Title: Shawn Washington v. State of Florida

State: florida

Issuer: Florida Supreme Court

Document:

1   We do not address any other issues raised by the petitioner in his brief on the
merits.
Supreme 
Court 
of 
Florida
 
____________
No. SC96028
____________
SHAWN WASHINGTON,
Petitioner,
vs.
STATE OF FLORIDA,
Respondent.
[February 28, 2002]
QUINCE, J.
We have for review Washington v. State, 732 So. 2d 1225 (Fla 1st DCA
1999), which cited as controlling authority Scott v. State, 722 So. 2d 256 (Fla. 5th
DCA 1998)1, a case we accepted for review and recently decided. We have
jurisdiction.  See art. V, § 3(b)( 3), Fla. Const.; Jollie v. State, 405 So. 2d 418 (Fla.
1981).  For the reasons stated below, we quash the decision under review and
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direct that Washington’s conviction be reversed.
 August 22, 1996, Shawn Washington was sitting on a guardrail at the 2500
block of Texas Street in Tallahassee, Florida.  Two other people were near him at
this rail.  They were under surveillance by undercover police officers.  According
to the trial testimony of Officer Chuck Perry, a car stopped near the guardrail and
the defendant, an amputee, hobbled over to the driver side window and began to
talk with the driver.  The officer further testified:
At that point, he [Washington] walked back to the rail
where he had been sitting, he reached into the bushes,
retrieved a brown paper bag, reached into the brown bag,
took out a dime bag of cannabis, put the bag back in the
bushes, and walked over to the driver’s window. . . . At
that point, he exchanged the bag for money.  
Soon after witnessing this transaction, Officer Perry recovered the brown bag,
which was later found to contain both crack cocaine and cannabis.  The officer
testified there was another man sitting on the rail selling drugs.  
The defendant was charged with two counts of possession of a controlled
substance with intent to sell.  The jury found him guilty of two counts of the lesser
included offense of possession of a controlled substance. 
At his trial, Washington asked the trial court to give a special instruction
requiring the jury to find the State had proven beyond a reasonable doubt that
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defendant knew of the illicit nature of the contents of the retrieved bag.  The court
rejected this request.  Washington now argues this was error.  We agree.  Pursuant
to our reasoning in Scott v. State, 27 Fla. L. Weekly S31 (Fla. Jan. 3, 2002), and
Chicone v. State, 684 So. 2d 736 (Fla. 1996), the requested instruction should have
been given. 
In Chicone and again in Scott we stated that knowledge of the illicit nature of
a substance is an element of the crime of possession even though this element is
not explicitly stated in the standard jury instructions.   The instructions given by the
trial court in this case only required the defendant be aware of the presence of the
substance. As we did in both Scott and Chicone, we find these instructions to be
inadequate because they do not require the State to prove the defendant had
knowledge of the illicit nature of the substance he possessed.  We find that the trial
court’s failure to grant Washington’s request for the specific jury instruction was
harmful error.
Therefore, we quash the decision of the district court of appeal and direct
that Washington’s conviction be reversed and this case remanded to the trial court
for further proceedings.
It is so ordered. 
SHAW, ANSTEAD, PARIENTE, and LEWIS, JJ., concur.
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HARDING, J., concurs with an opinion.
WELLS, C.J., dissents.
NOT FINAL UNTIL TIME EXPIRES TO FILE REHEARING MOTION, AND
IF FILED, DETERMINED.
HARDING, J., concurring.
I write separately for two reasons.  First, I explain why the Chicone issue
was preserved for review in this case.  The record here reflects that the defense
attorney submitted in writing a requested jury instruction based on Chicone, thereby
satisfying the requirement of Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.390(c) that
requests for jury instructions not part of the Florida Standard Jury Instructions be
submitted in writing to the trial court.  Second, as I stated in my dissenting opinion
in Scott v. State, 27 Fla. Law Weekly at 533-34, I again express concern regarding
the applicability of the Chicone instruction and the Medlin presumption to cases of
actual or constructive possession.   
Application for Review of the Decision of the District Court of Appeal - 
Direct Conflict
First District - Case No. 1D98-225 
(Leon County)
Nancy A. Daniels, Public Defender, and Kathleen Stover, Assistant Public Defender,
Second Judicial Circuit, Tallahassee, Florida,
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for Petitioner
Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General, James W. Rogers, Tallahassee Bureau
Chief, Criminal Appeals, and Veronica S. McCrackin, Assistant Attorney General,
Tallahassee, Florida,
for Respondent