491 So. 2d 1252 - Ritts v. State

How this case has been cited

Cited by 28 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2009 · most notably Howlett Ex Rel. Howlett v. Rose (1990), 543 So. 2d 732 - Kaisner v. Kolb (1989)

1 federal appellate · 1 district · 25 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.

¶1James Marion Mooran, Public Defender, Bartow, and Allyn Giambalvo, Asst. Public Defender, Clearwater, for appellant.

¶2Jim Smith, Atty. Gen., Tallahassee, and Gary O. Welch, Asst. Atty. Gen., Tampa, for appellee.

¶3DANAHY, Chief Judge.

¶4Terry Ritts was convicted of strong-arm robbery after snatching a purse from an elderly shopper in a shopping mall parking lot. We find no error in appellant's conviction. We do find, however, that a sentencing error was committed by including points for victim injury, resulting in an improper presumptive guidelines range. Accordingly, we reverse the sentence and remand for resentencing.

¶5This court has held that the crime of robbery, defined in section 812.13, Florida Statutes (1985), does not include victim injury as an essential element. Parker v. State,478 So.2d 823 (Fla. 2d DCA 1985); Hendry v. State,460 So.2d 589 (Fla. 2d DCA 1984). Therefore, it was error to include twenty-one victim injury points on appellant's scoresheet. See Fla.R.Crim.P. 3.701(d)(7). This error was not harmless since it produced a higher presumptive range. We remand so the trial court may resentence Ritts utilizing the correct guidelines range. While we hold that points for victim injury should not have been included on the scoresheet, we note that victim injury may properly be used as a reason to depart from the guidelines. See Parker at 825 (citing Hendrix v. State,475 So.2d 1218 (Fla. 1985)).

¶6Conviction affirmed; sentence reversed and remanded.

¶7SCHEB and HALL, JJ., concur.