PAUL LEWIS, APPELLANT,
v.
THE STATE OF FLORIDA, APPELLEE

Fla. 3d DCA | 2013-07-31
No. 3D12-1081
Before C0RTIÑAS, EMAS, and LOGUE, JJ.
118 So. 3d 291 Florida District Court of Appeal, Third District (2013) Caution
Cited by 4 cases

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Holding

A juvenile offender's sentence of life with parole eligibility does not violate Graham v. Florida, even if the presumptive parole release date is far in the future, especially when that date is extended due to the offender's own disciplinary violations.


Headnotes

[1] A sentence of life with parole eligibility for a juvenile convicted of a non-homicide offense does not violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition against de facto life with…

[2] The Eighth Amendment requires that juvenile non-homicide offenders be given a meaningful opportunity to obtain release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation,…

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Facts & Procedural History

Paul Lewis, a juvenile at the time, was sentenced to concurrent life sentences with parole eligibility after twenty-five years for armed robbery. He l…

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Opinion of the Court
EMAS, J.

EMAS, J.

Paul Lewis appeals from the trial court’s order denying his motion for postconviction relief. Lewis contends that his sentence of life with parole eligibility amounts to a de facto life sentence and violates Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48, 130 S.Ct. 2011, 176 L.Ed.2d 825 (2010). We affirm.

The limited record in this case reveals the following 1:

In 1981, the defendant Paul Lewis (sixteen years old at the time), was charged with five counts of armed robbery and two counts of aggravated battery. Lewis later entered a negotiated guilty plea in exchange for five concurrent life sentences on the five armed robbery counts, with parole eligibility after twenty-five years.2

In 2010, the United States Supreme Court, in Graham, held that the Eighth Amendment prohibits a state from imposing a life-without-parole sentence on a juvenile convicted of a non-homicide offense. The Supreme Court explained its rationale:

A State is not required to guarantee eventual freedom to a juvenile offender convicted of a nonhomicide crime. What the State must do, however, is give defendants like Graham some meaningful opportunity to obtain release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation. It is for the State, in the first instance, to explore the means and mechanisms for compliance. It bears emphasis, however, that while the Eighth Amendment forbids a State from imposing a life without parole sentence on a juvenile nonhomicide offender, it does not require the State to release that offender during his natural life. Those who commit truly horrifying crimes as juveniles may turn out to be irredeemable, and thus deserving of incarceration for the duration of their lives. The Eighth Amendment does not foreclose the possibility that persons convicted of nonhomicide crimes committed before adulthood will remain behind bars for life. It does forbid States from making the judgment at the outset that those offenders never will be fit to reenter society.

560 U.S. at 48,130 S.Ct. at 2030.

Lewis filed a motion for postconviction relief asserting that his life sentences violated Graham, because his current presumptive parole release date (which according to the record below is August 3, 2042) amounts to a de facto life sentence without parole. Lewis contends, in his brief: “Given Mr. Lewis’s experience in Florida’s parole system, he contends that it does not provide a ‘meaningful opportunity’ for release as Graham requires.” However, the sentences imposed upon Lewis are not controlled by the holding in Graham; moreover, Lewis’s current presumptive parole date is a result of his own apparent failure to take advantage of the *294opportunity offered to him under the parole system.

When Lewis was sentenced to life in 1981, he was eligible for parole after serving twenty-five years, when he would have been forty-one years old. His sentences on their face do not violate Graham because Lewis was sentenced to life with parole eligibility.3

Lewis’s “de facto life sentence” argument fails for an independent reason. Lewis’s presumptive parole release date now stands at 2042 because of a variety of disciplinary violations committed by him while serving his sentence. In March 1983, the parole commission established Lewis’s initial presumptive parole release date as July 3, 2033 (when Lewis would be 68 years old).4 However, just five months later, the parole commission, applying a different matrix established for youthful offenders, reduced Lewis’s presumptive parole release by 155 months-from July 3, 2033 to August 3, 2020 (when Lewis would be 55 years old).

The presumptive parole release date can also be modified (extended or reduced) based upon the parole commission’s periodic review of the conduct and behavior of the prisoner while serving his sentence. See §§ 947.172-174 Fla. Stat. (2013). In Lewis’s case, the parole commission on one occasion reduced his presumptive parole release date by forty-eight months, based upon work performed by Lewis as an institutional barber. However, on at least twelve other occasions between 1987 and 2011, the parole commission extended Lewis’s presumptive parole release date (in varying amounts) based upon disciplinary violations committed by Lewis during his sentence.5 These modifications, a result of Lewis’s own conduct in prison, resulted in a total of 324 months’ time (twenty-seven years) added to his presumptive parole release date.

Thus, Lewis received precisely what Graham requires:

— No determination at the outset of the sentence that Lewis would never be released from prison;- and
— No guarantee of eventual release, but rather a “meaningful opportunity to obtain release based upon demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation.”

The trial court properly denied Lewis’s motion for postconviction relief.

Affirmed.


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Citator

Cited By

  • Ira Demetrius McPHERSON v. State, 138 So. 3d 1201 (Fla. 2d DCA 2014)
    …e sentences with parole eligibility after a term of years. See Atwell v. State, 128 So. 3d 167, 169 (Fla. 4th DCA 2013) (holding Miller does not affect a sentence of life imprisonment with parole eligibility after twenty-five years); Lewis v. State, 118 So. 3d 291 (Fla. 3d DCA 2013) (declining to apply Graham to a comparable sentence in a postconviction proceeding). Neither the Florida Supreme Court nor the United States Supreme Court has announced new law directed to a sentence like Mr. McPherson’s. Accordin…
  • Franklin v. State, 141 So. 3d 210 (Fla. 1st DCA 2014)
    …egree murder not entitled to postconviction relief where crime was committed when inmate was a juvenile, but sentence provided parole eligibility after serving 25-year minimum mandatory). Furthermore, the Third District’s decision in Lewis v. State, 118 So. 3d 291 (Fla. 3d DCA 2013), recognizes that an inmate sentenced for a crime committed as a juvenile has no right to an eventual release on [*217] parole, where the Parole Commission has set his PPRD in 2042 based on Lewis’ misconduct in prison. And here, we…

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