IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA
FIFTH DISTRICT
NOT FINAL UNTIL TIME EXPIRES TO
FILE MOTION FOR REHEARING AND
DISPOSITION THEREOF IF FILED
STATE OF FLORIDA,
Appellant,
v. Case No. 5D18-683
RONALD GRATE AND CHARLES MORTON,
Appellees.
________________________________/
Opinion filed July 27, 2018
Appeal from the Circuit Court
for Brevard County,
Charles J. Roberts, George T. Paulk
and Jeffrey F. Mahl, Judges.
Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General,
Tallahassee, and Rebecca R. McGuigan,
Assistant Attorney General, Daytona
Beach, for Appellant.
James S. Purdy, Public Defender, and
Nancy Ryan, Assistant Public Defender,
Daytona Beach, for Appellees.
ORFINGER, J.
The State of Florida appeals the circuit court’s order denying its petition for a writ
of quo warranto, challenging the Office of Public Defender’s authority to intervene in civil
traffic infraction cases.1 We treat this matter as a direct appeal, reverse the circuit court’s
order, and remand with instructions to grant the petition.
1The circuit court considered this matter with a three-judge panel. Judge Paulk
dissented and would have granted the petition.
Ronald Grate and Charles Morton were charged in county court with driving with
a revoked license as a habitual traffic offender. The Office of Public Defender was
appointed to represent them. The assistant public defender assigned to the cases filed
motions in county court to modify the adjudications of guilt in earlier civil traffic infraction
cases in order to remove a predicate conviction necessary for habitual traffic offender
sanctions. The State moved to strike each motion to modify, arguing that the Office of
Public Defender had no authority to represent Grate and Morton in civil traffic infraction
matters. The county court denied the State’s motion to strike and modified the earlier
adjudications of guilt to withheld adjudications of guilt.2 The State then filed a petition for
a writ of quo warranto in the circuit court, challenging the public defender’s authority to
intervene in civil traffic infraction matters. Quo warranto is the proper means for inquiring
whether a particular individual has improperly exercised the power or right derived from
the state. Whiley v. Scott, 79 So. 3d 702, 707 (Fla. 2011). The circuit court denied the
State’s petition, and the matter is now before us.
Before considering the merits of the arguments presented, we must first determine
the nature of our review of the circuit court’s decision denying the State’s request for a
writ of quo warranto. Review of extraordinary writ proceedings is permissible by direct
appeal or by certiorari depending on the nature of the petition filed. If the petition for
extraordinary relief is filed in the circuit court to review an order by a lower tribunal, the
resulting order of the circuit court is reviewable in the district court of appeal by certiorari
and not by appeal. See, e.g., Fla. R. App. P. 9.030(b)(2)(B) (“The certiorari jurisdiction of
2 We agree with the State that the county court lacked jurisdiction to enter the
subject orders. See Fla. R. Traf. Ct. 6.490.
2
district courts of appeal may be sought to review . . . final orders of circuit courts acting in
their review capacity.”); Sutton v. State, 975 So. 2d 1073 (Fla. 2008) (holding prohibition
used in circuit court to review disqualification order by county court was reviewable by
certiorari); Sheley v. Fla. Parole Comm’n,
720 So. 2d 216 (Fla. 1998) (holding that
mandamus used in circuit court to review decision by parole commission was reviewable
by certiorari). However, when a petition for extraordinary relief initiates a new civil action
in the circuit court and is not used as a method of reviewing an order of the county court
or a local administrative tribunal, the final order is reviewed by appeal. See, e.g., Fla. R.
App. P. 9.030(b)(1)(A) (“District courts of appeal shall review, by appeal . . . final orders
of trial courts . . . .”); Fla. R. Civ. P. 1.630 (rule governing extraordinary writs); City of
Miami Beach v. State ex rel. Wood,
56 So. 2d 520, 520 (Fla. 1952) (appeal from judgment
entered in quo warranto proceedings); Brock v. Bd. of Cty. Comm’rs of Collier Cty.,
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So. 3d 844, 845-46 (Fla. 2d DCA 2009) (reviewing clerk’s appeal from circuit court’s
granting of quo warranto). Here, because the petition was a new civil action in the circuit
court and was not appellate in nature, our review is by appeal.
Turning to the merits, we consider this a matter of statutory construction subject to
de novo review. Citizens Prop. Ins. Corp. v. Perdido Sun Condo. Ass’n, 164 So. 3d 663,
666 (Fla. 2015). “The starting point of statutory interpretation is the language of the
statute itself.” Herrin v. City of Deltona,
121 So. 3d 1094, 1097 (Fla. 5th DCA 2013) (citing
GTC, Inc. v. Edgar,
967 So. 2d 781, 785 (Fla. 2007)). “If statutory language is clear and
unambiguous, ‘there is no occasion for resorting to the rules of statutory interpretation
and construction; the statute must be given its plain and obvious meaning.’”
Id. (quoting
A. R. Douglass, Inc. v. McRainey,
137 So. 157, 159 (Fla. 1931)).
3
The Office of Public Defender was initially created in this state by statute, and later
by an express constitutional provision, to provide indigent defendants the right of counsel
guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment. Article V, section 18 of the Florida Constitution
provides that the Office of Public Defender “shall perform duties prescribed by general
law.” This provision grants the Legislature the authority to delineate the duties to be
performed by public defenders, including the types of cases for which public defenders
can be appointed. Crist v. Fla. Ass’n of Criminal Def. Lawyers, Inc., 978 So. 2d 134, 141
(Fla. 2008). Section 27.51, Florida Statutes (2018), defines the duties of the Office of
Public Defender and generally provides that public defenders shall represent indigents
who have been charged or arrested for a variety of criminal offenses that could result in
imprisonment and in a limited number of civil proceedings that threaten their liberty
interests, as well as in all indigent criminal direct appeals. See, e.g., State ex rel. Smith
v. Jorandby,
498 So. 2d 948, 950 (Fla. 1986) (holding section 27.51 permits
representation by public defender only in circumstances entailing prosecution by state
threatening indigent’s liberty interest, including appeals). Thus, the duties of public
defenders, as enumerated in section 27.51, include representation of indigent defendants
only in circumstances that threaten liberty interests, which do not include civil traffic
infraction proceedings. Accord § 924.051(9), Fla. Stat. (2018) (“Funds, resources, or
employees of this state or its political subdivisions may not be used, directly or indirectly,
in appellate or collateral proceedings unless the use is constitutionally or statutorily
mandated.”).
Despite the lack of statutory authority, it is argued that the Office of Public Defender
can collaterally attack its client’s prior civil traffic infraction adjudication, if, in the exercise
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of its professional judgment, it concludes such representation is necessary to provide
effective and complete representation. We reject that argument, as the court did in Mann
v. State, 937 So. 2d 722, 726-29 (Fla. 3d DCA 2006), which concluded that while the
public defender’s desire to continue to assist criminal defendants, even after their
convictions have become final after appeal and the public defender’s statutory duty and
authority has terminated, is admirable, to do so would violate Florida’s statutory scheme
and deny all other similarly situated defendants desirous of representation in collateral
proceedings equal protection under the constitutions of the State of Florida and the United
States. Though not precisely on point, we find further support for our position in the
Florida Supreme Court’s holding in State v. Kilgore,
976 So. 2d 1066 (Fla. 2007), that the
Office of Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, an office similar to the Office of Public
Defender, could not represent a capital defendant in challenging a prior non-capital
conviction that the prosecution intended to use as an aggravating circumstance in the
capital case. Certainly, if publicly funded counsel cannot collaterally attack a prior
conviction in a death penalty case, we have no difficulty in concluding that the Office of
Public Defender cannot collaterally attack a prior civil traffic infraction conviction.
For these reasons, the circuit court should have granted the State’s petition for quo
warranto. Accordingly, we reverse the circuit court order and remand with instructions to
grant the petition.
REVERSED and REMANDED with instructions.
WALLIS and LAMBERT, JJ., concur.
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