BILL M. HEARNS, APPELLANT,

v.

THE STATE OF FLORIDA, APPELLEE

SCHWARTZ, Senior Judge.

Hearns again appeals from a judgment resentencing him to life imprisonment as a habitual violent felony offender [HVFO], which was entered after the last remand of the case to the trial court in Hearns v. State, 54 So.3d 500 (Fla. 3d DCA 2010). We find the present judgment to be unacceptably contrary to several of our prior opinions and mandates in Hearns’s case and therefore vacate the judgment under review with specific directions.

It is unnecessary to detail the depressing story of the lower court’s and the state’s failure to follow our, and the supreme court’s, repeated, express, and emphatic1 holdings that, because one of the three offenses relied upon to establish Hearns’s status as a “violent career criminal” [VCC], as elements of the substantive charge of possession of a firearm by such a person, that is, battery on a law enforcement officer, 2 did not qualify for that *456designation,3 Hearns could simply not be convicted and sentenced as one.4 See Hearns v. State, 54 So.3d 500, 502 (Fla. 3d DCA 2010) (“By our mandate, we foreclosed the possibility of resentencing as a violent career criminal. We thus reverse and remand with directions that Hearns be resentenced in case number 98-34265 without any violent career criminal enhancement.”); State v. Hearns, 961 So.2d 211, 219 (Fla.2007) (“[W]e approve the district court’s reversal of Respondent’s life sentence because BOLEO is not a forcible felony under section 776.08.... ”); Hearns v. State, 912 So.2d 377, 379-80 (Fla. 3d DCA 2005) (“Hearns did not qualify for sentencing as a VCC. We reverse the order denying post-conviction relief and remand with directions that Hearns be resentenced in case number 98-34265 without VCC enhancement.”).

Notwithstanding this history, we are now faced with an appeal from another life sentence imposed on Hearns “for possession of a firearm by a violent career criminal” [VCC]!5 This has got to and will stop. We will not engage in another futile endeavor to give the lower court still another opportunity to follow the law. See Zelman v. Metropolitan Dade County, 645 So.2d 57 (Fla. 3d DCA 1994). Instead, we ourselves hereby vacate the conviction and sentence below and directly order, as permitted by section 924.35, Florida Statutes (2009), that Hearns be found guilty and convicted of the lesser included offense of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, contrary to section 790.23, and sentenced with a habitual violent felony offender [HVFO] enhancement under section 775.084(4)(b)(2) (which requires “only” two offenses) to a maximum sentence of thirty years with a minimum mandatory term of ten years. The cause is remanded solely for sentencing accordingly.

*457Rehearing is dispensed with. The mandate shall issue immediately.