### D ISTRICT 

### C OURT 

### O F 

### A PPEAL 

### O F 

### T HE 

### S TATE 

### O F 

### F LORIDA

F OURTH D ISTRICT

CEDRIC DENNARD
, Appellant,

v.

STATE OF FLORIDA
, Appellee

.

No. 4D 13

- 3610

[ January 21, 2015 ]

Appeal of order denying rule 3.800 motion from the Circuit Court for

the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit, Palm Beach County ; Karen Miller , Judge;

L.T. Case No. 2000CF3809AXXXMB

.

Cedric Dennard, Clermont, pro se.

Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Allen R. Geesey, Assistant Attorney General, West Palm Beach, for appellee.

O N M OTION FOR C

ERTIFICATION

P ER C URIAM

.

We deny appellant’s motion for certification

.

L EVINE and C ONNER
, JJ., concur

. W ARNER
, J., dissents with opinion.

W ARNER , J., dissenting with opinion

.

The appellant has moved to certify questions to the supreme court as questions of great public importance. I think the majority wrongly applies the “no manifest injustice” exception in State v. McBride , 848 So. 2d 287

, 291

- 92 (Fla. 2003), to this case, wh ere all the sentences are illegal. It also

conflicts with Cooper v. State

, 960 So. 2d 849 , 851 (Fla. 1 st DCA 2007) ( holding t he fact that a court could have impose d consecutive sentence s to impose the same overall sentence does not cure an illegal sentenc e, which requir es resentencing). Therefore I would certify the following question:2 W HERE THE DEFENDANT IS SERVING NO LEGAL SENTENCE, CAN A COURT DENY CORRECTION OF AN

ILLEGAL SENTENCE ON THE GROUNDS THAT NO MANIFEST INJUSTICE OCCURS, BECAUSE THE COURT ON

RESENTENCING COULD STRUCTURE A LEGAL SENTENCE

OF THE SAME LENGTH?

Despite the refusal to certify a question, I would argue that the majority opinion actually conflicts with McBride . In McBride

, the court reviewed the

sentence to determine whether a manif est injustice has occurred “ that can be determined from the face of the record.” 848 So. 2d at 292 (emphasis supplied) . In McBride

, there was no manifest injustice because the defendant was serving another legal sentence, a fact that appeared on the

face of the record. Here, the record only shows that the appellant is serving illegal sentences. Therefore, on the record, there is a manifest injustice.

The reason why the courts must correct illegal sentences at any time is best put by Justice Pariente i n her concurrence in McBride :

As we noted in Maddox [ v. State , 760 So. 2d 89 (Fla. 2000) ]

, “[t]he extraordinary provision made for remedying illegal sentences evidences the utmost importance of correcting such errors, even at the expense of legal principles that might preclude relief from trial court errors of less consequence.”

760 S o. 2d at 101. We recognized that “clearly the class of errors that constitute an ‘illegal’ sentence that can be raised for the first time in a postconviction motion decades after a

sentence becomes final is a narrower class of errors than
those termed ‘fundamenta l’ errors that can be raised on direct appeal even though unpreserved.” Id . at 100 n. 8. We
observed in Maddox that the State recognizes that it “has no interest in any defendant serving a sentence that is longer than the sentence authorized by law.” Id . at 99. Indeed, the entire justice system certainly has an interest in ensuring that the defendant is not incarcerated longer than is authorized by law, or under illegal terms

. The courts have an obligation to correct any such error whenever it is broug ht to their attention

.

Id . at 293

- 94 ( e mphasis supplied). Appellant’s sentences should have been corrected, and we should certify this issue to the supreme court.

* * *