WALTER BERNARD CAMPBELL, APPELLANT,
v.
THE STATE OF FLORIDA, APPELLEE
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Walter Bernard Campbell appeals his violent career criminal (VCC) sentence imposed after conviction for attempted robbery and burglary with assault and battery. The court reversed the VCC adjudication and remanded for resentencing because the State's sole evidence of a qualifying prior release date—an unauthenticated computer printout from the Florida Department of Corrections website—was inadmissible hearsay.
The court held that the hearsay objection to the printout should have been sustained. Computer printouts are admissible only if a custodian or qualified witness testifies as to their manner of preparation, reliability, and trustworthiness, or if they are properly certified as official public records. The unauthenticated printout was insufficient to support the VCC adjudication.
[1] A computer printout from a government website is inadmissible hearsay unless accompanied by testimony from a custodian or qualified witness regarding its preparation, rel…
[2] A computer printout may be admissible as a self-authenticating public record if accompanied by a certification from the custodian or authorized person stating the copy is…
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Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence“Computer printouts, like business records, are admissible if the custodian or other qualified witness is available to testify as to manner of preparation, reliability and trustworthiness of the product.”
Establishes the foundational requirement for admitting computer printouts as evidence
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Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligenceCampbell was convicted of attempted robbery and burglary with an assault and battery. At sentencing, the State sought to classify him as a VCC, which …
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COPE, C.J.
Walter Bernard Campbell appeals the sentence imposed on him as a violent career criminal (“VCC”). We remand for a new sentencing proceeding.
Defendant-appellant Campbell was convicted of attempted robbery and burglary with an assault and battery. At sentencing the State sought to have the defendant classified as a VCC. See § 775.084(l)(d), Fla. Stat. (2000).1 The State had to establish (among other things) that the primary felony offense for which the defendant is to be sentenced was committed within five years after the defendant’s release from prison. See id. § 775.084(l)(d)3.a.
At the sentencing hearing, the State offered a paper printout of several pages on the Florida Department of Corrections’ website relating to the defendant. The website entry showed the defendant to be “out of custody” on July 9,1999, which was within five years of the current offense. The State maintained that this “out of custody” entry was the defendant’s release date from prison.
The defense objected that the printout was hearsay and not self-authenticating. The court overruled the objection and adjudicated the defendant to be a VCC. The printout from the website was the sole factual basis for determining that the defendant committed his current offense within five years of his release from prison. The defendant has appealed.
We conclude that the hearsay objection to the printout should have been sustained. The First District has said:
“Computer printouts, like business records, are admissible if the custodian or other qualified witness is available to testify as to manner of preparation, reliability and trustworthiness of the product.” Cofield v. State, 474 So. 2d 849, 851 (Fla. 1st DCA 1985)(adopting rale as stated in Pickrell v. State, 301 So. 2d 473, 474 (Fla. 2d DCA 1974)); see Desue v. State, 908 So. 2d 1116 (Fla. 1st DCA 2005). In appropriate circumstances, a printout may also be admissible as a properly certified copy of an official public record. See § 90.902(4), Fla. Stat. (2003); Charles W. Ehrhardt, Florida Evidence § 902.5, at 945 (2004 ed.) (explaining that to be self-authenticating under section 90.902(4), “the custodian of the document, or other person authorized by statute to make a certification, must certify that the copy is correct and that the person has custody of the original.... The custodian’s signature must follow the statement”). Compare King v. State, 590 So. 2d 1032, 1033 (Fla. 1st DCA 1991)(holding probation officer’s testimony regarding defendant’s release date, based on an unauthenticated Department of Corrections computer printout, was inadmissible hearsay, and that “[wjithout the improperly admitted testimony, the evidence is legally insufficient to support the trial court’s finding that appellant is an habitual felony offender”).
Gray v. State, 910 So. 2d 867, 869 (Fla. 1st DCA 2005) (emphasis in original; footnote omitted).2 See also Glover v. State, 871 So. 2d 1025, 1025-26 (Fla. 1st DCA 2004); King v. State, 590 So. 2d 1032, 1033 (Fla. 1st DCA 1991); Charles W. Ehrhardt, Florida Evidence § 803.6b, at 911-13 (2006).
While we must reverse the VCC adjudication and remand for resentencing, nothing prevents the State on remand from again seeking to establish that the defendant qualifies as a VCC.3 The cases relied on by the State are not on point.
Since there must be further proceedings on remand, we point out that a VCC adjudication is not permissible for count 1, the offense of attempted robbery. See Walters v. State 790 So. 2d 483, 484-85, (Fla. 5th DCA 2001); Landreth v. State, 739 So. 2d 1198 (Fla. 2d DCA 1999). For the stated reasons, we reverse the sentencing order and remand for a new sentencing hearing at which the trial court may again consider whether to sentence the defendant as a VCC on count 2, burglary with an assault or battery.
. The crime date was October 16, 2000.
. The Fourth District has certified, direct conflict with Gray on an issue not involved here, the sufficiency of a certification issued by the Florida Department of Corrections. See Yisrael v. State, 938 So. 2d 546, 550 (Fla. 4th DCA 2006)(en banc).
. We decline to address the decisional conflict mentioned in footnote 2.
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Williams v. Keith Robinson Oken, M.D., 62 So. 3d 1129 (Fla. 2011)…iss. Id. On January 13, 2010, Williams filed a notice to invoke discretionary review jurisdiction in this Court, alleging express and direct conflict between the First District’s decision below and the district court decisions in Campbell v. State, 949 So. 2d 1093 (Fla. 3d DCA 2007), Fassy v. Crowley, 884 So. 2d 359 (Fla. 2d DCA 2004), St. Mary’s, 785 So. 2d 1261, Fine v. Carney Bank of Broward County, 508 So. 2d 558 (Fla. 4th DCA 1987), and Finchum v. Vogel, 194 So. 2d 49 (Fla. 4th DCA 1966). This Court gran…
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Brown v. State, 113 So. 3d 134 (Fla. 1st DCA 2013)…ible if the custodian or other qualified witness is available to testify as to manner of preparation, reliability and trustworthiness of the product.” Id. & n. 1 (quoting Pickrell v. State, 301 So. 2d 473, 474 (Fla. 2d DCA 1974)); Campbell v. State, 949 So. 2d 1093, 1094 (Fla. 3d DCA 2007); Cofield v. State, 474 So. 2d 849, 851 (Fla. 1st DCA 1985). We concluded in Gray that the State failed to establish a proper predicate to admit this statement into evidence under any hearsay exception. The purported DOC docu…
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Whitley v. State, 1 So. 3d 414 (Fla. 1st DCA 2009)…the trial court erred in admitting the printout from the Department of Corrections’ website under the business record exception to the rule against hearsay. Our decision to reverse is supported by the Third District’s opinion in Campbell v. State, 949 So. 2d 1093 (Fla. 3d DCA 2007), which addressed nearly the exact argument Appellant forwards here. The Campbell court determined that a printout from the Department of Corrections’ website indicating the defendant’s release date from prison was not self-authent…
Authorities Cited
- Mitchell v. State, 938 So. 2d 546 (Fla. 4th DCA 2006)
- Gray v. State, 910 So. 2d 867 (Fla. 1st DCA 2005)
- Stoddard Pickrell v. State, 301 So. 2d 473 (Fla. 2d DCA 1974)
- King v. State, 590 So. 2d 1032 (Fla. 1st DCA 1991)
- Cofield v. State, 474 So. 2d 849 (Fla. 1st DCA 1985)
- Julian v. Desue, IV, 908 So. 2d 1116 (Fla. 1st DCA 2005)
- Glover v. State, 871 So. 2d 1025 (Fla. 1st DCA 2004)
- Walters v. State, 790 So. 2d 483 (Fla. 5th DCA 2001)
- Landreth v. State, 739 So. 2d 1198 (Fla. 2d DCA 1999)