DONTREVIUS BYRON
v.
STATE
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Appellant challenged the summary denial of his Rule 3.850 postconviction relief motion on three grounds. The appellate court found that the record did not conclusively refute Appellant's claim that trial counsel promised he would not receive a longer sentence than his codefendants. The court reversed in part and remanded for further proceedings on this specific issue while affirming the denial as to the remainder of the motion.
The court held that a general question about promises in a plea form is insufficient to conclusively refute specific allegations of misadvice regarding sentence length. The summary denial of this portion of ground one was reversed and the case was remanded for the trial court to either provide additional record evidence refuting the claim or conduct an evidentiary hearing.
[1] A standard plea form containing general language disclaiming promises is insufficient to conclusively refute a defendant's specific allegation that trial counsel made aff…
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Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligenceAppellant entered a guilty plea and was sentenced. During postconviction proceedings, he claimed trial counsel had made affirmative misrepresentations…
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PER CURIAM.
Appellant appeals the summary denial of his motion for postconviction relief filed pursuant to Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850, alleging three grounds for relief. We find that the record does not conclusively refute part of Appellant’s first ground for relief. As part of ground one, Appellant claims that trial counsel told him that he would not be sentenced to a longer sentence than his codefendants. Although the written plea form was attached to the postconviction court's order,1 its standard language, stating, "No person has made any promises to me that induced me to enter this plea," is insufficient to refute Appellant’s claim of affirmative misadvice. "[A] general question about promises made in exchange for a plea is insufficient to refute an allegation of specific misadvice by counsel about the length of a sentence." Collazo v. State, 8 So. 3d 1273, 1274 (Fla. 5th DCA 2009) (citations omitted); see Lamkin v. State, 215 So. 3d 640, 641 (Fla. 5th DCA 2017); Ostane v. State, 73 So. 3d 335, 335 (Fla. 5th DCA 2011). Accordingly, we reverse the summary denial of this portion of ground one and remand for the postconviction court to either attach additional portions of the record that conclusively refute the claim or hold an evidentiary hearing. We affirm the summary denial as to the remainder of Appellant’s ground one as well as grounds two and three in their entirety.
AFFIRMED in Part; REVERSED in Part, and REMANDED for Further Proceedings.
ORFINGER, WALLIS and LAMBERT, JJ., concur. 1 We note that the plea colloquy transcript was not included in the record.
Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus
Citator
Authorities Cited
- Collazo v. State, 8 So. 3d 1273 (Fla. 5th DCA 2009)
- Lamkin v. State, 215 So. 3d 640 (Fla. 5th DCA 2017)
- Dara Ostane v. State, 73 So. 3d 335 (Fla. 5th DCA 2011)