Court Opinion

ID: 9940565
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-02-14 19:04:10.239415+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:45:01.168643
License: Public Domain

FIRST DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL
                 STATE OF FLORIDA
                  _____________________________

                         No. 1D2022-2955
                  _____________________________

DARREL EARL DAISE

    Appellant,

    v.

STATE OF FLORIDA,

    Appellee.
                  _____________________________

On appeal from the Circuit Court for Escambia County.
John F. Simon, Jr., Judge.

                        February 14, 2024

B.L. THOMAS, J.

     On February 17, 2016, Appellant caused a three-vehicle
traffic crash. According to the record in Appellant’s appeal from
the judgment and sentence, while traveling more than seventy
miles per hour in a twenty-five-mile-per-hour residential zone,
Appellant ran a red light, struck an oncoming car, rotated, and
then struck a second vehicle. Appellant’s vehicle essentially rolled
over on top of the third vehicle, fatally injuring the driver in a
collision so violent that the impact pushed the primary victim’s
vehicle back more than sixty feet, caused incapacitating injuries to
the driver of the first vehicle Appellant struck, and caused the
wheels on Appellant’s vehicle to fly off the frame. The impact killed
the primary victim through blunt force trauma to the head.
Eyewitnesses at the scene had to physically hold Appellant down
and detain him to keep him from fleeing on foot. Law enforcement
discovered two blood-covered bags of cocaine in Appellant’s vehicle,
and Appellant himself tested positive for cocaine and marijuana at
the time of the crash.

     The State charged Appellant with vehicular homicide
(count I); DUI manslaughter (count II); manufacturing, sale,
delivery, or possession with intent to sell a controlled substance
(cocaine) (count III); driving while license suspended or revoked
with careless or negligent operation resulting in death or serious
bodily injury (count IV); expired driver’s license (count V); and
possession of prescription drugs without a prescription (count VI).
On February 23, 2017, Appellant entered an open plea on
counts II-VI with an agreement that the State would nolle pros
count I.

     During the sentencing hearing, the victim’s widower testified
that Appellant’s criminal history showed someone who had no
respect for the law because his repeated concurrent sentences had
caused him to consider many of his prior felony convictions as
“freebies.” He testified that Appellant was a known drug dealer
who frequented the neighborhood. He also testified that Appellant
never intended to stop, instead attempting to evade law
enforcement. He argued that the victim ultimately died because
Appellant had squandered his second chances and acted with a
callous disregard to the victim’s life, the life of the other person he
struck, and any other potential victims driving through the
intersection.

     The victim’s daughter also testified at length about how the
crash had left the victim’s body disfigured, and that Appellant
tried to flee when the hospital released him. Both she, the victim’s
son, and the victim’s widower argued extensively for the trial court
to impose a consecutive sentence because of Appellant’s actions
and his extensive prior criminal history. Indeed, the State noted
that Appellant was a habitual traffic offender whose license was
suspended at the time of the incident.

    The State also argued at sentencing that when law
enforcement made contact with Appellant in the hospital a few
days after the crash, Appellant asked about personal property and
showed no interest in the condition of the other two individuals he

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had struck during the crash. The State presented several
photographic exhibits of the scene of the crash, showcasing the
level of destruction that Appellant caused when he impacted the
victims’ vehicles. The State argued that Appellant had multiple
prior traffic incidents and had five prior crashes before the current
one. Appellant had also served eighteen months in prison in 2012
for leaving the scene of an accident with injuries, driving with a
suspended license, fleeing and eluding law enforcement, reckless
driving, battery, and resisting without violence. Given this, the
State asked the trial court to sentence Appellant to the maximum
of thirty-five years in prison.

     Ultimately, the trial court adjudicated Appellant guilty and
sentenced him to fifteen years in prison with a four-year
mandatory minimum on count II, fifteen years in prison on count
III (consecutive to count II), five years in prison as to count IV
(concurrent with count II), and time served on counts V and VI.
This Court per curiam affirmed Appellant’s convictions and
sentences and issued its mandate on March 8, 2019. See Daise v.
State, 263 So. 3d 1098 (Fla. 1st DCA 2019).

     On March 29, 2019, Appellant filed his initial motion for
postconviction relief under Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure
3.850. On January 17, 2020, Appellant sua sponte filed an
amended motion. On February 4, 2020, the postconviction court
struck both of Appellant’s motions as facially and legally
insufficient and gave him sixty days’ leave to amend. On April 2,
2020, Appellant filed his second amended motion for
postconviction relief. On June 1, 2020, the postconviction court
entered an order directing the State to show cause why Appellant’s
motion should not be granted, and the State timely responded. On
August 3, 2020, the postconviction court granted Appellant’s
request for a hearing on his pro se motion in which he had argued
that counsel had been ineffective for misleading him into believing
that the trial court would give him a ten-year sentence if he
entered the plea agreement. This hearing took place on July 28,
2022, and Appellant ultimately waived this pro se claim with
prejudice during that hearing.

    On August 7, 2020, counsel appeared on Appellant’s behalf.
Between March 5, 2021, and April 5, 2021, Counsel filed several

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motions for leave to amend the second amended motion. On August
6, 2022, the postconviction court denied Appellant’s motion for
leave to amend his motion as to his ineffective assistance of counsel
claims, but granted the motion as to his newly discovered evidence
claims. On August 18, 2022, the postconviction court denied
Appellant’s motion for reconsideration and the postconviction
motion itself. Appellant now appeals that order.

     In Appellant’s March 8, 2021 motion for leave to amend—filed
on what would have been the last day before the expiration of the
two-year time limit on rule 3.850 motions—Appellant raised new
claims that counsel was ineffective for failing to: 1) move to
suppress the results of his blood test; 2) advise Appellant that he
had a “causation defense” because the State had to prove that he,
not the victim, caused the action; 3) advise Appellant that he had
a necessity or duress defense; and 4) investigate Denario James as
a witness (or in the alternative, Appellant contended that this was
newly discovered evidence). Appellant also raised a cumulative
error claim in this motion. But this motion did not have Appellant’s
signature. On April 5, 2021, Appellant’s counsel filed another
motion for leave to amend that was functionally identical save that
it now had Appellant’s signature under oath.

     The postconviction court denied both motions for leave to
amend. It found that while the two-year period to file any rule
3.850 claims did not expire until after March 8, 2021, that rule did
not apply when determining whether a second amended motion
was timely filed under rule 3.850(e). It struck Appellant’s initial
motions for facial insufficiency on February 4, 2020, and gave him
sixty days to file an amended motion. Thus, Appellant only had
until early April 2020 to file amendments to the motion or seek
leave to file further amended motions. The trial court also found
that it had given Appellant multiple prior opportunities and leave
to amend the motion, and was not inclined to grant further leave
to amend.

     The Florida Supreme Court held in Spera v. State, 971 So. 2d
754, 761 (Fla. 2007), that while a trial court abused its discretion
when it failed to allow a defendant at least one opportunity to
amend an insufficient 3.850 motion, the resolution of further
amendments was subject to an abuse of discretion standard that

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depended on the circumstances of each case. “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.” White v. State, 817 So. 2d 799, 806 (Fla.
2002) (citing Tease v. State, 768 So. 2d 1050, 1053 n.2 (Fla. 2000).

    Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850(f)(2) states:

    If the [postconviction] motion is insufficient on its face,
    and the motion is timely filed under this rule, the court
    shall enter a nonfinal, nonappealable order allowing the
    defendant 60 days to amend the motion. If the amended
    motion is still insufficient or if the defendant fails to file
    an amended motion within the time allowed for such
    amendment, the court, in its discretion, may permit the
    defendant an additional opportunity to amend the motion
    or may enter a final, appealable order summarily denying
    the motion with prejudice.

Rule 3.850(e) provides that, when an order is entered under rule
3.850(f)(2), “any amendment to the motion must be served within
60 days.” (Emphasis added). Accordingly, when the postconviction
court in this case entered its initial order denying the motion as
insufficient on February 4, 2020, Appellant had until Monday,
April 6, 2020, to file any amendments to that motion. While
Appellant timely filed his first pro se amendment on April 2, 2020,
he did not seek leave of court to further amend the motion until
March 5, 2021, almost a full year after the sixty-day period had
expired, and both that motion and the March 8, 2021, motion were
themselves insufficient because neither motion contained the oath
that rule 3.850(c) requires. Thus, the postconviction court did not
abuse its discretion in denying the motion.

     Appellant maintains only one other argument on appeal: that
the postconviction court erred by summarily denying his newly
discovered evidence claim. Appellant claims that after his
convictions and sentences became final, Keisha Colley contacted
him and told him that she had witnessed Denario James assault
Appellant with a firearm just before Appellant fled at high speed.
Appellant asserts this evidence would have supported a necessity

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defense arguing that James entered Appellant’s vehicle with
cocaine and a gun, and attempted to rob him.

    This claim is meritless because Appellant cannot reasonably
show that he would have withdrawn his plea agreement and
proceeded to trial. The Florida Supreme Court has held:

         [T]he defendant must demonstrate a reasonable
    probability that, but for the newly discovered evidence,
    the defendant would not have pleaded guilty and would
    have insisted on going to trial. “[I]n determining whether
    a reasonable probability exists that the defendant would
    have insisted on going to trial, a court should consider the
    totality of the circumstances surrounding the plea,
    including such factors as whether a particular defense
    was likely to succeed at trial, the colloquy between the
    defendant and the trial court at the time of the plea, and
    the difference between the sentence imposed under the
    plea and the maximum possible sentence the defendant
    faced at trial.” Grosvenor[v. State], 874 So. 2d [1176] at
    1181-82 [(Fla. 2004)].

Long v. State, 183 So. 3d 342, 346 (Fla. 2016).

     In her affidavit, Colley claims that on the date of the incident,
she saw Denario James enter Appellant’s vehicle and that James
had “a clear plastic bag containing a white substance and a black
box in his hand.” She alleges that she heard yelling from the
vehicle after this, but could not hear what was being said. She does
not actually assert that James possessed a firearm, that he
assaulted Appellant, or that he tried to rob him. This bare-bones
declaration—essentially amounting to testimony that she saw
James enter Appellant’s vehicle with a bag of narcotics and a box,
and then heard a loud conversation—does not constitute
exculpatory evidence that would have materially reinforced a
duress or necessity defense. As such, there is no reasonable
probability that this new evidence would have convinced Appellant
to abandon a plea agreement in which the State agreed to nolle
pross Appellant’s vehicular homicide charge, thus reducing his
maximum exposure by fifteen years. Given the evidence presented
by the State at the sentencing hearing, there is also no probability

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that this proposed testimony would have resulted in a lesser
sentence.

    For these reasons, we affirm the postconviction court’s order.

    AFFIRMED.

ROWE and BILBREY, JJ., concur.

                _____________________________

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

Michael Ufferman and Mark V. Murray, Tallahassee, for
Appellant.

Ashley Moody, Attorney General, and Daren L. Shippy, Assistant
Attorney General, Tallahassee, for Appellee.

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