Lewis v. State

• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals
• Writing for the Court: Per Curiam.
• Citation: 413 So.3d 148
• Docket Number: 4D2024-2433
• Decision Date: 23 April 2025
• Parties: Thomas Dexter LEWIS, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.

413 So.3d 148

Thomas Dexter LEWIS, Appellant,

v.STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. 4D2024-2433

District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fourth District.

[April 23, 2025]

Appeal of order denying rule 3.800 motion from the Circuit Court for the Nineteenth Judicial Circuit, St. Lucie County; Michael Linn, Judge; L.T. Case No. 562010CF001610.

Daniel Tibbitt of Daniel J. Tibbitt, P.A., North Miami, for appellant.

James Uthmeier, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Rachael Kaiman, Senior Assistant Attorney General, West Palm Beach, for appellee.

Per Curiam.

In this postconviction appeal, the defendant challenges the summary denial of his Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.800(a) motion asserting illegality in his sentences for two separate crimes. We affirm the trial court’s denial of relief and write only to explain why we reject the State’s concession that the trial court reversibly erred by not granting the defendant postconviction relief from his thirty-five-year sentence, with a twenty-five-year minimum mandatory term pursuant to Florida’s 10-20-Life statute, for the second-degree felony of attempted robbery with a deadly weapon. In doing so, we certify conflict with our sister court’s decisions in Ray v. State, 331 So. 3d 309 (Fla. 5th DCA 2021), and Perez v. State, — So. 3d —, No. 5D2024-2599, 2025 WL 876855 (Fla. 5th DCA Mar. 21, 2025), insofar as both decisions granted rule 3.800(a) relief from similarly erroneous sentences imposed contrary to the Florida Supreme Court’s interpretation of the 10-20-Life statute as set forth in Hatten v. State, 203 So. 3d 142 (Fla. 2016).

Procedural History

At trial, the jury found that the defendant had actually possessed the firearm which he had used during the commission of the attempted robbery, and had caused great bodily harm to the victim by discharging the firearm while committing the offense. Consistent with the version of the 10-20-Life statute in effect when the defendant had committed the attempted robbery, he was required to “be sentenced to a minimum term of imprisonment of not less than 25 years and not more than a term of imprisonment of life in prison.” § 775.087(2)(a)l.c., 3., Fla. Stat. (2009); see also Mendenhall v. State, 48 So. 3d 740, 742 (Fla. 2010) (recognizing the trial court’s discretion under section 775.087(2)(a)3. “to impose a mandatory minimum of twenty-five years to life, even if that mandatory minimum exceeds the statutory maximum provided for in section 775.082”).

But rather than sentence the defendant to the statutorily permissible mandatory minimum sentence of life imprisonment, the trial court instead sentenced the defendant to a term of imprisonment of thirty-five years with a 10-20-Life twenty-five-year minimum mandatory term for his use and discharge of the firearm causing great bodily harm to the victim during the commission of the offense.

Almost ten years after he was sentenced, the defendant sought to correct what he characterized as his “illegal” sentence for the attempted robbery offense. The defendant asserted that his sentence for the attempted robbery was “illegal” because “there was no statutory authority for the additional term of years beyond the selected mandatory minimum of 25 years under the 10-20-Life statute.” In making this argument, the defendant specifically relied on the supreme court’s decisions in Mendenhall and Hatten.

As our supreme court recognized in Hatten, Mendenhall interpreted section 775.087(2)(a)3. of the 10-20-Life statute as authorizing a trial court to impose a mandatory minimum term of imprisonment of anywhere from twenty-five years to. life imprisonment. See Hatten, 203 So. 3d at 145 (discussing Mendenhall). However, our supreme court clarified in Hatten that “if the trial court chooses to impose a sentence beyond the selected mandatory minimum sentence pursuant to the 10-20-Life statute, additional statutory authority is required” for any “term of years beyond the selected mandatory minimum”—which in Hatten, as here, was 25 years. Id. at 146.

After treating the defendant’s motion as if it had been filed pursuant to Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.800(a), the trial court summarily denied the relief sought. The trial court reasoned that the defendant’s thirty-five-year sentence for the attempted robbery, with a twenty-five-year minimum mandatory term, was not illegal because he “could have been sentenced” to a mandatory term of imprisonment “not exceeding life in prison.”

Legal Analysis

We agree with the trial court’s reasoning in denying the defendant’s challenge to his attempted robbery sentence and affirm on the authority of our supreme court’s decision in Earl v. State, 314 So. 3d 1253 (Fla. 2021).

In Earl, the defendant claimed in a rule 3.800(a) motion that his life sentences as a prison release reoffender (PRR) for the crimes of armed robbery with a firearm and kidnapping to facilitate a felony were “illegal because the trial court failed to impose ten-year mandatory minimum sentences pursuant to” the 10-20-Life statute even though “the jury verdict form reflect[ed] a special finding that [the defendant] actually possessed a firearm during the commission of the crime[s].” Id. at 1254. The trial court in Earl denied rule 3.800(a) relief, “explaining that while the sentencing judge could have imposed the ten-year mandatory minimum sentences, the failure to do so did not render [the defendant’s] sentences illegal[.]” Id. at 1254-55.

On appeal from the trial court’s denial of relief, the First District Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal “because even though the sentencing judge was required to impose ten-year mandatory minimum sentences under the 10-20-Life statute,” the defendant in Earl “was not entitled to challenge his sentences on that ground because he benefited from the error.” Id. at 1255.

On discretionary review, our supreme court held that even though the trial court had no discretion “to omit the mandatory minimum terms” required by the 10-20-Life statute, the lack of any prejudice resulting to the defendant from the trial court’s error in omitting the minimum mandatory terms meant that the defendant could not “show that the denial of his rule 3.800(a) motion resulted in harm that may be remedied on appeal.” Id. at 1255-56.

In reaching this result, our supreme court held that even though “the plain language of rule 3.800(a) does not expressly prohibit defendants from seeking to correct unlawfully lenient sentences,” Florida’s statutory law makes clear that criminal defendants “are not entitled to such relief under the rule absent a showing of prejudice.” Id. at 1255. In fact, as our supreme court pointed out in Earl, section 924.051(7), Florida Statutes, which has remained unchanged now for over twenty-five years, precludes “[a] conviction or sentence” from being reversed on appeal “absent an express finding that a prejudicial error occurred in the trial court.” Earl, 314 So. 3d at 1254 (quoting § 924.051(7), Fla. Stat. (2020)).

[1] Here, the trial court was authorized to impose a minimum mandatory term of life imprisonment pursuant to the 10-20-Life statute consistent with the interpretation given to the statute by our supreme court in Mendenhall. The trial court’s imposition of a more lenient sentence than the 10-20-Life statute authorized for the attempted robbery with a deadly weapon offense does not make the resulting sentence, even if erroneous as a matter of law as discussed in Hatten, remediable as an “illegal” sentence under Earl because not all sentencing errors are “subject to correction under rule 3.800(a).” Martinez v. State, 211 So. 3d 989, 991 (Fla. 2017).

[2] Indeed, rule 3.800(a)(1) allows only for the correction of “an illegal sentence[.]” An “illegal sentence” is “one that no judge under the entire body of sentencing laws could possibly impose.” Martinez, 211 So. 3d at 991 (quoting Wright v. State, 911 So. 2d 81, 83 (Fla. 2005)); see also, e.g., Hobgood v. State, 166 So. 3d 840, 844 (Fla. 4th DCA 2015) (“The Florida Supreme Court defines an ‘illegal sentence’ as ‘one that imposes a punishment or penalty that no judge under the entire body of sentencing statutes and laws could impose under any set of factual circumstances.” (quoting State v. Akins, 69 So. 3d 261, 268-69 (Fla. 2011))).

[3] Thus, “few claims raised under rule 3.800(a) ‘come within the illegality contemplated by the rule.’ ” Martinez, 211 So. 3d at 991 (quoting Wright, 911 So. 2d at 83). In other words, a defendant “entitled to challenge [a] technical sentencing error on direct appeal” may “not do so in a rule 3.800(a) motion” unless the error is “one involving ‘a court’s patent lack of authority or jurisdiction, a violation of the sentencing maximums provided by the Legislature, or a violation of some other fundamental right resulting in a person’s wrongful imprisonment’ ” such as “a sentence that has been unconstitutionally enhanced in violation of the double jeopardy clause.” Id. at 991-92 (quoting Wright, 911 So. 2d at 84) (citing Hopping v. State, 708 So. 2d 263, 265 (Fla. 1998)); see also, e.g., Hobgood, 166 So. 3d at 844 (“This definition [of an ‘illegal sentence’] provides that ‘if it is possible under all the sentencing statutes—given a specific set of facts—to impose a particular sentence, then the sentence will not be illegal within rule 3.800(a) even though the judge erred in imposing it’ ” (quoting Carter v. State, 786 So. 2d 1173, 1178 (Fla. 2001))).

The defendant’s challenged sentence here is more lenient than the trial court was authorized to impose under the 10-20-Life statute. See Mendenhall, 48 So. 3d at 742 (holding that “the specific provisions of the 10-20-Life statute with regard to mandatory minimums control over the general provisions of section 775.082 regarding statutory maximums”). Accordingly, the challenged sentence cannot be remedied in a rule 3.800(a) proceeding consistent with our supreme court’s decision in Earl. See Coicou v. State, 359 So. 3d 814, 815 (Fla. 4th DCA ...