Henry Xavier Wilson v. State of Florida

DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA
                               FOURTH DISTRICT

                         HENRY XAVIER WILSON,
                               Appellant,

                                       v.

                            STATE OF FLORIDA,
                                 Appellee.

                              No. 4D2025-0250

                               [April 22, 2026]

  Appeal from the Circuit Court for the Nineteenth Judicial Circuit,
Martin County; William Loy Roby, Judge; L.T. Case No.
432022CF000918CFAXMX.

   Daniel Eisinger, Public Defender, and Ethan Goldberg, Assistant Public
Defender, West Palm Beach, for appellant.

  James Uthmeier, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Luke Robert
Napodano, Senior Assistant Attorney General, West Palm Beach, for
appellee.

GROSS, J.

    Henry Wilson was convicted after a jury trial of aggravated assault with
a firearm, burglary of a conveyance while armed, and resisting an officer
without violence. We write primarily to address one issue: whether
statements of public officials concerning the right “to keep and bear arms”
under the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution and
Article I, Section 8 of the Florida Constitution were admissible at trial to
show Wilson’s state of mind during the commission of the crimes. We hold
that the statements of the public officials were not relevant to any material
issue of fact at the trial and affirm the decision of the trial judge to preclude
the introduction of such evidence.

             Factual Background: The Prosecution’s Case

  The charges stem from an incident at Wilson’s apartment complex,
where he confronted a tow-truck driver with a firearm.
   Before the incident, Wilson had lived at the apartment complex for eight
years. He parked two vehicles at the complex: a Toyota work truck and a
1993 Mitsubishi 3000. The Mitsubishi needed repairs, so it was covered
with a nylon cover and had been kept in the parking lot for the entire time
Wilson lived at the complex.

   The apartment complex’s rules for vehicles, included in lease
agreements, prohibited covered or inoperable automobiles. Signs posted
throughout the community advised that the parking area was a tow-away
zone and that Gary’s Towing was used to remove vehicles.

    A leasing agent conducted regular checks of the buildings and parking
lots. She became aware that Wilson owned a vehicle that was not in
compliance with community rules.

   On September 16, 2022, the leasing agent placed a violation sticker on
the driver’s side window of the Mitsubishi on top of the cover. The sticker
was brightly colored and indicated that the vehicle would be towed on
September 21, 2022. She placed a separate parking violation notice on
Wilson’s work truck, which also had “issues with being in compliance.”

   On the same day the leasing agent placed the violation sticker on the
Mitsubishi, Wilson called the office to request a work order for his
dishwasher. During this phone call, the leasing agent mentioned the
compliance issues with Wilson’s vehicles, and he told her, “Don’t worry
about it.” The leasing agent testified that she told Wilson that his vehicles
were subject to being towed, and he hung up on her.

   On September 21, 2022, the owner of Gary’s Towing and Recovery
(“Gary”) went to the apartment complex to tow about five or six vehicles.
His business had a towing contract with the apartment complex.

   Gary wore a bright red shirt with “Gary’s Towing” emblazoned on the
front and back. He drove a black tow truck displaying his company’s name
and state license number.

    When Gary got to Wilson’s car, he pulled the cover up and verified that
the car was one he needed to tow. Using the tow truck, he lifted the car
in the air, got out of his truck, and came “around the corner to look at the
car and take the cover off.”

   At that point, Wilson ran out of his apartment, gun in hand. Gary told
Wilson that the gun was not necessary. Wilson responded with foul
language. Gary put his hands up and started backing up. Wilson said,

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“[P]ut my fucking car down,” and Gary replied, “I can’t do that.” Gary
testified that Wilson pointed the gun at him and threatened to kill him.
Gary was in fear for his life. Wilson never asked why Gary was towing his
vehicle.

    Meanwhile, an upstairs neighbor stepped outside to smoke when he
heard arguing. Based on Gary’s shirt and truck, the neighbor recognized
Gary as a tow-truck driver. The neighbor testified that Wilson had a
firearm and was demanding the keys from Gary. Although Wilson was not
“aiming at [Gary] as a target,” Wilson was waving his hands around in a
way that Gary would have been shot if a misfire had occurred. The
neighbor saw that Gary was terrified.

   The neighbor attempted to pacify Wilson, who was in an aggressive
mood. The neighbor intervened to get Wilson’s attention so that Gary
could hide. The neighbor stood in front of Gary and told Wilson that if he
was going to fire, he would hit two people and worsen his charges.

   During the confrontation, Gary’s tow truck’s door was slightly ajar. The
keys were in the ignition, and the truck was running. While Wilson still
held the firearm in his hand, he went into Gary’s truck, reached inside,
and grabbed the keys from the ignition. Wilson did not have permission
to enter Gary’s truck.

   After running away, Gary called 911 to report that a “guy’s got a gun
on me.” During the call, Gary could be heard saying “[H]ey, sir, don’t get
in my car. You better get out of my car.” Gary then told the 911 operator
that the man had entered the tow truck and had taken the keys.

   Officers responded to the 911 call in uniform and in marked patrol cars.
An officer observed Wilson near the tow truck with a black firearm in his
hand. This officer commanded him to drop the object in his hands, put
his hands on his head, walk towards the officer, and get on his knees.

    Wilson initially refused to comply with the officers’ commands,
including the command to put down the gun. Eventually, Wilson put his
gun down and got on one knee. Officers then brought Wilson down to the
ground with the assistance of a K-9 unit. A pat down search revealed two
sets of keys, with one belonging to Gary. Police also secured Wilson’s
firearm, which was loaded and functional.




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                        Wilson’s Trial Testimony

   Wilson testified that he did not recall any lease provision about parking
violations and that no one had ever told him he could not keep his
Mitsubishi covered in the parking lot. He denied seeing a violation tag on
the Mitsubishi and claimed that the leasing agent never told him that his
vehicle would be towed.

   When Wilson looked out his living room window and saw his car
elevated on a hook, he assumed someone was stealing his car. He was
aware of prior thefts at the apartment complex and did not believe that
there was any reason “for them to tow my car.” Although he admitted
taking his gun to confront Gary, he sanitized his conduct by denying that
he threatened Gary or pointed the gun at him.

   Wilson claimed that because he had to retrieve his phone from his
apartment to call the police, he reached into the open door of the tow truck
and grabbed the keys so Gary could not leave with his car. When the
police responded, Wilson did not think he had done anything wrong. A
back problem made it difficult for him to comply with the officers’
instruction to get on his knees.

                     Jury Instructions and Verdict

   Defense counsel did not object to the jury instructions given and did
not request an instruction on the justifiable use of force.

   The jury found Wilson guilty as charged on all three counts.

        Pretrial Proceedings Concerning Statements Made by
          Governor DeSantis and the Martin County Sheriff

   The incident in this case occurred several days before Hurricane Ian
struck Florida.

   In discovery, Wilson listed Governor Ron DeSantis as a witness and
disclosed a YouTube video titled “DeSantis Puts Looters On Notice After
Hurricane Ian,” which depicted a news conference held on September 30,
2022, about one week after the incident. In the video, the Governor says:
“Don’t even think about looting. . . . [I]n the State of Florida you never
know what may be lurking behind somebody’s home and I would not want
to chance that if I were you, given we’re a Second Amendment State.”



                                     4
  The Governor’s office moved to quash a subpoena for his trial testimony
and moved for a protective order.

    At a hearing on the motion, defense counsel argued that Wilson’s intent
was a material issue of fact. Defense counsel maintained that Wilson had
been “led to believe all along he has a Second Amendment Right to protect
himself” and “a right to arm himself even when personal properties [are]
at question or at risk of being taken.” Defense counsel continued that “it’s
what many of our citizenry have been led to believe based on statements
made by our elected officials and the Governor in particular.” According
to defense counsel, the video conveyed “the idea that it’s certainly alright
to arm yourself while defending yourself and/or protecting your personal
property,” which was relevant to Wilson’s mindset and intent at the time
of the offense. The Governor’s statements were relevant, defense counsel
argued, because they came from a higher authority who was in a position
“to know what the laws are.”

   Defense counsel also referenced statements from the Martin County
Sheriff to the effect that “anybody here that commits a crime must have
taken the wrong exit,” as well as general knowledge about people dressing
up “in various service industry uniforms” to commit crime and fraud.
Wilson’s theory of defense was that he believed his car was being stolen
and “all he wanted to do was detain that person until law enforcement
actually came to sort it out.”

   The trial court granted the protective order and ruled that Wilson would
be precluded from “taking this angle or advancing his case in this
particular way.”

                     Wilson’s Arguments on Appeal

   On appeal, Wilson argues that the trial court erred when it prohibited
him from pursuing his theory of defense that his actions were justified
because he acted in the defense of property. Emphasizing that an accused
has a right to present evidence in his own defense, Wilson argues that his
theory of defense went directly to his state of mind at the time of the
incident—namely, that he believed his car was being stolen and that he
had the right to protect his property with a firearm until the police arrived.
Wilson complains that the trial court improperly precluded him from
presenting evidence that his actions in the moment occurred “because he
was led to believe that Florida is a pro-Second Amendment state and that
our elected officials routinely promote the use of firearms for the protection
of personal property against theft and looting,” which Wilson viewed as
“the key ingredient to his defense.”

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                                     Discussion

   “A party is entitled to present evidence upon the facts that are relevant
to his theory of the case, so long as that theory has support in the law.”
Zamora v. State, 361 So. 2d 776, 779 (Fla. 3d DCA 1978). “Normally under
a plea of not guilty an accused may avail himself of any defense not
required by law to be specifically pleaded, and all matters of justification
and excuse.” Ivory v. State, 173 So. 2d 759, 760 (Fla. 3d DCA 1965).

   Still, while evidence that tends to support the defendant’s theory of
defense is generally admissible, “it is also true that ‘the admissibility of
this evidence must be gauged by the same principle of relevancy as any
other evidence offered by the defendant.’” Washington v. State, 737 So. 2d
1208, 1223 (Fla. 1st DCA 1999) (citation omitted). “Relevant evidence is
evidence tending to prove or disprove a material fact.” § 90.401, Fla. Stat.
(2024). “Relevancy has been defined as a tendency to establish a fact in
controversy or to render a proposition in issue more or less probable. To
be probable, evidence must be viewed in the light of logic, experience and
accepted assumptions concerning human behavior.” Kopsho v. State, 84
So. 3d 204, 217 (Fla. 2012) (quoting Zabner v. Howard Johnson’s Inc., 227
So. 2d 543, 545 (Fla. 4th DCA 1969)).

   Wilson did not request a jury instruction on the justifiable use of force
in defense of property.     Section 776.031, Florida Statutes (2022),
establishes the legal parameters for the use of force in the defense of
property 1:

       (1) A person is justified in using or threatening to use force,
           except deadly force, against another when and to the extent
           that the person reasonably believes that such conduct is
           necessary to prevent or terminate the other’s trespass on,
           or other tortious or criminal interference with, either real
           property other than a dwelling or personal property,
           lawfully in his or her possession or in the possession of
           another who is a member of his or her immediate family or
           household or of a person whose property he or she has a
           legal duty to protect. A person who uses or threatens to
           use force in accordance with this subsection does not have
           a duty to retreat before using or threatening to use such
           force.

1 Article I, Section 8(a) of the Florida Constitution establishes a “right of the people

to keep and bear arms,” but also states that “the manner of bearing arms may be
regulated by law.”

                                           6
      (2) A person is justified in using or threatening to use deadly
          force only if he or she reasonably believes that such
          conduct is necessary to prevent the imminent commission
          of a forcible felony. A person who uses or threatens to use
          deadly force in accordance with this subsection does not
          have a duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her
          ground if the person using or threatening to use the deadly
          force is not engaged in a criminal activity and is in a place
          where he or she has a right to be.

    The justifiable use of force has both a subjective and an objective
component. “When self-defense has been asserted, the defendant is
entitled to have the jury consider the facts and circumstances known to
the defendant (i.e., his or her subjective belief), but those facts and
circumstances must be balanced against what a reasonable person would
believe under the same or similar circumstances, the ultimate test of
‘reasonableness’ being objective.” Oquendo v. State, 420 So. 3d 466, 475
(Fla. 2025) (cleaned up).

   In Oquendo, the Florida Supreme Court held that while “PTSD evidence
may be relevant to the subjective component of a defendant’s self-defense
theory,” such evidence was properly excluded in that particular case
because the defendant claimed he fired the gun accidentally, and defense
counsel’s arguments suggested that the central purpose of the PTSD
evidence was to show diminished capacity. Id. at 469, 477–78.

   Relevant to the instant case, the Florida Supreme Court explained that
the plain text of the defense-of-person statute “requires both that ‘he or
she . . . believe[d]’ that the use of force was necessary (actual subjective
belief of the defendant) and that the belief was ‘reasonabl[e]’ (objective
reasonable person standard).” Id. at 475. Thus, the defense-of-property
statute, which uses the same “reasonably believes” terminology as the
defense-of-person statute, requires both a subjective belief that force was
necessary and an objectively reasonable basis for the belief.

    Although expert testimony about a defendant’s psychological condition
might be admissible under Oquendo to show the subjective component of
self-defense or defense of property, expert opinions about the
reasonableness of the defendant’s use of force are generally inadmissible
because “[w]hether self-defense applies in a given case is a classic question
that jurors are well equipped to handle.” Salomon v. State, 267 So. 3d 25,
31 (Fla. 4th DCA 2019); see also Mitchell v. State, 965 So. 2d 246, 251 (Fla.
4th DCA 2007) (affirming exclusion of expert’s proffered testimony that,

                                     7
based upon what the defendant told him, the defendant reasonably
believed that he had to defend himself, as there was nothing in the expert’s
testimony “which concerns a subject beyond the common understanding
of the average person”).

   Similarly, in rejecting a claim of fundamental error in jury instructions
on self-defense, we once remarked that “juries use their common
experience and apply a street version of self defense that allows a
defendant to use a reasonable amount of force under the circumstances,
and no more.” Farmer v. State, 975 So. 2d 1275, 1277 (Fla. 4th DCA 2008).

   Here, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in excluding evidence
of public statements by elected officials offered to show Wilson’s state of
mind.

   First, the Governor’s and Sheriff’s statements had nothing to do with
state of mind elements of the crimes with which Wilson was charged.

   Wilson suggests that “he lacked the criminal intent to commit the
charged crimes” because “he acted in defense of his property.” But this
argument conflates two different legal concepts.

   On Count I, the intent element required a finding that Wilson
intentionally threatened, either by word or act, to do violence to Gary. On
Count II, the intent element required a finding that Wilson entered the tow
truck with the intent “to commit an offense other than burglary or
trespass.”

   Whether Wilson believed his actions were justified in defense of his
property is a question distinct from whether the intent element was
satisfied as part of the State’s prima facie case for Counts I and II. The
elected officials’ statements were not relevant to whether Wilson had the
criminal intent to commit those offenses.

   Less reliable than expert opinions on whether a defendant’s use of force
was reasonable and therefore justifiable, tough talk by politicians about
the Second Amendment or the war against crime does not tend to prove
either the subjective state of mind of a given defendant or whether the
defendant’s belief was objectively reasonable.

   Such general statements are far removed from the facts confronting a
defendant who used force in a way that led to criminal charges. The
proffered generalized statements of the public officials did not tend to
establish Wilson’s subjective belief at the time of the incident that his

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conduct was necessary to prevent or terminate a tortious or criminal
interference with his personal property. Nor did such statements tend to
prove whether that belief was objectively reasonable. A section 776.031
analysis is tied to an evaluation of facts as they existed at the time force
was used or threatened.

   The admission of the public officials’ statements would not have
undermined the State’s evidence that (1) Wilson knew or should have
known that Gary was a lawful tow-truck driver with authority to tow
vehicles at the apartment complex, and (2) Wilson had been given notice
that his vehicles were subject to being towed. The proffered statements
had nothing to do with towing disputes and had no bearing on whether
Wilson subjectively or reasonably believed that his actions of confronting
a tow-truck driver with a firearm, threatening him with violence, and
seizing his keys were necessary to prevent the driver from tortiously or
criminally interfering with Wilson’s car.

   Even though he did not request that the jury be instructed on the
justifiable use of force in the defense of property, Wilson essentially
presented a justification defense without being tethered to the
requirements of section 776.031. The trial court never precluded Wilson
from telling the jury that he believed his conduct was justified. He testified
that he assumed his car was being stolen and that he did not believe he
had done anything wrong when he confronted Gary.

   As often happens in justifiable-use-of-force cases, the defense appealed
to the jurors’ street notion of justifiable defense of property. Under this
approach, it was for the jury to decide whether Wilson’s belief was genuine
and reasonable under the circumstances, a question that jurors were
equipped to determine based on their collective common experience.

   The trial court did not abuse its discretion in excluding the statements
of public officials regarding the Second Amendment and the “wrong exit”
notion.

    Turning to a sentencing error, we agree with Wilson’s point that the
trial court’s written sentencing order improperly imposed a general
sentence of 60 months “[a]s to Count[s] 1, 2.” See Moore v. State, 352 So.
3d 47, 49 (Fla. 2d DCA 2022) (holding that the trial court imposed an
illegal general sentence as to thirty-five counts of grand theft where,
“[r]ather than imposing an individual sentence for each grand theft count,
the sentencing order imposed a single sentence of forty years listing counts
two through thirty-six”); Holmes v. State, 100 So. 3d 281, 283 (Fla. 3d DCA
2012) (“[A] trial court may not impose a single general sentence to cover

                                      9
multiple counts”). The defendant raised this issue in a motion filed under
Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.800(b), which the trial court denied.
We therefore remand to the circuit court to enter a separate written
disposition as to each count, which would conform the written sentence to
the court’s oral pronouncements.

   Finally, we reject the argument that the six-person jury violated the
Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. See
Guzman v. State, 350 So. 3d 72, 73 (Fla. 4th DCA 2022) (holding that six-
person juries were constitutionally permissible under U.S. Supreme Court
precedent), rev. denied, No. SC2022-1597, 2023 WL 3830251 (Fla. June
6, 2023), cert. denied sub nom., Guzman v. Florida, 144 S. Ct. 2595 (2024).

    For these reasons, we affirm the convictions and sentences, but remand
to the circuit court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

   Affirmed and remanded.

CIKLIN and CONNER, JJ., concur.

                           *         *        *

   Not final until disposition of timely-filed motion for rehearing.




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