Third District Court of Appeal
State of Florida
Opinion filed April 3, 2019.
Not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing.
________________
No. 3D17-2327
Lower Tribunal No. 16-4938
________________
Ford Mahammad Charlier,
Appellant,
vs.
The State of Florida,
Appellee.
An Appeal from the Circuit Court for Miami-Dade County, Dava J. Tunis,
Judge.
Carlos J. Martinez, Public Defender, and Manuel Alvarez, Assistant Public
Defender, for appellant.
Ashley Moody, Attorney General, and Jeffrey R. Geldens, Assistant
Attorney General, for appellee.
Before EMAS, C.J., and LOGUE and HENDON, JJ.
HENDON, J.
Ford Mahammad Charlier appeals from his conviction and sentence for
second degree murder with a firearm. We affirm.
Charlier was charged with second degree murder of his girlfriend, Jasmine
Richards. The evidence against Charlier was entirely circumstantial. Evidence at
trial included testimony from Jasmine’s mother and Jasmine’s friend, both of
whom testified that the night before her murder, Jasmine spoke with each of them
on the phone, very distressed and relating how she and Charlier had argued and
that Jasmine was going to leave the relationship. Phone records confirmed the time
of these conversations. Charlier’s new girlfriend testified that she and Charlier
went clubbing the night before the murder, and they had stopped for wings at
Checkers before she dropped him off at the apartment around 5:00 a.m.
Surveillance video and testimony of the apartment’s security guard, Mr. Allen,
confirmed that he let Charlier into the secured building with the Checkers bag
around 5:00 a.m. and saw him get into the elevator to the apartment. Mr. Allen
confirmed that Charlier left the building by the stairs at 5:45 a.m., and additional
video of the stairwell entrance documented the same person going up the stairs
through a side door a few minutes later, then leaving again around 6:00 a.m.,
during the time Jasmine was supposed to leave for work. The security video
showed that upon exiting the building Charlier wore different shoes than the ones
he wore entering the building. Jasmine’s mother became concerned when Jasmine
2
failed to answer multiple phone calls between 6:17 and 7:40 a.m. At 9:45,
Jasmine’s office called to see why she was not at work. Around 10:30 a.m.,
Jasmine’s mother went to the apartment, found the door unlocked, and discovered
Jasmine dead in the bathroom from a gunshot to the head. At the trial, Jasmine’s
mother testified that on the morning she discovered her daughter’s body, Charlier
called her and told her he didn’t do it. Police tried to reach Charlier by phone, with
no response. They traced his calls to his mother’s apartment. When they knocked
on his mother’s door, no one responded. The police remained throughout the
evening and subsequently apprehended Charlier when he left his mother’s
apartment the next morning. The clothing Charlier was seen wearing when he
entered Jasmine’s apartment building were stained but had been recently washed.
Police found no evidence of a forced entry into Jasmine’s apartment. They found
the Checkers bag near Jasmine’s body. The medical examiner indicated that the
path of the bullet was consistent with a left-handed shooter (Charlier is left-
handed), and estimated the time of death between 5 a.m. and 10:30 a.m., when the
body was discovered. The blood in the apartment was only from the victim; a
blood trail led from the apartment, down the hallway past the elevator, to the
stairwell.
3
The trial court denied Charlier’s motion for judgment of acquittal. The jury
found the defendant guilty of second degree murder with a firearm, and the court
sentenced him to life imprisonment.
On appeal, Charlier argues that the trial court erred by denying his motion
for judgment of acquittal because the State failed to disprove a reasonable
hypothesis of innocence. Charlier contends that someone else could have
committed the murder after he left the building, as the only evidence is entirely
circumstantial. Circumstances that create nothing more than a strong suspicion
that the defendant committed the crime, he argues, are not sufficient to support a
conviction.
The standard of review on denial of a motion for judgment of acquittal is de
novo. Reynolds v. State, 934 So. 2d 1128, 1145 (Fla. 2006) (citing Pagan v. State,
830 So. 2d 792, 803 (Fla. 2002)). In a case in which the evidence is wholly
circumstantial, as here, not only must the State provide sufficient evidence
establishing each element of the offense, but the evidence must also exclude the
defendant's reasonable hypothesis of innocence. Pagan, 830 So. 2d at 803.
However, the State is not required to conclusively rebut “‘every possible variation’
of events which could be inferred from the evidence, but only to introduce
competent evidence which is inconsistent with the defendant's theory of events.”
State v. Law, 559 So. 2d 187, 188–89 (Fla. 1989). Indeed,
4
[t]he question of whether the evidence fails to exclude all reasonable
hypotheses of innocence is for the jury to determine. Where the
circumstantial evidence contradicts the defendant's theory of
innocence, and the inferences pointing to guilt are sufficiently strong,
the case should go to the jury. The standard for review of a denial of a
motion for judgment of acquittal is not whether in the opinion of the
trial judge or of the appellate court the evidence fails to exclude every
reasonable hypothesis other than guilt, but rather whether the jury
must reasonably so conclude.
Perez v. State, 565 So. 2d 743, 744 (Fla. 3d DCA 1990) (citations omitted).
Different interpretations of the same facts do not warrant taking the case
from the jury. In this instance, the State sufficiently met its burden by showing a
view of the evidence that is distinctly inconsistent with Charlier’s view that
someone else could have murdered Jasmine after he left the apartment around 6:00
a.m. The jury could instead reasonably conclude the victim was alive when the
defendant arrived, and she perished while he was there. We find sufficient
competent evidence on the record to contradict the appellant's theory of innocence
and support the denial of his motion for judgment of acquittal.
Charlier additionally argues that the trial court erroneously allowed the
testimony of Jasmine’s mother and friend as non-hearsay. We disagree. We review
a trial court's decision to admit evidence under an abuse of discretion standard,
Williams v. State, 967 So. 2d 735, 747–48 (Fla. 2007), and “[d]iscretion ‘is abused
only where no reasonable man would take the view adopted by the trial court.’”
Nolte v. State, 726 So. 2d 307, 309 (Fla. 2d DCA 1998) (quoting Canakaris v.
5
Canakaris, 382 So. 2d 1197, 1203 (Fla. 1980)). The statements from Jasmine’s
mother and friend as to what Jasmine was immediately experiencing the night
before her murder were admissible as either excited utterances or as statements
made relating to a startling event or condition, while the declarant was under the
stress of excitement caused by the event, i.e., her argument with Charlier. See §
90.803(1), Fla. Stat. (2016) (covering statements “describing or explaining an
event or condition made while the declarant was perceiving the event or condition,
or immediately thereafter, except when such statement is made under
circumstances that indicate its lack of trustworthiness.”); Pasha v. State, 225 So. 3d
688, 708 (Fla. 2017). There was no suggestion that the statements from the
witnesses were untrustworthy, and we conclude that their testimony was
appropriately admitted.
After a thorough consideration of the record and issues presented on appeal,
we affirm appellant's conviction.
Affirmed.
6