Bosque v. State

Third District Court of Appeal
State of Florida
Opinion filed September 21, 2016.
Not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing.
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Nos. 3D15-49 and 3D14-2936
Lower Tribunal No. 13-13315
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German D. Bosque,
Appellant/Cross-Appellee,
vs.
The State of Florida,
Appellee/Cross-Appellant.
Appeals from the Circuit Court for Miami-Dade County, Miguel M. de la O,
Judge.
David S. Molansky, for appellant/cross-appellee.
Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, and Michael W. Mervine, Assistant
Attorney General, for appellee/cross-appellant.
Before SUAREZ, C.J., and ROTHENBERG, and FERNANDEZ, JJ.
FERNANDEZ, J.
German D. Bosque appeals his judgment of conviction and sentence on the
charge of tampering with a victim and appellee State of Florida cross-appeals the
entry of a judgment of acquittal and new trial order on the charge of false
imprisonment. We affirm the judgment of acquittal on the charge of false
imprisonment, but reverse the judgment and sentence on the charge of tampering
with a witness/victim based on the State’s discovery violation pursuant to Brady v.
Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), and Richardson v. State, 246 So. 2d 771 (Fla.
1971).
Bosque was one of several police officers who responded to the scene of a
domestic dispute between Corey Davis and Joanna Flores over the custody of their
infant child. The officers tried unsuccessfully to convince Davis to return the child
to Flores. A struggle ultimately ensued between Bosque and Davis during which
Bosque allegedly punched Davis and retrieved the child from him. The police did
not arrest Davis at the scene. Davis later appeared at the police station to file an
internal affairs complaint against Bosque where Bosque briefly handcuffed Davis
and told him that Flores had complained about his attempt to run her over with a
car.
The State charged Bosque with false imprisonment, tampering with a
witness/victim, and battery. The State’s theory at trial was that Bosque abused his
authority and arrested Davis in retaliation for Davis’s complaint against Bosque.
The jury convicted Bosque of false imprisonment, tampering with a
witness/victim, and found him not guilty of battery.
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The State initially denied possession of dispatch audio recordings, but
produced the recordings post-trial. Bosque argued in his Motion to Dismiss, for
Judgment of Acquittal or alternatively for a New Trial, based on Newly
Discovered Withheld Discovery, that the State committed a willful and substantial
discovery violation when it failed to produce the dispatch audio recordings prior to
trial. The audio dispatch recordings demonstrated that, while at the scene of the
incident, Bosque did not know of Flores’ allegation that Davis tried to run Flores
over with his car, but that he subsequently learned of the allegation prior to his
encounter with Davis at the police station, establishing that he indeed had probable
cause to arrest Davis for the aggravated assault. The trial court granted Bosque’s
renewed motion for judgment of acquittal and new trial on the false imprisonment
charge and denied the motion on the charge of tampering with a witness/victim.
Bosque received a sentence of three-hundred sixty-four days in prison followed by
four years of probation.
Bosque is correct that the trial court erred when it failed to grant a new trial
on the charge of tampering with a witness/victim. Bosque argued that the audio
recordings would have served as impeachment evidence regarding the testimony of
at least one witness. The State committed a discovery violation when it failed to
produce the dispatch audio recordings. The trial court’s denial of a motion for new
trial is reviewed under an abuse of discretion standard. Stephens v. State, 787 So.
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2d 747, 754 (Fla. 2001). The precepts of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963),
require Bosque to “show (1) that favorable evidence – either exculpatory or
impeaching, (2) was willfully or inadvertently suppressed by the State, and (3)
because the evidence was material, [he] was prejudiced.” Duest v. State, 12 So.
3d 734, 744 (Fla. 2009). Bosque made the required showing and established
entitlement to a Richardson hearing. See Richardson v. State, 246 So. 2d 771 (Fla.
1971).
There is no question that the recordings were exculpatory in nature. The
recordings revealed that Bosque had knowledge of Davis’s commission of
aggravated assault against Flores at the time of arrest. This served to undermine the
State’s retaliation and abuse of authority theory. The State also either willfully or
inadvertently suppressed the dispatch audio recordings because the dispatch audio
recordings existed and were discoverable. Furthermore, the State’s failure to
disclose prejudiced Bosque because the dispatch audio recordings were material
where, as here, “there is a reasonable probability that, had the [dispatch audio
recordings] been disclosed to the defense, the result of the proceeding would have
been different.” United States v. Bagley, 473 U.S. 667, 682 (1985). The jury
could have viewed Davis’s arrest as proper independent of the internal affairs
complaint.
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We therefore reverse the trial court’s denial of Bosque’s motion for new trial
on the charge of tampering with a witness/victim and remand the cause for a new
trial on this charge. The judgment of acquittal on the charge of false imprisonment
is affirmed.
Affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded.
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