Opinion ID: 1830375
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: collateral evidence

Text: White claims that the trial court erred in preventing defense counsel's full cross-examination of Richard DiMarino, the State's key witness and the other perpetrator of the 1978 murder of Crawford, regarding the facts underlying the third-degree murder to which DiMarino pled guilty in Maryland in 1990. This Maryland crime occurred twelve years after White was convicted for the first-degree murder of Crawford. The facts underlying DiMarino's Maryland crime occurred in July 1990, when DiMarino and a codefendant were involved in an incident while riding their motorcycles. Words with two rival biker gang members escalated into a fight with the two rival bikers at an intersection. One of the two rival bikers fled, while DiMarino and a codefendant continued to fight with the remaining biker. In the fight, the remaining biker was stabbed and died from a single stab wound to the chest. DiMarino agreed to plead guilty to third-degree murder and agreed to testify against his codefendant in exchange for a reduced sentence of twenty years with ten years of the sentence suspended. Prior to DiMarino's testimony at the resentencing proceeding, the State filed a motion in limine seeking to prohibit defense counsel from questioning DiMarino regarding the underlying facts of the 1990 Maryland murder conviction. After hearing argument from counsel, the trial court stated: I certainly understand the State's argument on this particular motion. However, I'm also aware that this is the penalty phase of a first degree murder conviction. And that in the penalty phase the court can step outside the bounds of the traditional rules of evidence, step out of bounds in the allowing of hearsay testimony. Therefore, my ruling is going to be as follows: the defense in order to evaluate the credibility of Mr. DiMarino and also evaluate, properly put before the jury clearly what weight should be given to mitigating circumstances, the defense may ask Mr. DiMarino whether he has since his conviction for this particular crime been convicted of a felony. The defense may also ask him what type of felony it was, but may not delve into the facts of this case, i.e., was there a stabbing, was a throat slit, et cetera. You may also ask him if he negotiated some type of lesser sentence for his testimony against a codefendant, if that in fact was the circumstance of that particular murder. The defense may also inquire as to his lifestyle. DiMarino gave testimony, on direct and cross-examination, that in 1978, he was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years in prison for the third-degree murder of Crawford. Thereafter, DiMarino agreed to testify against his codefendants, Guy Ennis Smith and White, in exchange for concurrent time in prison on other unrelated felony charges. To protect DiMarino from retaliation from members of the Outlaws motorcycle gang, the State agreed to remove a tattoo and transfer DiMarino to an out-of-state prison facility. DiMarino further testified that he had been convicted of more than twenty-five felonies, including the 1990 Maryland third-degree murder for which he received a twenty-year sentence with ten years of the sentence suspended, in exchange for his testimony against his codefendant. Furthermore, defense counsel established that DiMarino was on parole for the 1990 Maryland third-degree murder conviction; thus, any deviation from DiMarino's original 1978 testimony in the Crawford case could have been the basis for a perjury charge, constituting a parole violation that could have required DiMarino to serve his complete sentence for the 1990 Maryland murder conviction. On appeal, White now claims that the trial court erred in preventing defense counsel's full cross-examination of DiMarino regarding the facts underlying his 1990 third-degree murder conviction in Maryland. White's first subclaim is that the facts underlying DiMarino's 1990 third-degree murder conviction are similar to the facts of Crawford's murder, in that in both crimes DiMarino killed a person by stabbing and then blamed a codefendant for his crime. Hence, the trial court's limitation on the cross-examination of DiMarino erroneously prevented White from using the facts underlying DiMarino's Maryland crime to impeach DiMarino's asserted minimal involvement in Crawford's murder. See § 921.141(6)(d), Fla. Stat. (1999) ([A] mitigating circumstance shall be ... [that the] defendant was an accomplice in the capital felony committed by another person and his or her participation was relatively minor.). White's second subclaim is that the facts underlying DiMarino's 1990 Maryland third-degree murder conviction should have been admitted as reverse Williams [4] rule evidence under section 90.404(2)(a), Florida Statutes (1999). White argues that the similarity between the facts underlying DiMarino's 1990 third-degree murder conviction and Crawford's murder show DiMarino's pattern of killing a person by stabbing and then blaming another for his crime. Hence, the trial court's limitation on White's cross-examination of DiMarino erroneously prevented the presentation of collateral evidence relevant to discrediting the view that DiMarino played a minimal role in Crawford's murder. See § 921.141(6)(d), Fla. Stat. We disagree. We first discuss White's second subclaim. In Zack v. State, 753 So.2d 9 (Fla.2000), cert. denied, 531 U.S. 858, 121 S.Ct. 143, 148 L.Ed.2d 94 (2000), we explained: In Williams v. State, 110 So.2d 654 (Fla.1959), this Court reiterated the standard rule for admission of evidence; that is, that any evidence relevant to prove a material fact at issue is admissible unless precluded by a specific rule of exclusion. See § 90.402, Fla. Stat. (1995). The Court also said relevant evidence will not be excluded merely because it relates to facts that point to the commission of a separate crime, but added the caveat that the question of the relevancy of this type of evidence should be cautiously scrutinized before it is determined to be admissible. 110 So.2d at 662. This rule concerning the admissibility of similar fact evidence has been codified by the Legislature as section 90.404(2), Florida Statutes (1995). Later, in Bryan v. State, 533 So.2d 744 (Fla.1988), we made it clear that the admissibility of other crimes evidence is not limited to crimes with similar facts. We stated that similar fact evidence may be admissible pursuant to section 90.404, and other crimes or bad acts that are not similar may be admissible under section 90.402. We reiterated the distinction between similar fact evidence and dissimilar fact evidence in Sexton v. State, 697 So.2d 833, 837 (Fla.1997). Thus, section 90.404 is a special limitation governing the admissibility of similar fact evidence. But if evidence of a defendant's collateral bad acts bears no logical resemblance to the crime for which the defendant is being tried, then section 90.404(2)(a) does not apply and the general rule in section 90.402 controls. A trial court has broad discretion in determining the relevance of evidence and such a determination will not be disturbed absent an abuse of discretion. Heath v. State, 648 So.2d 660, 664 (Fla.1994). Thus, whether the evidence of other bad acts complained of ... is termed similar fact evidence or dissimilar fact evidence, its admissibility is determined by its relevancy. The trial court must utilize a balancing test to determine if the probative value of this relevant evidence is outweighed by its prejudicial effect. See § 90.403, Fla. Stat. (1995); Gore v. State, 719 So.2d 1197 (Fla.1998). Id. at 16. Admission of evidence is within the discretion of the trial court and will not be reversed unless there has been a clear abuse of that discretion. Ray v. State, 755 So.2d 604, 610 (Fla.2000); see also Chandler v. State, 534 So.2d 701, 703 (Fla. 1988). Discretion is abused only when the judicial action is arbitrary, fanciful, or unreasonable, which is another way of saying that discretion is abused only where no reasonable person would take the view adopted by the trial court. See Trease v. State, 768 So.2d 1050, 1053 n. 2 (Fla.2000). We conclude that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to admit the facts underlying the 1990 Maryland crime but affording broad latitude concerning DiMarino's criminal background. DiMarino's 1990 Maryland murder was twelve years remote in time from the 1978 murder for which White was being resentenced. Moreover, the facts and circumstances of the Maryland murder are very different from Crawford's murder. See State v. Savino, 567 So.2d 892, 894 (Fla. 1990) (defendant must demonstrate a close similarity of facts, a unique or `fingerprint' type of information in order to introduce evidence of another crime to show that someone other than the defendant committed the instant crime). While both murders did involve stabbing with a knife, the 1978 murder involved activities within White's motorcycle group and the kidnapping of a young woman who was then stabbed fourteen times, and DiMarino's 1990 murder was during a fight at an intersection between rival motorcyclists while biking. The trial court achieved the proper balance by admitting evidence regarding the circumstances of DiMarino's 1990 guilty plea to third-degree murder in Maryland, while not allowing this witness's conviction for third-degree murder to become the focus of White's penalty phase proceeding. See Steverson v. State, 695 So.2d 687, 689 (Fla.1997) (Even when evidence of a collateral crime is properly admissible in a case, we have cautioned that `the prosecution should not go too far in introducing evidence of other crimes. The state should not be allowed to go so far as to make the collateral crime a feature instead of an incident.' Randolph v. State, 463 So.2d 186, 189 (Fla.1984).); Escobar v. State, 699 So.2d 988, 997 (Fla.1997), abrogated on other grounds by Connor v. State, 803 So.2d 598 (Fla.2001); Stano v. State, 473 So.2d 1282, 1289 (Fla.1985) ([E]vidence of unrelated crimes, however, cannot be made a feature of the trial.). Therefore, in light of the limited relevance of the facts underlying DiMarino's 1990 Maryland crime and the evidence actually presented through the testimony of DiMarino, we conclude that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to admit evidence of DiMarino's Maryland crime as reverse Williams rule evidence. See Gore v. State, 784 So.2d 418, 432 (Fla. 2001) (trial court did not abuse its discretion where defendant failed to show relevance and requisite similarities to admit evidence of collateral crime as reverse Williams rule evidence); Crump v. State, 622 So.2d 963, 969 (Fla.1993) (trial court properly excluded evidence regarding substance of a detective's interviews of other suspects because such evidence did not constitute reverse Williams rule evidence); Jones v. State, 580 So.2d 143, 145 (Fla. 1991) (evidence regarding witnesses' convictions involving drug-related offenses and violence against police did not meet test for reverse Williams rule evidence); Savino, 567 So.2d at 894 (no abuse of discretion where trial court ruled inadmissible reverse Williams rule evidence that was not sufficiently similar to murder at issue); Rivera v. State, 561 So.2d 536, 540 (Fla.1990) (trial court did not abuse its discretion in excluding proffered reverse Williams rule evidence). With respect to White's first subclaim, the trial court's ruling in the present case did not prevent the effective and thorough impeachment of DiMarino. Our review of the record demonstrates that through the cross-examination of DiMarino the jury was made aware of all the pertinent details concerning DiMarino's prior felonies and his agreements to testify against his codefendants in exchange for more favorable sentences. Therefore, we find no abuse of discretion in the trial court's limiting the admission of collateral evidence concerning the factual details of the witness's unrelated 1990 Maryland crime. See Steverson, 695 So.2d at 689; see also Fotopoulos v. State, 608 So.2d 784, 791 (Fla.1992) (credibility of any witness may be attacked by evidence of prior felony conviction, and such inquiry is generally restricted to existence of prior convictions and number of such convictions); Jackson v. State, 498 So.2d 906, 909 (Fla.1986). White further contends that even if the trial court did not err in limiting the cross-examination, the State opened the door to such examination when it elicited from DiMarino that he was sickened by Crawford's murder. Again, we cannot conclude that the trial court abused its discretion in holding that the facts and circumstances of the 1990 Maryland murder do not impeach DiMarino's testimony that he was sickened by the murder of Crawford in 1978. See Bryan, 533 So.2d at 750 (trial judge has wide discretion in determining permissible scope of cross-examination). Moreover, considering the evidence concerning DiMarino that the trial court did admit, any error in sustaining the objection to the admissibility of this evidence is harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. See State v. DiGuilio, 491 So.2d 1129, 1135 (Fla.1986).