Case ID: so2d_765/html/0064-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "PER CURIAM. POLEN, J.,", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Alaster KING, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
    No. 4D99-0230.
    District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fourth District.
    Feb. 16, 2000.
    Alexander R. Brumfield, III, of Brown and Brumfield, West Palm Beach, for appellant. .
    Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Gentry Denise Benjamin, Assistant Attorney General, West Palm Beach, for appellee.
   PER CURIAM.

We affirm appellant’s conviction for sale of cocaine. Neither the prosecutor’s comments in opening, nor Officer Moschette’s brief, innocuous statement that he knew appellant prior to the day of the sale “improperly inferred that the [police] had contact with appellant in an official capacity and suggested prior criminal activity on the part of appellant.” Mayes v. State, 718 So.2d 852, 853 (Fla. 4th DCA 1998) (citation omitted). The problem statement in Mayes was that an officer who investigated robberies and homicides had had “numerous contacts” with the defendant over a ten year period in the area where the drug sale occurred. See id. Viewing the entire trial, the state did not create the impression that appellant “had been involved in other criminal activities or had a prior record.” Hardie v. State, 513 So.2d 791, 792 (Fla. 4th DCA 1987).

STONE and GROSS, JJ., concur.

POLEN, J., concurs specially with opinion.

POLEN, J.,

concurring specially.

Unlike the situation in Mayes, the officer’s testimony in this case innocuously referred to his having known the defendant prior to the day of the offense. A police officer may know a suspect from any number of “non-official” situations: they may have been classmates in high school; the suspect may be a neighbor; or the officer may have gotten to know people in his or her community by “walking the beat” over an extended time. In my view, any comparable means by which the officer can show he knows the suspect is permissible, non-objectionable testimony, and does not convey that the witness knows the suspect from prior criminal conduct-related contacts.