Laines v. State

662 So. 2d 1248, 1995 WL 353512
CourtDistrict Court of Appeal of Florida
DecidedNovember 15, 1995
Docket94-93
StatusPublished
Cited by15 cases

This text of 662 So. 2d 1248 (Laines 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
Laines v. State, 662 So. 2d 1248, 1995 WL 353512 (Fla. Ct. App. 1995).

Opinion

662 So.2d 1248 (1995)

Clifford LAINES, Appellant,
v.
The STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. 94-93.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, Third District.

June 14, 1995.
Order Denying Rehearing November 15, 1995.

Bennett H. Brummer, Public Defender, and Julie M. Levitt, Sp. Asst. Public Defender, for appellant.

Robert A. Butterworth, Atty. Gen., and Elliot B. Kula, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee.

Before HUBBART, BASKIN and GREEN, JJ.

HUBBART, Judge.

This is an appeal by the defendant Clifford Laines from judgments of convictions and sentences for second-degree murder and aggravated battery, arising out of a homicidal attack against a single victim, which were entered below upon an adverse jury verdict. The defendant raises two points on appeal, both of which present, in part, reversible error.

I

First, the defendant contends that the trial court committed fundamental error in convicting *1249 the defendant of aggravated battery as the conviction was, in effect, barred by the defendant's constitutional privilege against double jeopardy. Because the defendant did not raise this objection at any time in the trial court, we conclude that the defendant has waived the point as to his adjudication of guilt, but not as to his sentence, for aggravated battery;[1] as to the sentence for this offense, we conclude that the point is welltaken.

As an abstract proposition, we agree with the state that second-degree murder [§ 782.04(2), Fla. Stat.] and aggravated battery [§ 784.045(1)(a), (2), Fla. Stat.] — the two offenses for which the defendant was sentenced below — each requires proof of an element that the other does not[2] and, accordingly, there is no double jeopardy bar under Section 775.021(4)(a), Florida Statutes (1993), as interpreted in State v. Smith, 547 So.2d 613 (Fla. 1989), to convicting and sentencing a defendant who "in the course of one criminal transaction or episode, commits an act or acts which constitute," § 775.021(4)(a), Fla. Stat. (1993), a violation of these two statutes. In the instant case, however, the defendant's acts do not constitute a violation of the aggravated battery statute, but only the second-degree murder statute, as it is clear that the defendant killed a single victim with a series of rapid-fire violent acts in a single transaction, all of which contributed to the victim's death. Because no one of these acts can be characterized as an aggravated battery, Section 775.021(4), Florida Statutes (1993), does not authorize a separate sentence for such an offense.

The evidence adduced at trial establishes that the defendant, without any legal justification, killed the victim in this case by committing a series of rapidly successive violent acts within an extremely short time frame: a blow to the victim's head with a pistol, immediately followed by two gunshots to the victim's body, immediately followed by more blows to the victim's body with a pistol; all of these homicidal acts were designed to effect the victim's death which, in fact, followed. Dr. Valerie Rao, an Associate Dade County Medical Examiner, was qualified at trial as an expert pathologist and testified that she conducted an autopsy on the victim's body. She found that the victim had been shot once in the neck and once in the abdomen at short range (eighteen inches or less); that the victim had injuries to both sides of the head, including four lacerations on the right side, all caused by a blunt instrument; and that, in her opinion, the cause of death was "[g]unshot wounds associated with the blunt injury he suffered to his head." (Tr. 201).

We fail to see how an aggravated battery can be parsed out of any of the murderous acts which the defendant committed during this criminal episode — whether those acts be gunshots or head blows, as, in totality, such acts indisputably led to the victim's death and thus constitute a murder. It is true that the head blows were not, in themselves, fatal, but, according to the associate medical examiner, they contributed to the victim's death along with the more lethal gunshot wounds. It is settled law that separate convictions and sentences under two homicide statutes [DUI manslaughter, § 316.193(3)(c)(3), Fla. Stat. (1993), and vehicular homicide, § 782.071, Fla. Stat. (1993)], for a single criminal homicide are constitutionally forbidden by the double jeopardy clause, because "Florida courts have repeatedly recognized that the legislature did not intend to punish a single [criminal] homicide under two different statutes." Houser v. State, 474 So.2d 1193, 1197 (Fla. 1985) (emphasis added). This result is still good law notwithstanding the subsequent 1988 amendment to Section 775.021(4), Florida Statutes (1993). State v. Chapman, 625 So.2d 838 (Fla. 1993). Moreover, to accept *1250 the state's contrary argument would mean that a separate aggravated battery was committed for every murderous head blow inflicted by the defendant on the deceased — a result which we think the legislature could not possibly have intended. It therefore follows that the defendant may not be punished for a single criminal homicide under two separate statutes, but only under one statute — namely, the second-degree murder statute; the defendant's sentence under the aggravated battery statute therefore cannot stand. Houser; Chapman.

Stated differently, a sentence for aggravated battery in this case is not authorized by Section 775.021(4)(a), Florida Statutes (1993), and is, accordingly, barred by double jeopardy because there was no evidence adduced at trial that the defendant "in the course of one criminal transaction or episode, commit[ted] an act or acts which constitute ... [the] separate criminal offense[]" of aggravated battery. § 775.021(4)(a), Fla. Stat. (1993). Indeed, if the defendant had only been charged with second-degree murder, a jury instruction on aggravated battery as a category 2 permissive lesser offense under Fla.R.Crim.P. 3.510(b) could not have been given by the trial court because the trial judge is expressly forbidden from instructing the jury "on any [permissive] lesser included offense as to which there is no evidence." Fla.R.Crim.P. 3.510(b); see State v. Wimberly, 498 So.2d 929 (Fla. 1986). It is settled that in a murder prosecution, the trial court may not instruct the jury on non-homicide lesser offenses like aggravated battery — where, as here, it is undisputed that the defendant killed the deceased — because there is no rational basis in the evidence to support a conviction for such an offense. Martin v. State, 342 So.2d 501 (Fla. 1977). Plainly, a homicidal assault on a victim by a defendant resulting in the victim's death, as here, constitutes a murder — and cannot possibly amount to a non-homicide offense instead of or in addition to the murder as there is no evidence to support it.

II

The defendant further contends that the trial court committed reversible error in imposing a sentencing guidelines departure sentence of life imprisonment for the second-degree murder conviction. We agree. Under the pre-1994 sentencing guidelines applicable to this case, written reasons for a sentencing guidelines departure must be issued contemporaneously when the departure sentence is imposed; where, as here, a trial court imposes a departure sentence and the next day files written reasons for the departure, the departure sentence must be reversed and the cause remanded to the trial court with directions to resentence the defendant within the sentencing guidelines range.[3]

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
662 So. 2d 1248, 1995 WL 353512, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/laines-v-state-fladistctapp-1995.