DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA

FOURTH DISTRICT

July Term 2014

MICHAEL ROUNDTREE,

Appellant,

v.

STATE OF FLORIDA,

Appellee.

No. 4D12-498

[ August 27, 2014 ]

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

Beach County; Joseph Marx, Judge; L.T. Case No. 2010CF014859AMB.

Carey Haughwout, Public Defender, and Jeffrey L. Anderson, Assistant 

Public Defender, West Palm Beach, for appellant.

Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Don M. Rogers, 

Assistant Attorney General, West Palm Beach, for appellee.

TAYLOR, J.

Appellant, Michael Roundtree, challenges his convictions for armed 

robbery and two counts of false imprisonment. We reverse, concluding 

that the trial court erred in admitting an interrogation of appellant which 

primarily consisted of the officer expressing his personal opinion as to 

appellant’s guilt.

The relevant facts are as follows. On the morning of December 12, 

2010, a man robbed a store in West Palm Beach. The incident was 

captured on the store’s surveillance video. The robber was wearing a cloth 

rag on his head and a mask that covered his face from the nose down.

The robber showed the two store clerks an object that appeared to be a 

gun. The robber grabbed money, MP3 players, and deodorants. He told 

the two store employees to go inside a storage room and to wait there while 

he took some things. He then shut the door behind them. The employees 

waited in the room for about twenty minutes and then called the police. 
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Neither store employee could identify the robber.

The robber was not wearing gloves when he handled the deodorant 

containers. Before exiting the store, the robber left some deodorants on 

the counter. A certified print examiner went to the store after the robbery 

and processed the scene for fingerprints. There were several latent 

fingerprints of value found on the deodorants that the robber handled. All 

of the identifiable fingerprints on the deodorants matched appellant’s 

fingerprints.

In January 2011, an officer interrogated appellant. Most of the 

interview was played to the jury, but the trial court excluded a portion of 

the interview containing a reference to appellant having been in jail.

In the interview, the officer repeatedly accused appellant of committing 

the robbery and appellant repeatedly denied committing the robbery. 

Appellant told the officer that he shopped at the store “a couple of weeks 

ago,” but appellant could not give an exact date.

When appellant continued to maintain his innocence, the officer stated: 

“I’m not going to believe you, I’m not going to change my mind. I’ve seen 

it on video and I have your fingerprints, okay? That’s how I got you here 

today.”

The back-and-forth between appellant and the officer continued for a 

while. The officer reiterated his opinion as to appellant’s guilt and 

appellant continued to deny that he robbed the store.

Appellant again stated: “I didn’t rob anybody.” The officer replied: “You 

did.” Appellant then said: “You keep saying that. You ain’t going to believe 

me regardless.” The officer replied: “I’m not – I’ve got video and scientific 

proof, okay?”

Later, the officer showed appellant the surveillance video of the robbery 

and said: “You start talking to her and I guess just forgot about the 

deodorants. That’s all we have. That’s all I need to (unintelligible) and the 

deodorants are right there. (Unintelligible.)” Appellant responded, 

“(Unintelligible) I’m guilty regardless.”

Appellant’s wife testified for the defense, claiming that appellant was at 

home with her on the morning of December 12, 2010. She also testified 

that about two weeks before Christmas in 2010, she and appellant were 

at the store in question to pick up a few items, including deodorants. The 

deodorants were for each member of the family. Appellant’s wife had 
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grabbed three or four deodorants. When she met appellant at the front of 

the store, she saw that he had also grabbed several deodorants, so she 

told him to place the deodorants back on the shelf.

The jury found appellant guilty of robbery with a firearm and two 

counts of false imprisonment. This appeal ensued.

A trial court’s decision on the admissibility of evidence is reviewed 

under an abuse of discretion standard. Hudson v. State, 992 So. 2d 96, 

107 (Fla. 2008). But the trial court’s discretion is limited by the rules of 

evidence. Id.

Because a witness’s opinion as to the credibility, guilt or innocence of 

the accused is generally inadmissible, “it is especially troublesome when a 

jury is repeatedly exposed to an interrogating officer’s opinion regarding 

the guilt or innocence of the accused.” Jackson v. State, 107 So. 3d 328, 

339-40 (Fla. 2012). Nonetheless, “a police officer’s statements during an 

interrogation are admissible if they provoke a relevant response or provide 

context to the interview such that a rational jury could recognize the 

questions are interrogation techniques used to secure confessions.” Id. at 

340.

In Jackson, the Florida Supreme Court held that the trial court abused 

its discretion in admitting the defendant’s videotaped interrogation in 

which the officers repeatedly expressed their opinions about the 

defendant’s guilt. Id. at 330, 341-42. The supreme court explained that 

while the detectives may have intended to secure a confession by 

consistently expressing their conviction as to the defendant’s guilt, they 

did not secure a confession throughout their dialogue. Id. at 341. 

Moreover, although the detectives’ opinions about the defendant’s guilt

and the weight and sufficiency of the evidence were not expressed during 

in-court testimony, admission of these statements essentially permitted 

the State to improperly elicit police opinion testimony and invade the

province of the jury. Id. Even to the extent the detectives’ statements did 

yield somewhat relevant responses, our supreme court explained that this 

evidence should not have been admitted, as the statements had minimal 

probative value when compared with the inappropriate statements by the 

detectives. Id. at 341-42.

The present case is governed by Jackson. During the interrogation, the 

officer repeatedly expressed his personal belief that appellant was guilty. 

Moreover, here, as in Jackson, the vast majority of the officer’s statements 

did not provoke relevant responses from appellant. Indeed, the officer 

never secured a confession from appellant. In addition to the officer’s 
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repeated opinions about appellant’s guilt, the jury was also permitted to 

hear a statement by the appellant which, because of its ambiguity, had 

little or no evidentiary value. The quip—“(Unintelligible) I’m guilty 

regardless”—cannot fairly be interpreted as an admission of guilt under 

the circumstances of this case. Appellant’s statement must be examined 

in the context of the entire interrogation. When appellant’s statement is 

read in context, we interpret the statement as meaning that the officer 

would consider him guilty regardless of his protestations of innocence. 

This is the only interpretation that makes sense in light of appellant’s 

repeated denials that he committed the robbery, the officer’s statements

to the effect that he was not going to believe appellant, and appellant’s 

reply to the officer that “[y]ou ain’t going to believe me regardless.” 

(Emphasis added.) Any relevance of appellant’s statement—

“(Unintelligible) I’m guilty regardless”—was minimal in comparison to the 

impropriety of admitting the officer’s opinions as to appellant’s guilt.

Accordingly, we find that the trial court should have excluded the entire 

interrogation at trial. See Pausch v. State, 596 So. 2d 1216, 1219 (Fla. 2d 

DCA 1992) (finding that the jury “could not have reasonably been expected 

to isolate and extract from the recording that which was admissible as 

evidence of the crime while disregarding the aspersions of guilt created by 

[the detective’s] words”).

Although we conclude that the trial court committed error by admitting 

the interrogation under the facts of this case, we take the opportunity to 

acknowledge that situations may exist where “the prejudice of an 

interrogating officer’s statements could be obviated or reduced by reading 

a limiting instruction to the jury.” Jackson, 107 So. 3d at 341 n.15. In 

Eugene v. State, 53 So. 3d 1104 (Fla. 4th DCA 2011), we gave an example 

of an instruction that a trial judge might use to address the problem of 

unfair prejudice when a defendant’s interrogation contains accusatory 

non-hearsay statements by police officers:

A recorded police interrogation of the defendant has been 

introduced into evidence in this trial. During the 

interrogation, any statements made by the police interrogator 

are not to be considered by you jurors as evidence of the 

defendant’s guilt. The statements made by the police 

interrogator during the interview of the defendant have not 

been introduced into evidence to prove the truth of the matters 

asserted in those statements. In fact, the statements made by 

the police interrogator during the interrogation of the

defendant may be false and misleading. It is permissible for 

a police officer conducting an interrogation of a defendant to 
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make false and misleading statements to the defendant in 

order to further the aims of the interrogation. However, it is 

not permissible for you jurors to rely on such police 

interrogator’s statements as proof of the defendant’s guilt.

Id. at 1112 n.4. In cases where an interrogating detective’s statements 

about a crime provoke relevant responses from the defendant, we would 

encourage trial judges to “instruct the jury on the limited purpose for 

which the jury has been allowed to hear the interrogator’s statements.” Id.

In conclusion, we find that the admission of the officer’s statements 

during the interrogation permitted the state to elicit a police officer’s 

opinion as to appellant’s guilt, thereby invading the province of the jury. 

In this contested identity case, we cannot conclude that the error was 

harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. See State v. DiGuilio, 491 So. 2d

1129, 1135 (Fla. 1986). We reverse and remand for a new trial.1

Reversed and Remanded.

CIKLIN and GERBER, JJ., concur.

* * *

Not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing.

1 The remaining issues are either moot or without merit.