Case Name: Floyd G. WILLIAMS, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee
Court: Florida District Court of Appeal
Jurisdiction: Florida
Decision Date: 1987-04-02
Citations: 507 So. 2d 1122
Docket Number: Nos. 85-1352, 86-62
Parties: Floyd G. WILLIAMS, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
Judges: SHARP, J., concurs.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 507
Pages: 1122–1130

Head Matter:
Floyd G. WILLIAMS, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
Nos. 85-1352, 86-62.
District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fifth District.
April 2, 1987.
Rehearing Denied June 1, 1987.
Thomas M. Jaworski, Florida Institutional Legal Services, Inc., Gainesville, for appellant.
Robert A. Butterworth, Atty. Gen., Tallahassee, and Ellen D. Phillips and Joseph N. D’Achille, Jr., Asst. Attys. Gen., Daytona Beach, for appellee.

Opinion:
COBB, Judge.
Floyd Williams appeals from the denial of his 3.850 motion, after a hearing in the trial court (Appeal No. 85-1352), and from denial of his petition for writ of habeas corpus to obtain a belated appeal (Appeal No. 86-62), contending that his trial and appeal were fatally flawed by his attorneys' failure to object to, and present on appeal, the improper admission of a collateral crime under the Williams Rule. Because both proceedings involved the same incident, we sua sponte ordered them consolidated for purposes of disposition by this court. After reviewing the record and briefs in both cases, we reverse the denial of Williams's 3.850 motion, rendering moot the belated appeal.
Williams was involved with two women, Lola Wilson and Vivian Shingle, whom he picked up at a bar in East Palatka known as the Pine Street Inn, shortly before midnight on Thursday, May 1, 1980; they had planned to "smoke a joint" together. These initial facts are not in dispute. Thereafter, according to the state's version, Vivian went directly home from the bar, and Williams drove away with Lola, stopped at an all-night fruit market in East Palatka, and thereafter forcibly raped her in a wooded area in east Putnam County; the next night he picked up Vivian, and raped her in a similar fashion. Williams's version, on the other hand, was that he drove away from the Pine Street Inn with both women on the evening of May 1,1980, and the three of them went together to the East Palatka Fruit Market to buy cigarettes; later in the evening, he was assaulted and robbed of his wallet and marijuana bag by the two women, who then fabricated the rape accusation as a cover-up. See Williams v. State, 447 So.2d 442 (Fla. 5th DCA 1984). Williams was tried and convicted of the kidnapping and sexual battery of Lola Wilson. He was sentenced to 100 years' imprisonment, with the trial judge retaining jurisdiction over 33V3 years.
The issue on this appeal, raised by Williams's 3.850 motion and the evidentia-ry hearing thereon, is whether his appointed trial counsel was effective in light of a record that reflects virtually no pretrial investigation and a determination to present no witnesses at trial, all in the name of preserving rebuttal during closing argument. Trial counsel even advised Williams not to testify, which would have meant the state's version of events was uncontradicted. Trial counsel also declined to depose the alleged rape victims prior to trial, ostensibly in order to retain a tactical surprise examination. A trial strategy to do nothing, contrary to the dissent, is not an acceptable one.
There was no physical evidence that either Lola Wilson or Vivian Shingle was assaulted or raped. The only evidence that Lola was raped was her own testimony. Lola's first report to the police about the incident stated that Williams had accused her of stealing drugs from him and had threatened her. She did not mention any sexual battery. In addition to the deputy who took Lola's first complaint, there were two other persons known to defense counsel, prior to trial, to whom Williams complained, "The girls ripped me off," pri- or to any mention of rape by Lola or Vivian —indeed, prior even to the alleged rape of Vivian. Valerie Hall (Williams's sister) and her husband, Donald, would have so testified had they been asked. Further, Valerie would have testified that after Lola's initial complaint to the police which did not mention rape, Valerie went to see Lola and asked her to drop the charges against Williams. Lola agreed, saying Williams was a nice guy, but he must stop threatening her. Again, Lola said nothing about having been raped. This solid testimony, which would have corroborated Williams's version of the events on Thursday night, was not presented to the jury, through what we must conclude was neglect or oversight on the part of defense counsel.
Moreover, Williams's trial counsel, by his own admission, never went to the Pine Street Inn or any other location to seek available witnesses. There were available witnesses frequenting the Pine Street Inn who could testify that Lola and Vivian had established reputations for violence and aggressive behavior, which supported Williams's version of the incident. See section 90.404(1)(b)1., Florida Statutes (1979), which provides that evidence of a pertinent character trait of a "victim" offered by the accused is an exception to the general rule of inadmissibility. In fact, our earlier opinion in this very case ordered the evi-dentiary hearing now on review and observed that the 3.850 motion prepared for Floyd Williams by Attorney Cary had sufficient specific allegations, as required by Meeks v. State, 382 So.2d 673 (Fla.1980), "indicating that facts could (and should) have been discovered via pretrial preparation in regard to impeachment of the two 'victims,' their reputation for violence (emphasis added), and a witness who saw both victims with the defendant on the night in question at a time when the state contended he was alone with only one of them." Williams at 443. Despite this court's express determination in Williams that this reputation evidence was relevant, at the required evidentiary hearing the trial court excluded it as irrelevant and inadmissible, and even refused a proffer of such evidence. Illustrative of that improperly excluded evidence is the affidavit of Andrew Betts:
Both women are fighters. They believe in cutting. I have seen "L" [Lola] fight larger men than Floyd, a couple of times, at the bar. Everyone knows she is not a pushover. If you do her wrong, you will have to prove yourself. Most people do not associate with them. They are tough women.
The absence of evidence at trial as to the reputations of Lola and Vivian was crucial. It allowed the prosecutor, on closing argument, to attribute the inconsistencies in Lola's account of the incident to her timidity and embarrassment at the nature of the offense; therefore, she was "reluctant to go into specifics concerning a sexual act which violated her very privacy and decency and integrity." The trial court's finding that trial counsel could not have found essential witnesses even had he bothered to look for them is singularly unpersuasive in view of the relative ease with which they were located by Attorney Cary in preparation of the 3.850 motion.
We conclude that this record establishes that Floyd Williams was convicted of kidnapping and rape as the result of ineffective assistance of counsel, which is evidenced by the omissions of trial counsel herein identified and which fall outside the wide range of professionally competent assistance. Absent these omissions, there is a reasonable probability that the outcome of Williams's trial would have been differ ent. See Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984); Knight v. State, 394 So.2d 997 (Fla.1981). See also Marks v. State, 492 So.2d 681 (Fla. 4th DCA), review denied, 500 So.2d 545 (Fla.1986); Gordon v. State, 469 So.2d 795 (Fla. 4th DCA), review denied, 480 So.2d 1296 (Fla.1985). Had corroborating testimony been offered at trial to bolster Williams's defense, even if only that of the Halls and the deputy, we conclude that "the decision reached would reasonably likely have been different." Strickland, 466 U.S. at 696, 104 S.Ct. at 2069.
Our concern here is not the protection of criminal defense lawyers from post-trial attack; it is to enforce the guarantee that every defendant — even one who is poor and black with a prior criminal record of theft — receives a fair trial. Floyd Williams did not get one. In effect, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for possessing marijuana in Putnam County while on parole.
Although our determination herein in regard to the appeal of the 3.850 motion renders moot the belated appeal, we would observe, for purposes of any subsequent trial below, that the testimony of Vivian Shingle, whatever its credibility, would be admissible either under the Williams Rule or as impeachment.
REVERSED FOR NEW TRIAL.
SHARP, J., concurs.
ORFINGER, J., dissents with opinion.
. § 90.404(2)(a), Fla.Stat. (1979).
. Attorney Susan Cary of Florida Institutional Legal Services, Inc., is to be commended for her diligent work in preparing the 3.850 motion in this cause.
. Our repudiation of that strategy is not a usurpation of the function of the trier of fact, as contended by the dissent. In this case, there are no disputed facts as to the admitted omissions of trial counsel. It is fundamental that the issue of the effectiveness of counsel, based on undisputed facts, is one to be resolved by a court as a matter of law. See Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984).
.In fact, the only physical evidence of injury was that to the back of Floyd's head, where Vivian admittedly struck him with a tire iron.
.Section 90.404(l)(b)l., Florida Statutes (1979), states as follows:
(1) CHARACTER EVIDENCE GENERALLY. — Evidence of a person's character or a trait of his character is inadmissible to prove that he acted in conformity with it on a particular occasion, except:
*
(b) Character of victim.—
1. Except as provided in s. 794.022, evidence of a pertinent trait of character of the victim of the crime offered by an accused, or by the prosecution to rebut the trait; or *
(NOTE: Section 794.022 deals with prior consensual sexual activity between the victim and other persons, not prior acts of violence by the victim.)
. The dissent's contention that we have reweighed the evidence obviously cannot apply to evidence that the trial court refused to hear, even though we directed that it do so.
. Despite the dissent's challenge to this statement, the record shows that Attorney Cary obtained ten witnesses (live and in affidavit form) in preparation for the 3.850 hearing, as opposed to trial counsel's inability to obtain any during the entire trial preparation — and that Cary went directly to the Pine Street Inn, whereas trial counsel never knew where it was, not even at the time of the 3.850 hearing (he testified it was in northwest Palatka). Moreover, Cary's quest for these witnesses occurred years after the incident with a cold trail.
. Our mandate for a new trial herein could also be predicated upon an appellate court's inherent authority, based upon its review of the record, to correct a fundamental injustice. See Tibbs v. State, 397 So.2d 1120, 1126 (Fla.1981), affirmed, 457 U.S. 31, 102 S.Ct. 2211, 72 L.Ed.2d 652 (1982); Robinson v. State, 462 So.2d 471, 477 (Fla. 1st DCA 1984), review denied, 471 So.2d 44 (Fla.1985).
. The dissent asserts that the jury's acceptance of Vivian Shingle's adverse testimony forecloses any claim of ineffective assistance of counsel— but the converse is true: An adverse jury verdict, far from rebutting such a claim, is an indispensable element of that claim. Otherwise, the issue would be moot.