LAWRENCE C. PERMENTER, APPELLANT,
v.
STATE OF FLORIDA, APPELLEE

Fla. 4th DCA | 2008-04-16
No. 4D07-2373
WARNER and GROSS, JJ., concur.
978 So. 2d 277 Florida District Court of Appeal, Fourth District (2008) Positive Treatment
Cited by 8 cases

AI-generated. These summaries, headnotes, and key points are machine-generated and may contain errors or omissions. Always verify against the full opinion text below. Not legal advice.


Holding

An erroneous jury instruction on self-defense, even if it involves an affirmative defense, does not constitute fundamental error if it does not deprive the defendant of a fair trial.


Headnotes

[1] An erroneous jury instruction on an affirmative defense constitutes fundamental error only if it deprives the defendant of a fair trial.

[2] A jury instruction on the forcible felony exception to self-defense is generally not warranted when the defendant is charged with a single offense.

Previewing 2 of 4 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

Facts & Procedural History

The defendant was charged with second-degree murder and claimed self-defense. The jury received an erroneous instruction regarding the forcible felony…

The full statement of facts, procedural history, and disposition for this case are member content.

Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence

© FLexlaw, Inc. — AI-generated enrichments are proprietary. All rights reserved.


Opinion of the Court
STONE, J.

STONE, J.

The state charged Permenter with a single count of second-degree murder. Per-menter’s sole defense was that he acted in self-defense. In instructing the jury on self-defense, the trial court read, without objection, the following instruction:

The person is justified in using force likely to cause death or great bodily harm if he reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent or great bodily harm to himself or the imminent commission of aggravated assault [sic] against himself.

However, the use of force likely to cause death or great bodily harm is not justifiable if you find:

Lawrence C. Permenter ... was attempting to commit, committing, or escaping after the commission of aggravated assault....

The jury found Permenter guilty of manslaughter. We previously granted Permenter’s petition alleging ineffective assistance of appellate counsel. See Permenter v. State, 953 So. 2d 647, 648 (Fla. 4th DCA 2007). Permenter now seeks a new trial, claiming fundamental error in the jury instruction. We affirm.

We recognize that the instruction was erroneous because Permenter was charged with a single offense. The relevant jury instruction was recently amended to state that it should be given “only if the defendant is charged with more than one forcible felony.” Fla. Std. Jury Instr. (Crim.) 3.6(f). We conclude, however, that, here, the erroneous instruction did not amount to fundamental error. The supreme court recently decided Martinez v. State, 33 Fla. L. Weekly S125, — So. 2d-, 2008 WL 450327 (Fla. Feb. 21, 2008), which addressed the fundamental error analysis in reviewing erroneous jury instruction. Martinez was charged with attempted first-degree murder, and the trial court gave the forcible felony instruction on self-defense. The supreme court held that “the erroneous forcible-felony instruction did not deprive Martinez of a fair trial and, therefore, fundamental error did not occur.” Id. at *6, at-. Outlining the correct test, the Martinez court explained that “[w]here the challenged jury instruction involves an affirmative defense, as opposed to an element of the crime, fundamental error only occurs where a jury instruction is ‘so flawed as to deprive defendants claiming the defense ... of a fair trial.’ ” Id. at *5, at - (quoting Smith v. State, 521 So. 2d 106, 108 (Fla.1988)).1

Subsequently, this court, in Farmer v. State, 975 So. 2d 1275, 1276 (Fla. 4th DCA 2008), declined to find fundamental error where “[njeither the state nor the defense referred to the erroneous instruction in closing argument.” In Farmer, “[t]he defense attorney referred to another portion of the instruction, involving a defendant who ‘initially provoked the force,’ ” and the prosecutor argued that deadly force was not justified because danger did not appear real. This court failed to find fundamental error, reasoning that the confusing language of the instruction leads “juries [to] use their common experience and apply a street version of self defense.” Id. at 1277 (“With this difficult jury instruction and the failure of either lawyer to mention the erroneous portion of it, we do not find that the instruction deprived Farmer of his defense.”).

Here, similar to the state’s closing in Farmer, the state did not specifically refer to the erroneous portion of the forcible felony exception to self-defense instruction.

Further, here, the state argued that “it wasn’t [the victim] that was otherwise committing an aggravated assault against Lawrence Permenter. It was Lawrence Permenter who committed the act of violence ultimately and deliberately,” and “he deliberately shot and killed [victim] in anger, not a planned murder, but one done in anger and fury and resentment.” In response, the defense attorney focused on Permenter’s inability to retreat, not the erroneous portion of the jury instruction.

Prior to Martinez, we would be obliged to reverse on the authority of this court’s opinions in Fair v. Crosby, 858 So. 2d 1103 (Fla. 4th DCA 2003), and Giles v. State, 831 So. 2d 1263 (Fla. 4th DCA 2002). However, following the reasoning in Farmer and Martinez, the prosecutor in this case “did not exploit the erroneous instruction in closing argument,” and a review of the record fails to show that the erroneous instruction deprived the defendant of a fair trial. Farmer, 975 So. 2d at 1277.

Therefore, the judgment and sentence are affirmed.

WARNER and GROSS, JJ., concur. . Martinez declined to address whether an erroneous forcible felony instruction could ever constitute fundamental error. Id. at *6 n. 5, at-n. 5.


Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus


Citator

Cited By

  • Furney v. State, 115 So. 3d 1095 (Fla. 4th DCA 2013)
    …this court has found that the error is not fundamental where the State did not rely on the erroneous instruction in closing argument, and the defendant was not deprived of a fair trial by the erroneous instruction. Permenter v. State (Permenter II), 978 So. 2d 277 (Fla. 4th DCA 2008); Farmer v. State, 975 So. 2d 1275 (Fla. 4th DCA 2008). In this case, the State’s position is that Furney’s self defense claim was weak, pointing out inconsistencies in his version of the events. It also maintains that self defen…
  • Clark v. State, 23 So. 3d 1213 (Fla. 4th DCA 2009)
    …this court has found that the error is not fundamental where the State did not rely on the erroneous instruction in closing argument, and the defendant was not deprived of a fair trial by the erroneous instruction. Permenter v. State (Permenter II), 978 So. 2d 277 (Fla. 4th DCA 2008); Farmer v. State, 975 So. 2d 1275 (Fla. 4th DCA 2008). In its response to this court’s order to show cause why this petition should not be granted, the State provided record attachments which demonstrate that fundamental error d…
  • McJIMSEY v. State, 31 So. 3d 797 (Fla. 4th DCA 2009)
    …asserted a claim of self-defense. Although the trial court erroneously read the forcible-felony portion of the self-defense instruction to the jury, we determine that such error was not fundamental. See Martinez, 981 So. 2d 449; Permenter v. State, 978 So. 2d 277 (Fla. 4th DCA 2008); Farmer v. State, 975 So. 2d 1275 (Fla. 4th DCA 2008), rev. denied, 988 So. 2d 621 (Fla.2008). A review of the record fails to show that the instruction deprived appellant of a fair trial. Appellant’s claim of self-defense was we…

Previewing 3 of 4 citing cases — full citator treatment, depth of discussion, and citing context are member features.

Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence

Authorities Cited

Full citator, related cases, and AI research tools

Open in FLexlaw