1115 (Fla. 2d DCA 2005); Guffey v. State, 837 So. 2d 1068 (Fla. 2d DCA 2003). Here, the State emphasizes that S.R. purposefully pushed Jerez; it was not an accident. This, however, is insufficient to rebut the self-defense claim. Self-defense does not focus on whether the act was purposeful. It focuses on…
Authorities Cited
- Emory Jack Brown, Jr. v. State, 454 So. 2d 596 (Fla. 5th DCA 1984)
- State v. Rivera, 719 So. 2d 335 (Fla. 5th DCA 1998)
- Rigoberto Diaz v. State, 387 So. 2d 978 (Fla. 3d DCA 1980)
- Bertram King v. State, 580 So. 2d 169 (Fla. 4th DCA 1991)
- Ramos v. State, 496 So. 2d 837 (Fla. 2d DCA 1986)
- Kem Mateo v. State, 757 So. 2d 1229 (Fla. 2d DCA 2000)