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State v. Harbaugh3/9/2000
We have for review a district court's decision on the following question, certified to be of great public importance.
WHERE A DEFENDANT REQUESTS THAT THE JURY DETERMINE THE EXISTENCE OF PRIOR DUI CONVICTIONS IN A FELONY DUI TRIAL, SHOULD THE BIFURCATED PROCEDURE OF STATE V. RODRIGUEZ, 575 SO. 2d 1262 (FLA. 1991), BE AMENDED IN LIGHT OF UNITED STATES V. GAUDIN, 515 U.S. 506 (1995)? Harbaugh v. State, 711 So. 2d 77, 83 (Fla. 4th DCA 1998). We have jurisdiction. Art. V, § 3(b)(4), Fla. Const. We answer the question in the affirmative.
In State v. Rodriguez, 575 So. 2d 1262 (Fla. 1991), this Court established the procedure whereby a defendant charged with felony DUI, requiring three previous convictions of misdemeanor DUI in addition to the presently charged DUI, must be tried in a bifurcated process.
We conclude that if a defendant charged with felony DUI elects to be tried by jury, the court shall conduct a jury trial on the elements of the single [present] incident of DUI at issue without allowing the jury to learn of the alleged prior [misdemeanor] DUI offenses. If the jury returns a guilty verdict as to that single incident of DUI, the trial court shall conduct a separate proceeding without a jury to determine, in accord with general principles of law, whether the defendant had been convicted of DUI on three or more prior occasions. All evidence of the prior DUI convictions must be presented in open court and with full rights of confrontation, cross-examination, and representation by counsel. The trial court must be satisfied that the existence of three or more prior DUI convictions has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt before entering a conviction for felony DUI. Id. at 1266 (footnote omitted).
The import of the Rodriguez decision was that, absent the bifurcated process, the jury is directly confronted with evidence of defendant's prior criminal activity and the presumption of innocence is destroyed and that " f the presumption of evidence is destroyed by proof of an unrelated offense, it is more easily destroyed by proof of a similar related offense." Id. at 1265 (quoting State v. Harris, 356 So. 2d 315, 317 (Fla. 1978)). We found support for the bifurcated process in Shargaa v. State, 102 So. 2d 814 (Fla. 1958), wherein we explained:
[Based on] our traditional concepts of due process in the administration of the criminal laws, the State should not be permitted merely to charge an accused with the commission of a crime and buttress its current charge with a simultaneous allegation that the accused had previously been convicted of a totally unrelated crime committed years before. It appears to us that the product of such a procedure would substantially destroy the historical presumption of innocence which clothes every defendant in a criminal case and in the mind of the average juror would in a measure place upon the accused the burden of showing himself innocent rather than upon the State the responsibility of proving him guilty. Id. at 816.
Thus, we held in Rodriguez that in the circumstance where a felony DUI charge contains an element of prior misdemeanor DUI offenses, in order to protect the defendant's presumption of innocence, due process allows a trial judge to make the determination of the existence vel non of the alleged prior misdemeanor offenses after the jury returns a guilty verdict in the present DUI charge. Rodriguez, 575 So. 2d at 1266.
In so holding, we made an unarticulated constitutional tradeoff. We preserved the defendant's presumption of innocence but at the cost of the defendant's constitutional right to have the jury and not the trial judge make the ultimate finding of guilt. See In re Winshi
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