Opinion ID: 1143104
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: preserving ree on appeal

Text: We held in Ree v. State, 565 So.2d 1329 (Fla. 1990), that [prior cases] compel us to ... require that written reasons [for guidelines departure] be issued at the time of sentencing. This holding, however, shall only be applied prospectively. Id. at 1331. Two years later, in Smith v. State, 598 So.2d 1063 (Fla. 1992), we opened a narrow window for pipeline cases: [W]e now hold that Ree shall apply to all cases not yet final when mandate issued after rehearing in Ree. Davis falls in the Smith window, as did the defendant in State v. Brown, 655 So.2d 82 (Fla. 1995). We recently held in Brown that Brown's Ree violation could be raised via post-conviction motion. The only real distinction between Davis and Brown is that Brown noted the Ree issue on appeal while Davis did not. The majority opinion turns on this distinction and denies relief to Davis because of it. The majority relies on Blair v. State, 598 So.2d 1068 (Fla. 1992), wherein we observed in dicta: [I]n Smith v. State, this Court explained that Ree's reference to prospectivity included its application to all cases not yet final where the issue was raised. Blair, 598 So.2d at 1069 (emphasis added). A close reading of Smith, however, reveals that the where the issue was raised requirement did not come from Smith at all. We eschewed this requirement in Smith for good reason, as explained below. Our decision in Smith was not limited to the retrospective application of Ree. Rather, we held that every decision of this Court announcing a new rule of law must be given retrospective application in all pipeline cases. Following Smith whenever this Court announced a new rule of law, defendants in pipeline cases would have an opportunity to amend their appeals to benefit from the new law. One small group of defendants affected by Smith would be unable to do this: the very subjects of the Smith case  those defendants, like Davis, with Ree-type errors who fell in the Smith window. Most of their cases were long since final when the Smith window was announced. These defendants would be unable to amend their appeals to address the Ree issue not through any fault of their own but rather because this Court had taken two years to correct the pipeline issue in Ree. [4]