Court Opinion

ID: 9957778
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-04-05 14:04:40.668999+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:18:38.834463
License: Public Domain

FIFTH DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL
                STATE OF FLORIDA
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                      Case No. 5D23-3421
                  LT Case No. 2023-32254-CICI
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JONATHAN TRAMMELL,

    Appellant,

    v.

STATE OF FLORIDA,

    Appellee.
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On appeal from the Circuit Court for Volusia County.
Mary G. Jolley, Judge.

Jonathan Trammell, Daytona Beach, pro se.

Ashley Moody, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Whitney
Brown Hartless, Assistant Attorney General, Daytona Beach, for
Appellee.

                           April 5, 2024

PER CURIAM.

     Jonathan Trammell appeals the circuit court’s dismissal of his
petition for writ of habeas corpus. We affirm.

     Trammell was tried and convicted in the Sixth Judicial
Circuit Court, Pinellas County, of lewd or lascivious molestation of
a child under the age of twelve and was sentenced by the trial court
to serve life in prison. Trammell’s direct appeal of his conviction
and sentence was affirmed by the Second District Court of Appeal
without opinion. Trammell v. State, 181 So. 3d 495 (Fla. 2d DCA
2015).

     Trammell is currently serving his sentence at the Tomoka
Correctional Institution located in Volusia County. In August
2023, he filed the subject petition for writ of habeas corpus in the
Seventh Judicial Circuit Court, Volusia County. Trammell’s
petition requested that his sentence be vacated and that he be
resentenced before a different judge. He argued that his due
process rights had been violated during sentencing because the
trial judge allegedly considered impermissible factors when
imposing sentence, made factual findings not determined by the
jury, and sentenced him more harshly based on the judge’s alleged
own personal bias against the type of crime for which Trammell
was convicted.

     In dismissing Trammell’s petition, the circuit judge in Volusia
County, citing Gisi v. State, 119 So. 3d 534, 535 (Fla. 5th DCA
2013), found that because Trammell’s petition raised claims solely
related to the trial court proceedings, and not related to an issue
regarding his incarceration in Volusia County, it lacked
jurisdiction to consider the petition. The circuit judge is correct.

    In Gisi, we wrote:
       The circuit court of the county in which a defendant
       is incarcerated has jurisdiction to consider a petition
       for writ of habeas corpus when the petition involves
       an issue regarding the prisoner’s incarceration.
       Johnson v. State, 947 So. 2d 1192, 1192–93 (Fla. 3d
       DCA 2007). However, a habeas petition attacking
       the validity of a conviction and asserting issues
       related to the trial court proceedings, must be
       brought in the circuit court of the county that
       rendered the judgment of conviction. Galloway v.
       State, 931 So. 2d 136, 136–37 (Fla. 5th DCA 2006).
       Because Gisi’s petition attacks his conviction, the
       proper court is the Circuit Court of Pinellas County.
Id. at 535.

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      Accordingly, we affirm the order of dismissal. 1

      AFFIRMED.

EDWARDS, C.J., LAMBERT and JAY, JJ., concur.

    1 We take no position as to the merits of Trammell’s habeas

corpus petition. We take further note that Trammell represented
in his instant petition filed below that he had previously filed the
subject petition raising the same claims in the circuit court of the
county (Pinellas) that rendered the judgment of conviction, which,
under our decision in Gisi, was the proper court to consider the
petition. Nevertheless, according to Trammell, the circuit court in
Pinellas County dismissed his petition for lack of jurisdiction
because Trammell was incarcerated in Volusia County. Trammell
further advised that in his appeal of this order, the Second District
Court of Appeal affirmed the dismissal order without opinion.
Trammell v. State, 369 So. 3d 1155 (Fla. 2d DCA 2023).

     We do not know what may have been argued by Trammell to
our sister court in that appeal; nor, for that matter, do we know if
the postconviction court in Pinellas County dismissed Trammell’s
petition on alternate or additional grounds upon which the Second
District Court based its PCA. See, e.g., Richardson v. State, 918
So. 2d 999, 1003–04 (Fla. 5th DCA 2006) (holding that dismissal of
a habeas corpus petition is the appropriate disposition when the
petition seeks to obtain collateral relief regarding claims that could
or should have been raised in the direct appeal of the judgment
and sentence). Whether Trammell may now see himself in a
proverbial “catch 22” dilemma, any further effort to challenge his
conviction or sentence does not lie within the jurisdiction of our
court, nor of the circuit courts located within our appellate
jurisdiction.

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