Christopher Dean v. State of Florida
Christopher Dean v. State of Florida
Opinion of the Court
This case is before the Court for review of the decision of the Fourth District Court of Appeal in Dean v. State, 199 So.3d 932 (Fla. 4th DCA 2016). In its decision, the district court ruled upon the following question, which it subsequently certified to be of great public importance:
IS MANSLAUGHTER A CATEGORY ONE LESSER - INCLUDED OFFENSE OF SECOND-DEGREE FELONY MURDER?
Id. at 934-36; Dean v. State, 193 So.3d 1108, 1108 (Fla. 4th DCA 2016) (granting motion for certification). For the reasons expressed below, we answer the certified question in the affirmative.
I. BACKGROUND
Following a jury trial in February 2014, Christopher Dean was convicted as charged of second-degree felony murder and burglary. The- trial court designated Dean a prison releasee reoffender (PRR) and sentenced him to life for the murder and 15 years for the burglary. The murder victim in this case,'Eric Flint, committed the burglary along with Dean. Flint was killed by one of the burglary victims during á high-speed ear chase that ensued as Dean and Flint fled from the scene of the burglary. At trial, the State’s case against Dean was based on the following evidence.
Phillondra Thompson and Gregory Mar-low lived in a second-floor apartment just west of 1-95 in Palm Beach County. On January 12, 2005, they came home for lunch and saw an unfamiliar white Nissan Maxima in the parking lot with the engine running arid no one ihside. They discovered the door to their apartment open, so Marlow checked to see if someone was inside, and Thompson went downstairs to call 911. Marlow then went around to the back of the apartment building to see if someone was on their balcony. At that point, Thompson saw Dean coming down the- stairs from the apartment carrying a green plastic bin. Dean put the bin inside the Maximá and quickly drove away. Mar-
Marlow continued to pursue Dean at a high rate of speed, eventually following him onto 1-95. Dean was speeding and weaving in and out of traffic, and Marlow tried to keep up. As Marlow was driving, he called 911, and the operator advised him to stop pm-suing Dean, but he did not. When Dean abruptly pulled off onto the right side of the interstate, Marlow continued following fast behind him. At that point, Marlow saw Flint come through the hedges and run towards the Maxima. Flint also saw Marlow and then he reached for something in his waistband. Believing that Flint was reaching for a gun,. Marlow ducked inside his vehicle, which continued moving forward, striking and killing Flint.
After this evidence was presented to the jury, defense counsel requested that, in addition to the charged offense of second-degree felony murder, the jury be instructed on manslaughter as a lesser included offense. The State opposed the request, arguing that manslaughter was not a lesser included offense of second-degree felony murder. The trial court agreed and denied defense counsel’s request. The jury was then given the standard instruction for second-degree felony murder.
On appeal to the Fourth District, Dean argued that the trial court erred in denying his request for the manslaughter instruction because it is a necessarily lesser included offense of second-degree felony murder and, therefore, the trial court was required to give the instruction. Dean, 199 So.3d at 935. The Fourth District affirmed the trial court’s ruling, citing its decision in Avila v. State, 745 So.2d 983 (Fla. 4th DCA 1999), in which it stated that “ ‘manslaughter is not a lesser-included offense’ of ‘second-degree felony murder.’ ” Id. (quoting Avila, 745 So.2d at 984). The Fourth District concluded that Avila had been correctly decided based on the following reasoning:
Reduced to its essence, manslaughter requires the commission of an act that directly causes the death of another. Second-degree felony murder, on the other hand, requires the commission of an enumerated felony, with the death occurring “during the perpetration of’ the felony, caused by a person not engaged in the perpetration of the felony. Unlike manslaughter, for second-degree felony murder there is no direct casual [sic] connection between the death of the victim and an act of the defendant. Manslaughter is thus not “always subsumed” within second-degree felony murder, because the act that caused death is by definition committed by a person who had nothing to do with the commission of the underlying felony.
Id. (citations omitted). Thereafter, the Fourth District granted Dean’s motion to certify the question of whether manslaughter is a necessarily lesser included offense of second-degree felony murder. Dean, 193 So.3d at 1108.
On appeal to this Court, Dean raises three issues in addition to the certified question: (1) whether the trial court abused its discretion in limiting the defense’s cross-examination of a key witness; (2) whether the trial court properly controlled the content of both the State’s and the defense’s closing arguments; and (3) whether his PRR sentences are supported by the evidence in the record and whether they are unconstitutional under the Sixth Amendment. Below, we address the certified question and whether Dean’s PRR sentences are supported by the record. We
II. CERTIFIED QUESTION
Dean argués that we should answer the certified question in the affirmative because the elements of manslaughter are subsumed within the elements of second-degree felony murder.
The second-degree felony murder statute provides:
When a person is killed in the perpetration of, or in the attempt to perpetrate, any [enumerated felony] by a person other than the person engaged in the perpetration of or in the attempt to perpetrate such felony, the person perpetrating or attempting to perpetrate such felony is guilty of murder in the second degree ....
§ 782.04(3), Fla. Stat. (2004). Pursuant to the statute, to be guilty of second-degree felony murder the following elements must be present: (1) the victim is dead; (2) the defendant was not the person who actually killed the victim, but he or she did commit or did knowingly aid, abet, counsel, hire, or otherwise procure the commission of a felony; (3) the victim’s death was caused during and was the consequence of the commission, or the escape from the immediate scene, of the felony; and (4) the person who actually killed the victim was not involved in the commission of the felony. See Fla. Std. Jury Instr. (Crim.) 7.5.
Manslaughter is defined as:
[t]he killing of a human being by the act, procurement, or culpable negligence of another, without lawful justification according to the provisions of chapter 776 and in cases in which such killing shall not be excusable homicide or murder, according to the provisions of [chapter 782] ....
§ 782.07(1), Fla. Stat. (2004). Based on the statute, the two elements of manslaughter are the unjustified or inexcusable killing of the victim and “a causative link between the death and the act, procurement, or culpable negligence of the defendant.” Tyus v. State, 845 So.2d 318, 321 (Fla. 1st DCA 2003).
“Necessarily lesser included offenses are those offenses in which the statutory elements of the lesser included offense are always subsumed within those of the charged offense.” Walton v. State, 208 So.3d 60, 64 (Fla. 2016) (quoting Sanders v. State, 944 So.2d 203, 206 (Fla. 2006)).
The elements of manslaughter are always subsumed within the elements of second-degree felony murder because both offenses require some action by the defendant that ultimately causes the victim’s death. Under the second-degree felony murder statute, the action by the defendant is the commission of the underlying felony. And the statutory requirement that the victim be killed “in the perpetration of’ the underlying felony creates an element of causation between the defendant’s act of committing the felony and the death of the victim. See Parker v. State, 570 So.2d 1048, 1052 (Fla. 1st DCA 1990) (recognizing there must be a “nexus between the [felony] and the death” to support a conviction for second-degree felony murder); see also Parker v. State, 641 So.2d 369, 376 (Fla. 1994) (explaining that “[t]he purpose of the felony-murder statute ‘is to protect the public from inherently dangerous situations caused by the commission of the felony.’” (quoting State v. Hacker, 510 So.2d 304, 306 (Fla. 4th DCA 1986))).
Accordingly, we answer the certified question in the affirmative and hold' that manslaughter is a necessarily lesser included offense of second-degree felony murder.
III. PRR SENTENCES
We quash the Fourth District’s holding regarding Dean’s PRR sentences and remand for resentencing because his designation as a PRR is not supported by the evidence in the record in this case.
For the reasons expressed above, we answer the certified question-in the affirmative. For the reasons expressed in Justice Polston’s concurring opinion and Justice Quince’s- concurring in result only opinion, we approve the result of the Fourth District’s decision to affirm Dean’s convictions. However, we quash the Fourth District’s holding regarding Dean’s PER sentences and remand for resentenc-ing.
It is so ordered.
. We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(4), Fla. Const.
. Because the certified question is a pure question of law our review is de novo. Haygood v. State, 109 So.3d 735, 739 (Fla. 2013).
. After the jury rendered its verdicts finding Dean guilty of second-degree felony murder and burglary, the trial court immediately proceeded to . sentencing. The State requested that Dean be sentenced as a PRR on both counts, however,' the State did not introduce any evidence to support a finding that Dean committed the crimes in this case within three years of being released from a state correctional facility, See § 775.082(9)(a), Fla. Stat. Instead, the State relied on a copy of its notice of intent to seek a PRR sentence and the sentencing transcript from Dean's first trial in 2008.' The 2008 sentencing transcript reflects that in that proceeding the State introduced certified nopies of DOC records regarding Dean's release date and his latent fingerprints, and that, based on those records, Dean was sentenced as a PRR, However, the actual document evidence supporting Dean’s initial PRR sentences was not presented to the trial court when Dean was sentenced in 2014,
Concurring Opinion
concurring.
I concur with the majority’s opinion in all respects, 'including its decision to approve the Fourth District’s affirmance of Dean’s convictions. I acknowledge that under this Court’s precedent the trial court’s failure to givé a requested jüry instruction on a necessarily lesser included offense one step removed from the charged offense is per se reversible error. See State v. Abreau, 363 So.2d 1063, 1064 (Fla. 1978). However, this rule, and the requirement that a trial'judge always give such a requested instruction, “is bottomed upon a recognition of the jury’s right to exercise its ‘pardon power.’” State v. Wimberly, 498 So.2d 929, 932 (Fla. 1986); see also Abreau, 363 So.2d at 1064 (holding that the failure to instruct on a lesser included offense one step removed “cannot be harmless because it is impossible to determine whether the jury, if given the opportunity, would have ‘pardoned’, the - defendant”). “This ‘pardon power’ allows the jury to acquit a defendant of a greater offense and convict him or her of a lesser one even though the evidence supports both crimes.” Sanders v. State, 946 So.2d 953, 957 (Fla. 2006).
As Justice Canady stated in his dissent in Haygood v. State, 109 So.3d 735, 749 (Fla. 2013) (Canady," J.; dissenting), “[njothing in the Florida Constitution, the Florida Statutes, or the Florida Rules of Criminal Procedure supports our recognition of such a right of áccess to a partial jury nullification.” In Sanders, a majority of this Court called into question the legal foundation of the jury pardon doctrine, recognizing that a jury pardon is “essentially ■ ‘a not guilty verdict rendered contrary to the jaw and evidence’ and .is an aberration.” 946 So.2d at 958 (quoting Willis v. State, 840 So.2d 1135, 1138 (Fla. 4th DCA 2003) (Klein, J., concurring specially) )
As this Court explained in Sanders, “[b]y definition, jury pardons violate the oath jurors must take before trial, as well as the instructions the 'trial court gives thém,” Id. “Jurors'in a criminal trial are required to swear or affirm that they ‘will well and truly try the issues between the State of Florida and the defendant and render a true Verdict according to the law and the evidence.’ ” Haygood, 109 So.3d at 750 (Canady, J., dissenting) (quoting Fla. R. Cfim. P. 3.360). When instructions are given for the charged offense as well as any lesser included offenses, the jury is further-instructed that “.[i]f you return a verdict of guilty, it should be for the highest offense'which has beén proven'beyond a reasonable doubt.” Id. (quoting Fla. Std. Jury Instr. (Crim.) 3.12) (emphasis added).
CANADY and LAWSON, JJ., concur.
Concurring Opinion
concurring in result only.
I agree with the majority’s decision to approve the result of the Fourth District’s decision affirming Dean’s convictions. However, I cannot agree with the majority’s conclusion that manslaughter is a category one lesser included offense 'of second-degree felony murder.
First, the definition of second-degree felony murder provided in the statutes is as follows:
When a human being is killed during the perpetration of, or during the attempt to perpetrate, any [enumerated felony] by a person other than the person engaged in the perpetration of or in the attempt to perpetrate such felony, the person perpetrating or attempting to perpetrate such felony commits murder in the second degree .... ”
§ 782.04(3), Fla. Stat. (2016) (emphasis added). We must be clear on the purpose of the felony murder statute'. As a society, we have decided that the desire to protect the public from the dangers associated with the commission of felony offenses permits the State to consider a defendant to be criminally liable for the acts of others as a consequence of the felony murder rule and the law of principals. See Adams v. State, 341 So.2d 765, 767-68 (Fla. 1976), superseded by statute, State v. Dene, 533 So.2d 265, 267 (Fla. 1988) (noting that the statutes were revised to distinguish between degrees of murder); Pope v. State, 84 Fla. 428, 94 So. 865, 869 (1922) (“ ‘The principle is well established that when several persons combine together to commit an unlawful act, each is criminally respon
To be sure, the facts of this case support the application of the felony murder statute. Dean and Flint were in flight from the burglary they committed when Flint was struck by the burglary victim’s car. The flight from the burglary is part of the res gestae of that felony. See Campbell v. State, 227 So.2d 873, 878 (Fla. 1969); Jefferson v. State, 128 So.2d 132, 137 (Fla. 1961). This is just the sort of behavior the felony murder rule seeks to deter. However, manslaughter by act requires the direct act of the defendant, which in this case did not occur.
In Montgomery, we concluded that manslaughter by act did not require an intent to kill the victim, only the intent to perform the act that led to the victim’s -death; participation in the robbery was not the act that led to the participant’s death in this case. The majority reasons that “[t]he elements of manslaughter are always subsumed within the elements of second-degree felony murder because both offenses require some action by the defendant that ultimately causes the victim’s death.” Majority op. at 423. This reasoning is a misstatement of second-degree felony murder, which requires the action of a third party not engaged in the felony. The majority then reasons that the commission of the underlying felony is the requisite action causing the victim’s death to qualify as manslaughter by act. Such reasoning reads the requirements of the felony murder statute into the manslaughter statute and cannot be supported. To find that manslaughter is a category one lesser included offense, the elements of manslaughter must be present without relying on the language of another statute.
Flint was struck and killed by a car not driven by Dean. Dean did not lure Flint onto 1-95 and place him in the path of the vehicle that struck him, Dean’s high-speed driving did not push another car into a victim, causing his or her death. Dean did not remove a guardrail that would have protected Flint from, injury. There is no action performed by Dean that but for said action Flint would be alive. Dean’s actions did not directly or indirectly cause the death of Eric Flint. Accordingly, the reasoning in Montgomery does not apply.
Second, if manslaughter by act is a nec-. essarily included offense, the .appropriate remedy is to remand for a new trial. As we stated in Montgomery, a “ ‘necessarily lesser included offense’ is ... a lesser offense that'is always included in the major offense. The trial judge has no discretion in whether to instruct the jury on a necessarily lesser included offense. Once the judge determines that the offense is a necessarily lesser included offense, an instruction must be given.”. Montgomery, 39 So.3d at 259 (quoting Wimberly, 498 So.2d at 932) (emphasis added). My colleague argues that there is no inherent error in failure to instruct on an immediate lesser-included offense because there is no right for the jury to exercise its pardon power. Concurring op. at 425 (Polston, J., concurring). This Court has recognized the opposite for as long as there has been a Florida Supreme Court. See, e.g., Brown v. State, 31 Fla. 207, 12 So. 640, 642 (1893) (“The offense of which there has been a conviction is included within or may be carved' out of that major offense charged in the indictment, and the indictment is sufficient to sustain the conviction.,.. And that fact that the evidence is more than sufficient to support the conviction does not render it insufficient to do so, and the prisoner is in nowise hurt by that excess of its probative force which the jury has ignored.”); Hayes v. State, 564 So.2d 161, 163 (Fla. 2d DCA 1990) (“Failure to so instruct on the next immediate lesser-included offense of the crime charged is reversible error because it has the effect of removing from the jury an opportunity to exercise its inherent pardon power.” (citing State v. Abreau, 363 So.2d 1063 (Fla. 1978))); Brown v. State, 206 So.2d 377, 384 (Fla. 1968) (“Necessarily included offenses should always be covered by an instruction, even though the trial judge is satisfied that the major crime charged -has also been proved. If the evidence is sufficient to go to the jury on the major crime then the necessarily included offense -instruction should [b]e given.”); Jimenez v. State, 158 Fla. 719, 30 So.2d 292, 295 (Fla. 1947). To hold otherwise, as the majority currently does, is to recede from centuries of caselaw without an explanation.
Because I would find that one cannot read the requirements of felony murder
. Indeed, the majority’s decision to answer the question in the affirmative belies its decision to affirm Dean’s convictions. This Court has repeatedly held that failure to instruct the jury on a category one lesser included offense is reversible error requiring a new trial. Haygood v. State, 109 So.3d 735, 741-43 (Fla. 2013).
. See § 782.04(3), Fla. Stat (2016).
. A felony that serves as a predicate to finding felony murder is not inherently an act that causes the death of another.
. For example, if Dean engaged in a high-speed chase with Flint as a passenger during the flight from the burglary and a third party, such as the burglary victim in this case, struck the car leading to Flint’s death, a jury could reasonably find either second-degree felony murder or manslaughter by act. The act in this example would be that Dean led a high speed chase, but the fact that Flint’s death was caused by a third parly during the
Concurring in Part
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in answering the certified question in the affirmative by concluding that manslaughter is a lesser included offense of second-degree murder. I dissent, however, from the decision to approve “the result of the Fourth District’s decision to affirm Dean’s convictions.” Majority op. at 425. Under our case law, the trial court’s error in failing to instruct the jury on manslaughter, a category one lesser included offense of second-degree felony murder, is per se reversible. Accordingly, I would quash the Fourth District’s decision in Dean v. State, 199 So.3d 932 (Fla. 4th DCA 2016), and remand for a new trial.
In State v. Montgomery, 39 So.3d 252, 259 (Fla. 2010), this .Court unanimously held that, “[a]t trial, the jury must be instructed on category one lesser included offenses.” See Haygood v. State, 109 So.3d 735, 742 (Fla. 2013). Indeed, Justice Pol-ston’s concurring opinion recognizes this Court’s long-standing precedent that a “trial court’s failure to give a requested jury instruction on a necessarily lesser included offense one step removed from the charged offense is per se reversible error.” Concurring op. at 425 (Polston, J., concurring) (citing State v. Abreau, 363 So.2d 1063, 1064 (Fla. 1978)). As this Court explained in Abreau:
Only the failure to instruct on the next immediate lesser-included offense (one step removed) constitutes error that is per se reversible. Where the' omitted instruction relates to an offense two or more steps removed, ... reviewing courts may properly find such error to be harmless.
363 So.2d at 1064. Therefore, because the majority answers thé certified question in the affirmative, a harmless error analysis is unnecessary, and our precedent compels us to reverse Dean’s conviction and remand for a new trial. See Haygood, 109 So.3d at 743; Montgomery, 39 So.3d at 260.
Notwithstanding our precedent directing that this error is per se reversible, Justice Lawson would now adopt Justice Canady’s dissenting opinion in Haygood, which Justice Polston joined, concluding that the unreasonableness of Florida’s jury pardon power directs that harmless error is the proper analysis in this context. 109 So.3d at 746 (Canady, J., dissenting). Justice Quince, who concurs in the result of affirming the conviction because she would not find manslaughter to be a lesser included offense, recognizes that “if manslaughter by act is a necessarily included offense, the appropriate remedy is to remand for a new trial” based on well-established and recently affirmed precedent. See concurring in result only op. at 428 (Quince, J., concurring in result only).
Further, not only is the error per se reversible but, under the facts of this case, it is not “beyond any doubt that no rational juror, acting on the basis of the facts and a correct understanding of the law, could determine the defendant to be guilty of the lesser offense and innocent of the charged offense.” Haygood, 109 So.3d at 746 (Cana
So, Dean wins a pyrrhic victory. He receives a favorable answer on manslaughter being a lesser included offense of second-degree felony murder, but he does not receive a new trial with a proper jury instruction on the lesser included offense of manslaughter. In my view, there would be a real possibility that the jury would have found him guilty of the lesser included offense, not as a result of the jurors disregarding their oath, but because the facts of this case could fit into manslaughter. Accordingly, I dissent from the decision to affirm Dean’s convictions. I concur, however, that Dean is entitled to resen-tencing after striking the PRR sentence.
Reference
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