Case Name: Bernard HOOPER, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee
Court: Florida District Court of Appeal
Jurisdiction: Florida
Decision Date: 1997-12-10
Citations: 703 So. 2d 1143
Docket Number: No. 96-3068
Parties: Bernard HOOPER, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
Judges: SHAHOOD, J., concurs.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 703
Pages: 1143–1149

Head Matter:
Bernard HOOPER, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
No. 96-3068.
District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fourth District.
Dec. 10, 1997.
Rehearing, Certification of Conflict and Question Denied Jan. 20, 1998.
Richard L. Jorandby, Public Defender, and Joseph R. Chloupek, Assistant Public Defender, West Palm Beach, for appellant.
Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Jeanine M. Germanowicz, Assistant Attorney General, West Palm Beach, for appellee.

Opinion:
KLEIN, Judge.
Appellant was convicted of robbery with a firearm, theft of a motor vehicle, and aggravated fleeing and eluding. We find that the court's use of a new jury instruction on principals, in which the elements were changed after the commission of this crime, constituted an ex post facto violation, but was harmless error.
Briefly, the facts of the case reflected that the victim was accosted by a man with a gun who took her rings and purse and then fled in a vehicle being driven by the appellant. A police chase ensued, appellant's vehicle hit a concrete barrier, and appellant was captured while attempting to flee with the victim's jewelry. Appellant gave a taped statement to a Hollywood police officer admitting that he had been the driver for two men who intended to steal purses, had witnessed the robbery of the victim, and had received the victim's property.
Appellant argues that after this robbery took place, the Florida Supreme Court made a substantive change in the standard jury instruction on principals, making it easier for the state to obtain a conviction, and that the trial court's use of the new instruction was an ex post facto law violation. The new instruction, appellant contends, functionally changed the facts that the state must prove to establish that a defendant is a principal.
At the time this crime occurred, the Florida Standard Jury Instruction on Principals stated:
If two or, more persons help each other [commit] [attempt to commit] a crime and the defendant is one of them, the defendant is a principal and must be treated as if [he][she] had done all the things the other person or persons did if the defendant: (1) knew what was going to happen (2) intended to participate actively or by sharing in an expected benefit and, (3) actually did something by which [he][she] intended to help [commit] [attempt to commit] the crime.
Standard Jury Instructions in Criminal Cases, 665 So.2d 212, 214 (Fla.1995).
After this crime occurred, the instruction was amended so that it now states:
If the defendant helped another person or persons [commit] [attempt to commit] a crime, the defendant is a principal and must be treated as if [he][she] had done all the things the other person or persons did if: (1) the defendant had a conscious intent that the criminal act be done, and (2) the defendant did some act or said some word which was intended to and which did incite, cause, encourage, assist or advise the other person or persons to actually [commit] [attempt to commit] the crime.
Standard Jury Instructions, 665 So.2d at 214.
The committee on standard jury instructions reported to the supreme court that the old instruction contained requirements that the defendant "intend to participate actively or by sharing in an expected benefit" and that the defendánt "knew what was going to happen," but that the statute defining principals, section. 777.011, Florida Statutes, did not require those elements. They were accordingly eliminated. Id. at 214.
In McGahee v. State, 561 So.2d 333 (Fla. 1st DCA 1990) defendant was tried in 1989 for having performed oral sex on an eight year old victim in 1971 and 1972. He was charged with rape of a female child under age ten; however, the applicable rape statute was not specific, prohibiting carnal knowledge and abuse, but not defining it. Court decisions in effect at the time of the crime, which defendant had admitted, defined rape under the statute as requiring penetration of the female sex organ by the male sex organ.
By the time McGahee was tried in 1989 the courts had broadened the interpretation of the language in the 1971 statute so that it would include the oral sex performed by McGahee. At the time McGahee committed his crime, it was not punishable under the rape statute, but as a crime against nature.
In holding that the jury instruction defining rape as including oral sex was a violation of the ex post facto provisions of the Florida and United States Constitutions, the first district relied on Bouie v. Columbia, 378 U.S. 347, 353-54, 84 S.Ct. 1697, 1702-03, 12 L.Ed.2d 894 (1964), in which the United States Supreme Court held:
[A]n unforeseeable judicial enlargement of a criminal statute, applied retroactively, operates precisely like an ex post facto law.... If a judicial construction of a criminal statute is "unexpected and indefensible by reference to the law which had been expressed prior to the conduct in issue," it must not be given retroactive effect.
The Supreme Court also held that when an unforeseeable court construction of a criminal statute is applied retroactively, the defendant has been deprived of due process because of the lack of warning that the conduct is criminal. Bouie at 354-55, 84 S.Ct. at 1702-03.
The state's argument that the statute has not changed misses the point. The jurors in this case were not instructed as to the contents of the statute. The only information they were given about the statute on principals was through the instruction. When our supreme court changed this jury instruction by deleting elements which must be proved to establish guilt, it altered the functional definition of the crime, even though the legislature had not changed the statute.
Nor does it make any difference whether changes in jury instructions are considered procedural. As our supreme court recognized in Dugger v. Williams, 593 So.2d 180, 181 (Fla.1991):
[I]t is too simplistic to say that an ex post facto violation can occur only with regard to substantive law, not procedural law. Clearly, some procedural matters have a substantive effect.
The use of the new instruction in this case, which enabled the state to establish guilt without the two elements contained in the prior instruction, was an ex post facto violation under McGahee and Bouie. It does not necessarily require a new trial, however, because even constitutional errors are subject to a harmless error analysis, State v. DiGuilio, 491 So.2d 1129, 1134 (Fla.1986).
In this case the state presented extensive evidence, and its primary position was, that appellant was a substantial participant in the crimes, not merely a principal. This evidence included appellant's confession to having prior knowledge of the intended crime, his having admitted that he had received some of the property stolen from the victim, and his admission that he was driving the get-away car. In addition the state, in closing argument, utilized the elements of the old principal instruction, not the new one. Besides appellant's confession, there was other overwhelming evidence of his guilt as an active participant, not as a principal, which leads us to conclude that the use of the new instruction was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
Appellant also contends that the trial court erred in not allowing him to voir dire jurors about their knowledge of news reports involving corruption in the Hollywood police department. Defense counsel alleged that members of the Hollywood police department, including the officer who took appellant's confession, had been untruthful in the investigation, and that this was therefore a proper subject of voir dire.
Appellant makes no argument as to how general corruption in the police department could possibly have had any relevance in this case. The eases on which he relies, Lavado v. State, 492 So.2d 1322 (Fla.1986); Perry v. State, 675 So.2d 976 (Fla. 4th DCA 1996), rev. denied, 684 So.2d 1352 (Fla.1996), were eases in which the trial courts erred in refusing to allow voir dire about broad legal concepts, not, as was the case here, an attempt to attack the credibility of a witness with information which was clearly inadmissible in evidence. What the first district said about this type of thing in Holiday v. Holbrook, 168 So.2d 752, 753 (Fla. 1st DCA 1964) is worth repeating:
The trial judge has a duty to so direct the course of counsel's voir dire examination that the minds of' the prospective jurors may not be infiltrated with ideas having no proper relation to the issue to be determined by them.
See also Carroll v. Dodsworth, 565 So.2d 346 (Fla. 1st DCA 1990) (trial court should have granted mistrial where defense counsel asked prospective jurors if they had read newspaper investigative reports about plaintiff's surgeon).
Because the state cannot appeal adverse verdicts, defense counsel in criminal cases do not have to worry about reversal if they inject irrelevant matters which are prejudicial to the state. We remind counsel, however, that they are ethically prohibited from doing so by Rule 4-3.4(e), R.Regulating Fla.Bar, which provides that a lawyer shall not "in trial, allude to any matter that the lawyer does not reasonably believe is relevant or that will not be supported by admissible evidence."
We therefore affirm.
SHAHOOD, J., concurs.
FARMER, J., concurs specially with opinion.