DIONCO BEDFORD, PETITIONER,
v.
STATE OF FLORIDA, RESPONDENT
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The court held that the trial court erred in denying the public defender's motion to withdraw due to a conflict of interest.
The public defender sought to withdraw from representing a petitioner due to a conflict arising from prior representation of a state witness who was a…
The full statement of facts, procedural history, and disposition for this case are member content.
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KLEIN, J.
The public defender who represents petitioner filed a motion to withdraw because of a conflict arising from the public defender’s prior representation of a witness for the state. The trial court denied the motion to withdraw, and the public defender seeks a writ of certiorari. We have jurisdiction. Valle v. State, 763 So. 2d 1175 (Fla. 4th DCA 2000). We grant the petition.
The motion to withdraw alleges that the public defender has a conflict of interest in that it had represented the witness to this crime in a case with a 1998 case number and that the witness was also a victim of the crime. The trial court, noting that the case in which the public defender’s office represented the victim was closed (the victim received probation), denied the motion.
In Martin v. State, 761 So. 2d 475 (Fla. 4th DCA 2000), we concluded that the public defender had stronger grounds for withdrawal based on conflict of interest where the witness previously represented by the public defender was also the victim of the crime. In Martin the witness was not a victim and we concluded that there were insufficient allegations of conflict to require withdrawal. We distinguished Valle, in which the witnesses were victims and had both been previously represented by the public defender’s office, one on a 1998 case which had been recently closed. The present case is indistinguishable from Voile. We therefore grant the petition, as we did in Valle, and quash the order deny-ing the motion to withdraw.
GUNTHER and GROSS, JJ., concur.
Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus
Citator
Cited By
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Rodriguez v. State, 767 So. 2d 621 (Fla. 4th DCA 2000)…So. 2d 1285 (Fla. 4th DCA 2000)(quashing the order of the trial court denying the public defender’s motion to withdraw when the public defender’s office represented the victim in a 1998 prosecution for public assistance fraud) and Bedford v. State, 765 So. 2d 846 (Fla. 4th DCA 2000)(permitting the public defender to withdraw where the State’s witness/victim had been represented by the public defender.) We have not reached the same conclusion where the former client is a witness. In Martin v. State, 761 So.…
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Moore v. State, 787 So. 2d 205 (Fla. 4th DCA 2001)…g retribution against the appellant and the appellant will have an interest in discrediting the alleged victim. Because the interests are adverse, the public defender’s office is faced with a conflict of interest. See id.; see also Bedford v. State, 765 So. 2d 846 (Fla. 4th DCA 2000)(public defender’s prior representation of a victim created a conflict of interest warranting withdrawal); Douglas v. State, 758 So. 2d 1285 (Fla. 4th DCA 2000) (quashing order of the trial court denying public defender’s motion t…
Authorities Cited
- Valle v. State, 763 So. 2d 1175 (Fla. 4th DCA 2000)
- Booker Martin v. State, 761 So. 2d 475 (Fla. 4th DCA 2000)