The Second District Court of Appeal has reversed a Sarasota County man’s sexual battery convictions and ordered a new trial, holding that the trial court improperly limited cross-examination of the alleged victim about her own prior denial of the abuse — and that the error was not harmless.
Brian K. Johnson was convicted on two of five counts of sexual battery against his stepniece, identified in the opinion only as K.M. Before trial, the defense sought to cross-examine K.M. about a November 2013 Department of Children and Families investigation in which she twice denied any sexual relationship with Johnson — the opposite of what she testified to years later at trial — while separately alleging, in those same interviews, that another person had inappropriately touched her. The trial court allowed the defense to bring out that K.M. had made “allegations of abuse” against another person during those interviews, but barred any mention that the allegations were sexual in nature.
The Second District held that was error. The defense’s theory was that K.M.’s accusation against Johnson — not made until 2020, years later — was fabricated, and the excluded evidence went directly to that theory: if jurors had known K.M. was willing to accuse another person of sexual abuse during the very same 2013 investigation in which she denied anything with Johnson, that undercuts any suggestion that fear or reticence explains her silence about Johnson at the time. Withholding the sexual nature of that allegation kept the jury from making that comparison.
The court also held the error was not harmless, pointing to trial testimony from K.M.’s grandmother that K.M. had once admitted lying about having sex with Johnson after a fight with a boyfriend, and to the jury’s acquittal on three of the five original counts as a sign some jurors already doubted parts of K.M.’s account. Johnson’s convictions on the remaining two counts were reversed for a new trial.
Download the full opinion (PDF)
Citation: Johnson v. State, No. 2D2024-0982 (Fla. 2d DCA Sept. 25, 2026).
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