SEADRICK MOORE, APPELLANT,
v.
STATE OF FLORIDA, APPELLEE

Fla. 2d DCA | 2010-11-10
No. 2D10-3188
NORTHCUTT and WALLACE, JJ„ Concur.
48 So. 3d 911 Florida District Court of Appeal, Second District (2010) Positive Treatment
Cited by 2 cases

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.

Synopsis

Seadrick Moore appealed the dismissal of his Rule 3.850 postconviction relief motion, but the appellate court dismissed the appeal as improper because the trial court's order was nonfinal and merely allowed him to file an amended motion. The court criticized the trial court's imposition of a 15-page limit on an 81-page motion as unreasonable given that the standard form itself is 12 pages.


Holding

The appeal must be dismissed because the trial court's order is nonfinal and nonappealable when it authorizes an amended motion. The court expressed concern that a 15-page limit is unreasonable given that the standard form itself is 12 pages and that 50 pages is a more reasonable limit under Florida precedent.


Headnotes

[1] An order dismissing a motion for postconviction relief with leave to amend is a nonfinal, nonappealable order.

[2] A trial court may impose reasonable page limits on postconviction motions, but such limits must be reasonable in light of the complexity of the claims and the rules gover…

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Key Quotes

“it is improper to inform a defendant of a right to appeal when the order is a nonfinal order authorizing an amended motion”

Establishes the legal principle for why the appeal must be dismissed

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Facts & Procedural History

Moore filed a timely 81-page postconviction relief motion in October 2008 containing one ground alleging ineffective assistance of counsel with five i…

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Opinion of the Court
ALTENBERND, Judge.

ALTENBERND, Judge.

Seadrick Moore appeals an order dismissing his timely motion for postconviction relief that was filed pursuant to Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850. The order dismissed his motion with leave to file an amended motion within thirty days, and then informed him that he also had the right to appeal the order within thirty days. Mr. Moore chose to appeal the order and this court does not know whether he also filed an amended motion.

This court has previously held that it is improper to inform a defendant of a right to appeal when the order is a nonfinal order authorizing an amended motion. See Wooten v. State, 36 So.3d 187 (Fla. 2d DCA 2010). We must dismiss this appeal as an appeal from a nonfinal, nonap-pealable order. On remand, Mr. Moore shall have thirty days from the issuance of mandate to file an amended motion.

We comment that Mr. Moore filed his motion in October 2008. He filed it using the standard twelve-page form. He carefully typed the form and added about seventy pages of double-spaced typed material. The materials are lengthy because Mr. Moore carefully typed out all portions of the record that he thought were relevant to his claim, and he also included a legal memorandum within the motion itself.

The material contained one ground alleging ineffective assistance of counsel, describing five instances of ineffective assistance. In ground 1(B), he claims that he was offered a sentence of 27.6 months’ imprisonment by the State and that his attorney convinced him to reject the offer, resulting in a sentence of thirty years. It appears likely that a hearing will be re*912quired on this ground. It contained a second ground alleging fundamental error. The second ground is legally insufficient on its face because fundamental error is not a basis for postconviction relief. See Hughes v. State, 22 So.3d 132 (Fla. 2d DCA 2009), review dismissed, 29 So.3d 291 (Fla.2010).

Nineteen months after Mr. Moore filed this motion, the trial court entered this order claiming that the eighty-one-page motion was too long and that the trial court had the right to impose a reasonable limit. For his “convenience,” the court attached the model form — which Mr. Moore had already used to file his motion nineteen months earlier. It then informed him that a reasonable length for his motion could not exceed fifteen pages, when the form itself, without content, is twelve pages in length. We note that both the Florida Supreme Court and the Fourth District Court of Appeal have recognized that a fifty-page limit on initial motions and petitions filed in court, unless the rules provide differently, is a reasonable limit unless good cause is shown justifying a higher limit. See Basse v. State, 740 So.2d 518 (Fla.1999); Schwenn v. State, 958 So.2d 531 (Fla. 4th DCA 2007).

We realize that prisoners sometimes file motions that are too long, but currently there are no standard forms to help them file shorter motions that contain all the necessary allegations. Likewise, they often file legal memoranda that have little value to the court. Unfortunately, they often have no access to computers and file handwritten pleadings that are extremely hard to read. Mr. Moore’s pleading was well organized and relatively easy to read. While it does require at least thirty minutes to read the document, we are inclined to believe that the trial court could have adequately reviewed and resolved this motion in the many months that it was pending in that court.

Presumably, if Mr. Moore obeys the trial court’s nonfinal order, the new motion will be little more than the headings he provided in his first motion. It will then be incumbent on the trial court to prepare an order with attachments to flesh out his claims and refute them if that can be done without a hearing. We are not convinced that the trial court’s methods are either efficient or effective in this context.

Appeal dismissed.

NORTHCUTT and WALLACE, JJ„ Concur.


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