BRUCE
v.
STATE
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.
A trial court's summary denial of a motion to correct an illegal sentence under Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.800(a) must be supported by an attached record that conclusively refutes the defendant's claim.
[1] A defendant may challenge a habitual violent felony offender sentence as illegal under Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.800(a) if the requisite predicate felonies ess…
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“If the requisite predicate felonies essential to qualify a defendant for habitualization did not exist, then the habitual offender sentence could not have been imposed as a matter of law because it would impose a 'kind of punishment that no judge under the entire body of sentencing statutes could possibly inflict under any set of factual circumstances.'”
Citation to Bover v. State regarding when a defendant may challenge a habitual offender sentence as illegal under Rule 3.800(a).
Tony Bruce filed a motion to correct his illegal sentence, arguing that his prior convictions in case F88-18388A did not exist and therefore he did no…
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.
Explore caselaw by topic → Browse Sentencing Guidelines Calculation cases and more on FLexlaw
Third District Court of Appeal State of Florida
Opinion filed February 20, 2019. Not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing.
________________
No. 3D18-1093 Lower Tribunal No. 99-40891 ________________
Tony Bruce, Appellant,
vs.
The State of Florida, Appellee.
An Appeal under Florida Rule of Appellate Procedure 9.141(b)(2) from the Circuit Court for Miami-Dade County, Eric William Hendon, Judge.
Tony Bruce, in proper person.
Ashley Moody, Attorney General, and Magaly Rodriguez, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.
Before EMAS, C.J., and SCALES and MILLER, JJ.
PER CURIAM.
2
Tony Bruce appeals the trial court’s summary denial of his motion to correct illegal sentence, filed pursuant to Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.800(a). In that motion, Bruce alleged his prior convictions in case number F88-18388A did not exist as a matter of law, and should not have been relied upon by the trial court in determining that Bruce qualified as a habitual violent felony offender. Bruce further asserted that, in the absence of those convictions, he did not qualify as a habitual violent felony offender and his sentence was therefore illegal. In light of our threshold determination that Bruce’s motion is legally sufficient,1 the State has properly and commendably conceded that we must reverse. Although the trial court’s summary denial order expressly indicates that “the defendant’s assertion is conclusively refuted by the attached certified conviction in case F88-18388A,” no such record is attached to the trial court’s order. We therefore reverse and remand this case to the lower court either to conduct a further hearing or to issue an order of denial, attaching those portions of the record that conclusively
2 We reject, as without merit and without need for further discussion, Bruce’s alternative claim that, even if these prior convictions do exist, the trial court illegally relied upon those prior convictions as both a factor in calculating Bruce’s guideline sentence as well as a basis to find Bruce qualifies for sentencing as a habitual violent felony offender.
Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus
Citator
Authorities Cited
- Bover v. State, 797 So. 2d 1246 (Fla. 2001)
- McINTYRE v. State, 844 So. 2d 679 (Fla. 4th DCA 2003)
- Standford v. State, 754 So. 2d 62 (Fla. 2d DCA 2000)