Court Opinion

ID: 9952653
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-03-20 15:03:35.159008+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:42:04.834176
License: Public Domain

FIRST DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL
                 STATE OF FLORIDA
                  _____________________________

                         No. 1D2023-2300
                  _____________________________

CHARLES LITTON MORRIS,

    Petitioner,

    v.

STATE OF FLORIDA,

    Respondent.
                  _____________________________

Petition for Writ of Mandamus—Original Jurisdiction.

                         March 20, 2024

TANENBAUM, J.

     In the early part of last year (January 2023), Charles Morris
pleaded no contest to felony charges of driving under the influence
(fourth offense) and driving while his license was permanently
revoked, plus several misdemeanors. The trial court adjudicated
him guilty and sentenced him to just over thirty months in prison
on the felony convictions and some concurrent jail time for the
misdemeanors. He did not appeal.

     Instead, two months after his adjudication, he filed a lengthy,
seven-claim, hand-written motion under Florida Rule of Criminal
Procedure 3.850, seeking to vacate his convictions and sentence.
The motion included claims that the statutes under which he was
convicted were unconstitutional; there was no probable cause for
his arrest; he did not receive competent counsel; and there was an
error in his scoresheet. Mr. Morris obviously had time on his hands
to stew about his admitted crimes, so when he did not receive an
order on his motion within forty-five days, he filed a “notice of
inquiry.” Still antsy in the middle of summer, he filed a “motion to
hear and rule,” but only regarding his sixth claim—the putatively
erroneous scoresheet. About forty-five days after that (bringing us
to September 2023), he filed the present petition with this court,
seeking a writ to compel the trial court to rule on his post-
conviction motion. By the beginning of November, the trial court
had done just that: It dismissed the motion for facial deficiencies
and gave Mr. Morris sixty days to file an amended post-conviction
motion. See Fla. R. Crim. P. 3.850(f)(2) (“If the motion is
insufficient on its face, and the motion is timely filed under this
rule, the court shall enter a nonfinal, nonappealable order allowing
the defendant 60 days to amend the motion.”).

     A few weeks later, Mr. Morris filed both an amended motion
and an emergency motion to expedite a ruling on his sentencing
scoresheet claim. A couple weeks after that, Mr. Morris filed a
supplement to that motion. One week later, he filed another notice
of inquiry. Then, at the end of January 2024, he filed, in the same
underlying case, a petition for writ of habeas corpus—again,
making noise about a claimed error in his sentencing scoresheet.
Another notice of inquiry followed two weeks later, and Mr. Morris
now has asked us to retain his petition and apply it to his effort to
get a ruling on his amended post-conviction motion.

     We decline. Under the circumstances laid out here, Mr. Morris
fails to state a clear legal right to a ruling on the timeline he
attempts to establish for the trial court. In fact, Mr. Morris,
unfortunately, soon will learn that the sentencing scoresheet
claim—which he is spending the most time needling the trial court
about—is procedurally barred as an issue he could have raised on
direct appeal (which he chose not to take). His petition is both
baseless and moot. We dismiss. See State ex rel. Davis v. Milledge,
88 So. 2d 909, 909 (Fla. 1956) (dismissing mandamus proceeding
because question raised in petition became moot); see also Barrs v.
Peacock, 61 So. 118, 118 (Fla. 1913) (explaining that a court may
dismiss an appeal on its own motion if it appears that “under no
circumstances can th[e] relief prayed be made effective”); Godwin
v. State, 593 So. 2d 211, 212 (Fla. 1992) (“A case is ‘moot’ when it

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presents no actual controversy or when the issues have ceased to
exist. A moot case generally will be dismissed.”).

     Mr. Morris should take this opinion also as an early warning
that there can be consequences if he engages in the same course of
frivolous filings with this court regarding his pleaded-to
convictions and his sentence—again, notably, from which he took
no appeal. See § 944.279(1), Fla. Stat. (“A prisoner who is found by
a court to have brought a frivolous or malicious suit, action, claim,
proceeding, or appeal . . . or to have brought a frivolous or malicious
collateral criminal proceeding . . . is subject to disciplinary
procedures pursuant to the rules of the Department of
Corrections.”).

    DISMISSED.

B.L. THOMAS, J., concurs; LEWIS, J., concurs in result only.
                 _____________________________

    Not final until disposition of any timely and
    authorized motion under Fla. R. App. P. 9.330 or
    9.331.
               _____________________________

Charles Litton Morris, pro se, Petitioner.

Ashley Moody, Attorney General, and Trisha Meggs Pate, Bureau
Chief, Tallahassee, for Respondent.

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