Case Title: State v. Ellis

Citation: 723 So. 2d 187

Docket Number: 90729

State: florida

Court: Florida Supreme Court

Date: 1998-10-15T00:00:00Z

Document:
723 So. 2d 187 (1998)
STATE of Florida, Appellant,
v.
Lauri A. ELLIS, Appellee.
No. 90729.

Supreme Court of Florida.
October 15, 1998.
Rehearing Denied December 15, 1998.
*188 Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General, James W. Rogers, Tallahassee Bureau Chief, Criminal Appeals, and Stephen R. White, Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, for Appellant.
James T. Miller, Jacksonville, for Appellee.
SHAW, Justice.
We have on appeal State v. Ellis, 22 Fla. L. Weekly D1298, 722 So. 2d 824 (Fla. 1st DCA 1997), wherein the district court declared section 837.011(3), Florida Statutes (1993), unconstitutional. We have jurisdiction. Art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. We reverse Ellis.
Lauri Ellis telephoned the Naval Hospital at the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Florida, on June 4, 1994, and said that her two year-old stepson, Timothy Jr., had suffered a seizure. A hospital employee told Ellis to call 911 and have the boy treated at the nearest emergency facility. Instead, Ellis drove Timothy to Naval Hospital, arriving an hour and twenty minutes after her phone call. The child was suffering from a massive head wound and later died.
Ellis' husband, Timothy Sr., was charged with murder and Ellis subsequently testified under oath during a discovery deposition that after ending the phone call on June 4, she proceeded directly to Naval Hospital with her stepson and arrived there within fifteen minutes of the phone call. She also testified that several weeks earlier, on May 18, 1994, she told Dr. Macyko at Naval Hospital that a child had struck Timothy Jr. on the head with a baseball bat. Based on these statements, Ellis was charged with perjury in an official proceeding. Prior to her trial, Ellis filed a motion to dismiss the charge, arguing that the perjury statute is invalid. The trial court agreed and held the statute unconstitutional. The district court affirmed.
Ellis contendsand the district court heldthat Florida's perjury statute is invalid because it removes an element of the offense, i.e., materiality, from the jury's consideration in violation of United States v. Gaudin, 515 U.S. 506, 115 S. Ct. 2310, 132 L. Ed. 2d 444 (1995). We disagree.
Michael Gaudin was charged with making false statements on federal loan documents in violation of 18 U.S.C. section 1001 (1994), which provides:
Gaudin, 515 U.S.  at 509, 115 S. Ct. 2310. The trial court, rather than submitting the issue of materiality to the jury, determined on its own that Gaudin's false statements were material, and he was convicted following a jury trial.
The United States Supreme Court reversed the conviction[1] because the trial court, rather than the jury, had determined an essential element of the crime:
*189 Id. at 511, 115 S. Ct. 2310. Chief Justice Rehnquist noted a key point: "The Government has conceded that ... `materiality' is an element of the offense that the Government must prove in order to sustain a conviction." Id. at 523, 115 S. Ct. 2310 (Rehnquist, C.J., concurring). In contrast, the State of Florida in the instant proceeding makes no such concession.
Florida's statute defining perjury in an official proceeding differs from the federal statute in Gaudin in a key respect: Under the Florida scheme, "materiality" is not a statutory element of the offense. Section 837.02 defines the crime of perjury in an official proceeding and limits the statute's sweep to those false statements that concern "material matters":
§ 837.02(1), Fla. Stat. (1993). Unlike the federal statute in Gaudin, the Florida statutory scheme expressly provides that the issue of materiality is a question of law for the court to decide, not a question of fact for the jury:
§ 837.011(3), Fla. Stat. (1993) (emphasis added). Cf. § 837.021(2), Fla. Stat. (1993) ("The question of whether a statement was material is a question of law to be determined by the court.").[2]
Florida's standard jury instruction on perjury is an accurate statement of the law:
Fla. Std. Jury Instr. (Crim.) 243 (emphasis added).
Florida's statutory scheme violates none of the principles underlying Gaudin, for as Chief Justice Rehnquist explained:
Gaudin, 515 U.S.  at 525, 115 S. Ct. 2310 (Rehnquist, C.J., concurring) (citations omitted).
In sum, "materiality" is not an element of the crime of perjury in Florida as Ellis proposes, but rather is a threshold issue that a court must determine prior to trial, as *190 with any other preliminary matter.[3] Just as the Florida Legislature could have defined materiality as an affirmative defense that the defendant must raise, that body is within its rights in designating "material matter" as a threshold issue for the court. This division of labor between court and jury guarantees that no Florida citizen will be haled into court for an immaterial falsehood or be prosecuted for a trifle:
Ellis, 22 Fla. L. Weekly at D1301, 722 So. 2d  at 830 (Miner, J., dissenting).
Our decision today comports with this Court's time-honored rule favoring the constitutionality of statutes. See, e.g., State v. Stalder, 630 So. 2d 1072, 1076 (Fla.1994) ("[I]n assessing a statute's constitutionality, this Court is bound `to resolve all doubts as to the validity of [the] statute in favor of its constitutionality.'"). We reverse Ellis and uphold the constitutionality of section 837.011(3), Florida Statutes (1993), as explained herein.
It is so ordered.
HARDING, C.J., and OVERTON and WELLS, JJ., concur.
ANSTEAD, J., dissents with an opinion, in which KOGAN and PARIENTE, JJ., concur.
ANSTEAD, Judge, dissenting.
This Court's opinion reverses the First District's decision in State v. Ellis, 22 Fla. L. Weekly D1298, 722 So. 2d 824 (Fla. 1st DCA 1997), declaring section 837.011(3), Florida Statutes (1993), unconstitutional in that it removes an element of the offense, materiality, from the jury's consideration in direct violation of the holding in United States v. Gaudin, 515 U.S. 506, 115 S. Ct. 2310, 132 L. Ed. 2d 444 (1995). In Gaudin, the United States Supreme Court held that it was a violation of the U.S. Constitution for the trial court, rather than the jury, to determine the same issue of materiality as a matter of law.[4]
This Court's opinion erroneously asserts that the Florida statute defining perjury in an official proceeding differs from the federal statute in Gaudin[5] and that "[u]nder the Florida scheme, `materiality' is not a statutory element of the offense." The relevant *191 portion of the perjury statute reads as follows:
§ 837.02, Fla. Stat. (1993) (emphasis supplied). A plain reading of the statute and, indeed, of Florida case law, indicates that materiality is, indeed, a statutory element.[6] The First District's opinion correctly explains that the Supreme Court's holding in Gaudin supersedes decisions which permit the issue to be withdrawn from the jury. The Supreme Court in Gaudin explicitly declared:
515 U.S.  at 512-19, 115 S. Ct. 2310.
Because the Supreme Court's opinion in Gaudin is based on the U.S. Constitution, I believe that the First District correctly concluded that neither this Court nor the state legislature can override this requirement for jury resolution of a required element of the crime.
KOGAN and PARIENTE, JJ., concur.
[1]  The United States Supreme Court affirmed the federal circuit court's reversal of the conviction. See United States v. Gaudin, 515 U.S. 506, 115 S. Ct. 2310, 132 L. Ed. 2d 444 (1995).
[2]  Several decisions of the Court address perjury prior to enactment of the above statutes. See, e.g., Hirsch v. State, 279 So. 2d 866 (Fla.1973); Wolfe v. State, 271 So. 2d 132 (Fla.1972); Gordon v. State, 104 So. 2d 524 (Fla.1958); Rader v. State, 52 So. 2d 105 (Fla.1951).
[3]  See, e.g., § 90.105(1), Fla. Stat. (1993) ("[T]he court shall determine preliminary questions concerning the qualification of a person to be a witness, the existence of a privilege, or the admissibility of evidence."); § 90.105(3), Fla. Stat. (1993) ("Hearings on the admissibility of confessions shall be conducted out of the hearing of the jury."); Fla. R.Crim. P. 3.133 (pretrial probable cause determination); Fla. R.Crim. P. 3.140(o) (dismissal of indictment or information); Fla. R.Crim. P. 3.150 (joinder of offenses and defendants); Fla. R.Crim. P. 3.152 (severance of offenses and defendants); Fla. R.Crim. P. 3.190(b) (motion to dismiss); Fla. R.Crim. P. 3.190(h) (motion to suppress evidence in unlawful search); Fla. R.Crim. P. 3.190(i) (motion to suppress confession or admission illegally obtained); Fla. R.Crim. P. 3.191 (speedy trial); Fla. R.Crim. P. 3.210 (incompetence to proceed); Fla. R.Crim. P. 3.240 (change of venue).
[4]  The crime involved in Gaudin was making material false statements in a matter within the jurisdiction of a federal agency. The judge determined the element of materiality, refusing to submit it to a jury. However, as Judge Miner points out in his dissent, the United States Courts of Appeals of the Second, Fifth, Ninth and Eleventh Circuits have since limited the Gaudin holding to prosecutions under 18 U.S.C. § 1001 (1994). See, e.g., United States v. Klausner, 80 F.3d 55 (2nd Cir.1996); United States v. Upton, 91 F.3d 677 (5th Cir.1996); United States v. Taylor, 66 F.3d 254 (9th Cir.1995), cert. denied, 520 U.S. 1103, 117 S. Ct. 1105, 137 L. Ed. 2d 307 (1997); United States v. Klais, 68 F.3d 1282 (11th Cir.1995), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 117 S. Ct. 94, 136 L. Ed. 2d 50 (1996).
[5]  18 U.S.C. § 1001 provides:

[W]hoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States knowingly and willfully falsifies, conceals or covers up by any trick, scheme or device a material fact, or makes any false, fictitious or fraudulent statements or representations, or makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any false, fictitious or fraudulent statement or entry, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
[6]  "The elements of the crime of perjury have been set out in Gordon v. State, 104 So. 2d 524 (Fla.1958), as (1) the wilful (2) giving of false testimony (3) on a material point (4) in a judicial proceeding (5) by a person to whom a lawful oath has been administered." State v. Marlow, 501 So. 2d 136, 137-38 (Fla. 2d DCA 1987).