Court Opinion

ID: 9898955
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-11-15 17:04:40.358249+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:08.993353
License: Public Domain

FIRST DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL
                 STATE OF FLORIDA
                  _____________________________

                         No. 1D2022-3657
                  _____________________________

JONARD EDMUND BANKS,

    Appellant,

    v.

STATE OF FLORIDA,

    Appellee.
                  _____________________________

On appeal from the Circuit Court for Hamilton County.
Wesley R. Douglas, Judge.

                        November 15, 2023

NORDBY, J.

     Jonard Edmund Banks appeals the trial court’s order
summarily denying his motion for postconviction relief filed under
Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850. In the motion, Banks
asserted four grounds for relief. We affirm the trial court’s order
on all grounds and write only to address Ground One. * We note

    *  On appeal, Banks raises a new issue—that the State
withheld information about a witness’s plea discussion and his
trial counsel was ineffective for failing to properly preserve the
issue for this Court’s review. Since this issue was not argued in the
postconviction motion before the trial court, it was not preserved
for our review. Bryant v. State, 901 So. 2d 810, 822 (Fla. 2005).
that Banks abandoned Grounds Two and Three by failing to raise
them on appeal. Givens v. State, 314 So. 3d 765, 769 (Fla. 1st DCA
2021) (citing Rosier v. State, 276 So. 3d 403, 406 (Fla. 1st DCA
2019) (en banc) (“[I]ssues not raised in the initial brief are
considered waived or abandoned.”)). We affirm Ground Four
without comment.

                                  I.

     A jury convicted Banks in 2017 of first-degree murder, arson,
and burglary. The trial court sentenced Banks to life sentences for
both murder and burglary, as well as thirty years for the arson
conviction, with all counts to run concurrently. This Court
affirmed his judgment and sentence. Banks v. State, 279 So. 3d 636
(Fla. 1st DCA 2019).

     In 2020, Banks filed a motion for postconviction relief,
alleging four grounds of ineffective assistance of counsel. As
alleged in his motion, Banks and his co-defendants, Isa Dean and
Tommy Roberts, were at a party when they agreed to buy
marijuana. When they arrived at the victim’s home, Banks
overheard Dean and Roberts planning to enter even if no one was
home. Banks tried to persuade Dean and Roberts otherwise. He
then stayed at the car with Dean’s girlfriend, Hope Broom. Banks
and Broom heard gunfire, and Dean fled the home. Dean then
drove the group back to their homes in Georgia.

     Banks claimed that his trial counsel was ineffective because
he failed to (1) request an independent act jury instruction, (2) file
an adequate motion for new trial, and (3) request a jury instruction
for Category One lesser included offenses. Lastly, Banks argued
that even if the first three claims did not individually amount to
ineffective assistance of counsel, their cumulative effect
undermined the trial’s outcome. The trial court denied Banks’s
motion for postconviction relief without a hearing. To support the
summary denial, the trial court attached the motion for a new
trial, the amended motion for new trial, the indictment, the jury
instructions, portions of the trial transcript, portions of the motion
for new trial hearing transcript, the order denying Banks’s
amended motion for new trial, and the verdict forms. This timely
appeal follows.

                                  2
                                 II.

     We review a postconviction court’s decision to summarily deny
a motion without an evidentiary hearing de novo. Fla. R. App. P.
9.141(b)(2)(D) (“On appeal from the denial of relief, unless the
record shows conclusively that the appellant is entitled to no relief,
the order must be reversed and the cause remanded for an
evidentiary hearing or other appropriate relief.”); see also Stephens
v. State, 748 So. 2d 1028, 1033 (Fla. 1999). Since there was no
evidentiary hearing, we assume that the facts raised in Banks’s
postconviction motion are true unless the record refutes them. See
Lewis v. State, 591 So. 2d 1046, 1047 (Fla. 1st DCA 1991).

     To prevail on his ineffective assistance of counsel claim, Banks
must show that his counsel’s representation was outside of the
range of reasonable professional assistance and that, but for his
counsel’s conduct, the trial’s outcome would have been different.
Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 687 (1984); see also Brown
v. State, 337 So. 3d 454, 455 (Fla. 1st DCA 2022).

     Under Ground One, Banks argued that his trial counsel was
ineffective for failing to request an independent act jury
instruction. A defendant is entitled to have the jury instructed on
the law applicable to his theory of defense. Lewis, 591 So. 2d at
1047 (citing Hansbrough v. State, 509 So. 2d 1081, 1085 (Fla.
1987); Smith v. State, 424 So. 2d 726, 732 (Fla. 1982); Bryant v.
State, 412 So. 2d 347, 350 (Fla. 1982); Motley v. State, 20 So. 2d
798, 800 (Fla. 1945)). The independent act doctrine applies “when
one cofelon, who previously participated in a common plan, does
not participate in acts committed by his cofelon, ‘which fall outside
of, and are foreign to, the common design of the original
collaboration.’” Cannon v. State, 18 So. 3d 562, 564 (Fla. 1st DCA
2009) (quoting Ray v. State, 755 So. 2d 604, 609 (Fla. 2000)). The
doctrine does not apply when a co-felon’s act was a foreseeable
consequence of the underlying felony. See Kitt v. State, 260 So. 3d
462, 463 (Fla. 1st DCA 2018).

     The independent act doctrine did not apply to Banks’s defense
at trial. In his motion for postconviction relief, Banks claimed that
the original plan among the co-defendants was to buy marijuana.

                                  3
Yet the postconviction court attached record evidence that, at trial,
the defense’s theory was that Banks was simply a passenger in the
vehicle and never intended to commit any of the alleged crimes.
Based on this theory, it was reasonable trial strategy for the
defense to not request an independent act jury instruction.
Rigterink v. State, 193 So. 3d 846, 862 (Fla. 2016) (quoting
Occhicone v. State, 768 So. 2d 1037, 1048 (Fla. 2000)).

     On appeal, Banks now contends that the original plan was
burglary but claims that he did not agree to the homicide and
arson. Even based on this version of events, the independent act
doctrine does not apply, as murder and arson are reasonably
foreseeable outcomes of burglary. See Kitt, 260 So. 3d at 463. There
was thus no basis for an independent act jury instruction. Since
the record refutes Banks’s claim, the trial court did not err in
denying the motion.

    Finding no error by the trial court, we affirm the order
summarily denying Banks’s motion for postconviction relief on all
grounds.

    AFFIRMED.

ROWE and RAY, JJ., concur.

                  _____________________________

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

Jonard Edmund Banks, pro se, Appellant.

Ashley Moody, Attorney General, and Virginia Chester Harris,
Senior Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, for Appellee.

                                 4