Pena v. State

829 So. 2d 289, 2002 WL 31322780
District Court of Appeal of Florida·Decided October 18, 2002·No. 2D01-1066·Published·Cited by 18 cases

Opinion

829 So.2d 289 (2002)

Jose PENA, Appellant,
v.
STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. 2D01-1066.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, Second District.

October 18, 2002.

*291 James Marion Moorman, Public Defender, and Terrence E. Kehoe, Special Assistant Public Defender, Bartow, for Appellant.

Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Erica M. Raffel, Assistant Attorney General, Tampa, for Appellee.

ALTENBERND, Judge.

Jose Pena appeals his judgment for first-degree murder and his sentence of life without possibility of parole. Mr. Pena was charged and convicted of murder resulting from the unlawful distribution of an illegal drug under section 782.04(1)(a)(3), Florida Statutes (1999). Although Mr. Pena raises several issues warranting discussion and certification to the supreme court, we affirm the judgment and sentence.

I. FACTS

On September 10, 1999, a citizen found the dead body of a young woman in the front yard of a Hillsborough County home. An investigation determined that the woman was Mirranda Fernandes. She was twenty-two years old and had died of a drug overdose. Her body contained lethal doses of both heroin and MDMA, also known as ecstasy.

Further investigation established that Ms. Fernandes and a girlfriend visited Mr. Pena's apartment on the evenings of September 7 and 9. According to Ms. Fernandes's girlfriend, on the first evening Mr. Pena gave Ms. Fernandes ecstasy. When the women returned on September 9, Ms. Fernandes used alcohol, marijuana, heroin, and ecstasy. In a recorded statement, Mr. Pena admitted that he gave heroin to Ms. Fernandes on the evening of September 9, but claimed that she brought her own supply of ecstasy on that night. Mr. Pena admitted that when he woke up the following day, he discovered Ms. Fernandes unresponsive in his apartment. After efforts to revive her failed, he placed her body in a car and dumped it in the location where she was later found.

Based on this investigation, the State charged Mr. Pena with a first-degree murder by drug distribution under section 782.04(1)(a)(3), Florida Statutes (1999). This statute provides:

782.04 Murder.—
(1)(a) The unlawful killing of a human being:
. . . .
(3) Which resulted from the unlawful distribution of any substance controlled under s. 893.03(1), cocaine as described in s. 893.03(2)(a)4., or opium or any synthetic or natural salt, compound, derivative, or preparation of opium by a person 18 years of age or older, when such drug is proven to be the proximate cause of the death of the user,
is murder in the first degree and constitutes a capital felony, punishable as provided in s. 775.082.

First-degree murder by drug distribution has been a recognized offense since 1972. See ch. 76-141, § 1, Laws of Fla.; ch. 72-724, § 3, Laws of Fla. It apparently is a rarely charged offense that has not generated a standard jury instruction or significant case law. The offense was first mentioned in Jones v. State, 360 So.2d 1293 (Fla. 3d DCA 1978), where the defendant was actually convicted of manslaughter. In Martin v. State, 377 So.2d 706 (Fla.1979), the supreme court upheld the constitutionality of a drug-distribution, first-degree murder statute as it applied to an indirect supplier of heroin. See also Ingleton v. State, 700 So.2d 735 (Fla. 5th DCA 1997) (affirming conviction based *292 upon this offense and other first-degree murder theories).

At trial, the State presented evidence sufficient to convict Mr. Pena of this offense, and the jury found him guilty as charged. The trial court imposed a mandatory life sentence. Mr. Pena raises three issues on appeal: (1) that the trial court committed fundamental error in failing to instruct the jury of the age requirement for the defendant under section 782.04(1)(a)(3) and in permitting a conviction on this charge when his age was not alleged in the information, (2) that the trial court committed fundamental error by failing to swear the venire prior to voir dire, and (3) that the trial court committed fundamental error by failing to instruct the jury on justifiable and excusable homicide. It is worth emphasizing that all of these issues come to this court unpreserved, apparently because trial counsel did not view these issues as important to the defense of the case. None of these issues comes to this court with any record suggesting that the alleged errors were actually harmful to Mr. Pena during the course of this trial.

II. FAILURE TO ALLEGE OR INSTRUCT REGARDING DEFENDANT'S AGE

As quoted above, first-degree murder by drug distribution requires that the offender be eighteen years of age or older. The information filed in this case did not allege that Mr. Pena was eighteen years of age or older. Moreover, Mr. Pena's age was not included in the jury instructions. However, it is undisputed that Mr. Pena was twenty-eight years of age at the time of the offense. His recorded statement, which was presented to the jury, established that his birth date was June 25, 1971. Mr. Pena did not object to the omission of this fact from either the information or the jury instructions. Thus, the first issue on appeal is whether either or both of these omissions are harmful, fundamental error.

The Third District has held that it is fundamental error to convict a defendant of capital sexual battery when neither the information nor the verdict makes reference to the fact that the offender is eighteen years of age or older. See Baker v. State, 604 So.2d 1239 (Fla. 3d DCA 1992); cf. Glover v. State, 815 So.2d 698 (Fla. 5th DCA 2002) (finding capital sexual battery instruction that failed to list defendant's age as element of offense was harmless error where instruction advised that defendant must be over eighteen and, based on facts, no reasonable jury could have found defendant to be less than eighteen). By contrast, the Fourth District has rejected the concept that age is an "element" of capital sexual battery and instead regards age as a sentencing factor. See Jesus v. State, 565 So.2d 1361 (Fla. 4th DCA 1990). From a functional standpoint, such an age requirement for a defendant simply limits an offense to an adult offense and not a crime supporting an adjudication of juvenile delinquency.

We decline to enter the debate on whether the defendant's age is an element of an offense or a sentencing factor. We merely hold that when there is no factual dispute that the defendant is old enough to commit first-degree murder by drug distribution and the defendant cannot show that he was confused or misled about the charged crime, the defendant can waive the need for this allegation in the information by failing to move to dismiss the information pursuant to Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.190(b).[1]

*293 Likewise, we conclude that it is not fundamental error to omit an instruction on the defendant's age when the undisputed evidence establishes that the defendant's age fulfills the statutory age requirement for this offense. See, e.g., State v. Delva, 575 So.2d 643 (Fla.1991) (finding failure to instruct jury on element of offense charged is not fundamental error if record shows that there was no dispute as to that element); King v. State, 800 So.2d 734 (Fla. 5th DCA 2001) (same). Mr. Pena's defense hinged on issues of causation. It would not have helped Mr. Pena had the jury been instructed that he needed

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