Opinion ID: 1705100
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Countervailing Public Policy Considerations

Text: Lastly, Polite and the State extensively argue about the public policy concerns at issue in this case. Polite asserts that the Third District's decision favors the protection of law enforcement officers at the expense of the citizenry who are placed in the untenable position of submitting to anyone who claims to be a police officer or face the possibility of extended incarceration for violating section 843.01. And such a concern is logical given the all too sad fact that persons have been victimized as a result of their trusting criminals who were impersonating police officers to facilitate crimes. W.E.P., 790 So.2d at 1172; see also A.F., 905 So.2d at 1012. Conversely, the State asserts that the protection of law enforcement officers, especially those who are undercover or enforcing an unpopular law, supersedes the rights of the citizenry and that, rather than resort to violence or self-defense on the street, the proper forum for such grievances is in the courts. There is validity to both of these public policy considerations. However, we have repeatedly explained that in matters of statutory construction it is not this Court's function to substitute its judgment for that of the Legislature as to the wisdom or policy of a particular statute. Tillman, 934 So.2d at 1270 (quoting State v. Rife, 789 So.2d 288, 292 (Fla.2001)). Nevertheless, a construction of the statute that requires the State to establish the defendant's knowledge of the victim's status as a law enforcement officer appears to favor another important public policy considerationto ensure that officers, especially those in undercover situations, take steps to properly identify themselves and make certain that an individual who is about to be stopped, frisked, detained, restrained, searched, seized, arrested, or otherwise approached in an official capacity knows the officer's status.
In this case, there are certainly facts to suggest that Officer Munoz took steps to identify himself as a police officer before attempting to arrest the defendant. However, there are also facts to suggest that a jury, if properly instructed and not affirmatively misled by the prosecution, could have determined that the State failed to meet its burden on the element of whether Polite knew that the person who attempted to detain him was a police officer. Indeed, when a uniformed officer ultimately arrested Polite and identified himself, Polite not only submitted to that authority without a struggle but told the officer that he wasn't sure that [Officer Munoz] was a policeman. Furthermore, the standard jury instructions in this case insufficiently instructed the jury on the State's burden of proof. We cannot agree with the Fourth District in O'Brien, which held that the standard jury instructions, simply by mirroring the statutory language, adequately advised the jury that knowledge of the status of the victim was an essential element of the crime. See 771 So.2d at 565. In fact, the State relied on the standard jury instructions in this case to argue to the jury that it was not required to prove knowledge. The ambiguity in the current standard jury instructions, which are nothing more than a verbatim restatement of the statute, required the trial court to give the special instruction requested by the defendant, which would have prevented the State from misleading the jury as to its burden of proof. Thus, we cannot conclude that this error in failing to properly instruct the jury is harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. [13]