Young v. Fla. Comm'n On Offender Review
| Decision Date | 18 August 2017 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 5D17-1308. |
| Citation | 225 So.3d 940 |
| Parties | John YOUNG, Appellant, v. FLORIDA COMMISSION ON OFFENDER REVIEW, Department of Corrections and State of Florida, Appellees. |
| Court | Florida District Court of Appeals |
John L. Young, Cross City, pro se.
Beverly Brewster, Assistant General Counsel, Department of Corrections, Tallassee, for Department of Corrections, Appellee.
Rana Wallace, General Counsel, Commission on Offender Review, Tallahassee, for Appellee, Commission on Offender Review.
No appearance for Appellee, State of Florida.
John Young appeals the order dismissing what the Putnam County Circuit Court treated as a motion to correct sentence filed pursuant to Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.800(a). Although the circuit court correctly dismissed Young's first claim against one respondent, finding it should be filed as a civil writ in Leon County Circuit Court, the court erred when it failed to address Young's claim that his life sentence for capital sexual battery is illegal.
In October 1985, Young entered a guilty plea to capital sexual battery and was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum mandatory 25–year term after he admitted in a police interview to having a "sexual problem" with a boy under the age of ten. Young has repeatedly and unsuccessfully challenged the legality of his life sentence. The trial court and this court have denied each challenge.
Young's current challenge to his life sentence began as a petition for writ of certiorari, filed with the Florida Supreme Court, in which he posed two questions:
The Supreme Court treated Young's filing as a petition for habeas corpus, transferred it to the Putnam County Circuit Court, and proposed that the petition might be considered as a rule 3.800(a) motion. The circuit court treated it as a rule 3.800(a) motion, but then dismissed Young's motion, stating that it would have been more appropriately presented as a civil writ to the circuit court or district court of appeal in which the Department of Corrections is headquartered. From that decision, Young filed a petition for writ of certiorari in the First District Court of Appeal, which in turn transferred that petition to this court. We treat this as an appeal from the dismissal of Young's rule 3.800(a) motion.
In his first claim, Young challenged the legality of action by the Florida Commission on Offender Review regarding its establishment of his PPRD beyond his life expectancy. In his second claim, he challenged the legality of his sentence and his continued incarceration by the Department of Corrections and the State of Florida. In this second claim, Young seems to assert that the abolition of the death penalty for non-fatal sexual battery in Buford v. State , 403 So.2d 943 (Fla. 1981), resulted in the concurrent re-categorization of "capital" felonies as first-degree felonies for which life sentences could not be imposed and somehow transformed them into nonexistent crimes for which he could not be imprisoned.
Young's first claim that the Commission on Offender Review improperly set his PPRD beyond his life expectancy should have been filed in a petition for writ of mandamus in the Leon County Circuit Court, and the trial court correctly dismissed this claim. See Johnson v. Fla. Parole Comm'n , 841 So.2d 615, 617 (Fla. 1st DCA 2003). "[J]udicial review is ... available through the common law writs of mandamus, for review of PPRD's, and habeas corpus, for review of effective parole release dates." Armour v. Fla. Parole Comm'n , 963 So.2d 305, 307 (Fla. 1st DCA 2007). Once the trial court conducts a complete review and denies the petition, the inmate is not entitled to a second plenary appeal but may file a petition for writ of certiorari in the district...
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