Clarke v. State

Decided September 18, 1984

District Court of Appeal of Florida · decided 1984-09-18

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“(a) If at any time after 5 years after determining a person incompetent to stand trial or proceed with a probation or community control violation hearing when charged with a felony, or 1 year when charged with a misdemeanor, the court, after hearing, determines that the defendant remains incompetent to stand trial or proceed with a probation or community control violation hearing, that there is no substantial probability that the defendant will become mentally competent to stand trial or proceed with a probation or community control violation hearing in the foreseeable future, and that the defendant does not meet the criteria for commitment, it shall dismiss the charges against the defendant without prejudice to the state to refile the charges should the defendant be declared competent to proceed in the future.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including Downing v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1984-09-18

How this case has been cited

Cited by 9 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2015

8 state decisions

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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BARKDULL, Judge.

¶1We deny the petition for certiorari under review because we find that the trial court properly found that before the accused can be considered for the remedies provided under Rule 3.213(b) Florida Rules of Criminal Procedure, said accused must demonstrate 5 consecutive uninterrupted years of incompetency to stand trial. As the record herein reflects that the defendant’s periods of incompetency had been broken by periods of competency the trial court was correct in denying the defendant’s motion to dismiss.

¶2Until such time as a trial court determines that the defendant has been incompetent for 5 consecutive years it does not reach the second determination of the rule “that there is no substantial probability that the defendant will become mentally competent to stand trial in the foreseeable future”.