EDWARD REYNOLDS
v.
STATE OF FLORIDA
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A trial court does not abuse its discretion in revoking probation based on a finding of domestic battery when hearsay evidence is corroborated by the trial court's observation of the victim's demeanor, photographs of the injury, and the totality of circumstances, even absent direct non-hearsay evidence identifying the batterer. A probationer may be found to have resisted arrest without violence under section 843.02 when the probationer refuses to comply promptly with lawful police commands, acts aggressively and confrontationally, and engages in threatening behavior toward officers.
[1] In violation of probation proceedings, hearsay evidence is admissible under relaxed evidentiary standards, but a probation revocation cannot be based solely upon hearsay;…
[2] Whether non-hearsay evidence is sufficient to corroborate a hearsay allegation of battery in a probation revocation proceeding depends upon the unique facts and circumsta…
Previewing 2 of 10 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“While hearsay evidence may be considered, Florida law requires admissible evidence to support or corroborate a finding that a defendant violated probation.”
Establishes that although hearsay is admissible in violation of probation hearings, some non-hearsay corroborating evidence is required to support a revocation finding.
Previewing 1 of 4 key quotes on this case — the court’s exact language, pinpointed for members.
Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligenceReynolds was serving a thirteen-year probation sentence for prior convictions when deputies responded to a 911 call reporting that his adult daughter …
The full statement of facts, procedural history, and disposition for this case are member content.
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IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA
FIFTH DISTRICT
NOT FINAL UNTIL TIME EXPIRES TO
FILE MOTION FOR REHEARING AND
DISPOSITION THEREOF IF FILED
EDWARD REYNOLDS,
Appellant,
v. Case No. 5D17-3820
STATE OF FLORIDA,
Appellee.
________________________________/
Opinion filed October 30, 2019
Appeal from the Circuit Court for Brevard County, Nancy Maloney, Judge.
W. Charles Fletcher, of Law Office
of W. Charles Fletcher, P.A., Jacksonville, for Appellant.
Ashley Moody, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Deborah
A.
Chance, Assistant Attorney General, Daytona Beach, for Appellee.
PER CURIAM.
We affirm the order finding Appellant, Edward Reynolds, in violation of his probation for committing the new law violations of domestic battery based upon our supreme court’s decision in Russell v. State, 982 So. 2d 642, 646–48 (Fla. 2008), and for resisting an officer without violence, e.g., N.H. v. State, 890 So. 2d 514, 516–17 (Fla. 3d
However, we write to observe three points in response to the dissent. First, some of the arguments relied on by the dissent were either not preserved or were not raised on appeal. For instance, Appellant did not argue below that the officer’s observation of the victim’s wound was insufficient corroboration because of the temporal break between the battery and observation by law enforcement. Likewise, Appellant did not argue below or in his initial brief that the State was required to present non-hearsay evidence to directly establish the identity of the batterer. Rather, Appellant argued below that there was no direct evidence that a battery occurred at all, implying that the victim might have received the laceration from some conduct other than a battery. Second, while the officers in this case did not arrive at the scene in temporal proximity to the battery, in our view, this goes to the weight of the evidence, not to its sufficiency to corroborate the hearsay evidence presented at a violation of probation hearing. To that end, we observe that the trial court made specific findings regarding
1 “[Section 843.02] is intended to apply to any situation where a person willfully interferes with the lawful activities of the police. Nothing indicates that it applies only when police are arresting a suspect[.]” N.H., 890 So. 2d at 516 (citations omitted); cf. J.M. v. State, 960 So. 2d 813, 815 (Fla. 3d DCA 2007) (“[I]naction can constitute interference under section 843.02.” (citation omitted)); Francis v. State, 736 So. 2d 97, 99 (Fla. 4th DCA 1999) (“The test under section 843.02 is not whether [the officer] ultimately was able to carry out the execution of his legal duties, but rather, whether [defendant] resisted his efforts in doing so.”; holding that defendant violated section 843.02 as he told police, who came to defendant’s home in response to 911 call regarding defendant’s stepson, that “everything was fine” and physically blocked officer’s path when he went over to investigate condition of stepson).
2 The officer’s interview with the victim was recorded and played for the trial court. The trial court also heard a recording of the victim’s daughter, who told officers that Appellant hit the victim two weeks earlier.
At the conclusion of the hearing, and after receiving live testimony, a partial recording of the actual arrest, and the recorded interviews with the victim and her daughter, the trial court found, in part, that:
. . . .
[Appellant’s] actions were aggressive and confrontational. And that, . . . combined with not responding immediately to law enforcement’s commands makes all four points of what the State has to prove in the resisting arrest.
. . . .
And I do find obstruction, not with violence, without violence . . . .
Based on our record, we simply cannot say that the trial court abused its discretion in finding that Appellant violated his probation by committing two new law violations.
AFFIRMED.
EISNAUGLE and SASSO, JJ., concur. EDWARDS, J., dissents with opinion.
6
CASE NO. 5D17-3820
EDWARDS, J., dissenting. Appellant, Edward Reynolds, was found to have violated his probation by committing two new law violations, namely domestic battery and resisting arrest without violence.3 The trial court revoked Appellant’s probation and sentenced him to serve five years in prison. I disagree with my colleagues’ decision to affirm and submit that the violation of probation order and resulting sentence should be reversed and remanded for a second revocation hearing for two reasons. First, the trial court erred when it relied completely and only upon stale hearsay evidence to solve the “whodunit” mystery in the domestic battery portion of the underlying violation of probation proceeding. Second, the trial court also erred in finding that Appellant resisted arrest without violence, as there was no evidence that Appellant did anything other than exit his vehicle slowly, cuss at the arresting officers, loudly beg for relief regarding the extreme discomfort a secured handcuff caused to his surgically repaired wrist, and thrash around a bit in the patrol car after being arrested. For the reasons which are explained in further detail below, I respectfully dissent. Background Facts
In 2013, Appellant pled no contest to two counts of aggravated battery upon a law enforcement officer and one count of leaving the scene of a crash with property damage, resulting in a sentence that included thirteen years of probation, which he was serving at the time of the incident described below. He had purposefully plowed his car into two police vehicles, making him unpopular with local law enforcement.
3 Both charges were ultimately nolle prossed by the State.
On May 28, 2017, Brevard County Deputy Sheriff Daugirda and his field training officer responded to a 911 call advising that Jessica had been elbowed in the mouth, not by Appellant, but by her husband, Robert Reynolds. That 911 call resulted in dispatching the deputies to respond to an address on Pine Street in Merritt Island; however, the deputies were unable to locate the dispatched address. By cross-referencing Jessica’s name in one or more databases, the deputies identified a different address and drove more than ten miles to Appellant’s house on North Road in Cocoa, Florida. They hoped their search would lead them to the supposed victim, Jessica. The deputies parked their marked patrol vehicle near the road, between Appellant’s and his next-door neighbor’s property. The deputies entered Appellant’s property on foot without either a search or arrest warrant.4 After passing through a gated entrance, the deputies approached Appellant’s house where they encountered Jessica. She denied calling 911 and also denied that a battery, the underlying reason for the 911 call, had occurred. Jessica told the deputies that perhaps her probation officer had placed
4 Surprisingly, the trial court in the instant case announced that police do not need warrants or the owner’s consent to enter property as long as they are investigating a crime.
During their discussion, Jessica showed Deputy Daugirda a small, healing laceration inside her mouth. The deputy testified that it did not appear to be a fresh injury. Jessica told him that it was one week old and showed him a photograph on her phone that she said was taken days earlier of the same laceration. Deputy Daugirda took photographs of her current injury and a photograph of the older photo on her phone. He concluded and subsequently testified that they were photos of the same injury on Jessica, but taken on different dates.
It quickly became apparent that the deputies were no longer responding to nor investigating the subject matter of an emergency 911 call. According to admittedly hearsay evidence, Jessica told the deputies that her father, Appellant, had hit her in the mouth a week earlier, causing the photographed laceration. Jessica advised the deputies that she told her probation officer two weeks earlier that her father had yelled at her, but she did not say anything about him striking her. Additional hearsay evidence was offered and attributed to Jessica’s daughter who told the deputies that Appellant had hit Jessica in the mouth two weeks earlier, rather than one week as Jessica claimed. Neither Jessica
5 Appellant proffered that Jessica was on drug offender probation; however, the State’s objection—that it was improper character evidence—was sustained. The fact that she was on drug offender probation was independently relevant based on Appellant’s testimony that he told her she could not stay in his house because she was dealing drugs.
With regard to the domestic battery of Jessica, there was no dispute that somebody had hit her in the mouth a week or two before the deputies interviewed her. The only mystery to be solved here was, “whodunit?” Was it her husband, as reported to the 911 dispatcher? Or was it her father, Appellant, as Jessica asserted? Each man was accused only in hearsay statements, and the trial court relied purely on hearsay to
6 Remarkably, when announcing its ruling, the trial court stated that it placed great weight on Jessica’s “testimony,” despite the fact that she never testified in court or by deposition.
7 Appellant also proffered that Jessica was further motivated to have him jailed so that she could steal and sell equipment located in his garage. According to counsels’ comments, made during the sentencing phase, while Appellant was in jail awaiting his violation of probation hearing, Jessica was arrested and convicted of doing exactly that.
To establish a violation of probation, “the [S]tate must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that a probationer willfully violated a substantial condition of probation.” Johnson v. State, 880 So. 2d 749, 750 (Fla. 5th DCA 2004) (citing Van Wagner v. State, 677 So. 2d 314, 316 (Fla. 1st DCA 1996)). A reviewing court must determine “whether the trial court’s finding of a willful and substantial violation of probation is supported by competent[,] substantial evidence.” Knight v. State, 187 So. 3d 307, 310 (Fla. 5th DCA 2016) (citing Savage v. State, 120 So. 3d 619, 621 (Fla. 2d DCA 2013)). If it is thusly supported, then the standard of review is whether the trial court abused its discretion in finding that a defendant violated probation; however, it is error to revoke a defendant’s probation absent competent, substantial evidence. Gauthier v. State, 949 So. 2d 326, 326-27 (Fla. 5th DCA 2007). The Florida Supreme Court has defined competent, substantial evidence as “such evidence as will establish a substantial basis of fact from which the fact at issue [here, who struck Jessica] can be reasonably inferred.” De Groot v. Sheffield, 95 So. 2d 912, 916 (Fla. 1957). “Competency of evidence refers to its admissibility under legal rules of evidence.” Lonergan v. Estate of Budahazi, 669 So. 2d 1062, 1064 (Fla. 5th DCA 1996) (quoting Dunn v. State, 454 So. 2d 641, 649 n.11 (Fla. 5th DCA 1984) (Cowart, J., concurring specially)). “Whether evidence is competent, nonhearsay evidence is a legal
Id. at 647. It is the duty of the appellate court, not to reweigh the evidence, but to ensure that the trial court gave proper consideration to “the reliability of the available evidence, and the totality of the evidence under the circumstances.” Id. In Russell, the victim, the defendant’s girlfriend, called police and told them when they arrived ten minutes later, that she was pregnant, and that Russell had hit her on the neck. Id. at 644. The responding deputy testified that upon his arrival at the gas station where the battery occurred, the girlfriend appeared to be nervous and scared. Id. He saw a red mark on the back of the girlfriend’s neck consistent with her story. Id. After being read his Miranda rights, Russell admitted that he knew his girlfriend was pregnant, but denied the baby was his. “Russell also told the detective that he does not hit the victim, ‘he just roughs her up.’” Id. At his revocation hearing, Russell testified about his failure to make reports or payments, but invoked his Fifth Amendment right and refused to testify at all about the battery. Id. Given the totality of those facts, the conclusion that Russell committed the battery is easily and reliably reached even though there was no non-hearsay evidence on that point because the victim did not testify. Another case factually similar to Russell in which the victim promptly called police, was visibly upset when police arrived on the crime scene, had visible fresh injuries, and
8 Consider the importance of temporal proximity to the following hearsay exceptions found in the noted subsections of section 90.803, Florida Statutes (2017): “(1) Spontaneous statement” (must have been made while the declarant was perceiving the event or condition, or immediately thereafter), “(2) Excited utterance (must have been made while the declarant was under the stress of excitement caused by the event or condition),” and “(3) [Statements about the declarant’s] [t]hen-existing mental, emotional, or physical condition.” While neither Russell nor Morris explicitly rely upon any of these exceptions, it is obvious that the victims’ hearsay statements in those cases do fit nicely, if not precisely, into one or more of those exceptions.
Resisting Arrest Without Violence
Appellant’s probation revocation was based in part upon the trial court’s finding that Appellant resisted, without violence, the warrantless arrest carried out by the Brevard County deputies during their equally warrantless entry into his home. Appellant argues
9 Below, Appellant argued that because the warrantless search and arrest were themselves unlawful, he could not be found to have resisted arrest because the deputies were not engaged in carrying out their lawful duties. See Nieves v. State, 77 So. 3d 745, 748 (Fla. 2d DCA 2019). However, because Appellant did not brief that issue on appeal, it is deemed to have been abandoned.
10 At the hearing, Appellant testified that he is one hundred percent disabled and has had eight back surgeries, three knee surgeries, and seven hand surgeries.
11 Appellant’s girlfriend testified that she locked the gate out of habit; they did not immediately realize deputies were on the property as the squad car was parked near the neighbor’s lot.
If only hearsay evidence is used to prove that a defendant violated probation, it must be overturned and the case should be remanded for a second revocation hearing. See Boyd v. State, 1 So. 3d 1186, 1188 (Fla. 2d DCA 2009) (reversing violation of probation where only evidence of violation was in form of hearsay testimony and noting “that double jeopardy does not preclude a second revocation hearing based on the filing of a new affidavit alleging the same violation”); Purvis v. State, 420 So. 2d 389, 389 (Fla. 5th DCA 1982) (“A reversal of a probation revocation hearing because only hearsay evidence has been presented does not present constitutional double jeopardy problems.”) Likewise, if insufficient evidence is offered to prove a “new law” violation of probation, the State may have a second chance. See Scott v. State, 937 So. 2d 746, 749 (Fla. 4th DCA 2006) (“Unlike the reversal of a criminal conviction for insufficient evidence, the reversal of a violation of probation conviction for insufficient evidence does not ‘bar a second revocation hearing based on the filing of a new affidavit alleging the same violations.’” (quoting Reeves v. State, 366 So. 2d 1229, 1230 n.2 (Fla. 2d DCA 1979))).
17
Accordingly, I would reverse and remand the order of revocation and the related sentence. Should the State so desire, it may seek a second revocation hearing by following the procedures outlined above.
Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus
Citator
Authorities Cited (23 total)
- de Groot v. Sheffield, 95 So. 2d 912 (Fla. 1957)
- VAN Wagner v. State, 677 So. 2d 314 (Fla. 1st DCA 1996)
- Russell v. State, 982 So. 2d 642 (Fla. 2008)
- Panci v. United States, 256 F.2d 308 (5th Cir. 1958)
- Dunn v. State, 454 So. 2d 641 (Fla. 5th DCA 1984)
- Morris v. State, 727 So. 2d 975 (Fla. 5th DCA 1999)
- Lonergan v. Est. OF Ethel L. Budahazi, 669 So. 2d 1062 (Fla. 5th DCA 1996)
- Francis v. State, 736 So. 2d 97 (Fla. 4th DCA 1999)
- Reeves v. State, 366 So. 2d 1229 (Fla. 2d DCA 1979)
- Purvis v. State, 420 So. 2d 389 (Fla. 5th DCA 1982)