By Jennifer Portman, The Associated Press
Tallahassee, Fla. (AP) -- Circumstantial evidence is enough to convict a public servant of receiving unlawful compensation and an explicit spoken agreement isn’t necessary to prove the charges, the Florida Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
The court reinstated the conviction of Fernando Castillo, a Miami-Dade County police officer whom a jury found had sex with a drunken teenager in exchange for not giving her a traffic ticket.
The 3rd District Court of Appeal had rejected the 2001 verdict that Castillo was guilty of unlawful compensation -- a charge often used in bribery cases involving public officials -- because there was no verbal agreement between the officer and the 19-year-old.
But the Supreme Court found that requiring a “spoken understanding” to prove a public servant broke the law puts too high of a burden on the state and would mean only the most blatant violations would be prosecuted.
“Public corruption has become sophisticated enough at least to expect that public officials soliciting or accepting unlawful compensation ordinarily will not be so audacious as to explicitly verbalize their intent,” the court said in its written opinion.
The district court based it’s ruling on the testimony of the woman, identified in court documents as A.S., that Castillo never said he would not arrest her if she had sex with him.
A.S. said she had been drinking and smoking marijuana before being pulled over by Castillo for speeding, and followed the uniformed officer’s orders to follow him to a nearby warehouse because she was scared. After Castillo had sex with her on the hood of her car, he told her she was lucky he didn’t give her a ticket.
Castillo contended A.S. had sex with him willingly, but the Supreme Court said that didn’t matter. It ruled there doesn’t have to be a “meeting of the minds” between the participants, and a public servant need only have corrupt intent to be found guilty of unlawful compensation.
“The other participant’s state of mind is irrelevant; it is the public servant’s state of mind that matters, " the court wrote. “The competent, substantial evidence in this case demonstrates that Castillo acted with corrupt intent in accepting an unauthorized benefit -- sex -- in exchange for his exercising his discretion not to issue a traffic citation.”
The case has been watched closely by those who prosecute public corruption cases. They feared the district court’s ruling would make it much harder to prove their cases.