LUIS CASTILLO, APPELLANT,
v.
STATE OF FLORIDA, APPELLEE

Fla. 4th DCA | 2007-11-14
No. 4D07-1301
Polen, J., Hazouri, J., May, J.
967 So. 2d 1108 Florida District Court of Appeal, Fourth District (2007)

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.

Synopsis

Court affirmed postconviction relief denial on most grounds but reversed and remanded for evidentiary hearing on claim that defense counsel misrepresented gain-time calculations in plea agreement.


Holding

A defendant is entitled to an evidentiary hearing on a claim that defense counsel made misrepresentations about actual time to be served when the plea colloquy does not conclusively refute the allegation.


Headnotes

[1] A defendant is entitled to an evidentiary hearing on a postconviction claim that defense counsel misrepresented gain-time or actual prison time when the plea colloquy doe…

Previewing 1 of 1 headnotes on this case. FLexlaw’s editorially structured points of law — every proposition, pinpointed — are reserved for members.

Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence

Key Quotes

“the defendant's negative response during a plea colloquy to the trial court's question of whether anything had been promised to induce his guilty plea did not conclusively refute his post-conviction relief claim that the plea was the product of defense counsel's misrepresentations concerning the amount of sentence he would actually serve”

Court cited Debonis v. State to establish that a defendant's denial during plea colloquy does not conclusively refute postconviction claims of counsel misrepresentation about actual time served.

Facts & Procedural History

Castillo entered a negotiated plea deal for an eight-year prison term, claiming his attorney promised he would serve only 70.5 months if he maintained…

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.


Opinion of the Court
PER CURIAM.

PER CURIAM.

The appellant timely sought postconviction relief after the entry of a negotiated plea deal.

We affirm as to all grounds raised, except for a portion of ground two, wherein we reverse and remand for an evidentiary hearing. In that portion of ground two, the appellant claims his attorney promised him that the eight-year prison term he agreed to as a part of a plea deal would result in just 70.5 months of actual time, if he “kept his nose clean” while incarcerated. The transcript of the plea colloquy does not conclusively refute this allegation, as the lower court did not question the appellant about any promises concerning gain-time or the amount of time he would actually serve in prison. See Debonis v. State, 745 So. 2d 407 (Fla. 4th DCA 1999) (“[T]he defendant’s negative response during a plea colloquy to the trial court’s question of whether anything had been promised to induce his guilty plea did not conclusively refute his post-conviction relief claim that the plea was the product of defense counsel’s misrepresentations concerning the amount of sentence he would actually serve.”) (citing State v. Leroux, 689 So. 2d 235 (Fla.1996)).

Therefore, the appellant is entitled to an evidentiary hearing on the matter. As such, we reverse as to that portion of ground two and affirm as to all other issues raised.

POLEN, HAZOURI and MAY, JJ., concur.


Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus


Citator

Authorities Cited

Full citator, related cases, and AI research tools

Open in FLexlaw