Zeth Trawick v. State

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
ZETH TRAWICK,
Appellant,
v. Case No. 5D16-2367
STATE OF FLORIDA,
Appellee.
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Opinion filed August 25, 2017
3.850 Appeal from the Circuit Court
for Volusia County,
Raul A. Zambrano and Margaret W.
Hudson, Judges.
Tiffany Gatesh Fearing, of Suncoast Legal
Group, P.L., Spring Hill, for Appellant.
Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General,
Tallahassee, and Rebecca Roark Wall,
Assistant Attorney General, Daytona
Beach, for Appellee.
PER CURIAM.
Zeth Trawick ("Appellant") appeals the denial of two grounds of his twelve-ground
motion for postconviction relief, filed pursuant to Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure
3.850. We affirm the denial of the first challenged ground without discussion. However,
we reverse the summary denial of the second ground and remand for an evidentiary
hearing.
Throughout his trial for second-degree murder, Appellant maintained that he killed
the victim in self-defense. Nonetheless, the jury found Appellant guilty, and the trial court
sentenced him to life in prison.1 Appellant subsequently filed a pro se motion for
postconviction relief, alleging that his trial counsel provided ineffective assistance by
failing to obtain exculpatory photographs and proceeding to trial without them.
Specifically, he argued photographs of his hands and arms, taken by the DeLand Police
Department, would have depicted a fresh cut, purportedly made by the victim's knife
during the altercation that resulted in the victim's death. Appellant argued these
photographs would have demonstrated that he had defensive wounds from attempting to
deflect an attack. The trial court summarily denied this claim.
The record on appeal contains evidence that trial counsel otherwise explored
Appellant's self-defense theory and cross-examined the medical examiner concerning the
injuries to both the victim and Appellant. However, this evidence does not conclusively
refute Appellant's claim that the introduction of the photographs would have bolstered his
self-defense argument, especially in response to the State's introduction of photographs
of the victim's defensive injuries and testimony from two witnesses denying the existence
of Appellant's injury. Thus, we reverse the trial court's summary denial of this ground and
remand for an evidentiary hearing on the matter. See Saunders v. State, 186 So. 3d 55,
1We per curiam affirmed Appellant's direct appeal of the judgment and sentence.
Trawick v. State, 46 So. 3d 65 (Fla. 5th DCA 2010).
2
57 (Fla. 5th DCA 2016) ("Because claim 2 is not conclusively refuted by the attached
record, we remand for an evidentiary hearing.").
AFFIRMED in Part; REVERSED in Part; REMANDED with Instructions.
ORFINGER, WALLIS and EISNAUGLE, JJ., concur.
3