Case ID: so2d_585/html/1050-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "DOWNEY, Judge. FARMER, Judge,", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Joseph WHITE, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
    No. 90-1691.
    District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fourth District.
    Sept. 4, 1991.
    
      Richard L. Jorandby, Public Defender, and Cherry Grant, Asst. Public Defender, West Palm Beach, for appellant.
    Robert A. Butterworth, Atty. Gen., Tallahassee, and Georgina Jimenez-Orosa, Asst. Atty. Gen., West Palm Beach, for appellee.
   DOWNEY, Judge.

This is an appeal from a conviction of corruption by threat against a public servant and of improper exhibition of a firearm.

Four appellate points have been presented, only one of which we find meritorious. That point has to do with an alleged Richardson violation.

As a result of appellant’s request for discovery, the state advised that appellant had made oral statements to two police officers. By amended answer, the state set forth the substance of the alleged statements, one of which stated that, after being arrested, appellant said to an officer “that all he (defendant) would have to do is make one phone call and the ‘Disciples’ would come down and get them.” The other statement was to the effect that he would “call his cousin and have him come down from Chicago and ‘spray’ the officers.”

At trial one officer testified that appellant threatened him, saying “That’s okay. I can get more guns. I will kill you if you arrest me. All you pigs are going to die.” Another officer testified that appellant said, “If you arrest me, I can get my hands on another gun and come back and shoot you.”

Appellant objected, moved for mistrial and requested a Richardson hearing, all of which were denied, apparently due to the trial court’s feeling that there wasn’t any appreciable difference in the two sets of statements and that, as suggested by the prosecutor, it would suffice to let the appellant impeach the officers with the prior statements. We disagree entirely and hold there was a clear Richardson violation mandating a hearing thereon. Denial of the request was per se reversible error. Brown v. State, 515 So.2d 211 (Fla.1987).

Accordingly, the judgment of conviction and sentence are reversed and the cause is remanded for a new trial.

WARNER, J., concurs.

FARMER, J., dissents with opinion.

FARMER, Judge,

dissenting.

I fear that the majority has gone too far in their finding of a discovery violation. This is not an instance of the state failing to disclose the identity of a witness it intends to use at trial, as in Richardson v. State, 246 So.2d 771 (Fla.1971), or even a failure to disclose the substance of what the witness told the police the defendant said.

Appellant was charged with corruption of a police officer by threatening bodily harm. The state responded to defendant’s initial demand for discovery by disclosing that police officers Maraño and Sanchez, among others, would testify as to oral statements made to them by defendant. Defendant then asked only for the substance of those statements, and the state responded with what Judge Downey has described. The trial testimony of these witnesses is also as Judge Downey has described.

As I read defendant’s discovery request and Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.220(b)(l)(iii), the state is required to disclose only the substance of the statements, not a verbatim transcript. In this case, the substance of the disclosed oral statements was that the defendant would have the officers shot. The trial testimony contains the same substance, but in more specific (and colorful) detail.

A defendant is also authorized under rule 3.220(b)(l)(i) to take the deposition of certain witnesses disclosed by the state. If a defendant wants to use the prosecutorial disclosure to impeach the trial testimony of police officers testifying as to oral statements made by the defendant to the officers, the defendant should request and use the officers’ police reports or similar documents containing a written account of the statements. Otherwise he should take discovery depositions.

To use a Richardson inquiry as defendant sought to do here is to allow the defendant to set up a gotcha when the trial testimony is not, for it rarely is, word-for-word as it has been set down in prior accounts. It would allow convictions to be set aside for trivial or harmless differences in pre-trial statements and trial testimony. I see nothing in either the rule or in Richardson itself that justifies such preternatural exactitude. I therefore dissent. 
      
      . Richardson v. State, 246 So.2d 771 (Fla.1971).