Title: Thomas Sergio Burgess v. State of Florida
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: SC00-1724
State: Florida
Issuer: Florida Supreme Court
Date: October 17, 2002

Supreme Court of Florida
_____________
No. SC00-1724
_____________
THOMAS SERGIO BURGESS,
Petitioner,
vs.
STATE OF FLORIDA,
Respondent.
[October 17, 2002]
HARDING, Senior Justice.
We have for review a decision of a district court of appeal on the following
question, which the court certified to be of great public importance:
AFTER THE HOLDING IN CALLAWAY, CAN A TRIAL COURT
RELY UPON A SWORN ARREST REPORT IN THE COURT
FILE TO DETERMINE, AS A MATTER OF LAW, THAT
CONSECUTIVE HABITUAL OFFENDER SENTENCES ARE
ILLEGAL?
Burgess v. State, 764 So. 2d 749, 752 (Fla. 2d DCA 2000).  We have jurisdiction. 
See art. V, § 3(b)(4), Fla. Const.  For the reasons stated below, we answer the
certified question in the negative.
1.  Also, as a result of violating his probation with respect to two prior
burglaries committed on January 15, 1988, and June 8, 1988, petitioner was
sentenced to imprisonment for terms of fifteen years for each burglary conviction
(with credit of five years for time served for each sentence), five years for each
possession of burglary tools conviction (with a credit of five years for time served
for each sentence), and five years for the failure to appear conviction, all to run
concurrently with the habitual felony offender sentences received in this case.
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BACKGROUND
On January 22, 1990, petitioner was convicted of burglary of a structure
(count 1), grand theft (count 2), possession of burglary tools (count 3), and
resisting arrest without violence (count 4).  The court sentenced petitioner as a
habitual felony offender to ten years for count 1, five years each on counts 2 and 3,
and time served on count 4.  The court further ordered all of the sentences to run
consecutively.1
On April 23, 1999, petitioner filed a motion pursuant to Florida Rule of
Criminal Procedure 3.800(a), claiming that the consecutive habitual felony offender
sentences imposed were illegal because all of the offenses allegedly occurred during
the same criminal episode, in violation of our decision in Hale v. State, 630 So. 2d
521 (Fla. 1993).  However, relying on our decision in State v. Callaway, 658 So. 2d
983 (Fla. 1995), the trial court ruled that such a motion had to be filed by way of a
rule 3.850 motion, and because petitioner failed to file such a motion on a timely
basis, petitioner’s motion was denied.  
2.  See § 775.084(1)(b), Fla. Stat. (1989).
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On appeal, the Second District affirmed, finding petitioner was compelled to
file a timely motion pursuant to rule 3.850 and that the trial court was not permitted
to rely, as a matter of law, upon the information contained in the police report to
determine whether the offenses arose from one criminal episode.  See Burgess, 764
So. 2d at 750-51.
ANALYSIS
In 1993, this Court determined that, under the habitual offender statute,2 trial
courts in Florida are not authorized to have each of the enhanced habitual offender
sentences run consecutively.  See Hale, 630 So. 2d at 525.  Further, in Callaway,
we found that Hale may be retroactively applied, but that movants had only a
two-year window from our opinion in Hale to raise Hale errors.  See Callaway, 658
So. 2d at 987.  Subsequently, in Dixon v. State, 730 So. 2d 265 (Fla. 1999),
however, we receded from Callaway to the limited extent that defendants had two
years from our mandate in Callaway to file rule 3.850 motions seeking Hale relief
(i.e., until July 20, 1997).  It is undisputed that petitioner did not attempt to file a
rule 3.850 motion within this nearly four-year window, and his claim is time-barred. 
In Callaway, we also addressed the certified question:  "Whether an unsworn
motion under rule 3.800 that alleges a Hale sentencing error and requests a factual
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determination of the number of criminal episodes alleges an ‘illegal’ sentence that
may be resolved at any time."  Callaway, 658 So. 2d at 987.  The district court
found that although Callaway’s two convictions of burglary and grand theft may
have arisen out of a single episode, the court records did not provide it with the
ability to make a factual determination on the issue since evidence involving times,
places, and circumstances had to be examined.  See id. at 988.  On appeal, we
agreed that a determination of whether the offenses for which the defendant had
been sentenced arose out of a single criminal episode was not a pure question of
law.  See id.  We further stated that resolution of the issue would require an
evidentiary determination, and thus should be dealt with under rule 3.850 which
specifically provides for an evidentiary hearing.  See id.  Accordingly, we answered
the certified question in the negative.  See id. 
Indeed, Callaway specifically provides:  "A rule 3.800 motion . . . is limited
to those sentencing issues that can be resolved as a matter of law without an
evidentiary determination."  See Callaway, 658 So. 2d at 988 (emphasis added).  In
this case, petitioner seeks relief based solely on the information contained in a 
police report, which has never been subjected to cross examination or any
adversarial testing as to the reliability of the facts contained therein.  Therefore, the
court would be required to resolve the instant case, not as matter of law, but rather
3.  Section 90.803(8), Florida Statutes (1999), states:
PUBLIC RECORDS AND REPORTS.  Records, reports,
statements reduced to writing, or data complications, in any form, of
public offices or agencies, setting forth the activities of the office or
agency, or matters observed pursuant to duty imposed by law as to
which there was a duty to report, excluding in criminal cases matters
observed by a police officer or other enforcement personnel, unless
the sources of the information or other circumstances show their lack
of trustworthiness.  The criminal case exclusion shall not apply to an
affidavit otherwise admissible under s. 316.1934 or s. 327.354.
(Emphasis added.)
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by making its own impermissible factual and evidentiary determination and, as a
result, would be acting in direct contravention of Callaway. 
Moreover, the information contained in police reports is ordinarily
considered hearsay and inadmissible in an adversary criminal proceeding.  See
Bolin v. State, 736 So. 2d 1160, 1167 (Fla. 1999).  Nor does the information
contained in the report in question fall under any recognized exception to the
hearsay rule.  See §§ 90.801-805, Fla. Stat. (1999).  A police report or criminal
arrest affidavit is not admissible into evidence as a public record exception to the
hearsay rule because that exception expressly excludes "in criminal cases matters
observed by a police officer or other law enforcement personnel." § 90.803(8), Fla.
Stat. (1999).3  "[This] limitation is based on the belief that observations by officers
at the scene of a crime or when a defendant is arrested are not as reliable as
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observations by public officials in other cases because of the adversarial nature of
the confrontation between the police and the defendant."  Charles W. Ehrhardt,
Florida Evidence § 803.8 (2001 ed.).
Furthermore, and contrary to petitioner’s argument, the hearsay cannot be
considered merely because it is part of the court file.
Although a trial court may take judicial notice of court records, see §
90.202(6), Fla. Stat. (1997), it does not follow that this provision
permits the wholesale admission of hearsay statements contained
within those court records.  We have never held that such otherwise
inadmissible documents are automatically admissible just because they
were included in a judicially noticed court file.  To the contrary, we
find that documents contained in a court file, even if that entire court
file is judicially noticed, are still subject to the same rules of evidence
to which all evidence must adhere. 
Stoll v. State, 762 So. 2d 870, 876-77 (Fla. 2000) (citations omitted).  In this case,
there was no opportunity for the State to rebut—even to challenge the accuracy
of—what was contained in the report.  While a  police report may be part of a
record, it is still hearsay, and both the defendant and the State should be provided
an opportunity to ensure that its contents are complete and accurate for the
purposes of the court’s factual determination in a Hale proceeding.
Petitioner has also failed to cite any case in which the contents of arrest
reports were treated as matters of law for a motion filed pursuant to rule 3.800(a). 
Petitioner does cite to several cases where courts have relied upon police reports in
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circumstances other than the guilt-innocence stage of a criminal trial; however, these
cases are factually distinguishable because they involve statutes which expressly
permit the use of police report information in making administrative findings.  See,
e.g., Gramegna v. Parole Commission , 666 So. 2d 135, 137 (Fla. 1996) (noting
that in section 947.146(3), Florida Statutes (1993), Legislature expressly provided
that Parole Commission could rely on information contained in arrest reports to
make control release eligibility determinations); Dugger v. Grant, 610 So. 2d 428,
432 n.2 (Fla. 1992) (noting that in section 944.277, Florida Statutes (1993),
Legislature expressly provided that Department of Corrections could rely on
information contained in arrest reports to make provisional credit determinations). 
There is no such statute authorizing courts to rely on hearsay documentation in rule
3.800(a) proceedings.
Likewise, our decision in State v. Mancino, 714 So. 2d 429 (Fla. 1998), upon
which petitioner relies, is also distinguishable.  In Mancino, we held that a claim of
jail credit for jail time served is cognizable in a rule 3.800(a) motion to the extent
that "court records reflect an undisputed entitlement to credit" and a sentence fails
to grant such credit.  Mancino, 714 So. 2d at 430.  We held so, however, because
"[t]he entitlement to time served is not a disputed issue of fact in the sense that an
evidentiary hearing is needed to determine whether there is such an entitlement."  Id.
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at 433 (emphasis added).  Unlike Mancino, where undisputed credit for jail time
served could be easily resolved from the face of jail administration records,
Callaway counsels that resolution of the issue of whether the offenses for which
petitioner has been sentenced arose out of a single criminal episode clearly
"depends on factual evidence involving the times, places, and circumstances of the
offense" and, therefore, would require an evidentiary determination.  Callaway, 658
So. 2d at 988 (quoting Callaway v. State, 642 So. 2d 636, 639 (Fla. 2d DCA
1994)).  In addition, and unlike the information in the police report which petitioner
seeks to rely on, the jail records relied upon in Mancino clearly fall under the public
records exception to the hearsay rule.  See § 90.803(8), Fla. Stat. (2000). 
Finally, Valdes v. State, 765 So. 2d 774 (Fla. 1st DCA 2000), is also
distinguishable.  In that case, the district court found that the trial court could have
treated an untimely 3.850 motion as a 3.800(a) motion to correct an illegal sentence
resulting from a Hale error, "because his Hale claim is apparent from the face of the
record."  Valdes, 765 So. 2d at 777.  The court in Valdes, however, did not rely
upon inadmissible hearsay contained in police reports, but rather  relied upon the
facts established in the transcript of the defendant’s jury trial, which was part of the
record from the defendant’s previous direct appeal.  See id.  There is no such
record information available to rely on in this case.
4.  Petitioner had from October 14, 1993 (the release date of our opinion in
Hale), until August 16, 1997 (two years after the release date of our opinion in
Callaway), to file his 3.850 motion seeking Hale relief.
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Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850 has a two-year limitation to avoid
consideration of factual claims which become less and less reliable with the passage
of time—a rule which the courts of this state have long understood to be necessary
in the effective administration of justice.  Moreover, and as the lower court
recognized, the information in police reports is not always accurate or complete
and, indeed, there would be great mischief in treating such reports as undisputed
facts for purposes of a rule 3.800(a) motion.  Under these circumstances, we see
no principled reason to depart from our holding in Callaway, and we find that the
proper mechanism for petitioner’s challenge was to have raised this claim in a
motion pursuant to rule 3.850 within the time periods prescribed in Callaway and
Dixon.4
Accordingly, we answer the certified question in the negative and approve
the decision rendered by the Second District below.
It is so ordered.
ANSTEAD, C.J., and SHAW, WELLS, PARIENTE, LEWIS, and QUINCE, JJ.,
concur.
NOT FINAL UNTIL TIME EXPIRES TO FILE REHEARING MOTION, AND
IF FILED, DETERMINED.
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Application for Review of the Decision of the District Court of Appeal - Certified
Great Public Importance 
Second District - Case No. 2D00-207
(Hillsborough County)
James Marion Moorman, Public Defender, and Deborah K. Brueckheimer,
Assistant Public Defender, Tenth Judicial Circuit, Bartow, Florida,
for Petitioner
Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General, Robert J. Krauss, Senior Assistant
Attorney General, Chief of Criminal Law, and Ronald Napolitano, Assistant
Attorney General, Tampa, Florida,
for Respondent