State v. Muro

909 So. 2d 448, 2005 WL 2016825
CourtDistrict Court of Appeal of Florida
DecidedAugust 24, 2005
Docket4D04-4302
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 909 So. 2d 448 (State v. Muro) 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
State v. Muro, 909 So. 2d 448, 2005 WL 2016825 (Fla. Ct. App. 2005).

Opinion

909 So.2d 448 (2005)

STATE of Florida, Appellant,
v.
Claudia MURO, Appellee.

No. 4D04-4302.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fourth District.

August 24, 2005.

*449 Charles J. Crist, Jr., Attorney General, Tallahassee, and August A. Bonavita, Assistant Attorney General, West Palm Beach, for appellant.

Ramona L. Tolley of Ramona L. Tolley, P.A., Fort Lauderdale, for appellee.

PER CURIAM.

The State appeals the trial court's order granting Claudia Muro's motion to suppress a videotape which contains footage recorded by a "nanny cam." Muro's motion to suppress alleges that her due process rights were violated because law enforcement preserved only two of eighty hours of recording and the seventy-eight hours of recording not collected or preserved potentially contained exculpatory evidence. We reverse.

Muro was charged with eight counts of child abuse of a child for whom she served as a nanny. One of the counts, which is the focus of this appeal, was for an incident in which Muro allegedly forcibly shook the child. The incident was allegedly recorded by a "nanny cam."

The child's father became suspicious of Muro when he discovered a bruise on his daughter's thigh and observed his daughter begin to cry every time she was near Muro. As a result, he installed a "nanny cam" to monitor Muro's interaction with his daughter. As the trial court summarized in its suppression order, the "nanny cam" operated in the following fashion:

After Defendant was hired, the [father] had a "nanny cam" installed. The device is a digital recorder, ("DVR") with four cameras attached. It operates much like a VCR, but instead of recording to a tape, it records to a hard drive. The device has the capability of recording fourteen days, but once the hard drive is full, it starts over and begins taping over itself. The device is based on a motion detection system that can record data from all four cameras simultaneously. If the motion detector senses any movement, which could be as slight as a cat moving through the room, the camera begins recording. If there is slight movement in all four rooms where the cameras are installed, then all four cameras would be recording at the same time, but if there is movement in only one room, only one camera would be recording. As explained to this Court, if one camera is recording, the image seen by the viewer is 30 frames per second, which is what the human eye is capable of seeing, so the image appears fluid. However, if two of the cameras are recording at the same time, the frames per second are split, and there are only 15 frames per second. Further, if all four cameras are in operation, the resolution is 7.5 frames per second. As explained by both the State and the Defense experts, this does not change the real time of the video, but it could change the appearance of the playback. The State's expert testified the video would look more "jumpy" at 7.5 frames per second. The best explanation given to this Court is the example of a cartoon. If there are 30 frames in the cartoon, the movements of the characters are much more fluid than if there were only 7.5 frames.

*450 Upon returning from work one day, the father discovered a bruise on his daughter's face. The father and mother then played back the day's "nanny cam" recording on a television and viewed Muro allegedly shaking their daughter. The father used a camcorder to tape the television screen as the incident played. The father and mother then took their daughter to the emergency room and contacted law enforcement. Following numerous examinations, no injuries were found on the child. A detective spoke with the father and mother at the hospital, viewed the footage on the camcorder, and arrested Muro for child abuse.

Thereafter, law enforcement sought to retrieve the hard drive, which contained the original recording of the incident, from the "nanny cam." The father refused to turn over the hard drive to law enforcement due to the fact the recording would also show private and intimate activities of the father and mother. As a result, a law enforcement technician visited the family's home, connected a camcorder to the "nanny cam," and copied several minutes of recording surrounding each suspicious incident, including the shaking incident, pointed out by the father and mother. The technician copied approximately two hours of tape out of the eighty hours that Muro spent with the child during the fourteen-day recording cycle.

The father allowed the "nanny cam" to continue recording after the technician finished, because he testified that he was not instructed by law enforcement to turn it off. The law enforcement technician agreed that he did not instruct the father to turn off the "nanny cam." As a result, due to the fourteen-day recording cycle, the original recording of the incident in question and related computer data was erased from the "nanny cam" hard drive. As such, the only remaining recording is the two hours of tape produced by the law enforcement technician.

Muro filed a motion to suppress the videotape produced by the law enforcement technician, alleging, inter alia, that her due process rights were violated because the videotape does not provide a fair and accurate depiction of events. Muro asserted that it was vital for law enforcement to have retained the other seventy-eight hours of tape in which Muro appeared because such might demonstrate that Muro was loving and caring toward the child. Additionally, Muro contended that the original recording should have been preserved because it cannot be ascertained whether Muro's actions were volitional or rather the result of frame rate changes that cannot be determined from the law enforcement technician's videotape. The State responded that Muro's concerns were a matter of the weight rather than the admissibility of the evidence.

At a hearing on the motion to suppress, the law enforcement technician and detective assigned to the case testified that standard operating procedure is not to retrieve an entire surveillance tape but only the footage of the incident and its surrounding context. The detective indicated that some of the surrounding footage did depict Muro playing with the child in a gentle manner. A defense expert testified that the frame rate that the "nanny cam" was recording at could have been fluctuating throughout the entire recording based on the number of cameras operating, and that such could have been ascertained by viewing the original playback from the "nanny cam" hard drive or retrieving the raw data from the hard drive. He further testified that if the "nanny cam" had recorded the incident in question at a lower frame rate and it was played back at a higher frame rate, it would appear to be *451 playing in fast forward and look "jerky" in nature.

The trial court entered a written order granting Muro's motion to suppress and reaching the following legal conclusions:

If a due process violation is alleged based on destruction of evidence, it is the State's burden to prove there is no prejudice to the defendant. State v. Sobel, 363 So.2d 324, 328 (Fla.1978). Prejudice can be shown by proving the lost evidence would not [sic] have been beneficial to the defense. Snell v. State [State v. Snell], 391 So.2d 299 (Fla. 5th DCA 1980). If the State shows the evidence would have been only potentially useful for the defense, the defendant must show bad faith on the part of the State in order for there to be a due process violation. Felder v. State, 873 So.2d 1282 (Fla. 4th DCA 2004).

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909 So. 2d 448, 2005 WL 2016825, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-muro-fladistctapp-2005.