DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA

FOURTH DISTRICT

July Term 2014

MICHAEL HASPEL,

Appellant,

v.

STATE OF FLORIDA,

Appellee.

No. 4D12-317

[July 23, 2014]

Appeal from the Circuit Court for the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit, 

Broward County; Jeffrey R. Levenson, Judge; L.T. Case No. 10-8926 

CF10A.

Carey Haughwout, Public Defender, and Gary Lee Caldwell, Assistant 

Public Defender, West Palm Beach, for appellant.

Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Jeanine 

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

WARNER, J.

Appellant challenges his multiple convictions for sexual battery of a 

child under the age of twelve, for which he received life in prison and other 

concurrent sentences for lesser offenses. He raises three issues. First, he 

claims that his attorney was ineffective in failing to object when a detective 

testified as to when the crimes occurred, thus giving the officer’s opinion 

of defendant’s guilt. As the question did not inquire as to the officer’s 

opinion of guilt, no error occurred. Second, he claims that the prosecutor 

improperly appealed to sympathy by referring to the victim as “damaged.” 

The evidence supported the prosecutor’s statement, however, and thus it 

was not improper. Finally, he argues that the jury instructions were in 

error because they included conduct not charged in the charging 

document. Because no objection was made, this issue was not preserved. 

Nevertheless, we conclude that, even if it had been preserved, the error 

was not harmful. We thus affirm.
2

Appellant was charged and convicted of sexual battery against his stepdaughter, beginning when she was eight years old and continuing on a 

regular basis. She did not report the crimes until she was seventeen. 

When confronted, appellant made multiple incriminating statements both 

to his ex-wife and on a recorded telephone call.

At the trial, the investigating detective was asked, “[D]uring the course 

of your investigation, did you determine that the alleged incidents occurred 

as early as 2001?” He responded, “Yes.” No objection was made, but on 

appeal, appellant claims that this amounted to the detective giving an 

improper opinion on the appellant’s guilt. In no way do we find that the 

question and answer could be construed as the detective giving his opinion 

on the guilt of the appellant. The question merely sought to establish the 

earliest date that the “alleged” incidents occurred, as the time was relevant 

to the issue of the age of the victim.

This is entirely different than Battle v. State, 19 So. 3d 1045 (Fla. 4th 

DCA 2009), upon which appellant relies. There, the officer was allowed to 

testify that, although he had not witnessed the burglary, “[d]efinitely, one 

hundred percent, [Battle] is the guy that committed the burglary.” Id. at 

1046. We concluded that this was clearly opinion evidence and could have 

conveyed to the jury the impression that the officer had other evidence of 

Battle’s guilt. Id. at 1047-48. In the present case, however, the officer’s 

comment was not opinion evidence, nor did it convey to the jury that the 

detective may have possessed additional information which led to a 

conclusion of appellant’s guilt. As this did not constitute opinion evidence, 

appellant’s contention lacks merit.

During closing argument, the prosecutor referred to the victim as 

“damaged” on multiple occasions. Despite never having objected to the 

use of the word “damaged” at trial, appellant now asserts that this was an 

improper appeal to the jury for sympathy for the victim which was 

intended to inflame the jurors and which amounted to fundamental error. 

We disagree. Much of the “damage” referred to by the prosecutor was a 

description of the victim’s psychological state caused by other harmful 

events in her life. The prosecutor used these events to explain why she 

didn’t seek help when she was young and the abuse started. The evidence 

at trial showed that the victim had been abused by her first step-father as 

well as appellant, and disbelieved by her grandmother when she tried to 

report the abuse by the appellant.

Moreover, as these references were never objected to, they would have 

to amount to fundamental error for us to reverse. In order for 

prosecutorial misconduct to amount to fundamental error, it must “reach 
3

down into the validity of the trial itself to the extent that a verdict of guilty 

could not have been obtained without the assistance of the alleged error.” 

Farina v. State, 937 So. 2d 612, 629 (Fla. 2006) (quoting Harrell v. State, 

894 So. 2d 935, 941 (Fla. 2005)). These comments do not rise to that level.

Finally, appellant claims that the jury instruction was incorrect in that 

it allowed the jury to convict him on conduct not charged. The state 

charged Haspel in count IV with committing a sexual battery “by causing 

his finger to penetrate the vagina” of the victim. But the jury instruction 

merely instructed that the state had to prove that her vagina was 

penetrated by “an object.” Haspel argues that it is fundamental error to 

instruct the jury on an alternative act where the state has alleged only one 

of several possible acts.

He relies on Sanders v. State, 959 So. 2d 1232 (Fla. 2d DCA 2007), in 

which the jury was instructed on alternative means of committing 

aggravated battery on a law enforcement officer, where the state had 

presented no evidence of the uncharged alternative theory of the offense. 

The present case is distinguishable from Sanders because the evidence 

adduced regarding this count was that the victim was digitally penetrated. 

There was no evidence that she was penetrated by “an object.” The 

information charged digital penetration, and the prosecutor argued in 

closing that the jury needed to find digital penetration to convict appellant. 

The verdict instructed the jury to find appellant guilty “as charged in the 

information.” The type of error which occurred in Sanders did not occur 

in this case, nor was any error of such an extent that it would have vitiated 

the trial.

For the foregoing reasons we affirm appellant’s convictions and 

sentences.

DAMOORGIAN, C.J., and MAY, J., concur. 

* * *

Not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing.