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Bautista v. State12/4/2003
eparate and distinct offenses as there are persons killed by the unlawful act").
Applying a common-sense approach to the DUI manslaughter statute leads to one inexorable conclusion. Any reasonable consideration of the language of the statute, the history of its enactment, the uniform statutory treatment of manslaughter offenses, and the case law in existence makes it clear that the legislative intent is that each death caused in a DUI crash is to be charged and punished as a separate offense.
C. DUI Manslaughter and the A/Any Test
The a/any test does not compel a contrary determination of the Legislature's intended unit of prosecution for the offense of DUI manslaughter. Bautista's argument based on the a/any test succeeds only if we were to apply the test as a simple syntactical rule in isolation from the context in which the test arose. However, it would be improper to so isolate this distinction. As discussed earlier, the a/any distinction was used in Grappin as one part of a common sense application of well-established rules of statutory interpretation, including reference to the overall statutory scheme and purpose as well as to related cases. Within this context, the a/any test is a valid linguistic tool that is helpful in establishing the Legislature's intended unit of prosecution. However, the a/any test is not an infallible or exclusive indicator of legislative intent. Rather, absent clear legislative intent to the contrary, the a/any test serves as a valuable but nonexclusive means to assist courts in determining the intended unit of prosecution.
We acknowledge that our decision in Watts, while reaching the correct result, might appear to apply the a/any test mechanistically. We applied the a/any test in that case because there was no clear evidence of legislative intent to permit multiple units of prosecution. However, Grappin and its progeny should not be interpreted to suggest that the intended unit of prosecution is automatically rendered ambiguous whenever a statute uses the word "any." In the DUI manslaughter statute, the intent of the Legislature is clear. And since our purpose in construing a statutory provision is to give effect to legislative intent, the unit of prosecution in DUI manslaughter cases must be the number of victims killed-not the number of DUI traffic violations. The a/any test should not be applied to create an ambiguity where none exists and then to reach a result contrary to clear legislative intent.
We therefore hold that the a/any test adopted in Grappin does not preclude multiple convictions of DUI manslaughter where multiple deaths occur in a single DUI crash.
We decline to address Bautista's collateral argument regarding the enhancement of his convictions for failure to render aid because this issue is outside the scope of the certified question and the Fourth District Court of Appeal did not rule on the issue. See Major League Baseball v. Morsani, 790 So. 2d 1071, 1080 n.26 (Fla. 2001) (stating that this Court generally declines to review issues which are outside the scope of a certified question and which have not passed jurisdictional muster).
III. CONCLUSION
For the reasons stated above, we answer the certified question in the negative and approve the decision of the Fourth District Court of Appeal.
It is so ordered.
ANSTEAD, C.J., and WELLS, PARIENTE, LEWIS, QUINCE, and CANTERO, JJ., concur.
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