DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA

FOURTH DISTRICT

ELIAS ROSADO,

Appellant,

v.

STATE OF FLORIDA,

Appellee.

No. 4D18-2968

[March 6, 2019]

Appeal of order denying rule 3.850 motion from the Circuit Court for 

the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit, Broward County; Paul L. Backman, 

Judge; L.T. Case No. 07-002858CF10A.

Elias Rosado, Florida City, pro se.

Ashley B. Moody, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Matthew Steven 

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

PER CURIAM.

Elias Rosado appeals an order summarily denying his second rule 

3.850 motion and an order prohibiting further pro se filing in this case. 

We affirm the denial of the rule 3.850 motion and reverse the sanction.

In 2007, Rosado pleaded guilty to burglary of a structure, and he was 

sentenced to ten years in prison as a habitual offender. He filed a prior 

rule 3.850 motion that was denied after an evidentiary hearing and 

affirmed on appeal. Rosado v. State, 67 So. 3d 220 (Fla. 4th DCA 2011). 

He also filed a rule 3.800(a) motion to correct an illegal sentence that was 

denied and affirmed on appeal. Rosado v. State, 234 So. 3d 747 (Fla. 4th 

DCA 2017). 

On July 19, 2017, Rosado filed this rule 3.850 motion alleging newly 

discovered evidence after he received a notice from the State that DNA 

statistical probabilities may have been miscalculated in his case. The 

notice stated that the Broward Sheriff’s Office Crime Laboratory 

inappropriately used Combined Probability of Inclusion (CPI) to calculate 

the statistical probabilities of genetic profiles in complex mixture DNA 
2

cases. The notice did not indicate whether CPI calculations were used in 

Rosado’s case. He sought to withdraw his plea, alleging that he would 

have proceeded to trial if he had known that the DNA statistics were 

miscalculated. 

The trial court ordered the State to file a response to the rule 3.850

motion in ninety days. After the State did not timely respond, Rosado filed 

two motions to hear and rule and he requested supplemental DNA 

discovery including all serology and DNA reports and to allow further 

testing. 

More than a year after Rosado filed this rule 3.850 motion and eight 

months after the court’s order, the State filed its response. The State 

explained that the notice about calculation errors in complex DNA mixture 

cases did not apply in this case because the sample analyzed was not a 

mixture. It was blood from a single person. The State argued there was 

no good cause to allow postconviction discovery. Referring to filings in 

Rosado’s other cases, the State asked the court to prohibit further pro se 

filing. 

The trial court denied the rule 3.850 motion, and following an order to 

show cause pursuant to State v. Spencer, 751 So. 2d 47 (Fla. 1999), the 

court prohibited further pro se filing in this case. 

We affirm the denial of Rosado’s rule 3.850 motion because the State’s 

generic DNA Brady1 notice does not apply to Rosado’s case. As a result, 

there is no newly discovered evidence that could have affected the 

voluntariness of his plea. 

However, we agree with Rosado that the trial court erred in prohibiting 

further pro se filing in this case. See Gaston v. State, 141 So. 3d 627 (Fla. 

4th DCA 2014). Rosado’s second rule 3.850 motion, filed in response to 

the State’s Brady notice, was not an abuse of procedure. The Brady notice 

did not provide enough information for him to understand that the 

calculation error did not occur in his case. The Spencer order to show 

cause was directed at this case, not his other unrelated cases. On appeal, 

the State acknowledges that apart from his motions to hear and rule and 

his request for discovery, this case is controlled by Gaston. These motions 

were related to the State’s delay in responding to the rule 3.850 motion. A 

prompt response would have shown that the Brady notice was inapplicable 

and there was no need for further discovery. The record does not show 

that Rosado abused the postconviction process in this case. See Fla. R. 

 

1 Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963). 
3

Crim. P. 3.850(n). Accordingly, the sanction prohibiting further pro se 

filing is reversed. 

Affirmed in part; reversed in part.

WARNER, GROSS and KLINGENSMITH, JJ., concur. 

* * *

Not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing.