Berry v. State

652 So. 2d 836, 1994 WL 706304
CourtDistrict Court of Appeal of Florida
DecidedMarch 8, 1995
Docket93-1817
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 652 So. 2d 836 (Berry v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court of Appeal of Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Berry v. State, 652 So. 2d 836, 1994 WL 706304 (Fla. Ct. App. 1995).

Opinion

652 So.2d 836 (1994)

Germaine BERRY, Appellant,
v.
STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. 93-1817.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fourth District.

December 21, 1994.
Opinion Granting Rehearing March 8, 1995.

*837 Richard L. Jorandby, Public Defender, and Cherry Grant and Frantz Vitel, Asst. Public Defenders, West Palm Beach, for appellant.

Robert A. Butterworth, Atty. Gen., Tallahassee, and Joan L. Greenberg, Asst. Atty. Gen., West Palm Beach, for appellee.

FARMER, Judge.

When the legislature enacts a statute that is clear and unambiguous, there is still the problem of how this clear statute will be applied to varying factual situations. The criminal kidnapping statute is a case in point. See § 787.01(1)(a), Fla. Stat. (1993).[1] The words are plain, and the meaning is clear. It is a first degree felony to use force to confine, abduct or imprison someone against their will in order to effectuate certain crimes. In terms of judging, the courts are not then construing the statute so much as they are deciding how the statute may be used in shifting factual contexts. Such a decision is Faison v. State, 426 So.2d 963 (Fla. 1983).

There the defendant was convicted of two counts of sexual battery, two counts of kidnapping and one count of burglary. The convictions arose from separate attacks on two women, one in an office and the other in her home. In the office attack, he dragged the victim from her desk in front of a large window to the rear of the office and there assaulted her; afterwards, he forced her into the restroom and assaulted her again. In the later home incident, he attacked the woman in her kitchen and dragged her down a hallway into a bedroom where he assaulted her. The district court affirmed the kidnapping convictions, and its decision was approved by the supreme court.

Starting with the statute itself, the court said that the crime of kidnapping means "to forcibly, secretly, or by threat confine, abduct, or imprison another person against his will with the intent to commit or facilitate the commission of any felony." The court had previously construed this text in Mobley v. State, 409 So.2d 1031 (Fla. 1982), where it had said: "[i]f construed literally this subsection would apply to any criminal transaction which inherently involves the unlawful confinement of another person, such as robbery or sexual battery." 409 So.2d at 1034. The Mobley court had explained that the kidnapping statute should not be applied to confinements *838 that were merely incidental during the commission of another crime; the confinement must have independent significance in order to support such a conviction. Thus in Mobley the court had held that the statute applied to the confinement of guards and a visiting lawyer in a prison cell during an attempted escape from prison.

In Faison, the supreme court faced the argument that the kidnappings were "merely incidental to and were not materially different from the detention necessarily involved in the course of the sexual batteries." Id. To deal with that contention the court turned to Harkins v. State, 380 So.2d 524 (Fla. 5th DCA 1980), where the fifth district confronted the same argument in a case involving sexual battery and kidnapping convictions. Justice McDonald echoed Mobley when he noted that the fifth district had itself reasoned in Harkins that if the kidnapping statute were literally applied "it would convert every first-degree robbery and every forcible rape into two life felonies." Faison, 426 So.2d at 965. To eliminate that unintended effect, Faison adopted the same test used in Harkins, namely that the kidnapping statute does not include movement or confinement that is "inconsequential or inherent in the nature of the felony." Faison, 426 So.2d at 966; Harkins, 380 So.2d at 528.

The problem with this "test" is that it does not assist judges in determining just which confinements are "inconsequential or inherent in the nature of the felony," especially when the felony is robbery or sexual battery — both of which, as the supreme court itself has twice observed, involve some confinement. For the answer to that judicial conundrum, one can turn only to the supreme court's frequent cases on the subject.

Where the charge is kidnapping, one must first ask whether the facts show conduct that can reasonably be described as "confining, abducting or imprisoning."[2] In this case, the facts are that defendant and two other persons inveigled their way into the apartment of one Salako where they pulled out weapons and proceeded to rob him. A visiting friend was tied up with phone cord and left where he was found in the apartment. After they completed the robbery, they also tied up Salako and left him pretty much where they had found him. Salako freed himself almost immediately after they had departed and summoned the police. The whole episode was over within less than 30 minutes.

To us, these facts could not possibly constitute either abducting or imprisoning. And so the question is whether they amount to that kind of confinement embraced by the kidnapping statute. No one would dispute that the act of tying up someone entails to some degree the confinement of the one tied up. Hence, there is a logical foundation for the homily that "if you tie 'em up you've kidnapped 'em." It appears, however, that the supreme court itself has bestowed its nihil obstat on this homespun wisdom.

In Walker v. State, 604 So.2d 475 (Fla. 1992), the robber of a convenience store ordered all of the occupants to go to the rear of the store and lie down on the floor. Some moved 30-40 feet, while one moved 10 feet. At trial the robber testified that he ordered the occupants around to facilitate his escape and reduce the risk of getting caught. The supreme court ruled that these movements were too slight, that they were inconsequential and merely incidental to the robberies to support a conviction for kidnapping. In reaching its decision, the court considered *839 Kirtsey v. State, 511 So.2d 744 (Fla. 5th DCA 1987), because of direct conflict with the district court decision in Walker.

In Kirtsey, the robbers of a restaurant had tied up one employee while the other opened the safe. The movement and confinement of the employees was limited to the interior of the restaurant. The district court in Kirtsey held that the movements and confinement were too slight to support the conviction. In comparing Walker with Kirtsey the court said: "[a]t least with respect to the employee who was not tied up, the pertinent facts of Kirtsey are virtually the same as those in [Walker]." [e.s.] Walker, 604 So.2d at 477. Continuing, the court said:

"We do not believe that the facts of this case fulfill the first prong of the Faison analysis. The limited movement and confinement of the four occupants within the interior of the store were not significant. See Jackson v. State, 436 So.2d 1101 (Fla. 4th DCA 1983). Unlike in Faison the victims were not dragged from room to room. They were not bound and blindfolded for half an hour as in Marsh v. State, 546 So.2d 33 (Fla. 3d DCA 1989). They were not barricaded inside the bathroom like in Johnson v. State, 509 So.2d 1237 (Fla. 4th DCA 1987), nor were they taken out of the store and put in the restroom located in the rear as in Ferguson [v. State, 533 So.2d 763 (Fla. 1988)].

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Related

Miller v. State
124 So. 3d 395 (District Court of Appeal of Florida, 2013)
Conner v. State
19 So. 3d 1117 (District Court of Appeal of Florida, 2009)
Berry v. State
668 So. 2d 967 (Supreme Court of Florida, 1996)
Morgan v. State
662 So. 2d 1392 (District Court of Appeal of Florida, 1995)

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Bluebook (online)
652 So. 2d 836, 1994 WL 706304, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/berry-v-state-fladistctapp-1995.