STATE OF FLORIDA, APPELLANT,
v.
JAMES MOORE, APPELLEE

Fla. 2d DCA | 2002-04-05
No. 2D01-886
ALTENBERND and SALCINES, JJ., Concur.
814 So. 2d 1127 Florida District Court of Appeal, Second District (2002)

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Synopsis

The State appeals the trial court's discharge of James Moore after his conviction for felon in possession of a firearm by a violent career criminal was vacated due to the statute's unconstitutionality. The appellate court affirms the discharge, holding that under Florida Supreme Court precedent, resentencing is permitted only for lesser-included offenses on which the jury was originally instructed.


Holding

Resentencing is limited to lesser-included offenses for which the jury was instructed at trial. Because the jury in Moore's case received no instructions on lesser-included offenses, the proper remedy was to vacate his conviction and discharge him, not to resentence him to felon in possession of a firearm.


Headnotes

[1] When a statute under which a defendant was convicted and sentenced is declared unconstitutional, the proper remedy is to vacate the judgment and sentence and remand for f…

[2] Following a declaration of unconstitutionality of a statute, a defendant may only be retried on lesser included offenses that were instructed on at the original trial.

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Key Quotes

“when a defendant is convicted of a crime found to be nonexistent at the time he is alleged to have committed it, the proper remedy is to remand for a retrial on any lesser offense instructed on at trial.”

Establishes the controlling legal standard from State v. Gibson that limits resentencing to offenses for which jury instructions were given.

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Facts & Procedural History

James Moore was convicted and sentenced in 1995 for felon in possession of a firearm by a violent career criminal. The statute under which he was conv…

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Opinion of the Court
CASANUEVA, Judge.

CASANUEVA, Judge.

James Moore was convicted of and sentenced for the crime of felon in possession of a firearm by a violent career criminal, an offense occurring on October 30, 1995. He appealed that conviction. Because the statute under which Mr. Moore was convicted and sentenced was subsequently declared unconstitutional for violation of the single subject rule of article III, section 6, of the Florida Constitution, see State v. Thompson, 750 So. 2d 643 (Fla.1999), this court vacated his judgment and sentence and remanded the case to the trial court for further proceedings on August 23, 2000. In accordance with our mandate, the trial court held a hearing to consider whether to resentence Mr. Moore or to discharge him. After hearing argument from counsel, the trial court vacated the judgment and sentence and discharged Mr. Moore. The State has now appealed. The State argued at the hearing on remand that Mr. Moore should be resen-tenced for the crime of felon in possession of a firearm, a necessarily lesser-included offense of the now nonexistent crime with which he was originally charged. The defense, however, contended that precedent from the supreme court allowed resentencing only for those crimes on which the jury had been originally instructed. The trial judge perused the original record and found no instructions for any lesser-included offenses, so she felt compelled to vacate Mr. Moore’s conviction and sentence.

Even though it is logical to conclude that the evidence at Mr. Moore’s trial would have proven him guilty of the crime of felon in possession of a firearm, the trial court took the only recourse available under the Florida Supreme Court’s decision in Thomas v. State, 777 So. 2d 957 (Fla.2001). Thomas was also convicted of and sentenced for possession of a firearm by a violent career criminal under the act that was subsequently declared unconstitutional in Thompson, 750 So. 2d 643. The supreme court ordered that Thomas’s conviction and sentence be vacated and remanded “for retrial on any lesser offense instructed on at trial.” Thomas, 777 So. 2d at 958. In so doing the supreme court relied upon State v. Gibson, 682 So. 2d 545, 546 (Fla.1996), for the proposition that “when a defendant is convicted of a crime found to be nonexistent at the time he is alleged to have committed it, the proper remedy is to remand for a retrial on any lesser offense instructed on at trial.”

On appeal the State has argued that this court has the authority to reduce a conviction overturned on appeal to a lesser offense when the charging document sufficiently alleges the elements of the lesser offense and the evidence supports the conviction for them. § 924.34, Fla. Stat. (1995); Bledsoe v. State, 764 So. 2d 927, 928 (Fla. 2d DCA 2000). Under this theory the fact that the jury was not instructed on the offense would not affect the analysis. Although this argument has logic to support it, we must reject it in this instance because Thomas is directly on point.

Accordingly, we affirm the order vacating Mr. Moore’s conviction and sentence and discharging him.

ALTENBERND and SALCINES, JJ., Concur.


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