Opinion ID: 1727284
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: consideration of fundamental sentencing errors on direct appeal in light of the act

Text: The primary sections of the Act that are at issue in this case provide that: (3) An appeal may not be taken from a judgment or order of a trial court unless a prejudicial error is alleged and is properly preserved or, if not properly preserved, would constitute fundamental error. A judgment or sentence may be reversed on appeal only when an appellate court determines after a review of the complete record that prejudicial error occurred and was properly preserved in the trial court or, if not properly preserved, would constitute fundamental error. (4) If a defendant pleads nolo contendere without expressly reserving the right to appeal a legally dispositive issue, or if a defendant pleads guilty without expressly reserving the right to appeal a legally dispositive issue, the defendant may not appeal the judgment or sentence. § 924.051(3)-(4). The goal of the 1996 enactment of the Criminal Appeal Reform Act was to ensure that all claims of error are raised and resolved at the first opportunity. § 924.051(8). This goal is consistent with the policy of this Court that sentencing errors should be handled by the trial courts at the earliest opportunity rather than on appeal or in the postconviction process. See Amendments II, 761 So.2d at 1025-27. Section 924.051(3) specifically gives defendants the right to raise, and appellate courts the authority to correct, fundamental error. The Act neither defines fundamental error nor differentiates between trial and sentencing error. It is certainly reasonable to assume that, rather than attempting to alter the definition of fundamental error as it evolved through case law, the Legislature intentionally deferred to the judicially created definition of fundamental error. See Bain, 730 So.2d at 301; see also State v. Mitro, 700 So.2d 643, 645 (Fla.1997) (stating that where a term is not defined by statute, the courts may resort to the previous case law definition in order to determine the plain meaning of the term). As Judge Altenbernd observed, In its narrowest functional definition, `fundamental error' describes an error that can be remedied on direct appeal, even though the appellant made no contemporaneous objection in the trial court and, thus, the trial judge had no opportunity to correct the error. Judge v. State, 596 So.2d 73, 79 n. 3 (Fla. 2d DCA 1991). This Court's previous definitions of fundamental error generally describe error that occurred at trial. For example, the Court has described fundamental error as error that goes to the foundation of the case or the merits of the cause of action. J.B. v. State, 705 So.2d 1376, 1378 (Fla.1998); see State v. Smith, 240 So.2d 807, 810-11 (Fla. 1970); see also Gudinas v. State, 693 So.2d 953, 961 (Fla.1997) (Fundamental error is `error which reaches down into the validity of the trial itself to the extent that a verdict of guilty could not have been obtained without the assistance of the alleged error.') (quoting Archer v. State, 673 So.2d 17, 20 (Fla.1996), which was quoting State v. Delva, 575 So.2d 643, 644-45 (Fla. 1991)). This Court has also defined fundamental error as one where the interests of justice present a compelling demand for its application. Sochor v. State, 619 So.2d 285, 290 (Fla.1993) (quoting Ray v. State, 403 So.2d 956, 960 (Fla.1981)); see Smith v. State, 521 So.2d 106, 108 (Fla.1988). Although most of this Court's definitions of fundamental error describe trial error, this Court has at times referred to unpreserved errors in the sentencing context as fundamental and corrected them on direct appeal. See State v. Johnson, 616 So.2d 1, 3 (Fla.1993); Wood v. State, 544 So.2d 1004 (Fla.1989). In Johnson, for instance, we found that the defendant's claim that the habitual offender statute violated the single subject requirement constituted fundamental error. 616 So.2d at 3-4. In reaching this conclusion, we noted that to be fundamental the error must be basic to the judicial decision under review. Id. at 3. We concluded that because the statute affect[ed] a quantifiable determinant of the length of sentence that may be imposed on a defendant, it involved fundamental `liberty' due process interests. Id. We recently reaffirmed this principle with regard to a claim that the session law enacting sentencing guidelines violated the single-subject requirement. See Heggs v. State, 759 So.2d 620, 623 (Fla.2000) (citing Johnson, 616 So.2d at 2). We have also used the term fundamental to address the imposition of costs without statutorily required notice as resulting in a denial of procedural due process, even though this error does not affect the length of the defendant's sentence or a liberty interest. See Wood, 544 So.2d at 1006. Although the entry of a guilty plea foreclosed the defendant's ability to appeal events occurring before the entry of the plea other than a claim that the trial court lacked subject matter jurisdiction, see Robinson v. State, 373 So.2d 898, 902-03 (Fla. 1979), [5] the willingness of the appellate courts to correct unpreserved sentencing errors as fundamental extended to errors that occurred following a guilty plea. See Wood, 544 So.2d at 1005-06; see also Larson v. State, 572 So.2d 1368, 1371 (Fla. 1991) (examining alleged error in condition of probation of defendant who pleaded guilty to determine whether it constituted fundamental error). For example, the defendant in Wood had pleaded guilty, but we found that the imposition of costs without the statutorily required notice was a fundamental sentencing error that violated due process. 544 So.2d at 1005-06. We thus conclude that section 924.051(3) of the Act specifically recognizes the ability of defendants to raise fundamental sentencing errors on direct appeal. We likewise find that the language of section 924.051(4), concerning the right to appeal following the entry of a plea of guilty or nolo contendere, does not preclude this Court from considering on appeal fundamental sentencing errors. In Amendments I, we found that under section 924.051(4), the principle of Robinson controls and defendants must have the right to appeal that limited class of issues described in Robinson.  Amendments I, 696 So.2d at 1105. Accordingly, defendants who entered a plea of guilty or nolo contendere without expressly reserving an issue for appellate review may nonetheless raise sentencing errors on direct appeal as recognized in Robinson. [6] We next examine whether this Court's procedural rules preclude the consideration of all unpreserved sentencing errors on appeal, no matter the nature of the error or its seriousness. In concluding that unpreserved sentencing errors should no longer be considered on direct appeal, the Fifth District in Maddox relied upon this Court's promulgation of procedural rules that both provide a mechanism for preservation of sentencing errors following the hearing and require that sentencing errors be preserved for review. See Fla. R.Crim. P. 3.800(b); Fla. R.App. P. 9.140(b)(2)(B), 9.140(d). [7] We acknowledge that rule 9.140(d) requires that sentencing errors be preserved, either through a contemporaneous objection or the filing of a motion pursuant to Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.800(b). We adopted both of these rules in 1996 in response to the passage of the Act. See Amendments I, 696 So.2d at 1105, 1131. In adopting these rules, we anticipated that we would further the goal of the Act by giving defendants an appropriate mechanism for correcting and preserving sentencing errors. However, as we discussed extensively in Amendments II, this goal was not realized because the procedural mechanism provided by rule 3.800(b) did not function as we envisioned. 761 So.2d at 1017. Because section 924.051 allows fundamental error to be raised on appeal, if we were to mechanically apply rule 9.140(d) to bar consideration of any sentencing errors in the window period, no matter how serious the error was, we would obviously frustrate, rather than recognize the Legislature's intent in adopting the Act. Nelson, 719 So.2d at 1233. As the Second District pointed out in Bain, [T]he question of whether an error is fundamental has never turned on the existence vel non of a mechanism for correcting it in the lower court. 730 So.2d at 302. Further, and importantly, we recognized in Amendments II that rule 3.800(b) as it was originally promulgated fell far short of the goal of providing a `failsafe' method for defendants to seek to have sentencing errors corrected in the trial court and thereby preserve them for appellate review. 761 So.2d at 1017. Thus, the failure of rule 3.800(b) to provide a failsafe method for defendants to raise and preserve sentencing errors, see id., is a major consideration in our decision not to give literal effect to rule 9.140(d) during the window period. The reason that courts correct error as fundamental despite the failure of the parties to adhere to procedural rules requiring preservation is not to protect the interests of a particular aggrieved party, but rather to protect the interests of justice itself. See Bain, 730 So.2d at 302. Thus, we conclude that for those defendants who did not have the benefit of our recently promulgated amendment to rule 3.800(b) in Amendments II, during this window period the appellate courts should continue to correct unpreserved sentencing errors that constitute fundamental error. To hold otherwise would neither advance judicial efficiency nor further the interests of justice. However, for those defendants who had available the procedural mechanism of our recently amended rule 3.800(b), we anticipate that the interests of justice should be served by the ability of appellate counsel to first raise the issue in the trial court prior to filing the first appellate brief.