Court Opinion

ID: 9957777
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-04-05 14:04:39.221146+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:18:38.698126
License: Public Domain

FIFTH DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL
                 STATE OF FLORIDA
                  _____________________________

                       Case No. 5D23-1169
                     LT Case No. 2007-CF-293
                  _____________________________

MICHAEL R. JACKSON,

    Appellant,

    v.

STATE OF FLORIDA,

    Appellee.
                  _____________________________

On appeal from the Circuit Court for Clay County.
Don H. Lester, Judge.

Matthew J. Metz, Public Defender, and George D.E. Burden,
Assistant Public Defender, Daytona Beach, for Appellant.

Ashley Moody, Attorney General, and Julian E. Markham,
Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, for Appellee.

                           April 5, 2024

JAY, J.

     Appellant seeks the reversal of his convictions for first-degree
murder and sexual battery. He asserts that the trial court erred by
allowing the State to introduce evidence about a sexual battery
that he previously committed. We hold that no error occurred.
Therefore, we affirm Appellant’s convictions and sentences.
                                 I.

     In 2007, a grand jury indicted Appellant for first-degree
murder and sexual battery. A.B. was the victim in both counts.
Coworkers found her deceased body near a kennel cage at the
veterinary clinic in Orange Park where she was a technician. She
had been raped, strangled, and brutally beaten. Appellant lived
near the clinic, and investigators found his DNA in the victim’s
body. A jury found him guilty as charged. The Supreme Court of
Florida later awarded him a new trial. Jackson v. State, 107 So. 3d
328 (Fla. 2012) (holding that the trial court should have excluded
a lengthy video of Appellant’s interview with investigators in
which the investigators repeatedly expressed their certainty about
Appellant’s guilt and spoke highly of the victim).

     In preparation for Appellant’s new trial, the State filed a
notice of its intent to introduce evidence of other crimes, wrongs,
or acts under section 90.404, Florida Statutes. The other crime
was a sexual battery that Appellant committed in 1986. In that
case, Appellant pleaded guilty and served thirteen years of a
thirty-year prison sentence before entering probation. He was still
serving that probation when A.B.’s sexual battery and murder took
place.

     Appellant asked the trial court to exclude all evidence from
his 1986 case. He argued that the time lapse between the crimes
and their alleged factual dissimilarities rendered any mention of
his earlier case inadmissible. After holding a hearing, the trial
court entered a detailed order ruling that the evidence was
admissible.

    At trial, Appellant maintained that he had consensual,
unprotected sex with A.B. in the timeframe that immediately
preceded her sexual battery and murder. He claimed he never
went to the veterinary clinic where A.B. worked or attacked her in
any way.

     During its rebuttal case, the State presented two witnesses
who testified about the 1986 sexual battery: the victim and one of
the officers who investigated it. Before the victim (H.E.) testified,
the court instructed the jury to consider her testimony exclusively

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“for the limited purpose of proving opportunity, intent, plan,
identity and lack of consent.” The court cautioned the jury that
Appellant was not on trial for his prior conduct. One juror
immediately reported that she could not hear the court’s
instructions. The court then repeated the instructions.

     H.E. testified that on March 27, 1986, she was living in an
apartment complex in Jacksonville with her mother and sister.
Around 7:00 that morning, a stranger carrying a knife entered her
bedroom. The man approached H.E.’s bed, grabbed a pillow, and
placed the pillow over her head. He threatened to harm her if she
did not comply with his demands. He then removed her pants and
underwear and penetrated her vagina with his penis. The attack
continued until the man heard someone cough in the living room.
H.E. told the man that her mother was the person who coughed.
The man initially questioned H.E.’s statement, saying that he
watched H.E.’s mother leave the apartment earlier that morning.

     Now realizing he was not alone with H.E., the man tried to
figure out what to do. H.E. feared the man would harm her mother,
so she suggested that he escape through the window of her second-
story bedroom. The man followed H.E.’s suggestion. As the man
exited, he faced H.E. That was the moment when H.E. was able to
get an unobstructed view of her attacker. H.E. and her mother
then called the police. H.E. later identified Appellant as her
attacker from a photographic lineup.

      The State next presented the testimony of Timothy O’Steen.
The court again instructed the jurors about the limited purpose of
the testimony that they were about to hear. O’Steen testified that
in 1986, he was working in the sex crimes unit of the Jacksonville
Sheriff’s Office. He investigated H.E.’s case. In addition to H.E.’s
identification of Appellant, officers found that Appellant lived in
H.E.’s apartment complex and that his fingerprints were on the
sill of H.E.’s bedroom window. The State charged Appellant with
burglary and sexual battery. He pleaded guilty to those charges.

     Before the jurors retired to deliberate, the court once again
instructed them to consider evidence about Appellant’s previous
case only “for the limited purpose of proving opportunity, intent,
plan, identity and lack of consent.” The court reiterated that

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Appellant was not on trial for his prior conduct. Ultimately, the
jury found Appellant guilty as charged on both counts.

                                 II.

     “A trial court’s decision to admit collateral-act evidence is
reviewed for abuse of discretion.” Whisby v. State, 262 So. 3d 228,
231 (Fla. 1st DCA 2018). “A court abuses its discretion 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.” Smith v. State, 139 So. 3d 839, 846 (Fla. 2014) (alteration
in original) (quoting Frances v. State, 970 So. 2d 806, 817 (Fla.
2007)).

     “In a criminal case in which the defendant is charged with a
sexual offense, evidence of the defendant’s commission of other
crimes, wrongs, or acts involving a sexual offense is admissible and
may be considered for its bearing on any matter to which it is
relevant.” § 90.404(2)(c)1., Fla. Stat. (emphasis added). Under
this statute, “collateral-crime evidence of a sexual offense is
admissible even if offered to show propensity.” Whisby, 262 So. 3d
at 232.

     “However, the State must still demonstrate that the probative
value of the evidence is not substantially outweighed by the danger
of unfair prejudice, confusion of issues, misleading the jury, or
needless presentation of cumulative evidence.” Id. (citing § 90.403,
Fla. Stat.). To decide this issue, a court considers:

    (1) the similarity of the prior acts to the act charged
    regarding the location of where the acts occurred, the age
    and gender of the victims, and the manner in which the
    acts were committed; (2) the closeness in time of the prior
    acts to the act charged; (3) the frequency of the prior acts;
    and (4) the presence or lack of intervening circumstances.

Id. (quoting McLean v. State, 934 So. 2d 1248, 1262 (Fla. 2006)).
“This list is not exclusive.” McLean, 934 So. 2d at 1262. Courts
“should also consider other factors unique to the case.” Id.

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     Here, the similarities in the sexual batteries are numerous.
Both occurred in northeast Florida. Both victims were young
women in their teens or twenties. Both suffered penile-vaginal
penetration. Both crimes took place in the early morning hours
while the victims either were or appeared to be alone. Both
occurred in places where the victims went daily. Both transpired
near where Appellant lived. Thus, while the crimes are not
identical, they have much in common. Appellant’s claim that
“[t]here was nothing similar about the crimes” is inconsistent with
the facts.

     As to the other McLean factors, it is true that a significant
amount of time passed between the two cases. This generally
favors exclusion but is not dispositive. See Youngblood v. State, 348
So. 3d 1260, 1261 (Fla. 1st DCA 2022) (“Although some of the prior
bad acts occurred many years ago, that was but one factor for the
trial court to consider in deciding to admit this evidence.”); Aguila
v. State, 255 So. 3d 522, 529 (Fla. 3d DCA 2018) (“Although the
collateral crimes evidence and the charged offenses were allegedly
committed twenty years apart, the intervening time is insufficient
to render the collateral crimes evidence inadmissible.”).
Importantly, here, there was a glaring “intervening circumstance”:
Appellant was in prison for much of the time that followed his
sexual battery of H.E. Thus, while Appellant’s crimes are
separated by many years, that separation becomes less compelling
when one considers that for thirteen of those years, it would have
been impossible for Appellant to commit similar acts.

     Further, the hallmarks of unfair prejudice are not present. See
McLean, 934 So. 2d at 1262 (identifying considerations that cut
against the admission of collateral acts, such as “the potential for
unfair prejudice” and “whether the evidence of the prior acts will
confuse or mislead jurors by distracting them from the central
issues of the trial”). First, Appellant’s 1986 case, though heinous,
was not as heinous as his 2007 case, which culminated in murder.
Second, the evidence from Appellant’s previous case was not a
feature of the trial. The State presented only two witnesses who
testified about his earlier sexual battery. These witnesses testified
in rebuttal after the State presented sixteen witnesses during its
case-in-chief, and Appellant presented seven witnesses in his case-
in-chief. On such a record, no reasonable observer would claim the

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earlier case became a feature of Appellant’s trial. See Whisby, 262
So. 3d at 233 (“Additionally, W.W. was the only witness who
testified about the collateral crime. The State’s other eleven
witnesses, including S.C., testified as to Whisby’s charged offenses
and how forensic evidence, notably DNA, linked Whisby to the
crimes. Thus, the collateral-crime evidence did not ‘transcend the
bounds of relevancy’ and become ‘an assault on the character of
[Whisby].’” (alteration in original) (quoting Durousseau v. State, 55
So. 3d 543, 551 (Fla. 2010))).

     Finally, the trial court instructed the jury four times about the
proper role of the evidence from the earlier case—twice before H.E.
testified, once before O’Steen testified, and again before
deliberations. The law presumes the jury followed these
instructions. See Nolan v. Kalbfleisch, 369 So. 3d 346, 347 (Fla. 5th
DCA 2023) (quoting Carter v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp.,
778 So. 2d 932, 942 (Fla. 2000)). And the presence of these
instructions reinforces our conclusion that Appellant was not
unfairly prejudiced. See McLean, 934 So. 2d at 1263 (identifying
the trial court’s “cautionary instructions to the jury both before
[the prior victim’s] testimony and during the final charge” as one
of the reasons the trial court did not err by allowing the
defendant’s prior sexual abuse victim to testify); Youngblood, 348
So. 3d at 1261 (affirming the admission of testimony from the
defendant’s previous sexual abuse victims because, inter alia, “the
jury was repeatedly instructed as to the proper use of the collateral
crimes evidence”).
                                   III.

     Appellant has not shown that the trial court abused its
discretion when it allowed H.E. and O’Steen to testify about the
sexual battery that Appellant previously committed. Accordingly,
we affirm his convictions and sentences.

    AFFIRMED.

EISNAUGLE and PRATT, JJ., concur.

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          _____________________________

Not final until disposition of any timely and
authorized motion under Fla. R. App. P. 9.330 or
9.331.
           _____________________________

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