Opinion
No. 94-1875.
November 29, 1995.
Appeal from the Circuit Court for Broward County; Paul L. Backman, Judge.
Edward G. Salantrie, Special Public Defender, Fort Lauderdale, for appellant.
Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Joan L. Greenberg, Assistant Attorney General, West Palm Beach, for appellee.
Appellant, Sheldon Morgan, defendant below, appeals his conviction and sentence for two counts of armed robbery and two counts of armed kidnapping. We affirm both issues raised on appeal and, regarding Morgan's kidnapping convictions, specifically rely on this court's recent decision in Berry v. State, 652 So.2d 836 (Fla. 4th DCA 1994), rev. granted, 662 So.2d 341 (Fla. 1995).
AFFIRMED.
GUNTHER, C.J., and GLICKSTEIN, J., concur.
STONE, J., concurs specially with opinion.
I concur specially to comment that although the circumstances here, in which the victims were tied up in the course of a robbery, are analogous to those in Berry, I do not rely on the statement in Berry, "if you tie `em up, you've kidnapped `em." 652 So.2d at 838. Rather, I would note that, here, there is ample evidence supporting a conclusion that tying up the victims was not slight or inconsequential, made the underlying crime substantially easier to commit, and substantially lessened the risk of detention by facilitating Appellant's get-away. E.g., Ferguson v. State, 533 So.2d 763 (Fla. 1988).