Opinion ID: 1670664
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: L.B. v. STATE

Text: The petitioner in L.B. v. State, 700 So.2d 370 (Fla.1997), was charged with and convicted of possessing a weapon on school grounds based on her possession of a folding knife with a 3¾-inch blade: At trial, the court considered whether petitioner's knife fit within the common pocketknife exception to the definition of weapon contained in section 790.001(13), Florida Statutes (1995). Section 790.001(13) provides: Weapon means any dirk, metallic knuckles, slungshot, billie, tear gas gun, chemical weapon or device, or other deadly weapon except a firearm or a common pocketknife. The trial court found that petitioner's knife was too large to be considered a common pocketknife, and was therefore a weapon within the meaning of sections 790.001(13) and 790.115(2). Accordingly, the trial court found appellant guilty of the violation. On appeal, the Second District vacated the trial court's order and remanded the case for a new trial. The district court held that section 790.001(13) is unconstitutionally vague insofar as it excludes common pocketknives from the definition of weapon. L.B., 700 So.2d at 371 (footnote and citations omitted). This Court disagreed that the phrase common pocketknife was unconstitutionally vague: The legislature's failure to define the term common pocketknife in section 790.001(13) does not render that term unconstitutionally vague. Moreover, a court may refer to a dictionary to ascertain the plain and ordinary meaning which the legislature intended to ascribe to the term. [The Court then set forth dictionary definitions of the terms common and pocketknife.] From these definitions, we can infer that the legislature's intended definition of common pocketknife was: A type of knife occurring frequently in the community which has a blade that folds into the handle and that can be carried in one's pocket. We believe that in the vast majority of cases, it will be evident to citizens and fact-finders whether one's pocketknife is a common pocketknife under any intended definition of that term. L.B., 700 So.2d at 372 (citations omitted). The Court concluded that the petitioner's knife plainly fell within the meaning of common pocketknife but added the following caveat: We note that neither the Attorney General nor this Court maintains that four inches is a bright line cutoff for determining whether a particular knife is a common pocketknife. We merely hold that appellant's knife fits within the exception to the definition of weapon found in section 790.001(13). L.B., 700 So.2d at 373 n. 4.