Opinion
No. 1D19-2170
04-21-2020
Guillermo L. CRUZ-CEDENO, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
Andy Thomas, Public Defender, and Victor Holder, Assistant Public Defender, Tallahassee, for Appellant. Ashley Moody, Attorney General, and Damaris E. Reynolds, Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, for Appellee.
Andy Thomas, Public Defender, and Victor Holder, Assistant Public Defender, Tallahassee, for Appellant.
Ashley Moody, Attorney General, and Damaris E. Reynolds, Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, for Appellee.
Lewis, J.
Appellant, Guillermo L. Cruz-Cedeno, appeals his convictions and sentences for armed robbery and shooting a firearm at, within, or into a building and raises two issues. For the reasons that follow, we reject Appellant's argument that the trial court erred by overruling his objection to Special Deputy Alaniz's "violent felons" testimony and by denying his resultant motion for mistrial. We affirm as to the second issue without discussion.
BACKGROUND
Appellant was charged with armed robbery and shooting a firearm at, within, or into a building. At trial, the victim and his friend testified that they were having a backyard barbecue at their apartment complex when Appellant walked up to them and told the victim to hand over his wallet. The victim initially refused to comply with Appellant's requests for his wallet, but he acquiesced when Appellant pulled a pistol and aimed it at him as he demanded it a third time. As Appellant was walking away with the wallet, he started shooting at the victim upon seeing he had a cell phone in his hand. The victim hid by a staircase and heard seven gunshots. When Appellant stopped shooting and began to run, the victim followed him and saw that a vehicle was waiting for him in the parking lot. Appellant shot at the victim again upon noticing him, and then he got into the backseat of the car, which drove away. The victim called the police and gave a description of the perpetrator. The victim and his friend both identified Appellant as the perpetrator in a photograph line-up the following day, as well as in court.
A neighbor of the victim testified that he heard gunshots and then a bullet entered his apartment through the front door while he and his wife were inside. Law enforcement retrieved the bullet from behind the drywall inside the apartment and also located shell casings in the direction of the parking lot.
Based on a surveillance video of the apartment complex, the police identified several witnesses. Two of those witnesses, a husband and wife, testified that they picked up Appellant and they all went to the victim's apartment complex to visit someone. When the couple left the complex to get something to eat, Appellant stayed behind and later called to tell them where to park upon their return to pick him up. When the couple returned, they parked in the back as they had been told, and while they waited, they heard several gunshots and saw Appellant running towards their car with a gun in his hand and a man following behind him. Appellant also had a wallet in his hand and told them he had shot at a man and stolen his wallet.
Although officers with the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office quickly developed Appellant as the suspect, they were unable to find him, prompting them to seek the assistance of other agencies. Data from the phone service provider placed Appellant's phone in Houston, Texas. The data also showed that Appellant's cell phone was around the scene of the crime when it was committed and that his phone was turned off from the following day until two days later, when it utilized a cell tower in Houston.
When the State called Special Deputy U.S. Marshal Alaniz to the stand and asked him about the purpose of his task force, Alaniz explained:
Speaking about my task force in general we're tasked with going for -- looking for at large violent offenders. As a matter of fact, our task force is named the Gulf Coast Violent Offenders Fugitive Task Force, so anybody who has open warrants we go out and look for them. Most of them are - - if not all them are violent felons -
Defense counsel objected and at sidebar moved for a mistrial, arguing that Alaniz's testimony implied that Appellant was a violent offender and a violent person. The State responded that the witness was talking about his work in general and made no implications about this case. The trial court denied Appellant's objection.
Alaniz testified that one aspect of his duties was to help apprehend persons who were wanted for violent crimes and were outside of their jurisdiction. In this case, Alaniz was asked to help apprehend Appellant because he was outside of the jurisdiction of Jacksonville, Florida, and was potentially in Houston, Texas. Upon reporting to the location he was given for Appellant and confirming his presence there via surveillance, Alaniz arrested Appellant.
The jury returned a verdict finding Appellant guilty as charged and specifically finding that he carried and actually possessed and discharged a firearm during the commission of the robbery. The trial court adjudicated Appellant guilty and sentenced him to twenty-five years of imprisonment with a mandatory minimum term of twenty years for the firearm on the armed robbery count and to a concurrent term of fifteen years of imprisonment on the shooting count. This appeal followed.
ANALYSIS
We review the trial court's ruling on the admissibility of evidence for an abuse of discretion, but the court's discretion is limited by the evidence code and case law and we review its interpretation of those authorities de novo . Pitts v. State , 263 So. 3d 834, 837 (Fla. 1st DCA 2019). A motion for mistrial "should only be granted when the error is so prejudicial as to vitiate the entire trial," and we review the trial court's ruling on the motion for an abuse of discretion. Thomason v. State , 273 So. 3d 182, 189 (Fla. 1st DCA 2019).
"Relevant evidence is evidence tending to prove or disprove a material fact," and "[a]ll relevant evidence is admissible, except as provided by law." §§ 90.401 – 90.402, Fla. Stat. (2018). "Relevant evidence is inadmissible if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of issues, misleading the jury, or needless presentation of cumulative evidence." § 90.403, Fla. Stat. (2018). "[C]ollateral-crime evidence, such as bad acts not included in the charged offenses, is admissible when relevant to prove a material fact in issue, but is inadmissible when the evidence is relevant solely to prove bad character or propensity." Wright v. State , 19 So. 3d 277, 291–92 (Fla. 2009) ; see also § 90.404(1), Fla. Stat. (2018) (providing that with limited exceptions, "[e]vidence of a person's character or a trait of character is inadmissible to prove action in conformity with it on a particular occasion"); Holmes v. State , 91 So. 3d 859, 862 (Fla. 1st DCA 2012) ("Evidence of other crimes, wrongs or bad acts is admissible if it is relevant and probative of a material issue and not used for the purpose of demonstrating bad character or propensity.").
In arguing that the trial court erred by overruling his objection and by denying his motion for mistrial with regard to Alaniz's testimony, Appellant relies on Bozeman v. State , 698 So. 2d 629 (Fla. 4th DCA 1997), and Thomas v. State , 701 So. 2d 891 (Fla. 1st DCA 1997). However, Appellant's reliance on those cases is misplaced as they are distinguishable.
In Bozeman , the appellant was convicted of battery on a police officer and resisting an officer with violence based on an incident at the jail where he was an inmate. 698 So. 2d at 629. At trial, the victim referred to the jail unit he managed as a "special management" division and, over objection, explained that the unit housed the "worse behaved inmates in the Broward County jail system," men who were "maladjusted" and "violent" and were placed there because "they [had] exhibited the propensity for violent behavior towards other inmates and staff. They are there for escape risk." Id. at 629-30. During closing argument, the State used the victim's description of the jail unit to argue that the appellant must have been the aggressor, contrary to his assertion of self-defense. Id. at 630. The Fourth District reversed the appellant's convictions upon finding that the victim's testimony was inadmissible because it "was tantamount to the admission of prior bad acts to prove that Bozeman had acted consistently with that pattern of conduct in striking the officer" and it constituted evidence of Bozeman's bad character. Id.
In Thomas , we reversed the appellant's convictions for attempted second-degree murder and possession of a weapon by a state prisoner because the trial court erroneously admitted a prison guard's testimony that the appellant "was housed in a wing of the prison reserved for the ‘more violent inmates.’ " 701 So. 2d at 891–92. We reasoned that the "natural impact" of the testimony "would have been to imply that appellant was prone to resort to violence, and that he probably acted consistently with that propensity with regard to the incident in question, rather than in self-defense," and the testimony was irrelevant to any issue and "seems relatively clearly to have been intended to bear on appellant's propensity for violence." Id. at 892.
As the Florida Supreme Court has noted, "[a] close reading of Bozeman and Thomas ... reveals that the information related to the jury in both cases was critical to the prosecution's factual theories, because both of the defendants were accused of attacking someone and both asserted at trial that they were only defending themselves" and "[t]he fact of being housed in a particular section was used to enhance a predisposition for violence." Cox v. State , 819 So. 2d 705, 714 (Fla. 2002). The Supreme Court found those cases distinguishable and affirmed Cox's conviction for a first-degree murder committed in prison following a jury trial where a fellow inmate testified that Cox "has two life sentences already." Id. at 709, 713 (noting that the trial court gave a curative instruction and finding that it did not err by denying the motion for mistrial). The Court reasoned that "the fact that Cox was serving two life sentences was certainly not critical to the State's case, and was not related to its theories—the jury already knew that he was an inmate at the Lake Correctional Institution where the events occurred." Id. at 714.
Here, Appellant argues that Special Deputy Alaniz's testimony that most, if not all, of the people his task force looks for are violent felons constituted impermissible evidence of his bad character and painted him as a violent convicted felon. However, Alaniz was testifying about his task force's mission and the persons it was designed to apprehend in general. Indeed, he prefaced his description of his unit's purpose by stating, "Speaking about my task force in general ...." Alaniz did not make any statements about Appellant's character or prior bad acts.
Unlike here, in Bozeman and Thomas the natural inference from the challenged testimony was that the appellant had a predisposition for violence and acted consistently with that propensity in committing the charged crimes, thereby negating the appellant's claim of self-defense. The jury could infer from Alaniz's testimony about the task force's purpose in general that Appellant had an open warrant for the commission of a violent crime. Significantly, the jury already knew that there was an open warrant for Appellant's arrest and that he was wanted for the violent crimes of armed robbery and shooting a firearm at, within, or into a building. As such, it would stand to reason that a law enforcement officer normally assigned to apprehending violent criminals would be assigned to arrest Appellant. Alaniz's testimony did not lend itself to the natural inference that Appellant had a history of, or propensity for, violence beyond the charged offenses. Nor does this case involve a claim of self-defense.
In light of the foregoing, we conclude that the trial court did not abuse its discretion by overruling Appellant's objection to Alaniz's testimony and by denying his motion for mistrial. We further find that even if the trial court had erred in overruling Appellant's objection, such error would be harmless because there is no reasonable probability that the alleged error contributed to the verdict in light of the limited nature of the challenged testimony and the strong evidence of Appellant's guilt. See Marston v. State , 136 So. 3d 563, 571 (Fla. 2014).
CONCLUSION
Therefore, we affirm Appellant's convictions and sentences.
AFFIRMED .
Rowe and Jay, JJ., concur.