Adam Cole Crenshaw v. State of Florida

Summary

The Fifth District Court of Appeal of Florida reviewed Adam Cole Crenshaw's convictions and life sentence for multiple sexual battery and lewd or lascivious molestation offenses. The court reversed the conviction for count IX because the evidence did not establish that the charged conduct occurred during the charged period, and remanded for the trial court to reconsider Crenshaw's motion for new trial under the proper weight-of-the-evidence standard. The court affirmed the remaining challenged issues, including the admission of collateral-crime evidence, sufficiency challenges, and the cost of prosecution.

Holdings

1. Any error in failing to conduct a more thorough competency inquiry was unpreserved because Crenshaw did not request inquiry into the victim's ability to observe or recollect facts or her moral obligation to testify truthfully after the court conducted a truth-and-lie inquiry.
2. The State did not commit a discovery violation by providing the complete forensic phone download more than a year before trial rather than separately identifying the specific messages it later introduced, and no Richardson hearing was required.
3. The trial court properly admitted evidence that Crenshaw had abused the victim for approximately six years before the charged offenses as inextricably intertwined evidence because it established the entire context from which the charged crimes arose.
4. The State provided adequate notice of its intent to introduce Williams rule evidence because its notice was served more than ten days before trial and identified the dates, locations, and details of the prior sexual conduct with sufficient particularity.
5. The prior-abuse evidence did not become a feature of the trial because the prosecutor referred to it only briefly, the victim described the charged abuse in detail but the prior abuse vaguely, and the jury received a limiting instruction.
6. The evidence was insufficient to establish that Crenshaw touched the victim's breasts between January 1 and March 11, 2021, so Crenshaw was entitled to a judgment of acquittal on count IX.
7. The insufficiency of evidence concerning the victim's age at the time of the breast touching did not constitute fundamental error because the State presented some evidence that the charged crime occurred; the deficiency concerned only one element.
8. Child-hearsay statements may constitute sufficient evidence when the child does not recant, repudiate, or directly contradict those statements in trial testimony; the victim's failure to mention breast touching at trial did not amount to recantation or contradiction.
9. Transmission of an image harmful to minors is complete when the defendant sends the image to a specific individual known to be a minor; the State need not prove that the recipient actually viewed the image.
10. When a defendant moves for a new trial based on the weight of the evidence, the trial court must weigh the evidence, not merely determine whether sufficient evidence supports the verdict; because the record did not clearly show that the court did so, remand was required for reconsideration.
11. The trial court properly imposed the minimum cost of prosecution even though the State did not request it.

Questions Presented

1. Whether the trial court adequately determined the child victim's competency to testify.
2. Whether the State committed a discovery violation by identifying the specific portions of a previously disclosed forensic phone download only shortly before trial, requiring a Richardson hearing.
3. Whether evidence of prior abuse was improperly admitted as inextricably intertwined evidence and Williams rule evidence, whether notice was adequate, and whether the evidence became a feature of the trial.
4. Whether sufficient evidence supported the charged dates and elements of several convictions, including whether count IX was supported by evidence that the breast touching occurred during the charged period.
5. Whether child-hearsay evidence could support convictions when the victim did not recant, repudiate, or contradict the hearsay.
6. Whether transmission of an image harmful to minors requires proof that the minor recipient actually viewed the image.
7. Whether the trial court applied the correct weight-of-the-evidence standard to Crenshaw's motion for new trial.
8. Whether the trial court could impose the minimum cost of prosecution without a request by the State.

Disposition

reversed_and_remanded