Welsh v. State

850 So. 2d 467, 2003 WL 21355197
CourtSupreme Court of Florida
DecidedJune 12, 2003
DocketSC02-1092
StatusPublished
Cited by21 cases

This text of 850 So. 2d 467 (Welsh v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Welsh v. State, 850 So. 2d 467, 2003 WL 21355197 (Fla. 2003).

Opinion

850 So.2d 467 (2003)

Travis WELSH, Petitioner,
v.
STATE of Florida, Respondent.

No. SC02-1092.

Supreme Court of Florida.

June 12, 2003.

*468 Nancy A. Daniels, Public Defender, and Richard M. Summa, Assistant Public Defender, Second Judicial Circuit, Tallahassee, FL, for Petitioner.

Charles J. Crist, Jr., Attorney General, James W. Rogers, Tallahassee Bureau Chief, Criminal Appeals, and Anne C. Toolan, Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, FL, for Respondent.

PER CURIAM.

We have for review the decision in Welsh v. State, 816 So.2d 175 (Fla. 1st DCA 2002), which certified conflict with the decisions in Velazquez v. State, 648 So.2d 302 (Fla. 5th DCA 1995), and King v. State, 642 So.2d 649 (Fla. 2d DCA 1994). The conflict issue is whether lewd and lascivious conduct as set forth in section 800.04, Florida Statutes (1997), is a permissive lesser included offense of capital sexual battery[1] as set forth in section 794.011(2)(a), Florida Statutes (1997). We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(4), Fla. Const. We conclude, based on this Court's opinion in State v. Hightower, 509 So.2d 1078 (Fla.1987), that lewd and lascivious conduct is not a permissive lesser included offense of capital sexual battery, and thus, the defendant was not entitled to a jury instruction on the offense.[2]

By amended information filed October 13, 2000, Travis Welsh was charged with one count of capital sexual battery upon a person less than twelve years of age, by oral-vaginal contact in contravention of section 794.011(2)(a), Florida Statutes.[3] Welsh was also charged with lewd and lascivious assault of the victim by touching her breasts or vagina or both on occasions separate from the occasions underlying the charge of sexual battery in contravention of section 800.04(1), Florida Statutes.[4] A *469 jury trial was held. As to the capital sexual battery charge, the trial court instructed the jury on the lesser included offenses of battery, attempted sexual battery, and assault. The trial court denied Welsh's request for an instruction on lewd and lascivious conduct as a lesser included offense of the sexual battery charge. The jury returned verdicts of guilty on both charged counts. The trial court sentenced Welsh to the statutorily mandated term of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for the offense of capital sexual battery, and a concurrent term of fifteen years' imprisonment for the offense of lewd and lascivious conduct.

Welsh appealed to the First District Court of Appeal, arguing that the jury should have been instructed on lewd and lascivious conduct as a permissive lesser included offense of capital sexual battery. Welsh relied on statements in King and Velazquez, which indicate that when a defendant is charged with sexual battery, if the evidence adduced at trial could support a jury verdict for lewd and lascivious conduct, the jury should be instructed on the lesser offense. See King, 642 So.2d at 649-50; Velazquez, 648 So.2d at 305 n. 7. The First District rejected Welsh's argument and affirmed his conviction, explaining its reasoning as follows:

This court has previously stated that one cannot be convicted of committing a lewd and lascivious act on a child less than 12 for conduct that also constitutes the offense of sexual battery. See Jozens v. State, 649 So.2d 322, 323 (Fla. 1st DCA 1995). Accord State v. Robinson, 771 So.2d 1256 (Fla. 3d DCA 2000); McGriff v. State, 526 So.2d 995 (Fla. 4th DCA 1988); Walker v. State, 464 So.2d 1325 (Fla. 5th DCA 1985). The appellant, however, relying on Velazquez v. State, 648 So.2d 302, 305 n. 7 (Fla. 5th DCA 1995) (on reh'g); King v. State, 642 So.2d 649 (Fla. 2d DCA 1994); and Kolaric v. State, 616 So.2d 117 (Fla. 2d DCA 1993), argues that he is entitled to the instruction as a permissible lesser included offense to sexual battery, because the jury could have rejected the testimony of state witnesses and decided that no sexual battery occurred, and it could have determined as well from the evidence that appellant was guilty only of a lewd and lascivious act. We cannot agree.

Initially, the Schedule of Lesser Included Offenses does not list the offense of lewd and lascivious act as a Category 2 (permissible lesser) crime. As the supreme court observed in In re Use By the Trial Courts of the Standard Jury Instructions in Criminal Cases, 431 So.2d 594, 597 (Fla.1981), the "schedule will be an authoritative compilation upon which a trial judge should be able to confidently rely." The exclusion of lewd and lascivious act from the list of lesser offenses should not be viewed as a mere *470 inadvertent omission. Even before the schedule's adoption, the court had constructed the following analysis to determine whether a particular offense should be permissibly included within a greater offense: (1) whether the information specifically alleged all the statutory elements of the lesser offense, and (2) whether evidence presented at trial would support the lesser offense. See Brown v. State, 206 So.2d 377, 383 (Fla. 1968). By operation of law, the information in the present case charging capital sexual battery could not also allege all of the statutory elements of lewd and lascivious conduct.

Appellant was accused of committing capital sexual battery in violation of section 794.011(2)(a), because he, a person 18 years of age or older, placed his mouth on the vagina of the victim, a person less than 12 years of age. The allegations clearly comply with the definition of sexual battery.... In defining the offense of a lewd and lascivious act, section 800.04, Florida Statutes (1997), has, by specifically excluding sexual battery as a means of perpetrating such act, removed sexual battery as an element involved in the commission of a lewd and lascivious act....
Thus, the ... provisions make clear that the offenses of sexual battery and lewd and lascivious act are mutually exclusive, a conclusion the Florida Supreme Court reached in State v. Hightower, 509 So.2d 1078, 1079 (Fla.1987). Although the issue raised before the court in Hightower pertained solely to the question of whether a lewd and lascivious act was a necessarily included offense to sexual battery, the court's analysis is broad enough to apply as well to its inclusion as a permissible lesser offense....
The crime of lewd and lascivious conduct cannot ... by operation of law, be considered any category of lesser offense to sexual battery.

Welsh, 816 So.2d at 176-77 (emphasis supplied).

In Welsh, the First District relied on Hightower, in which the issue was whether lewd and lascivious conduct was a necessarily lesser included offense of capital sexual battery. In rejecting this argument in Hightower, we construed the statutory language of section 800.04(1):

[I]t is evident that the phrase "without committing the crime of sexual battery" was included to differentiate between crimes of sexual battery and lewd and lascivious conduct. Had the phrase been excluded, a person having forcible sexual intercourse with a child under sixteen would be guilty of both crimes. As now worded, section 800.04 contemplates that if sexual activity takes place with a person under sixteen years of age which does not constitute the crime of sexual battery, the conduct is deemed to be lewd and lascivious.

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