JAMES FOWLER
v.
STATE OF FLORIDA
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A trial court must enter a written order reflecting its oral finding of competency before sentencing, and probation revocation based on failure to pay costs requires a prior determination that the defendant had the ability to pay.
[1] A trial court must enter a written order documenting its finding of competency to proceed, conforming to any oral pronouncement made on the record.
[2] Probation revocation based on failure to pay costs requires a prior judicial determination that the defendant had the ability to pay such costs.
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Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligenceFowler was found to have violated probation. The circuit court ordered a competency evaluation, reviewed the expert's report, and orally found Fowler …
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DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA
FOURTH DISTRICT
JAMES C. FOWLER, Appellant,
v.
STATE OF FLORIDA, Appellee.
No. 4D2023-1739
[April 2, 2025]
Appeal from the Circuit Court for the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit, Broward County; Peter Holden, Judge; L.T. Case No. 19-011424CF10A.
Daniel Eisinger, Public Defender, and Summer Hill, Assistant Public Defender, West Palm Beach, for appellant.
James Uthmeier, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Rachael Kaiman, Senior Assistant Attorney General, West Palm Beach, for appellee.
PER CURIAM.
James Fowler appeals the order revoking his probation and his sentence. We affirm in part without discussion but remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
The circuit court ordered a competency evaluation of the defendant after finding he violated probation but before sentencing him. The court reviewed the expert’s report and discussed it at a hearing. Then, on two separate occasions, the court accepted the report and found the defendant competent to proceed. But a written order reflecting the court’s oral pronouncement was never entered into the record. We remand the case for the court to issue a written order that conforms to its oral finding of competency. See, e.g., Johnson v. State, 266 So. 3d 234, 236 (Fla. 2d DCA 2019).
The parties agree that the circuit court erred when it found the defendant violated his probation by not paying costs without determining that the defendant had the ability to pay. Banks v. State, 262 So. 3d 876, 877 (Fla. 1st DCA 2019). We remand with instructions for the circuit court
2
to enter a new revocation order that does not include the conditions relating to the costs.
Affirmed in part and remanded for further proceedings.
CIKLIN, CONNER and KUNTZ, JJ., concur.
* * *
Not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing.
Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus
Citator
Authorities Cited
- Johnson v. State, 266 So. 3d 234 (Fla. 2d DCA 2019)
- Patricia Ann Banks v. State, 262 So. 3d 876 (Fla. 1st DCA 2019)