DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA

FOURTH DISTRICT

OCKEVE SINCLAIR,

Appellant,

v.

STATE OF FLORIDA,

Appellee.

No. 4D19-2815

[April 14, 2021]

Appeal from the Circuit Court for the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit, 

Broward County; Timothy L. Bailey, Judge; L.T. Case No. 16-5754CF10A.

Carey Haughwout, Public Defender, and David John McPherrin, 

Assistant Public Defender, West Palm Beach, for appellant.

Ashley Moody, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Alexandra A. Folley, 

Assistant Attorney General, West Palm Beach, for appellee.

GROSS, J.

Ockeve Sinclair appeals his conviction for first-degree murder. We 

affirm and write to address one issue—the admissibility of Sinclair’s 

statements to a police detective. We hold that the trial court properly 

denied Sinclair’s motion to suppress a May 12, 2016 statement to the 

police.

Background

Sinclair was charged along with a codefendant, Brian Fairweather, who 

accepted a plea bargain. Sinclair was convicted after a jury trial.

The murder victim, who worked as a corrections officer, was shot in his 

apartment, once in the mouth and three times to the chest. A witness saw 

Sinclair, wearing a red hoodie, and Fairweather, wearing a black hoodie,

in the area of the victim’s apartment between 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. A 

surveillance video from the apartment complex showed two men, one in a 

red hoodie and the other in a black hoodie, walking toward the victim’s 

apartment. Phone records established that both Sinclair’s phone and 
2

Fairweather’s phone were near the victim’s apartment between 12:30 and

1:30 p.m. When the victim did not show up for work at 2:00 p.m., the 

corrections facility contacted the victim’s mother, who went to the 

apartment and found her son’s body lying in a pool of blood by the front 

door. She dialed 911.

When police arrived at the apartment, they observed no signs of forced 

entry. A bottle of bleach was close to the victim’s body and the apartment 

smelled of bleach. The apartment was ransacked. There were items 

missing from a jewelry case. Although the victim owned a number of guns, 

no guns were found in his apartment.

During the investigation, a detective learned that the victim might have 

had a romantic relationship with Fairweather’s wife and that Fairweather

had a confrontation with the victim a few days before the murder.

Sinclair made statements to an acquaintance, who testified at trial. The 

acquaintance said he met Sinclair through Fairweather. Sinclair told the 

acquaintance that he and Fairweather went in the victim’s apartment and 

came back out, but “they didn’t have enough stuff.” Sinclair said that 

Fairweather was a coward, who “didn’t wasn’t to go back inside the house,” 

so Sinclair took a gun from Fairweather and went back inside. Sinclair 

said that Fairweather did not “have the balls to pull the trigger” and that, 

after the murder, they cleaned up the place with bleach.

Sinclair’s Statements to Police

Sinclair was interrogated on three occasions: (1) February 16, 2016; (2) 

March 9, 2016; and (3) May 12, 2016. He moved to suppress all three 

statements. The trial court granted Sinclair’s motion to suppress the 

March 9, 2016 statement, but denied Sinclair’s motion to suppress the 

other two statements. 

On February 16, 2016, Sinclair spoke with a detective and denied 

involvement in the murder. Sinclair also provided his phone for analysis. 

On March 9, 2016, the detective interviewed Sinclair at the Pembroke 

Pines police station without first giving Miranda warnings. The detective

told Sinclair that the victim’s neighbors placed him at the victim’s 

apartment, but Sinclair continued to deny involvement in the murder. 

Throughout this interview, the detective repeatedly denied Sinclair’s 

requests to leave. The trial court suppressed this statement, concluding 

that it was made without Miranda warnings and that Sinclair was in 

custody, since he was not free to leave. 
3

On May 12, 2016, following Sinclair’s arrest in Fort Pierce for firstdegree murder, a Fort Pierce police officer contacted the detective and told 

him that Sinclair requested to speak with him. The detective drove to Fort 

Pierce to interview Sinclair. Sinclair received Miranda warnings and 

executed a written waiver. 

In the May 12, 2016 statement, Sinclair claimed that he was at the 

victim’s apartment complex to sell weed. At first, he denied that he went 

inside the victim’s apartment. Eventually, he admitted that he was inside

the victim’s apartment, helping Fairweather take the victim’s guns. He 

said Fairweather shot the victim three or four times as the victim entered 

the apartment. He also claimed that Fairweather took guns and watches 

from the victim’s apartment, while he took boxes of bullets. He admitted

to selling Fairweather a .38 revolver about one to three months before the 

murder, which was the same weapon Fairweather used to shoot the victim.

During the interview, he never asked that questioning stop and never 

asked for a lawyer. 

Following a suppression hearing at which both Sinclair and the 

detective testified, the trial court denied the motion to suppress the May 

12, 2016 confession, finding that (1) Sinclair reinitiated the conversation 

with the detective, (2) he received Miranda warnings, (3) he waived his 

Miranda rights, (4) he was not coerced, and (5) he never expressed a desire 

to end the interrogation. The trial court rejected Sinclair’s testimony that 

he informed the detective over the phone that he did not want to speak to 

him. The trial court noted that Sinclair spent “the last half hour” of the 

interrogation “trying to get a deal out of [the detective],” telling the detective 

that he knew something about other murders and “almost explaining why 

he wanted to talk to [the detective].” Having watched “the entire visit 

between [the detective] and Sinclair,” the trial court found that the 

interview was consistent with the State’s argument that Sinclair “wanted 

to talk to [the detective].” A large portion of the May 12, 2016 interview 

was played for the jury at trial. 

The Detective’s Failure to Honor Sinclair’s Invocation of 

His Right to Silence on March 9th Did Not Carry Over to 

Sinclair’s Statement on May 12th

Sinclair argues that because the detective did not scrupulously honor 

his invocation of his right to silence on March 9, 2016, his subsequent 

statement on May 12, 2016 was subject to suppression. We disagree.

We hold that the detective’s failure to honor Sinclair’s invocation of his 

right to silence on March 9th did not carry over to the May 12th statement. 
4

Sinclair initiated the May 12th statement following a significant passage 

of time and a break in custody between the two statements. 

In State v. Hunt, 14 So. 3d 1035 (Fla. 2d DCA 2009), the Second District 

set forth a two-step analysis for determining whether to suppress a 

suspect’s statement to the police after an earlier invocation of his rights: 

Where, as here, a suspect has made statements to the 

police after invoking his right to remain silent, the correct 

approach to determining whether the police have 

scrupulously honored the suspect’s right to remain silent may 

require a two-step analysis. In the first step, courts must 

decide whether the police continued to interrogate the suspect 

despite his or her invocation of the right to remain silent. If 

the police continued the interrogation, then they failed to 

scrupulously honor the right to remain silent and the 

resulting statements are inadmissible. Under these 

circumstances, the court need not proceed to the second step. 

On the other hand, if the interrogation ceased, the court 

must proceed to the second step of the analysis. In the second 

step, the court must determine who reinitiated the dialogue. 

The answer to this question determines what factors the court 

must examine in resolving the issue. 

* * *

[W]here it was the suspect who reinitiated the dialogue 

with the authorities, the inquiry is different. Under these 

circumstances, the courts consider whether the suspect’s 

decision to change his or her mind and to waive his or her 

rights by speaking with the authorities was voluntary, 

knowing, and intelligent. 

Id. at 1038–39 (citations omitted).

To be sure, Hunt contains language stating that if police fail “to 

scrupulously honor the right to remain silent,” then “the resulting 

statements are inadmissible” and “the court need not proceed to the 

second step.” Id. However, this court has observed that Hunt “does not 

directly address a situation where the defendant reinitiated dialogue with 

the police after an earlier interrogation in which the police did not 

immediately cease questioning when the defendant invoked his rights.”

Calder v. State, 133 So. 3d 1025, 1032 (Fla. 4th DCA 2014). 
5

Courts that have addressed the “initiation” issue in depth have held 

that “where law enforcement officers have disregarded a suspect’s 

previously-invoked rights by continuing to interrogate him, a renewal of 

contact by the defendant will be considered an ‘initiation’ only if the 

decision to renew contact was not a ‘response to’ or ‘product of’ the prior 

unlawful interrogation.” Mack v. State, 765 S.E.2d 896, 903 (Ga. 2014).

For example, in Calder, we held that the defendant’s reinitiation of the 

interrogation and waiver of his previously-invoked right to counsel was the 

product of improper police conduct, as the detective’s improper comments 

reduced the defendant to tears and the defendant’s reinitiation occurred 

less than 10 minutes after the first interrogation ended. 133 So. 3d at 

1029–33. 

Significant to the analysis in this area, “either a break in custody or a 

lapse of time may be sufficient to obviate the effect of improper police 

interrogation.” Perrine v. State, 919 So. 2d 520, 524–25 (Fla. 3d DCA 

2005). For example, in Perrine, the Third District held that the trial court 

did not err in finding that the taint of improper questioning had dissipated 

where (1) the defendant initially invoked her Miranda rights, (2) the police 

improperly continued questioning, (3) the defendant left the police station 

for 30 minutes and returned voluntarily, and (4) the defendant reinitiated 

questioning and waived her Miranda rights. Id. at 521–24. 

Similarly, in Maryland v. Shatzer, 559 U.S. 98 (2010), the United States 

Supreme Court held that where a suspect experienced a break in custody 

of at least 14 days, the rule of Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U.S. 477 (1981),

does not require suppression. The Edwards rule provides that when a 

suspect has invoked his right to counsel, he should not be subject to 

further interrogation until either counsel has been made available or the 

suspect himself initiates further exchanges with the police. In Shatzer, 

the Court ruled that suppression was not required, as 14 days “provides 

plenty of time for the suspect to get reacclimated to his normal life, to 

consult with friends and counsel, and to shake off any residual coercive 

effects of his prior custody.” 559 U.S. at 110.

Here, the trial court properly denied Sinclair’s motion to suppress his 

May 2016 statement because, under the totality of the circumstances, he

voluntarily initiated this interrogation. Although the detective failed to 

scrupulously honor Sinclair’s invocation of his right to silence during the 

March 2016 interrogation, the trial court addressed that harm by 

suppressing that earlier statement. Importantly, the trial court made an 

express factual finding that Sinclair reinitiated contact with the detective
6

after he was arrested in May 2016, that Sinclair received Miranda warnings 

prior to the May 2016 interrogation, and that he voluntarily waived his 

rights. 

Based on the trial court’s factual findings, Sinclair’s subsequent 

reinitiation of contact with the detective in May 2016 was not the product 

of the prior unlawful interrogation. There was both a break in custody and 

a lapse of time between the two statements. Either factor would be 

sufficient to obviate the effect of the previous improper interrogation.

We cite Shatzer only to illustrate that this case isn’t even close. Two 

months was enough time for Sinclair to “shake off” any residual coercive 

effects of the prior interrogation. The taint of the detective’s improper 

questioning two months earlier had long since dissipated. We need not 

decide the exact amount of time that must pass to obviate the effect of a 

prior improper interrogation in cases where there has been no break in 

custody, as our decision is limited to the present circumstances.1 

For these reasons, the trial court properly denied the motion to 

suppress.

Affirmed.

LEVINE, C.J., and ARTAU, J., concur.

* * *

Not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing.

1 While the passage of time after the invocation of Miranda rights is not a critical 

element in determining the voluntariness of a statement if the defendant has 

reinitiated further communications with police, see Hunt, 14 So. 3d at 1039, the 

passage of time can be a relevant factor in determining whether the reinitiation 

itself was voluntary following a prior unlawful interrogation. See Calder, 133 So. 

3d at 1033 (holding that the defendant’s reinitiation of the interrogation was 

involuntary under the totality of the circumstances where fewer than ten minutes 

had passed between the officer’s improper comments, which were designed to 

induce the defendant to reinitiate the interrogation without a lawyer, and the 

defendant’s reinitiation).