LORENZO M. WILLIAMS, APPELLANT,
v.
STATE OF FLORIDA, APPELLEE
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The court held that statements made to a 911 operator were not testimonial and that a defendant does not have a right to a jury trial for habitual offender sentencing.
Appellant was convicted of robbery with a weapon and challenged the admission of a 911 tape and his sentencing as an habitual offender.…
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PER CURIAM.
Appellant challenges his conviction for robbery with a weapon on two grounds: First, that the lower court improperly admitted as evidence a 911 tape in violation of Appellant’s right of confrontation under the United States Constitution, and second, that his Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial was infringed when the court sentenced him as an habitual offender. We affirm.
The disposition of Appellant’s Confrontation Clause argument turns on whether statements made to a 911 operator by a witness to the crime were “testimonial” under Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 L.Ed.2d 177 (2004). We conclude that the statements, which were clearly in the nature of excited utterances, were not testimonial in nature. Therefore, the admission of the statements did not violate Appellant’s con stitutional right to confront the declarant. Towbridge v. State, 898 So. 2d 1205 (Fla. 3d DCA 2005). See also, John F. Yetter, Wrestling with Crawford v. Washington and the New Constitutional Law of Confrontation, 78 Fla. B.J. 26, 29 (2004).
As to Appellant’s second point, we conclude that Appellant did not have a right to jury trial to determine whether he should be sentenced as an habitual offender. Frumenti v. State, 885 So. 2d 924 (Fla. 5th DCA 2004).
AFFIRMED.
SHARP, W., SAWAYA and TORPY, JJ., concur.
Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus
Citator
Cited By
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Bartee v. State, 922 So. 2d 1065 (Fla. 5th DCA 2006)…hose in the present case, bear the hallmarks of excited utterances or spontaneous statements, and are admitted into evidence under those exceptions to the hearsay rule, the statements are not necessarily testimonial in nature. See Williams v. State, 909 So. 2d 599 (Fla. 5th DCA), review denied, 919 So. 2d 437 (Fla.2005); Towbridge v. State, 898 So. 2d 1205 (Fla. 3d DCA 2005); Herrera-Vega. See also U.S. v. Todd, 2005 WL 2673506 (11th Cir. Oct.20, 2005). The statements here, for example, were not made in respo…
Authorities Cited
- Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (U.S. 2004)
- Frumenti v. State, 885 So. 2d 924 (Fla. 5th DCA 2004)
- Towbridge v. State, 898 So. 2d 1205 (Fla. 3d DCA 2005)