Opinion ID: 1702151
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the content of the common pocketknife exception when bunkley's conviction became final

Text: Under the facts relied upon by the United States Supreme Court in its review of our decision in Bunkley I, this Court in its review of the Second District decision, and the Second District in its review of the denial of Bunkley's postconviction motion, Bunkley's pocketknife fit within the common pocketknife exception at the time his conviction became final. The statute containing the common pocketknife exception remained unchanged between 1989, when Bunkley's conviction became final, and 1997, when this Court decided L.B. Thus, the common pocketknife exception was not any narrower when Bunkley's conviction became final than when this Court decided L.B. This conclusion is illuminated by revisiting both L.B. and district court precedent addressing the common pocketknife exception, and by correctly identifying the roles played by this Court and the district courts of appeal in defining and applying the law of the state.
As the United States Supreme Court recognized, Florida law has exempted common pocketknives from the statutory definition of a weapon since 1901, in language unchanged since the exception became law. See Bunkley II, 123 S.Ct. at 2021; see also Bunkley I, 833 So.2d at 743. The statutory language in effect when Bunkley's conviction became final in 1989 was identical to the statutory language at the time of L.B.'s conviction in 1995. [29] Under the construction of this language adopted in L.B., Bunkley was improperly convicted of the crime of armed burglary, which incorporated the statutory definition of a weapon, for his possession of a knife that was a common pocketknife as a matter of law. The due process concern in this case is identical to Fiore. In a decision in another case issued after Fiore's conviction became final, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court clarified that the statute under which Fiore was prosecuted and convicted did not prohibit Fiore's conduct. That decision was not new law but rather a clarification of what the law had always been. Thus, Fiore did not present an issue of retroactivity. See 531 U.S. at 228, 121 S.Ct. 712. However, because the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's clarification stated the law at the time of Fiore's conviction, the United States Supreme Court held that Fiore's conviction violated due process. See id. When the issue of the definition of a common pocketknife first came before this Court in 1997 in L.B., we were not called upon to reconsider any previous decision of this Court. Rather, we were reviewing a decision in which the Second District had declared the common pocketknife exception to the statutory definition of weapon void for vagueness. Despite the majority's statement in Bunkley I to the contrary, see 833 So.2d at 745, in quashing the Second District decision we did not rely on any evolutionary process in judicial constructions of the statutory common pocketknife exception. Rather, to save the term common pocketknife from unconstitutional vagueness, we relied not only on the 1951 Attorney General's definition of common pocketknife, as the majority points out, but also on a 1986 dictionary definition from Webster's Third New International Dictionary. See L.B., 700 So.2d at 372-73; see also Francis v. State, 808 So.2d 110, 138 (Fla.2001) (stating in parenthetical cite to L.B. that this Court relied on dictionary definition in responding to vagueness challenge). [30] In L.B., we clarified a statute that had recognized, without any change, the common pocketknife exception for decades. Our holding was not a change in the law but rather an explanation of what the law had always been. L.B. stands for the proposition that a folding knife with a blade of less than four inches which is carried in a folded position is a common pocketknife as a matter of law within the meaning of section 790.001(13). Our holding in L.B. is consistent with the intent of the Legislature in exempting common pocketknives from the definition of weapon, as recognized by the Third District Court of Appeal as early as 1974: Obviously the legislature, by excepting common pocket knives from the category of weapons, the carrying of which would be a crime, did so in order that the carrying of a common pocket knife by a citizen should not constitute a crime, in view of the general custom of people to carry such knives for convenience and useful purposes unrelated to any criminal intent or activity. State v. Nixon, 295 So.2d 121, 122 (Fla. 3d DCA 1974); see also L.B. v, State, 681 So.2d 1179, 1180 (Fla. 2d DCA 1996).
Due process requires that the clarification of the common pocketknife exception in L.B. be applied in this case because there was no evidence that the pocketknife Bunkley possessed was in any way related to his offense of burglary. The material facts of L.B. match the facts relied upon first by the Second District in Bunkley's postconviction appeal, then by this Court in Bunkley I, and finally by the United States Supreme Court in Bunkley II. Each defendant carried in the folded position a common pocketknife with a blade of less than four inches in length. See Bunkley I, 833 So.2d at 741; L.B., 700 So.2d at 373. We ordered the defendant in L.B. discharged on the weapon offense, while Bunkley remains imprisoned pursuant to the weapon enhancement to his burglary conviction under this Court's decisions in his case. Even with the addition of testimony describing Bunkley's knife as a buck knife now relied upon by the majority, the holding in L.B. remains applicable because, as reflected in the Second District opinion in that case, the knife in L.B. was also described as a buck knife. See 681 So.2d at 1180. [31] Although additional testimony indicated that Bunkley's knife had a locking blade and was a little bit larger than a natural pocketknife, its blade was shorter than the four-inch threshold established in L.B. for common pocketknives. [32] Further, Bunkley testified that his reason for having the knife was to cut roofing materials. Accordingly, under the facts relied upon by the majority in either our previous or current review of this case, Bunkley's knife, which was not described as having a hilt guard or notched handle, was a common pocketknife. Cf. J.D.L.R. v. State, 701 So.2d 626 (Fla. 3d DCA 1997) (holding that a knife with a 3-3/4 inch pointed blade, notched handle and large metal hilt guard was not a common pocketknife). Therefore, the clarification of the common pocketknife exception in section 790.001(13) in L.B. applies directly to Bunkley.
In characterizing the applicability of the common pocketknife exception as a jury question when Bunkley's conviction became final, the majority relies on district court decisions concerning the definition of a weapon in section 790.001(13). The majority focuses on State v. Ortiz, 504 So.2d 39, 40 (Fla. 2d DCA 1987), in which the Second District held that it was a jury question whether a knife with a four-inch folding blade was a weapon, and on cases that cite Ortiz but in which the common pocketknife exception was not in issue. See Baldwin v. State, 857 So.2d 249, 252 (Fla. 2d DCA 2003) (holding that defendant's firearm could not be included in the definition of concealed weapon because chapter 790 specifically excludes firearms from the definition of weapon), review dismissed, 865 So.2d 479 (Fla.2003); Mitchell v. State, 698 So.2d 555, 561 (Fla. 2d DCA 1997) (acknowledging that case law tends to make the issue of whether a BB gun is a deadly weapon a jury question), approved, 703 So.2d 1062 (Fla.1997); Bell v. State, 673 So.2d 556, 557 (Fla. 1st DCA 1996) (stating that whether defendant's knife constituted a weapon was a jury question without discussing statutory exception for pocketknives). In its reliance on post- L.B. precedent citing Ortiz, the majority fails to distinguish cases in which the common pocketknife was not used in the course of another offense from cases where, depending on the manner of use, even a common pocketknife could become a weapon and the issue was therefore properly submitted to the jury. As the Third District recognized in reversing the dismissal of a prosecution for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in Nixon, the Legislature's exclusion of common pocketknives from the definition of weapon does not mean that a pocketknife cannot be a deadly weapon. Whether an object used as a weapon in an assault is a deadly weapon is a factual question to be resolved by the finder of facts at trial and is to be determined upon consideration of its likelihood to produce death or great bodily injury. 295 So.2d at 122 (citation omitted). Neither L.B. nor Bunkley I addressed a situation in which a folding knife was carried in an open position, brandished, or otherwise used in a manner likely to cause death or great bodily harm. Moreover, we specifically declined in L.B. to consider whether a pocketknife with a blade-length in excess of four inches can be considered a `common pocketknife.' 700 So.2d at 373 n. 4. [33] Therefore, after our decision in L.B., as before, the question of whether a knife with a folding blade is a common pocketknife is a fact question for the jury where the blade exceeds four inches or the knife is carried in an open position or brandished. See Porter v. State, 798 So.2d 855, 856 (Fla. 5th DCA 2001) (holding that it was a jury question whether a pocketknife carried in an open position was a deadly weapon for purposes of the crime of possession of a weapon by a convicted felon); Arroyo v. State, 564 So.2d 1153, 1155 (Fla. 4th DCA 1990) (recognizing that pocketknives could be deadly weapons when used in a manner likely to produce death or great bodily harm ); McCoy v. State, 493 So.2d 1093, 1094 (Fla. 4th DCA 1986) (concluding it was a jury question whether defendant who waved around a small pocketknife could be convicted of assault with a deadly weapon). Consequently, the majority's conclusion that the question of whether Bunkley's pocketknife constituted a weapon was properly submitted to the jury is incorrect. Just because some district court opinions before L.B. can be found that affirmed a conviction of a weapon offense or enhancement that had been submitted to the jury does not mean that it was proper as a matter of law to do so in cases where the weapon was a common pocketknife and the pocketknife was not used or brandished as a weapon. Submission of the case to the jury under these circumstances certainly was not the law of the state. As the majority demonstrates in its reliance on Ortiz, it was at most the law of the Second District. Therefore, no district court decision preceding our decision in L.B. set forth the established law of the state such that L.B. constituted a change, rather than a clarification, of the law of the state. L.B.'s status as a first-time declaration of the law of the state is easily demonstrated. The majority relies on the Second District decision in Ortiz as the precedent governing Bunkley's case at the time his conviction became final in 1989. In 1990, three years after Ortiz, the Fourth District held in a case similar to Bunkley's that the trial court erred in submitting a charge of attempted burglary with a dangerous weapon to the jury based on evidence that the defendant had an open pocketknife that was not used in a manner likely to produce death or great bodily injury. See Arroyo, 564 So.2d at 1155. The court in Arroyo, relying on the 1974 decision by the Third District in Nixon, held that the pocketknife was not a dangerous weapon under the facts of the case, and directed the trial court to reduce the conviction to attempted burglary. See id. Nine years after its decision in Ortiz, the Second District concluded in L.B. that [t]his case and others before this court demonstrated that the common pocketknife exception was unconstitutionally vague and its application could no longer be left to the whim of a jury. L.B., 681 So.2d at 1180 (quoting Curris v. State, 647 So.2d 227, 229 (Fla. 2d DCA 1994)). Thus, Ortiz was not the law of the state at the time Bunkley's conviction became final, and was no longer even the law of the district that issued it by the time L.B. reached this Court. Instead, Ortiz was merely one of the myriad decisions in which district courts reached different conclusions in reviewing convictions before the issue of the proper interpretation of the common pocketknife exception reached this Court. The Second District's determination in L.B. that section 790.001(13) was unconstitutionally vague provided this Court with the first opportunity to address the common pocketknife exception. We have mandatory jurisdiction of decisions that declare state statutes unconstitutional. See art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. This Court's decision in L.B. alone established the law of the state that bound all Florida trial and appellate courts on the meaning of the common pocketknife exception.