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478 So. 2d 430

478 So.2d 430

10 Fla.L.Weekly 2494

Docket No. 85-314.

State v. Row

STATE of Florida, Appellant, v. Robert Maurice ROW, Appellee.

District Court of Appeal of Florida

Decided November 7, 1985.

District Court of Appeal of Florida · decided 1985-11-07

Relies on 462 So. 2d 101 - Robinson v. Royal Bank of Canada

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1985-11-07

How this case has been cited

Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently August 2018

8 state decisions

301985199020002010decided

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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¶1*431 Jim Smith, Atty. Gen., Tallahassee, and Paula C. Coffman, Asst. Atty. Gen., Daytona Beach, for appellant.

¶2James B. Gibson, Public Defender, and Kenneth Witts, Asst. Public Defender, Daytona Beach, for appellee.

¶3COBB, Chief Judge.

¶4The state appeals from the sentence imposed on the defendant, Robert Maurice Row, claiming that it was an illegal sentence.[1] We agree and vacate the sentence.

¶5Defendant was convicted of trafficking in cocaine, in violation of section 893.135(1)(b)1, Florida Statutes (1983). Without stating his reasons therefor, the trial judge indicated at sentencing that he was willing to depart from the guideline recommended sentence of five years downwards to the three-year mandatory minimum prescribed by section 893.135(1)(b)1. In pronouncing sentence, the judge stated:

In this case, I have a minimum requirement to sentence you to three years, and I am going to sentence you to three years. I am going to condition that to be six months served in the Orange County Jail and two-and-a-half years will be on community control in lieu of two-and-a-half years of Department of Corrections incarceration.[2]

¶6The trial court's sentence was unauthorized for two reasons. First, section 893.135(1)(b)1 explicitly states that defendants convicted under this section "shall be sentenced to a mandatory minimum term of imprisonment of three calendar years." (Emphasis supplied.) The trial court was thus without authority to substitute community control for imprisonment. Cf. Gottlieb v. State,462 So.2d 101 (Fla. 4th DCA 1985). Second, Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.701(d)(9) provides that "If the guideline sentence exceeds the mandatory sentence, the guideline sentence should be imposed." Therefore, the five-year guideline recommended sentence should have been imposed in this case, unless a valid reason for departure had been given. We note also that the record does not reflect that the mandatory $50,000.00 fine required under section 893.135(1)(b)1 was imposed in this case.

¶7The sentence in this case is vacated and the cause remanded to the trial court for resentencing, with instructions to impose the guideline recommended sentence of incarceration unless a valid reason for departure is stated, and to impose the mandatory minimum fine.

¶8SENTENCE VACATED; REMANDED FOR RESENTENCING.

¶9UPCHURCH, J., and VANN, H.R., Associate Judge, concur.

NOTES

¶10[1] See Fla.R.App.P. 9.140(c)(1)(I).

¶11[2] The trial court subsequently modified the incarceration portion of defendant's sentence to work release.

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