Case Name: Junior ROBINSON, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee
Court: Florida District Court of Appeal
Jurisdiction: Florida
Decision Date: 1979-03-16
Citations: 368 So. 2d 638
Docket Number: No. 78-1652
Parties: Junior ROBINSON, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
Judges: HOBSON, J., concurs.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 368
Pages: 638–640

Head Matter:
Junior ROBINSON, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
No. 78-1652.
District Court of Appeal of Florida, Second District.
March 16, 1979.
Jack 0. Johnson, Public Defender, W. C. McLain, Asst. Public Defender, and David A. Davis, Legal Intern, Bartow, for appellant.
Jim Smith, Atty. Gen., Tallahassee, and Charles Corees, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., Tampa, for appellee.

Opinion:
GRIMES, Chief Judge.
The appellant was sentenced to five years upon conviction of the offense of carrying a concealed firearm. In this appeal he contests the court's reservation of jurisdiction over a portion of his sentence under Section 947.16(3), Florida Statutes (Supp.1978).
The portion of that statute pertinent to this appeal reads as follows:
(3) Persons who have become eligible for parole and who may, according to the objective parole guidelines of the commission, be granted parole shall be placed on parole in accordance with the provisions of this law; except that, in any case of a person convicted of murder, robbery, aggravated assault, aggravated battery, kidnapping, sexual battery, arson, or any felony involving the use of a firearm or other deadly weapon or the use of intentional violence, at the time of sentencing the judge may enter an order retaining jurisdiction over the offender for review of a commission release order. This jurisdiction of the trial court judge is limited to the first third of the maximum sentence imposed.
The question before us is whether carrying a concealed firearm is a felony "involving the use of a firearm."
Some good semantical arguments concerning the word "use" are made by both sides. The appellant also argues that because the statute is penal in nature, it must be strictly construed. Dotty v. State, 197 So.2d 315 (Fla. 4th DCA 1967). In the final analysis, a study of the enumerated crimes which bring the statute into play leads us to believe that the legislature contemplated that the firearm or other deadly weapon was to have been employed in some manner in connection with the felony before the court would be authorized to retain jurisdiction over the defendant's sentence.
Our conclusion is fortified by Section 775.087, Florida Statutes (1977), which reclassifies felonies upward when a firearm is involved. In that section, the felonies in question are those in which "the defendant carries, displays, uses, threatens, or attempts to use" a firearm. If, in Section 775.087, the terms "uses" and "carries" have different meanings, then it should follow that the legislature also conceived of those terms as different when it enacted Section 947.16(3), and thus did not intend for that section to apply to a carrying offense.
The judgment is affirmed, but the retention of jurisdiction over the sentence pursuant to Section 947.16(3) is hereby stricken.
HOBSON, J., concurs.
BOARDMAN, J., dissents with opinion.