GERMAINE WILLIAMS

v.

STATE OF FLORIDA

FIFTH DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL

STATE OF FLORIDA

_____________________________ Case No. 5D2025-2353 LT Case No. 2019-000200-CFMA _____________________________ GERMAINE WILLIAMS, Appellant, v. STATE OF FLORIDA, Appellee. _____________________________ 3.850 Appeal from the Circuit Court for St. Johns County.

R. Lee Smith, Judge.

Germaine Williams, Indiantown, pro se. No Appearance for Appellee. October 31, 2025

LAMBERT, J.

Germaine Williams appeals the postconviction court’s final order that summarily denied his motion for postconviction relief filed under Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850. For the following reasons, we reverse and remand for further proceedings.

I.

Williams was convicted after jury trial of sale of cocaine and unlawful use of a two-way communication device regarding his

II.

Williams timely filed the instant Rule 3.850 motion alleging ineffectiveness of his counsel during trial. Williams first argued that his counsel was ineffective for failing to object to: (1) improper vouching of the credibility of the CI by a law enforcement witness, (2) improper prejudicial testimony from the CI regarding Williams’s past criminal behavior of selling or dealing in drugs and the CI’s work involving “dangerous people,” and (3) an alleged improper comment made by the prosecutor during closing argument. In the second ground of his motion, Williams asserted that his counsel was ineffective for not objecting to a comment made by the trial judge that evidenced the consideration of “impermissible sentencing factors” prior to imposing sentence.

III.

In the final order denying Williams’s Rule 3.850 motion without a hearing, the court first observed that to warrant an evidentiary hearing on an ineffective assistance of trial counsel claim, a defendant must allege sufficient facts establishing the deficient performance and prejudice prongs under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984), and not just “general allegations or mere conclusions.” The court then turned to the substance of Williams’s motion. In summarily denying the various grounds of the motion, the court found that they lacked merit because, among other things: any error committed by trial counsel was harmless; Williams’s guilt

IV.

Under Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850(f)(5), when a legally sufficient motion “can be conclusively resolved either as a matter of law or by reliance upon the records in the case,” the motion may be summarily denied; however, “[i]f the denial is based on the records in the case, a copy of that portion of the files and records that conclusively shows that the defendant is entitled to no relief shall be attached to the final order.” Additionally, we must accept an appellant’s “factual allegations as true to the extent they are not refuted by the record.” Smith v. State, 50 Fla. L. Weekly D2173 (Fla. 1st DCA Oct. 1, 2025) (quoting Hurst v. State, 18 So. 3d 975, 997 (Fla. 2009)). Here, the postconviction court did not deny Williams’s ineffective assistance of trial counsel claims as a matter of law. And without any record attachments to the denial order, we have no way of knowing whether, for example, any errors committed by trial counsel were “harmless” or that Williams’s guilt was “overwhelming,” as described by the court in the order. Stated somewhat differently, without record attachments to the order, we are unable to determine whether Williams’s claims for postconviction relief are conclusively refuted by the record. As we explained in Terry v. State, 369 So. 3d 339 (Fla. 5th DCA 2023), “when a trial court summarily denies a rule 3.850 claim and fails to attach a copy of portion of the files and records in the case that conclusively shows that the defendant is not 1 The postconviction judge did not preside over the trial.² See Smith v. State, 312 So. 3d 135 (Fla. 5th DCA 2020).