IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL
FIRST DISTRICT, STATE OF FLORIDA
CHRISTOPHER WILLIAMS, NOT FINAL UNTIL TIME EXPIRES TO
FILE MOTION FOR REHEARING AND
Appellant, DISPOSITION THEREOF IF FILED
v. CASE NO. 1D15-2244
STATE OF FLORIDA,
Appellee.
_____________________________/
Opinion filed May 12, 2016.
An appeal from the Circuit Court for Suwannee County.
David W. Fina, Judge.
Nancy A. Daniels, Public Defender, Glenna Joyce Reeves, Tallahassee, for
Appellant.
Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, David Llanes and Matthew Pavese, Assistant
Attorneys General, Tallahassee, for Appellee.
PER CURIAM.
AFFIRMED.
LEWIS and THOMAS, JJ., CONCUR; MAKAR, J., CONCURS WITH OPINION.
MAKAR, J., concurring.
Defendant brutally beat, stabbed multiple times, and sexually battered the
victim in her bedroom, locking the door behind him as he moved her inward before
his savagery began. Convicted of sexual battery, attempted first-degree murder,
aggravated battery, and kidnapping while armed with a weapon, he claims the
kidnapping count fails under our decision in Miller v. State, 124 So. 3d 395 (Fla. 1st
DCA 2013), because the confinement of his victim was incidental to the other
charges. Miller cannot, and should not, be read so broadly.
Kidnapping, as charged in this case, means “forcibly, secretly, or by threat
confining, abducting, or imprisoning another person against her or his will and
without lawful authority with intent to . . . [i]nflict bodily harm upon or to terrorize
the victim or another person.” § 787.01(1)(a)3, Fla. Stat. (2014). Defendant’s
captivity of the victim readily falls within this statute’s proscription. But he says that
the confinement of the victim to her room was no longer than necessary to have
committed the other felonies, attempted murder, sexual battery, and aggravated
battery, making it incidental and non-actionable.
Miller does not advance defendant’s argument because the only act of
confinement in that case was “placing a pillow over the victim’s face,” which was
deemed to be an incidental act that occurred simultaneously with the sexual battery
that occurred. Miller, 124 So. 3d at 398 (it “lasted no longer than commission of the
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other crime”). Here, the defendant went well beyond what Miller deemed
insufficient. 1 He menacingly approached and entered the victim’s bedroom carrying
a knife, moving her inside as he locked the door, thereby confining the victim at that
point; this was a separate, divisible, actionable offense. The State wasn’t required to
prove that the kidnapping was independent of the other crimes; instead, a kidnapping
charge is actionable if the kidnapping is “not merely incidental to the killing, but
was sufficiently separate from” the other crimes. Allen v. State, 137 So. 3d 946, 960
(Fla. 2013); Somers v. State, 162 So. 3d 1077, 1078 (Fla. 5th DCA 2015) (under
section 787.01(1)(a)3, Florida Statutes, “the State need not prove that the
confinement is independent of the related crime.”). That the lock was on the inside
of the door didn’t lessen the victim’s confinement; a jury could easily find she was
restrained by a knife-wielding, rageful aggressor that was a precursor to, but not
coterminous with, the vicious stabbings and beatings that occurred thereafter
(including tying the victim’s belt around her neck and lifting her off the bed thereby).
And that the victim was able to flee and seek help soon after defendant’s flight,
doesn’t diminish that she had already been confined unlawfully. Defendant’s
prefatory actions were not merely minor, incidental acts subsumed within the other
crimes committed. See generally Frank J. Wozniak, Annotation, Seizure or detention
1
See also Mackerley v. State, 754 So. 2d 132, 137 (Fla. 4th DCA 2000) (placing
victim in a headlock to shoot him is incidental confinement), quashed on other
grounds, 777 So. 2d 969 (Fla. 2001).
3
for purpose of committing rape, robbery, or other offense as constituting separate
crime of kidnapping, 39 A.L.R.5th 283 (1996 & Supp. 2016) (collecting cases
regarding “whether the seizure or the detention of the victim of a rape, robbery, or
similar offense would be sufficient to constitute the separate crime of kidnapping”).
The trial court was correct to reject the defendant’s argument that “there was no
action on [defendant’s] part to attempt to confine her nor to restrict her freedom.”
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