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Lugo v. State2/20/2003
rimes, and the manner in which they were committed."
However, interests in practicality, efficiency, expense, convenience, and judicial economy, do not outweigh the defendant's right to a fair determination of guilt or innocence. Wright v. State, 586 So. 2d 1024, 1029-30 (Fla. 1991) (citations omitted) (quoting Garcia v. State, 568 So. 2d 896, 899 (Fla. 1990)).
Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.150 requires that the criminal charges joined for trial "be considered in an episodic sense." Garcia v. State, 568 So. 2d 896, 899 (Fla. 1990). Moreover, there must be a "meaningful relationship" between or among the charges before they can be tried together. Ellis v. State, 622 So. 2d 991, 999 (Fla. 1993). That is to say, "the crimes in question must be linked in some significant way." Id. at 1000.
Lugo primarily addresses the trial court's failure to grant his pretrial motion to sever the Schiller counts, the Griga-Furton counts, and the racketeering counts from each other so that separate trials could be conducted on each set of charges. However, he generally fails to address the important part that the racketeering charges had in the trial judge's decision to deny the motion for severance. The trial judge noted that the State had properly pled the racketeering-related charges in the indictment, with events involving the Schiller counts and the Griga-Furton counts serving as two of the required predicate acts. He also noted that he was being asked "in advance of hearing one shred of evidence [during the trial]" to sever the Schiller counts, the Griga-Furton counts, and the racketeering counts, when one of the crucial points that the State intended to assert was that the Schiller counts and the Griga-Furton counts were integral parts of the very racketeering enterprise in which Lugo and others had engaged. At the pretrial hearing, the trial judge indicated that Lugo was free to file a formal motion to dismiss the racketeering charges if the State failed during trial to present evidence of the link between the Schiller and Griga-Furton counts and their relationship to Lugo's alleged racketeering activities. On the facts before us, we are not prepared to determine that the trial judge erred in his conclusion that the RICO charges provided a "relevant relationship" between the Schiller and Griga-Furton counts, thereby justifying a single trial on all charges filed against Lugo. This conclusion reflects the requirement that there be a "meaningful relationship" among charges that are tried together, as we discussed in Ellis. See Ellis, 622 So. 2d at 999. Moreover, unlike Ellis, the instant case involves charges of racketeering that link criminal incidents which might appear upon initial inspection to be temporally unrelated because they occurred within a six-month span. The racketeering charges provide the "significant way" in which the Schiller counts, the Griga-Furton counts, and Lugo's alleged racketeering activity were linked. See generally Ellis, 622 So. 2d at 1000.
Florida law fully supports the trial judge's conclusion. In Shimek v. State, 610 So. 2d 632 (Fla. 1st DCA 1992), the appellant, an attorney, sought before trial to have one count of grand theft severed both from other counts of grand theft and from a count of racketeering. The appellant contended that severance was necessary because one grand theft count (the "Skipper" count) involved investing settlement funds of a client of his legal practice in a bank that engaged in questionable practices, whereas the other grand theft counts (the "Pierce-LaCoste" counts) involved investors sought by the appellant or the principals of that same bank. The appellant argued that the count involving his client was not related i
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