Case ID: so2d_235/html/0358-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "PEARSON, Chief Judge. CHARLES CARROLL, Judge", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Leo HENZEL, Appellant, v. The STATE of Florida, Appellee.
    No. 69-956.
    District Court of Appeal of Florida, Third District.
    May 12, 1970.
    Fink & Syna, Miami, for appellant.
    Earl Faircloth, Atty. Gen., and Harold Mendelow, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee.
    Before PEARSON, C. J., and CHARLES CARROLL and SWANN, JJ.
   PEARSON, Chief Judge.

Appellant having waived jury trial was tried before the court and found guilty of grand larceny by obtaining money by fraudulent representations. During the trial the appellant voluntarily removed himself from the jurisdictional limits of the court during a part of the trial. He filed a timely appeal which was heard before this court. See Henzel v. State, Fla.App.1968, 212 So.2d 92. The opinion recites:

“The basis of defendant’s primary point on appeal is that he was denied the right to be present at his trial in contravention of the provisions of § 914.01, Fla.Stat., F.S.A.”

This court after a full review of the facts and the applicable law held: “We conclude, therefore, that defendant’s right to be present at his trial for commission of a felony has not been abridged.”

Appellant sought review of the decision of this court by petition for certiorari filed in the Supreme Court of Florida. Appellant’s petition was denied. See Henzel v. State, Fla.1968, 218 So.2d 165. Thereafter appellant sought review of the decision in the Supreme Court of the United States. Appellant’s petition was denied. See Henzel v. Florida, 393 U.S. 1085, 89 S.Ct. 870, 21 L.Ed.2d 778 (1969). Appellant’s petition for rehearing was denied by the Supreme Court of the United States. See Henzel v. Florida, 394 U.S. 967, 89 S.Ct. 1303, 22 L.Ed.2d 570 (1969). Appellant has informed us that he thereafter sought relief upon two separate occasions by filing a petition for writ of habeas corpus in the Federal District Courts. In each case his petition was dismissed or denied. The present appeal stems from a motion for relief pursuant to Rule 1.850, Florida Rules of Criminal Procedure, 33 F.S.A., filed in the court which originally tried him. The motion for relief was based upon tw.o grounds: (1) appellant was denied his right to be present at his own trial; (2) appellant was denied the right to effective assistance of counsel. The trial court held an evidentiary hearing and denied the motion upon both grounds.

Upon this appeal the appellant has expressly abandoned the second ground of his petition, i. e., that he was denied the right to effective assistance of his privately employed counsel. Otherwise, appellant’s brief is a re-argument of the point presented upon the appeal from the conviction. Thus, this is a second appeal by means of Rule 1.850. We ought not be required to plow the same ground twice. Suarez v. State, Fla.App.1969, 220 So.2d 442. Nevertheless, in the hope that the litigation may be brought to an end in some court of ultimate resort, we have carefully examined the evidence presented to the trial court at the hearing upon appellant’s motion for relief pursuant to Rule 1.850. We find that the evidence presented reinforces this court’s decision reported at 212 So.2d 92.

Affirmed.

CHARLES CARROLL, Judge

(concurring specially).

I concur in the opinion and judgment of this court.

This case furnishes an example of a current tendency toward unending litigation of criminal cases after trial and conviction and affirmance on appeal, by continued applications initiated in the state and federal trial courts. The decisions of a trial court, and, when appealed, of the appellate court having jurisdiction for review, should bring such cases to an end, other than for matters for which relief properly may be sought later under Rule 1.850 Cr.P.R.

Litigants in civil cases are not permitted to retry decided cases. A continuous stream of applications to the court where tried, or to other trial courts, to relitigate a civil case in whole or in part, on some new theory or with the benefit of embellished evidence, would not individually receive serious and time-consuming consideration. Such applications by civil case litigants generally meet prompt and firm rejection, as deserved.

Successive applications in criminal cases (as in one case known to have spawned more than a score) for retrial of an issue in the trial court, or for reconsideration of matters concluded on appeal, not only place an unwarranted burden on the judiciary and on the office of the prosecutor or attorney general who must resist them, but they run counter to the principle, applied to other litigants, that the disposition of a case in the trial court (and on appeal, where appeal was invoked) should mark the end thereof. 
      
      . “Appellant also assigned as error (Assignment of Error No. 5(b)) that the Court erred in finding that the Appellant was not denied his right to the effective assistance of counsel, which is guaranteed by the Due Process Law of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, and by Article I, Section 16 of the Florida Declaration of Rights. After a review of the testimony taken in the proceedings pursuant to Rule 1.850 of the Florida Rules of Criminal Procedure, it is the considered opinion of both the attorney for the Appellant and of the Appellant himself that this particular assignment of error is without merit and therefore same is hereby abandoned.”