Bishop v. State

46 So. 3d 75, 2010 Fla. App. LEXIS 13422, 2010 WL 3515473
District Court of Appeal of Florida·Decided September 10, 2010·No. No. 5D08-3684·Published·Cited by 10 cases

Opinions

EVANDER, J.

William Bishop timely appeals from judgments and sentences for kidnapping a child under the age of thirteen (13),1 lewd or lascivious molestation,2 lewd or lascivious conduct,3 lewd or lascivious exhibition,4 and use of a child in a sexual performance.5 We conclude that Bishop’s conviction for lewd or lascivious conduct violated his double jeopardy rights. We otherwise affirm.

The eight-year-old victim and her family were vacationing at the Disney Swan Hotel. The victim was playing by herself in a sandy area near the hotel’s pool. She testified that Bishop approached her and told her, “You’re a pretty girl. I have a girl next door to me that looks exactly like you.” Bishop was wearing an Hawaiian shirt and shorts and was holding a hand-held video camera. He briefly pulled his penis out over the top part of his shorts and then asked the victim if she wanted to see the water pipes to the pool’s waterfall. The victim responded “okay” and followed Bishop to a wooded area behind a storage shed. They both sat down and Bishop pointed his video camera at the lower part of the victim’s body as he rubbed her leg and genital area with his hand underneath her swimsuit bottom. The victim testified that the video camera appeared to be on.

The victim’s testimony was generally consistent with that of eleven-year-old David Silva. David and his family (apparently unrelated to the victim’s family) were also vacationing at the Swan Hotel. David testified that before his contact with the victim, Bishop had approached David’s younger sister and asked her if she could point out her parents to him. The younger sister ignored Bishop, but David informed his father of the incident and the two decided to “keep an eye” on Bishop.

Subsequently, David observed Bishop talking to the victim. He followed the two to the wooded area and observed Bishop apparently videotaping his act of rubbing the victim’s genital area. David told his father, who immediately alerted the lifeguards. Michael Charette, one of the lifeguards, saw Bishop on his knee with the victim next to him. The victim ran to her parents and Bishop walked quickly in the opposite direction. Charette observed Bishop adjusting his shorts and pressing buttons on the video camera. While pursuing Bishop, Charette ordered Bishop to stop “messing” with the camera, but Bish[78] op continued to do so. Bishop was subsequently detained by law enforcement officers, identified by the victim, and arrested. No images of Bishop’s molestation of the victim were recovered from the video camera. On the date of the aforedescribed events in question, Bishop was sixty-one years old.

On appeal, Bishop first contends that the trial court erred in denying his motion for judgment of acquittal on the kidnapping charge. Bishop argues that the State’s evidence failed to establish that the victim was forcibly (or by threat of force) confined or restrained by Bishop and, furthermore, that any movement of the victim by Bishop was only incidental to or inherent in the additional charged offenses. We reject these arguments.

The term “kidnapping” means “forcibly, secretly, or by threat confining, abducting, or imprisoning another person against her or his will and without lawful authority” with the intent, inter alia, to commit or facilitate the commission of a felony. § 787.01(l)(a)2., Fla. Stat. (2006) (emphasis added). The term “secretly,” as used in the kidnapping statute, means that the abduction or confinement is intended by the defendant to isolate or insulate the intended victim from meaningful contact or meaningful communication with the public. Robinson v. State, 462 So.2d 471, 476 (Fla. 1st DCA 1984). It is not necessary that the movement of the victim be by force or threat of force. Id. Here, the State’s evidence was sufficient to establish that Bishop secretly abducted or confined the victim. He led the child to a secluded location, out of the view of those persons in or near the hotel’s pool, so as to isolate her from meaningful contact with the public. When, as in the present case, the victim is under the age of thirteen, the “against her or his will” element is met if the confinement is without the consent of the child’s parent or legal guardian. § 787.01(l)(b), Fla. Stat. (2006). Here, the victim’s father testified that Bishop did not have his permission to take his daughter.

Bishop’s contention that the evidence was insufficient to support a kidnapping conviction, pursuant to Faison v. State, 426 So.2d 963 (Fla.1983), also fails. In Faison, the Florida Supreme Court adopted a three-prong test to determine whether movement or confinement during the commission of another felony is sufficient to support an additional conviction for kidnapping. For a kidnapping conviction to stand, the resulting movement or confinement: 1) must not be slight, inconsequential, and merely incidental to the other offense; 2) must not be of the kind inherent in the nature of the other offense; and 3) must have some significance independent of the other offense in that it makes the other offense substantially easier to commit or substantially lessens the risk of detection. Id. at 965. In the instant case, the State’s evidence satisfied the requirements set forth in Faison. Bishop’s luring of the child away from a busy hotel pool area to a secluded wooded area behind a storage shed was not slight or inconsequential, was not inherent in the commission of lewd or lascivious acts against the child, and was clearly intended to lessen the risk of detection. See also Kent v. State, 702 So.2d 265 (Fla. 5th DCA 1997) (movement of victim from her front door to her bedroom where sexual battery occurred was sufficient to support conviction for kidnapping; movement was not slight nor merely incidental to sexual battery, was not inherent in crime of sexual battery, and made crime of sexual battery substantially easier to commit or lessened risk of detection given that front door had been broken).

[79] Bishop also challenges the denial of his motion for judgment of acquittal on the use of a child in a sexual performance charge. Section 827.071, Florida Statutes (2006), prohibits an individual from employing, authorizing, or inducing a child less than eighteen years of age to engage in a sexual performance. “Sexual performance” means any performance or part thereof which includes sexual conduct by a child of less than eighteen years of age. § 827.071(l)(h), Fla. Stat. (2006). “Performance” means “any play, motion picture, photograph, or dance or any other visual representation exhibited before an audience.” § 827.071(l)(b), Fla. Stat. (2006).

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Bishop v. State, 46 So. 3d 75, 2010 Fla. App. LEXIS 13422, 2010 WL 3515473 (Fla. Ct. App. 2010).

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