CRAIG E. EDWARDS
v.
STATE
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When a trial court is specifically informed of its discretion under section 775.087 to impose minimum mandatory sentences concurrently and affirmatively chooses to impose them consecutively, no reversal is required even if the court initially believed consecutive sentences were mandatory.
[1] Section 775.087, Florida Statutes, permits but does not require consecutive minimum mandatory terms of imprisonment for multiple firearm offenses committed contemporaneou…
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Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence“the court was aware of its discretion to impose the sentences concurrently, and instead chose to re-impose the sentences consecutively”
Court's rationale for affirming despite the trial court's initial erroneous belief about the mandatory nature of consecutive sentences
Craig Edwards, convicted as a juvenile of attempted felony murder with a firearm and robbery with a firearm, was initially sentenced to life in prison…
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IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA
FIFTH DISTRICT NOT FINAL UNTIL TIME EXPIRES TO FILE MOTION FOR REHEARING AND DISPOSITION THEREOF IF FILED CRAIG EUGENE EDWARDS, Appellant,
v. Case No. 5D17-1846 STATE OF FLORIDA, Appellee. ________________________________/ Opinion filed July 27, 2018 Appeal from the Circuit Court for Orange County, Marc L. Lubet, Judge.
James S. Purdy, Public Defender, and Kathryn Rollison Radtke, Assistant Public Defender, Daytona Beach, for Appellant.
Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Pamela J. Koller, Assistant Attorney General, Daytona Beach, for Appellee.
COHEN, C.J.
Craig Edwards appeals two of his consecutively imposed minimum mandatory sentences. We affirm.
Edwards was sentenced for several crimes committed when he was sixteen years of age. Two of the charges of which he was convicted were attempted felony murder with a firearm (count3) and robbery with a firearm (count 4). The trial court originally sentenced Edwards to life in prison for counts3 and 4, which included minimum mandatory sentences per count imposed consecutively.
Edwards subsequently obtained an evidentiary hearing for reevaluation of his sentences based on Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48 (2010).1 At that hearing, the trial court analyzed section 775.087, Florida Statutes (2017), under which Edwards was sentenced, then stated, “unfortunately, the statute requires consecutive time, consecutive min-man time” for counts3 and 4. The court resentenced Edwards to concurrently serve
45 years on counts3 and 4, but re-imposed the minimum mandatory sentences on the counts consecutively.
Edwards then filed a motion to correct sentencing error, arguing in part that under
Williams v. State, 186 So. 3d 989 (Fla. 2016),2 “[c]onsecutive sentencing is not mandatory under [section 775.087] under these circumstances and the Court has the discretion to run counts3 and 4 concurrently.” The court entered an order reiterating that the minimum mandatory sentences were to run consecutively.3
Edwards filed a motion for rehearing, again calling the court’s attention to Williams.
Regarding the consecutively imposed minimum mandatory sentences, the court stated,
“Counts3 and 4 of this case each have a 20-year minimum mandatory, which the Court is imposing consecutive to each other for a total of 40 years. That ruling was not a scrivener’s error and Defendant has not argued or proven that the statute does not permit it.”
Where the record indicates that a trial court believed that consecutive minimum mandatory sentences were required rather than permissible under section 775.087,
reversal for resentencing is required. See James v. State, 43 Fla. L. Weekly D816 (Fla.
2d DCA Apr. 18, 2018); Mason v. State, 210 So. 3d 120, 121 (Fla. 2d DCA 2016). It is clear that at Edwards’s initial resentencing, the trial court believed that it was required to impose the minimum mandatory sentences consecutively. However, Edwards presented
Williams to the court in both his motion to correct sentencing error and motion for rehearing. The court’s order on rehearing stating that the imposition of consecutive minimum mandatory sentences was not a scrivener’s error and that the sentence imposed was one permitted by statute, in conjunction with the fact that the court had specifically been provided Williams twice, persuades us that the court was aware of its discretion to impose the sentences concurrently, and instead chose to re-impose the sentences consecutively. Accordingly, we affirm.
AFFIRMED.
PALMER and ORFINGER, JJ., concur.
Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus
Citator
Cited By
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Edwards v. State, 43 Fla. L. Weekly D816 (Fla. 5th DCA 2018)
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Edwards v. State, 252 So. 3d 356 (Fla. 5th DCA 2018)
Authorities Cited
- Williams v. State, 186 So. 3d 989 (Fla. 2016)
- Mason v. State, 210 So. 3d 120 (Fla. 2d DCA 2016)
- Edwards v. State, 43 Fla. L. Weekly D816 (Fla. 5th DCA 2018)