JOSEPH GRIFFIS, APPELLANT,
v.
STATE OF FLORIDA, APPELLEE

Fla. 1st DCA | 1989-02-09
No. BJ-356
Wigginton, J., Barfield, J., Ervin, J.
541 So. 2d 647 Florida District Court of Appeal, First District (1989)

AI-generated. These summaries, headnotes, and key points are machine-generated and may contain errors or omissions. Always verify against the full opinion text below. Not legal advice.


Holding

A trial court's departure from sentencing guidelines may be affirmed when the appellate court is satisfied from the entire record that the State has met its burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the sentence would not have been affected by impermissible reasons.


Headnotes

[1] On review of a sentencing departure from guidelines, an appellate court may consider a trial court's statement that it would impose the same sentence regardless of which…

Previewing 1 of 1 headnotes on this case. FLexlaw’s editorially structured points of law — every proposition, pinpointed — are reserved for members.

Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence

Key Quotes

“a statement by the trial court that it would depart for any of the reasons given, standing alone, is not enough to satisfy the State's burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the sentence would not have been affected by the absence of the impermissible reasons”

The court's interpretation of the supreme court's holding in Griffis II regarding the sufficiency of a trial court's statement alone

Facts & Procedural History

Griffis was sentenced with a departure from the recommended guidelines. The trial judge listed eight reasons for the departure, only three of which we…

The full statement of facts, procedural history, and disposition for this case are member content.

Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence

© FLexlaw, Inc. — AI-generated enrichments are proprietary. All rights reserved.


Opinion of the Court
PER CURIAM.

PER CURIAM.

This case is before the court on remand for reconsideration in light of Griffis v. State, 509 So. 2d 1104 (Fla.1987) (Griffis II). Upon reconsideration, we affirm the sentence.

In Griffis v. State, 497 So. 2d 296 (Fla. 1st DCA 1986) (Griffis I), we affirmed the trial judge’s departure from the recommended guidelines sentence, in support of which he had listed eight reasons, the first three of which we found to be valid. We noted his statement that he would have imposed the same sentence if any one of the reasons were upheld as valid, and certified to the supreme court, as a matter of great public importance, the question of whether such a statement satisfies the standard set forth in Albritton v. State, 476 So. 2d 158 (Fla.1985).

In Griffis II, the supreme court held that a statement by the trial court that it would depart for any of the reasons given, standing alone, is not enough to satisfy the State’s burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the sentence would not have been affected by the absence of the impermissible reasons, and that such a sentence may be affirmed only when the appellate court is satisfied by the entire record that the State has met its burden. We do not interpret this to mean that the appellate court may not take into account such a statement by the trial court, but only that it may not rely on such a statement without considering the entire record.

The record in this case, including the trial judge’s statement, demonstrates that the same sentence would have been imposed in the absence of the impermissible reasons. The sentence is therefore AFFIRMED.

WIGGINTON and BARFIELD, JJ., concur. ERVIN, J., dissents with written opinion.

Dissent
ERVIN, Judge,

ERVIN, Judge,

dissenting.

Given the language in Griffis v. State, 509 So. 2d 1104 (Fla.1987), reversing and remanding our earlier opinion in Griffis v. State, 497 So. 2d 296 (Fla. 1st DCA 1986), with directions that we reconsider the matter in light of the supreme court’s opinion, I do not consider that we have any recourse other than to reverse and remand for sentencing. In our prior opinion, we found that only three of the eight reasons advanced by the trial judge were valid. In Griffis, in affirming the trial court’s departure sentence, we erroneously determined that the sentence imposed met the reasonable doubt standard required in Albritton v. State, 476 So. 2d 158 (Fla.1985), because of the trial court’s statement that it would still depart if any one of the reasons given was later upheld as valid. In quashing our opinion in Griffis, the supreme court observed that the Albritton standard could not “be met through the anticipatory language of the trial judge rather than the reweighing of only the appropriate departure factors.” 509 So. 2d at 1105. Because we are confronted with a record which includes only three valid reasons out of eight given for departure, as well as the “boiler plate” language of the trial judge, I am not satisfied that the state has met the burden exacted by Albritton. Therefore, I would reverse and remand for resentencing.


Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus


Citator

Authorities Cited

Full citator, related cases, and AI research tools

Open in FLexlaw