Opinion ID: 1702151
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: District Court Decisions Under Section 790.001(13)

Text: 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.