Court Opinion

ID: 9903080
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-11-27 15:29:21.313948+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:05.577259
License: Public Domain

IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA
                      FIFTH DISTRICT

                                 NOT FINAL UNTIL TIME EXPIRES TO
                                 FILE MOTION FOR REHEARING AND
                                 DISPOSITION THEREOF IF FILED

QUANAVIS LADON PENDER,

           Appellant,

v.                                   Case No. 5D23-53
                                     LT Case No. 16-2020-CF-002996-AXXX-MA

STATE OF FLORIDA,

          Appellee.
________________________________/

Opinion filed June 9, 2023

Appeal from the Circuit Court
for Duval County,
A. C. Soud, Jr., Senior Judge.

Jessica J. Yeary, Public Defender,
and Justin Foster Karpf, Assistant
Public Defender, Tallahassee, for
Appellant.

Ashley Moody, Attorney General,
and Robert Charles Lee, Assistant
Attorney General, Tallahassee, for
Appellee.

LAMBERT, C.J.
      On the evening of March 20, 2020, Quanavis Pender was sitting in his

Tahoe SUV with a firearm when he was approached by a man whom he

knew to be dating his estranged wife. Pender fired one shot, hitting the victim

in his jaw and causing him significant injury. Pender then drove away, taking

his gun with him. When eventually questioned by law enforcement about the

gun’s whereabouts following his arrest, Pender responded that he had

thrown the gun “in the river.” The firearm was never located.

      Pender was charged and later convicted after trial of attempted

second-degree murder with a firearm and discharging a firearm from a

vehicle. Having considered the arguments raised by Pender on appeal for

reversal, we affirm his convictions and sentences on these counts without

further discussion.

      We write, however, to address Pender’s separate conviction at trial for

tampering with evidence—specifically, the firearm that he used to shoot the

victim. The crime of tampering with evidence is codified at section 918.13,

Florida Statutes (2019). The 2019 version of this statute, which applies here,

provided, in pertinent part:

            (1) No person, knowing that a criminal trial or
            proceeding or an investigation by a duly constituted
            prosecuting authority, law enforcement agency,
            grand jury or legislative committee of this state is
            pending or is about to be instituted, shall:

                                      2
            (a) Alter, destroy, conceal, or remove any record,
            document, or thing with the purpose to impair its
            verity or availability in such proceeding or
            investigation.

§ 918.13(1)(a), Fla. Stat.

      Prior to trial, Pender had moved in limine under the corpus delicti 1 rule

to preclude his confession from being admitted into evidence at trial. “The

phrase ‘corpus delicti’ refers to proof independent of a confession that the

crime charged was in fact committed.” Meyers v. State, 704 So. 2d 1368,

1369 (Fla. 1997) (citing Bassett v. State, 449 So. 2d 803, 807 (Fla. 1984)).

“[U]nder the corpus delicti rule, the State has the burden of proving, by

substantial evidence, that a crime was committed before a defendant’s

confession can be admitted in evidence.” Scott v. State, 147 So. 3d 5, 6

(Fla. 1st DCA 2013) (quoting Martin v. State, 911 So. 2d 821, 822 (Fla. 5th

DCA 2005)). In other words, “[a] person’s confession to a crime is not

sufficient evidence of a criminal act where no independent direct or

circumstantial evidence exists to substantiate the occurrence of a crime.”

State v. Allen, 335 So. 2d 823, 825 (Fla. 1976).

      Pender argued in his motion that the State did not have the requisite

independent substantial evidence to show that the crime of tampering with

      1
        Corpus delicti is the “body, foundation, or substance of the crime.”
State v. Lindsey, 738 So. 2d 974, 976 n.1 (Fla. 5th DCA 1999).

                                       3
evidence was committed; thus, the State could not use his confession as

proof of this crime.     The State disagreed, responding that the victim’s

testimony of being shot by Pender, plus the surveillance video from a nearby

business establishment depicting the shooting and Pender leaving the scene

with the gun, established the corpus delicti of the crime, making Pender’s

confession admissible.

      The trial court denied Pender’s motion in limine by unelaborated written

order. Pender’s later “corpus delicti” objections at trial to the admissibility of

his confession were overruled.

                                  ANALYSIS

      Under the 2019 version of section 918.13(1)(a), to commit the crime of

tampering with evidence, a defendant must either “alter,” “destroy,”

“conceal,” or “remove” a thing with the purpose of impairing its verity or

availability in a criminal proceeding or investigation. In the instant case, the

State had no evidence to show or prove that Pender’s gun was “altered.”

Next, the only evidence from the State to show that Pender’s gun was either

“destroyed,” or “concealed” was Pender’s confession, which, by itself, is

insufficient to prove the crime. See Allen, 335 So. 2d at 825.2 The question

      2
        Had there in fact been evidence that Pender was observed throwing
his firearm “into the river” while being pursued by law enforcement, or that
he had been seen doing so by some other witness, the corpus delicti rule

                                        4
thus comes down to whether the State’s proof that Pender shot the victim

and then “removed” the firearm from the scene by driving away with it,

without more, was the requisite independent substantial evidence to

establish the corpus delicti of the crime of tampering with evidence. See

Sciortino v. State, 115 So. 2d 93, 99 (Fla. 2d DCA 1959) (“Direct evidence

of one offense may not be used as proof of corpus delicti of another crime.”).

      We conclude that it was not. The crime of evidence tampering is a

specific intent crime. McNeil v. State, 438 So. 2d 960, 962 (Fla. 1st DCA

1983). As such, because the language of the applicable version of section

918.13(1)(a) required that removal of a thing be done “with the purpose to

impair its verity or availability,” the requisite intent cannot be inferred from

commission of the physical act component of the offense, i.e., removal of the

gun from the scene. See Linehan v. State, 442 So. 2d 244, 247 (Fla. 2d

DCA 1983).

      Simply stated, under the facts of this case, without Pender’s

confession, the State had no separate substantial evidence of Pender’s

intent or purpose in taking his gun from the scene. See Anderson v. State,

would have provided him with no relief. See Chambers v. State, 880 So. 2d
696, 698 (Fla. 2d DCA 2004) (discussing a case in which the defendant was
convicted of tampering with evidence “following a high-speed car chase
during which [the defendant] threw the gun involved in the shooting out the
window of his car”).

                                       5
123 P.3d 1110, 1117–18 (Alaska Ct. App. 2005) (rejecting the State’s

argument that under Alaska’s tampering with evidence statute that

criminalizes the altering, suppressing, concealing, or removing of physical

evidence with intent to impair its verity or availability, the defendant

committed a “removal” of evidence when he drove away from the scene of

his crimes with the handgun still in his possession); State v. Like, No. 21991,

2008 WL 1759080 (Ohio Ct. App. Apr. 18, 2008) (reversing the defendant’s

conviction for tampering with evidence because, although there was no

dispute that the gun used in the murder was removed from the crime scene

by the defendant, the State offered no evidence, other than the defendant’s

own statement about throwing the gun into a dumpster, to support an

inference that the gun was removed from the scene with the purpose of

impairing its value or availability); Mullins v. Commonwealth, 350 S.W. 3d

434, 443 (Ky. 2011) (“When a crime takes place, it will almost always be the

case that the perpetrator leaves the scene with evidence. If this amounted

to a charge of tampering, the result would be an impermissible ‘piling on.’”).

      Accordingly, we hold that the trial court erred in denying Pender’s

motion in limine. We reverse his conviction and sentence for tampering with

evidence and remand with directions to the trial court to enter a judgment of

acquittal on this count.

                                      6
      AFFIRMED, in part; REVERSED, in part; and REMANDED, with
directions.

BOATWRIGHT and KILBANE, JJ., concur.

                               7