DENNIS JAMES BATES, APPELLANT,
v.
STATE OF FLORIDA, APPELLEE
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.
The court held that sentencing a defendant as a habitual offender after a conviction for felony battery under section 784.03(2) does not violate double jeopardy principles.
Appellant was convicted of felony battery, which was elevated from a misdemeanor due to prior convictions. He was subsequently sentenced as a habitual…
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 Habitual Felony Offender Sentencing cases and more on FLexlaw
ALLEN, C.J.
The appellant challenges the order by which the trial court denied his Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.800(a) motion to correct an illegal sentence. Although we affirm the order under review, we write to address one of the appellant’s claims.
The appellant was convicted of felony battery under section 784.03(2), Florida Statutes (1996), which provides that when a person has two prior convictions for battery, a third or subsequent conviction for battery will be a felony of the third degree. After having been convicted of felony battery, the appellant was then sentenced as a habitual offender. He argues that his sentence violates the proscription against double jeopardy because his crime was first enhanced from a misdemeanor to a felony, and then enhanced again under the habitual felony offender statute.
Similar challenges have been presented as to habitual felony offender sentences imposed following convictions under the very closely analogous felony petit theft statute, which provides that when a person has two or more prior convictions for theft, a subsequent conviction for petit theft will be a felony of the third degree. The supreme court has rejected these challenges, concluding that imposition of a habitual felony offender sentence following a conviction of felony petit theft does not violate double jeopardy principles because felony petit theft is a separate substantive offense and not a mere enhancement of the crime of petit theft. See Gayman v. State, 616 So. 2d 17 (Fla.1993). Because the legal analyses required to address the issues in Gayman and in the present case appear to us materially indistinguishable, the resulting holdings must be consistent. We accordingly conclude that there was no double jeopardy violation in the present case because section 784.03(2) felony battery is a separate substantive offense and not a mere enhancement of the crime of battery.
AFFIRMED.
BOOTH and BARFIELD, JJ., concur.
Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus
Citator
Cited By
-
State v. Rothwell, 981 So. 2d 1279 (Fla. 1st DCA 2008)…er does not and neither offense is entirely subsumed within the other. Furthermore, a section 784.03(2) felony battery is not an enhancement or degree of a section 784.03(1) battery, and is instead a separate substantive offense. See Bates v. State, 825 So. 2d 1025 (Fla. 1st DCA 2002). Section 775.021(4) permits the felony battery prosecution in these circumstances. That prosecution thus does not violate double jeopardy protections, and the felony battery charge should not have been dismissed. The appealed o…
Authorities Cited
- Dorcy Gayman v. State, 616 So. 2d 17 (Fla. 1993)