Case Name: STATE of Florida, Petitioner, v. Reinaldo Demetrio MENESES, Respondent
Court: Florida Supreme Court
Jurisdiction: Florida
Decision Date: 1981-01-08
Citations: 392 So. 2d 905
Docket Number: No. 57506
Parties: STATE of Florida, Petitioner, v. Reinaldo Demetrio MENESES, Respondent.
Judges: BOYD, OVERTON and McDONALD, JJ., concur.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 392
Pages: 905–909

Head Matter:
STATE of Florida, Petitioner, v. Reinaldo Demetrio MENESES, Respondent.
No. 57506.
Supreme Court of Florida.
Jan. 8, 1981.
Jim Smith, Atty. Gen., Tallahassee and Anthony C. Musto, Asst. Atty. Gen., Miami, for petitioner.
No appearance for respondent.

Opinion:
ALDERMAN, Justice.
We have for review the decision of the District Court of Appeal, Third District in Meneses v. State, 372 So.2d 1152 (Fla. 3d DCA 1979), which conflicts directly with Brooks v. State, 209 So.2d 271 (Fla. 1st DCA 1968). The question presented for our resolution is whether the pendency of a petition for writ of certiorari in this Court, arising from the affirmance on direct appeal of the judgment and sentence, deprives the trial court of jurisdiction to consider a Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850 motion to vacate filed after the certiorari petition has been filed in this Court. We hold that the trial court was deprived of jurisdiction to rule on Meneses' motion to vacate while certiorari proceedings were pending before us, approve Brooks, and quash the decision of the district court in Meneses.
On January 31, 1977, Meneses pled nolo contendere to a lottery-bolita violation reserving the right to appeal denial of his motion to suppress after the trial court denied his motion to suppress the primary evidence against him — wiretap evidence of telephone conversations. During the plea proceeding, the assistant state attorney represented to the court that a voice gram had been done and that the voice print compared by public safety department expert Earl Richardson verified the fact that Meneses' voice was heard on these calls. Meneses was sentenced on March 15, 1977, to two years in the state prison. The District Court of Appeal, Third District, affirmed his conviction and sentence, and Meneses sought certiorari to this Court. While his certiorari petition was pending and without securing leave of this Court to do so, Meneses filed a 3.850 motion in the trial court to vacate his judgment and sentence and to dismiss the information against him, or in the alternative to allow him to withdraw his nolo plea and to proceed to trial. He alleged that the prosecutor had made an untrue statement during the plea proceeding relative to the verification of Meneses' voice as being a voice heard on these wiretapped calls. He alleged that in fact at the time he had entered his plea, there had been no identification of his voice and further stated that nine days after he entered his plea of nolo contendere, a voice identification report was sent by Earl Richardson to the assistant state attorney assigned to Meneses' case advising her that he could not positively identify the voice on the tapes submitted to him as Meneses'. The motion also alleged that this report was never furnished to Meneses or his counsel, that the assistant state attorney failed to furnish Richardson's report to the court which, at the time, was conducting a presentence investigation, and that the court, at the time it entered sentence, had no knowledge of the voice gram report because of deliberate suppression by the State. Finding that the allegations contained in the motion did not constitute legal grounds for granting a new trial or release of Meneses, the trial court denied the motion to vacate without hearing.
Meneses appealed, and the district court reversed and held that the trial court did not lack subject matter jurisdiction to consider the motion because of pendency of certiorari proceedings in the Supreme Court although the district court did recognize that a 3.850 motion may not be considered while the judgment from which relief is sought is on direct appeal in the district court of appeal. The district court remanded to the trial court for an evidentiary hearing to determine whether there had been a Brady violation.
Explaining the difficulty in allowing motions to vacate to be filed while certiorari review or appeal is pending from the conviction. Judge Hubbart dissented and expressed the view that the trial court lacked jurisdiction to entertain Meneses' motion to vacate. He asserted that the trial court was correct in summarily denying Meneses' motion to vacate for lack of jurisdiction, and he explained:
The orderly administration of justice requires, it seems to me, that the defendant pursue in one court at a time whatever legal remedies he desires to employ in attacking his criminal conviction. While pursuing his appellate remedies, the defendant ought not be allowed to simultaneously seek collateral attack relief in the trial court. Unnecessary confusion and needless expenditure of judicial time and effort are avoided by such a rule. Until today, I had thought that such was the prevailing law on the subject. Now it appears that Brooks v. State, 209 So.2d 271 (Fla. 1st DCA 1968), is no longer good law, and Barton v. State, 193 So.2d 627 (Fla. 2d DCA 1966); Gobie v. State, 188 So.2d 34 (Fla. 3d DCA 1966); and Grizzell v. State, 187 So.2d 342 (Fla. 1st DCA 1966), are in serious doubt. I am not persuaded that we should turn an about face on such decisions in favor of a practice which is dubious at best, and, in all likelihood, will lead to considerable confusion and waste of judicial resources.
By the court's decision herein, a busy trial judge is required to hold an eviden-tiary hearing on a motion to vacate, which, if denied, will be a complete waste of time and effort should the Florida Supreme Court later grant certiorari in the cause, quash our decision and reverse the defendant's conviction. On the other hand, if the trial judge grants the motion to vacate, the Florida Supreme Court will, in effect, be ousted of jurisdiction to further entertain the defendant's petition for certiorari, an anomaly in itself, after expending, and thus wasting, its judicial labor thereon.
To further complicate the matter, it should be noted that (a) either party may appeal an unfavorable ruling by the trial court on the motion to vacate, and (b) successive motions to vacate may be filed and appeals taken from rulings thereon so long as new grounds are raised in each motion. See Whitney v. State, 184 So.2d 207, 209 (Fla. 3d DCA 1966); 9A Fla.Jur. "Criminal Law" § 540 (1972). By requiring the trial court to entertain such motions and the appellate courts to review rulings thereon regardless of the status of other appellate remedies being simultaneously pursued by the defendant, a practice has been adopted which is likely to lead to the proliferation of a single criminal case in various courts resulting in considerable confusion as to the status of each remedy as well as needless ex penditure of judicial time and effort on remedies later mooted at both the trial and appellate levels. Even if this is workable, which I doubt, I see nothing to commend such an unnecessarily complex practice particularly at a time when the state's judicial resources are already strained by ever increasing caseloads. See England, "1979 Report on the Florida Judiciary," 53 Fla.Bar.J. 296-305 (1979).
Meneses v. State, 372 So.2d at 1155.
We agree with this rationale of Judge Hubbart, and we approve those decisions, some of which are cited above in the excerpt from Judge Hubbart's dissenting opinion, which hold that while appeal proceedings or certiorari proceedings are pending in an appellate court, the trial court is without jurisdiction to entertain a motion to vacate. The trial court's denial of the motion to vacate in the present case was therefore proper.
Our holding, however, does not preclude defendant's seeking an order from the appellate court to temporarily relinquish jurisdiction to the trial court for the purpose of filing and being heard on a motion to vacate prior to the appellate court's disposition of the case. This is the practice now utilized in the appellate courts in this state. See e. g., Jacobs v. State, 357 So.2d 169 (Fla.1978). The filing in the appellate court of a request to relinquish jurisdiction, however, does not require an appellate court to automatically relinquish jurisdiction to the trial court. The proceedings in the appellate court may be nearing conclusion, and therefore the appellate court may not wish to relinquish jurisdiction at the time of the request but it might prefer to proceed with the disposition of the cause. This is within the discretion of the appellate court to decide. Further, the appellate court, before relinquishing jurisdiction, may evaluate the grounds for the motion to vacate to determine whether they are frivolous and may decide not to relinquish on this basis. This denial of the request to relinquish, however, is not a ruling on the merits of the motion to vacate and will not prevent a subsequent filing of a motion to vacate with the trial court at the conclusion of the proceedings in the appellate court.
Accordingly, we hold that during the pendency of a certiorari proceeding before us, the trial court is without jurisdiction to rule on a motion to vacate filed after review is sought in this Court. The decision of the district court is quashed, and this cause is remanded for further proceedings consistent herewith.
It is so ordered.
BOYD, OVERTON and McDONALD, JJ., concur.
ENGLAND, J., dissents with an opinion with which SUNDBERG, C. J., and ADKINS, J., concur.