ROGER WALLS, APPELLANT,
v.
STATE OF FLORIDA, APPELLEE
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Roger Walls was convicted of burglary of an occupied conveyance and sentenced to twelve years in prison (seven suspended) with community control and probation. The court affirmed the conviction and most of the sentence but reversed and remanded regarding the condition requiring full-time employment, finding it impermissibly conditioned on factors beyond the defendant's control.
The court affirmed the conviction and most sentencing provisions but reversed and remanded the full-time employment requirement because it imposed obligations beyond the defendant's control. The written sentence must be amended to reflect both the corrected employment condition and the special conditions of community control and probation that were orally pronounced but not included in the written sentence.
[1] A sentencing condition requiring a defendant to maintain full-time employment is sufficiently egregious to constitute fundamental error, even if not objected to at trial.
[2] A trial court errs by imposing a probation condition that requires full-time employment, as factors beyond the defendant's control may prevent compliance.
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Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence“A defendant does not need to object to a sentence when the sentence is illegal or otherwise "so egregious as to be the equivalent of fundamental error."”
Establishes the standard for fundamental error in sentencing without trial objection
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Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligenceWalls was found guilty of stealing a purse from an occupied vehicle containing a fourteen-year-old boy. The trial court sentenced him as a habitual fe…
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PER CURIAM.
Roger Walls brings this appeal from his conviction of burglary of an occupied conveyance. We affirm, except with respect to the condition of probation requiring Walls to maintain full-time employment.
Walls was found guilty of stealing a purse from a vehicle that was occupied by a fourteen-year old boy. The trial court sentenced Walls as a habitual felony of fender to twelve years in prison, with seven years suspended. The court also sentenced Walls to two years community control and five years probation. As a special condition of Walls’s community control and probation, the court prohibited Walls from using or possessing alcoholic beverages or any controlled substances and required him to maintain full-time employment of at least thirty-five hours per week. Walls did not object to his sentence.
A defendant does not need to object to a sentence when the sentence is illegal or otherwise “so egregious as to be the equivalent of fundamental error.” Larson v. State, 572 So. 2d 1368, 1370-71 (Fla.1991). The trial court’s requirement that Walls maintain full-time employment is sufficiently egregious to be the equivalent of fundamental error. Factors beyond Walls’s control, for example, the poor economy, may prevent him from satisfying that element of his probation. As such, the trial court erred in placing the full-time employment requirement on Walls. The court should have instead ordered Walls to maintain or actively seek gainful employment. Boudreaux v. State, 578 So. 2d 457, 458 (Fla. 1st DCA 1991); Cowan v. State, 527 So. 2d 305, 305 (Fla. 1st DCA 1988).
This court notes that Walls’s written sentence does not conform to the trial court’s oral pronouncement of judgment and sentence. Walls’s written sentence does not include the special conditions of his period of community control and probation. A written sentence must conform to the oral pronouncements of judgment and sentence. E.g., Kord v. State, 508 So. 2d 758, 758 (Fla. 4th DCA 1987). Because Walls’s written sentence does not conform to the trial court’s oral pronouncements, on remand the trial court is instructed to amend Walls’s written sentence not only to include a statement that he maintain or actively seek gainful employment, but that he not use or possess alcoholic beverages or any controlled substances during his period of community control and probation.
AFFIRMED IN PART; REVERSED IN PART, AND REMANDED WITH INSTRUCTIONS.
DOWNEY and GARRETT, JJ., and OWEN, WILLIAM C., Jr., Senior Judge, concur.
Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus
Citator
Cited By (13 total)
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Traman D. Tory v. State, 686 So. 2d 689 (Fla. 4th DCA 1996)…court’s oral pronouncement was merely a “misstatement” and that the written sentence should prevail. However, where a written order does not conform to the court’s oral pronouncement of judgment and sentence, the latter prevails. See Walls v. State, 596 So. 2d 811, 812 (Fla. 4th DCA 1992); Tannihill v. State, 559 So. 2d 608, 609 (Fla. 4th DCA 1990). Moreover, an oral pronouncement will most certainly prevail where the state concedes that the written sentence was in error. See Lester v. State, 563 So. 2d 178,…
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Armstrong v. State, 620 So. 2d 1120 (Fla. 5th DCA 1993)…ee with appellant that such a condition was sufficiently egregious to be the equivalent of fundamental error and, thus, appellant was not required to make a contemporaneous objection. Evans v. State, 608 So. 2d 90 (Fla.1st DCA 1992); Walls v. State, 596 So. 2d 811 (Fla.4th DCA 1992). Because economic conditions beyond a defendant’s control could prevent the defendant from completing such a condition, courts have modified this condition to require instead that a defendant maintain or actively seek gainful empl…
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Evans v. State, 608 So. 2d 90 (Fla. 1st DCA 1992)…the equivalent of fundamental error.” Larson, 572 So. 2d at 1370-71. A condition of probation requiring the probationer to maintain full-time employment has been found to be sufficiently egregious as to constitute fundamental error. Walls v. State, 596 So. 2d 811, 812 (Fla. 4th DCA 1992). Since such factors as a down-turn in the economy could prevent the completion of such a condition of probation, a more appropriate course would be to order the probationer to seek gainful employment. Boudreaux v. State, 578…
Previewing 3 of 13 citing cases — full citator treatment, depth of discussion, and citing context are member features.
Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligenceAuthorities Cited
- Myren Wayne Larson v. State, 572 So. 2d 1368 (Fla. 1991)
- Kord v. State, 508 So. 2d 758 (Fla. 4th DCA 1987)
- Boudreaux v. State, 578 So. 2d 457 (Fla. 1st DCA 1991)
- Hackworth v. State, 527 So. 2d 305 (Fla. 1st DCA 1988)