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616 So. 2d 992

Docket No. 80367.

Gipson v. State

Charles Howard GIPSON, Petitioner, v. STATE of Florida, Respondent.

Supreme Court of Florida

Decided April 15, 1993.

Supreme Court of Florida · decided 1993-04-15

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“sentence imposed under [the habitual offender statute] shall not be subject to the provisions of s. 921.001 [the sentencing guidelines],”

quoted by 1 later decision, including State v. Matthews

Relies on 593 So. 2d 557 - Wood v. State · Boomer v. State · In the Interest of R.M. v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1993-04-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently November 2011

10 state decisions

50199320002010decided

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 →

¶1*993 James Marion Moorman, Public Defender, and Cecilia A. Traina, Asst. Public Defender, Bartow, for petitioner.

¶2Robert A. Butterworth, Atty. Gen., and Katherine V. Blanco, Asst. Atty. Gen., Tampa, for respondent.

¶3SHAW, Justice.

¶4We have for review Gipson v. State,603 So.2d 64 (Fla.2d DCA 1992), which relied on Boomer v. State,596 So.2d 730 (Fla.2d DCA 1992). We have jurisdiction. Art V, § 3(b)(3), Fla. Const. We approve Gipson.

¶5Gipson was convicted of numerous drugrelated crimes and sentenced to two concurrent guidelines maximum sentences to be served consecutively with his several habitual felony offender terms, which were in turn imposed consecutively. The district court affirmed in a one-sentence opinion, citing to Boomer, wherein the second district ruled that a guidelines maximum sentence ordered to be served consecutively with a capital sentence does not constitute a departure requiring written justification. The court in Gipson cited as conflicting authority Wood v. State,593 So.2d 557 (Fla. 5th DCA 1992), a fifth district case wherein the court ruled that a guidelines maximum sentence imposed consecutively with an habitual offender sentence constitutes a departure.

¶6Subsequent to issuance of Gipson, this Court approved Boomer, reasoning that because capital felonies are excluded from the sentencing guidelines scheme they are not subject to guidelines restrictions including the one barring imposition of consecutive maximum terms. See Boomer v. State,616 So.2d 991 (Fla. 1993). We note that habitual offender sentences are similarly excluded from the guidelines scheme:

A sentence imposed under this [habitual offender] section shall not be subject to the provisions of s. 921.001 [the sentencing guidelines].

¶7Section 775.084(4)(e), Fla. Stat. (1991). Accordingly, we hold that where a court imposes a guidelines maximum sentence to be served consecutively with an habitual offender sentence the resulting term does not constitute a guidelines departure requiring written justification.

¶8Based on the foregoing, we approve Gipson and disapprove Wood.

¶9It is so ordered.

¶10BARKETT, C.J., and OVERTON, McDONALD, GRIMES, KOGAN and HARDING, JJ., concur.

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