DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA

FOURTH DISTRICT

DESMOND D. SANDERS,

Appellant,

v.

STATE OF FLORIDA,

Appellee.

No. 4D17-2489

[ September 20, 2018 ]

Appeal from the Circuit Court for the Nineteenth Judicial Circuit, St. 

Lucie County; Steven J. Levin, Judge; L.T. Case No. 562015CF003442A.

Carey Haughwout, Public Defender, and Paul Edward Petillo, Assistant 

Public Defender, West Palm Beach, for appellant.

Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Melynda L. 

Melear, Assistant Attorney General, West Palm Beach, for appellee.

ARTAU, EDWARD L., Associate Judge.

Appellant, Desmond Sanders, challenges his conviction and sentence 

for first-degree murder in the shooting death of Carlos Bradwell. We affirm 

on all issues but write to address appellant’s argument that the trial court 

erred by allowing the jury to hear evidence that, within two hours after 

Bradwell’s death, a shooting occurred at appellant’s home.

The evidence at trial established that at about 3:00 a.m. on November 

28, 2015, police were called to the House of Meat (a grocery store and afterhours club) in Fort Pierce to respond to reports of a shooting. Several 

police officers met with a witness who testified that she saw an individual 

she subsequently identified as appellant with a gun earlier in the night,

she later saw him walk in front of her vehicle, and shortly thereafter, she 

heard gunshots. However, she did not see the shooting. The witness 

described the person who walked in front of her vehicle as a young, black 

male with short hair and gold teeth, who went by the name “Des.”

While still at the House of Meat, one officer was called at about 5:00 

a.m. to respond to reports of a shooting at a home on Kerr Street, which 
2

was about three miles away. During her search for evidence at the home, 

the officer encountered a young black male with short hair and gold teeth, 

who said his name was “Des.” The witness would later identify him as the 

same person who had walked in front of her vehicle at the House of Meat.

At trial, there was a dispute about whether the reason for the call to 

the Kerr Street home was to be allowed into evidence. The trial judge had 

preliminarily ruled that certain testimony about the Kerr Street shooting, 

including testimony about the shell casings and bullet holes found there,

was not admissible, but that it could be relevant and admissible if the state 

could show a connection between the Kerr Street incident and the House 

of Meat shooting.

Before the officer testified, the prosecutor instructed her not to mention

the evidence found, nor the reason for the call to the Kerr Street home. On 

cross-examination, however, defense counsel asked the officer questions 

about the thoroughness of her investigation at the Kerr Street home, 

including whether she had found any guns or ammunition there, and 

implied that she had gone to the Kerr Street home for no reason other than 

to wake a peaceful, quiet family at 5:00 a.m. To avoid violating the 

prosecutor’s pre-testimony instructions, the officer responded by stating 

that she was asked not to speak about the evidence found at Kerr Street. 

Despite the officer’s reluctance to answer the questions based on the 

admonition she had previously received from the prosecutor, defense 

counsel pushed on, asking her to confirm that the ammunition found at 

Kerr Street belonged to a .410 shotgun and not a .45 caliber gun, which 

was the type that was removed from the body of the House of Meat shooting

victim.

The court then allowed, over objection, appellant’s mother to testify that 

she called the police to her Kerr Street home, and that the reason for the 

call was that her home had been “shot up.” The court ruled that based on 

defense counsel’s strategy to ask about the evidence found at the Kerr 

Street home, calling into question the thoroughness of the police’s 

investigation and the motives of law enforcement in going to the Kerr Street 

home at 5:00 a.m., the defense had opened the door. Otherwise, the 

defense would have been allowed to mislead the jury into believing that 

the responding officer had failed to conduct a thorough investigation and 

had randomly showed up at the Kerr Street home while the occupants 

were sleeping. The court found that the two incidents were inextricably 

intertwined, and that the Kerr Street incident was relevant for the jury to 

receive a complete picture as to why the police showed up to a home about 

three miles away and coincidentally encountered the House of Meat 

suspect.
3

After trial, the jury found appellant guilty of first-degree murder, as 

charged in the indictment. The court sentenced him to life in prison with 

review after twenty-five years and credit for 587 days.

Appellant argues on appeal that evidence of the Kerr Street shooting 

was not relevant, and even if it was, any probative value was substantially 

outweighed by the risk of unfair prejudice. Appellant also argues that the 

two shootings were not inextricably intertwined and that the jury did not 

need to know the reason why police were called to appellant’s home.

The state contends that the Kerr Street shooting evidence was relevant 

to show the chronological sequence of events leading to the identification 

of the House of Meat suspect. The state also argues that the testimony 

about why the police responded to appellant’s home within two hours and 

just three miles from the House of Meat shooting did not involve hearsay 

or accusations against appellant. Furthermore, the probative value of the 

evidence was not substantially outweighed by the prejudicial effect where 

the evidence was limited to show that after having responded to the call 

about the shooting at appellant’s home, an officer recognized appellant as 

someone matching the description of a suspect involved in the House of 

Meat shooting.

We agree with the state.

A trial court’s admission of evidence is reviewed for an abuse of 

discretion, limited by the rules of evidence. Gaines v. State, 155 So. 3d 

1264, 1271 (Fla. 4th DCA 2015). The prerequisite for the admissibility of 

evidence is relevance. Castanon v. State, 162 So. 3d 52, 54 (Fla. 4th DCA 

2014) (citing § 90.402, Fla. Stat.). Evidence is relevant if it tends to prove 

or disprove a material fact. § 90.401, Fla. Stat. (2017).

Although relevant evidence is ordinarily admissible, there is an 

exception where the evidence is precluded by law. § 90.402, Fla. Stat.

(2017). For example, “[r]elevant evidence is inadmissible if its probative 

value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, 

confusion of issues, misleading the jury, or needless presentation of 

cumulative evidence.” Castanon, 162 So. 3d at 54 (citing § 90.403, Fla. 

Stat.). “In weighing the probative value against the unfair prejudice, it is 

proper for the court to consider the need for the evidence; the tendency of 

the evidence to suggest an improper basis to the jury for resolving the 

matter . . . .” Rubinger v. State, 98 So. 3d 659, 663 (Fla. 4th DCA 2012) 

(quoting Taylor v. State, 855 So. 2d 1, 22 (Fla. 2003)).
4

The admission of otherwise inadmissible evidence under the concept of 

“opening the door” requires that “the defense must offer misleading 

testimony, or make a specific factual assertion which the state should be 

able to correct so that the jury will not be misled.” Fiddemon v. State, 858 

So. 2d 1100, 1102 (Fla. 4th DCA 2003). When the defense questions the 

thoroughness of the police’s investigation, the door may be opened to 

additional information that the police had uncovered. Id. However, the 

door is not opened to acts that are not relevant for any reason other than 

the opening of the door. Id.

In Tillman v. State, 964 So. 2d 785, 787 (Fla. 4th DCA 2007), on which 

appellant relies, the defendant was charged with aggravated assault,

fleeing or eluding, and resisting arrest without violence. We held there 

that the contents of two police BOLO (“be on the lookout”) reports were 

inadmissible hearsay and prejudicial where the reports involved 

information about an armed kidnapping by a suspect last seen in a white 

Dodge Intrepid, a crime not charged against the defendant. Id. at 786. 

Officers located a vehicle matching the BOLO description and observed the 

defendant nearby. Id. The subsequent events (assault, fleeing, and 

resisting arrest) led to the defendant’s charges. Id. at 786–87. We likened 

Tillman to Conley v. State, 620 So. 2d 180 (Fla. 1993), where the Florida 

Supreme Court found that the contents of a police dispatch report were

hearsay and not relevant to establish a sequence of events; that the reason 

why officers arrived at the scene was not a material issue; and that the 

inherently prejudicial effect of the contents of the hearsay report

outweighed the probative value. Id. at 789.

Here, the admitted evidence did not consist of hearsay reports

portraying appellant as the perpetrator of an uncharged crime, which 

could potentially prejudice appellant as to the charged crime. Appellant 

and his family were the victims of the Kerr Street shooting. The evidence 

did not consist of a bad deed committed by appellant that would make the 

jury more likely to convict him of first-degree murder. Moreover, the 

details of what happened at Kerr Street were relevant to establish the 

sequence of events that led up to police arriving at Kerr Street and 

identifying appellant, particularly where defense counsel had opened the 

door by portraying the police as not having conducted a thorough 

investigation and implying that the police just showed up to disrupt a 

sleeping family.

Accordingly, we find that the instant case is more akin to Collier v. 

State, 701 So. 2d 1197 (Fla. 3d DCA 1997), wherein the Third District held 

that it was not error to admit the contents of a police BOLO report that 

contained a description of a particular car but no accusatory information. 
5

Id. at 1198. The Third District concluded that the information in the BOLO 

was not elicited for the truth of the matter, but only to demonstrate to the 

jury why police were initially drawn to the particular vehicle in which the 

defendant was riding and to establish the sequence of events that followed. 

Id. (citing Kearse v. State, 662 So. 2d 677, 684 (Fla. 1995) (no error in the 

admission of a police dispatch tape where it was not offered to prove truth 

of the matter asserted, but to establish the sequence of events and to 

explain why police investigation focused on defendant as perpetrator)).

Similarly, the evidence regarding the circumstances of the Kerr Street 

home shooting was not introduced to establish that appellant had 

anything to do with the shooting there. No one implied or suggested that 

appellant would have shot at his own home. In addition, the trial court 

admonished the state not to make the Kerr Street shooting a feature of the 

trial. Instead, the Kerr Street shooting evidence was introduced to 

demonstrate why police were drawn to the home where they found 

appellant and to establish a complete sequence of events in the face of 

misleading information initiated by the defense about the investigation 

leading up to the identification of appellant as the House of Meat suspect.

Therefore, we affirm the trial court’s admission of the testimony about 

the Kerr Street shooting. Defense counsel opened the door for testimony 

about the evidence found and the reason for the call to Kerr Street. 

Defense counsel also presented a misleading and incomplete picture to the 

jury about the investigation at the Kerr Street home and why the police 

disturbed what was portrayed as a peaceful and sleeping family. Upon 

opening the door, the testimony was relevant to provide a logical sequence 

of events that led police to identify appellant as the House of Meat suspect 

after encountering him at the Kerr Street home. Under these 

circumstances, we cannot find the trial court’s decision to allow testimony 

about the Kerr Street shooting to be an abuse of discretion. See Pierre v. 

State, 246 So. 3d 545, 547 (Fla. 4th DCA 2018) (“[B]ecause reasonable 

minds may differ as to whether the [admitted evidence] was relevant to the 

issues of the state’s or the defense’s case, we find no abuse of discretion 

in the trial court’s determination of relevance.”).

Affirmed.

LEVINE and FORST, JJ., concur.

* * *

Not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing.