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596 So. 2d 811

Docket No. 91-1551.

Walls v. State

Roger WALLS, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.

District Court of Appeal of Florida

Decided April 15, 1992.

District Court of Appeal of Florida · decided 1992-04-15

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“The trial court’s requirement that [the defendant] maintain full-time employment is sufficiently egregious to be the equivalent of fundamental error. Factors beyond [the defendant’s control, for example, the poor economy, may prevent him from satisfying that element of his probation. As such, the trial court erred in placing the full-time employment requirement on [the defendant]. The court should have instead ordered [the defendant] to maintain or actively seek gainful employment.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including 145 So. 3d 915 - James Tindal v. State

“[t]he court should have ... ordered Walls to maintain or actively seek gainful employment.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including 616 So. 2d 174 - Gregory v. State

Relies on 572 So. 2d 1368 - Larson v. State · 508 So. 2d 758 - Kord v. State · 578 So. 2d 457 - Boudreaux v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1992-04-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently August 2014

13 state decisions

110199220002010decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

¶1Richard L. Jorandby, Public Defender, and Louis G. Carres, Asst. Public Defender, West Palm Beach, for appellant.

¶2Robert A. Butterworth, Atty. Gen., Tallahassee, and Patricia G. Lampert, Asst. Atty. Gen., West Palm Beach, for appellee.

¶3PER CURIAM.

¶4Roger Walls brings this appeal from his conviction of burglary of an occupied conveyance. We affirm, except with respect to the condition of probation requiring Walls to maintain full-time employment.

¶5Walls was found guilty of stealing a purse from a vehicle that was occupied by a fourteen-year old boy. The trial court sentenced Walls as a habitual felony offender *812 to twelve years in prison, with seven years suspended. The court also sentenced Walls to two years community control and five years probation. As a special condition of Walls's community control and probation, the court prohibited Walls from using or possessing alcoholic beverages or any controlled substances and required him to maintain full-time employment of at least thirty-five hours per week. Walls did not object to his sentence.

¶6A defendant does not need to object to a sentence when the sentence is illegal or otherwise "so egregious as to be the equivalent of fundamental error." Larson v. State,572 So.2d 1368, 1370-71 (Fla. 1991). The trial court's requirement that Walls maintain full-time employment is sufficiently egregious to be the equivalent of fundamental error. Factors beyond Walls's control, for example, the poor economy, may prevent him from satisfying that element of his probation. As such, the trial court erred in placing the full-time employment requirement on Walls. The court should have instead ordered Walls to maintain or actively seek gainful employment. Boudreaux v. State,578 So.2d 457, 458 (Fla. 1st DCA 1991); Cowan v. State,527 So.2d 305, 305 (Fla. 1st DCA 1988).

¶7This court notes that Walls's written sentence does not conform to the trial court's oral pronouncement of judgment and sentence. Walls's written sentence does not include the special conditions of his period of community control and probation. A written sentence must conform to the oral pronouncements of judgment and sentence. E.g., Kord v. State,508 So.2d 758, 758 (Fla. 4th DCA 1987). Because Walls's written sentence does not conform to the trial court's oral pronouncements, on remand the trial court is instructed to amend Walls's written sentence not only to include a statement that he maintain or actively seek gainful employment, but that he not use or possess alcoholic beverages or any controlled substances during his period of community control and probation.

¶8AFFIRMED IN PART; REVERSED IN PART, AND REMANDED WITH INSTRUCTIONS.

¶9DOWNEY and GARRETT, JJ., and OWEN, WILLIAM C., Jr., Senior Judge, concur.

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