DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA

FOURTH DISTRICT

CHANARD RANDRELL GREEN,

Appellant,

v.

STATE OF FLORIDA,

Appellee.

No. 4D13-1869

[March 18, 2015]

Appeal from the Circuit Court for the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit, Palm 

Beach County; Karen M. Miller, Judge; L.T. Case No. 2011CF007929AXX.

Carey Haughwout, Public Defender, and Tom Wm. Odom, Assistant 

Public Defender, West Palm Beach, for appellant.

Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Richard 

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

TAYLOR, J.

Chanard R. Green appeals his convictions for sale of cocaine and

trafficking in 28 grams or more of cocaine. Appellant argues that the trial 

court erred by (1) permitting law enforcement officers to testify that he was 

arrested in a high crime neighborhood, (2) denying his motion to dismiss 

on grounds of objective entrapment, and (3) allowing the State to introduce 

hearsay testimony that improperly bolstered the testimony of another 

officer. We affirm on all issues but write to address appellant’s argument 

that the trial court erred in permitting law enforcement officers to testify 

that he was arrested in a high crime neighborhood.

A multi-agency task force set up a storefront called Crossbones in the 

Westgate neighborhood of Palm Beach County. Law enforcement officers 

worked in the store selling clothing, CDs, DVDs, and tobacco products at 

discounted prices. If a customer held himself out to be a drug dealer or to 

have access to firearms, the agents would “probe a little bit further” to see 

if the customer would return to the store with the drugs or firearms that 

he claimed to have.
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Appellant assisted another man in negotiating the sale of crack cocaine 

to an undercover special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearm 

and Explosives (ATF), who worked as the store manager. The sale was 

captured on video and shortly thereafter appellant was arrested.

During opening statements, the prosecutor explained that the multiagency operation used statistics to identify and concentrate on high crime 

areas in Palm Beach County; Westgate was one of those areas. Defense 

counsel did not object to these comments. Defense counsel also addressed 

this issue in his opening statement, asserting: “I believe you’ll hear in 

evidence they specifically chose a minority area in one of the worst 

economies since the great depression. . . . They undersold every store in 

the neighborhood. . . . They did everything in their effort to lure people in 

to sell or take part in crime with them and arrested . . . large amounts of 

people in this area.”

A deputy sheriff worked in the back room of the store monitoring 

activities captured on the store’s video surveillance. The prosecutor asked 

the deputy if in recent years special efforts have been made to reduce crime 

in the Westgate area. Defense counsel made a relevancy objection and the 

court overruled the objection. The deputy responded in the affirmative.

The ATF special agent, who worked as the store manager, testified that

the bureau began the operation to address violent crime, specifically the 

high rate of narcotics and firearms activity in Palm Beach County. The 

multi-agency task force used crime mapping statistics to identify the

Westgate neighborhood as one of those high crime areas. When asked 

about the discount price of the goods, he explained that the merchandise 

was priced at a discount to give customers the impression that it came 

from an illegitimate source.

At the close of the state’s case, defense counsel filed a motion to dismiss 

on the grounds of objective entrapment. Defense counsel argued that by 

opening a store in a lower socioeconomic neighborhood and selling goods

below market cost, law enforcement enticed customers to engage in 

criminal activity. The trial court denied the motion to dismiss.

The jury found appellant guilty on both counts. He was sentenced to 

eight years in prison with a three-year mandatory minimum on the 

trafficking charge.

Appellant argues that the trial court erred by permitting the law 

enforcement officers to describe the neighborhood where they set up the 

storefront as a high crime area. According to appellant, such testimony 
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was irrelevant and presumptively harmful as it linked appellant to violent 

crime and implied his guilt by association with violent criminals.

As a preliminary matter, the state argues that appellant failed to 

preserve his undue prejudice argument for appeal by making only a 

relevancy objection at trial. See Datus v. State, 126 So. 3d 363, 365 (Fla. 

4th DCA 2013) (“an objection on relevance grounds only will not preserve 

an argument of unfair prejudice on appeal.”). Although the issue of undue 

prejudice was not preserved, the issue of relevancy of testimony about the 

neighborhood’s high-crime reputation was preserved for appellate review. 

See id. at 366.

“In Florida, evidence that a criminal defendant was arrested in a high 

crime area is generally inadmissible [because] [s]uch evidence is usually 

considered irrelevant to the issue of guilt and unduly prejudicial because 

of its tendency to establish guilt by association.” Latimore v. State, 819 

So. 2d 956, 958 (Fla. 4th DCA 2002) (citing Johnson v. State, 559 So. 2d 

729 (Fla. 4th DCA 1990), and Beneby v. State, 354 So. 2d 98 (Fla. 4th DCA 

1978)). However, in Gillion v. State, 573 So. 2d 810, 811 (Fla. 1991), the 

Florida Supreme Court held that testimony identifying the location of a 

defendant’s arrest as a high-crime area may not always result in reversal. 

Whether such testimony is irrelevant and unduly prejudicial depends 

upon the facts of each case. Id. at 812.

Here, when the state first raised the neighborhood’s reputation for 

criminal activity in its opening statement, defense counsel failed to object.

Then, after defense counsel raised the issue of objective entrapment in his

opening statement, the prosecutor elicited testimony from the deputy 

sheriff and the ATF special agent regarding their reasons for setting up the 

undercover operation in the Westgate neighborhood. This was properly 

done in anticipation of the defendant’s theory of the case. See Bell v. State, 

965 So. 2d 48, 56-57 (Fla. 2007) (finding that the prosecutor was entitled 

to anticipate and mitigate the impact of negative testimony that may be 

revealed on cross-examination).

The state contends, and we agree, that testimony regarding the high 

crime character of the neighborhood was relevant and admissible to refute 

appellant’s objective entrapment defense that the storefront was set up 

simply to target and prey upon the low-income residents of the 

neighborhood. Accordingly, we affirm.

Affirmed

WARNER and KLINGENSMITH, JJ., concur.
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* * *

Not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing.