Court Opinion

ID: 9840832
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-20 15:06:16.060833+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:24:07.102640
License: Public Domain

DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF FLORIDA
                       SECOND DISTRICT

                         DARRYL C. DANIELS,

                               Appellant,

                                   v.

                          STATE OF FLORIDA,

                                Appellee.

                             No. 2D21-2737

                          September 20, 2023

Appeal from the Circuit Court for DeSoto County; Don T. Hall, Judge.

Howard L. Dimmig, II, Public Defender, and Karen Kinney, Assistant
Public Defender, Bartow, for Appellant.

Ashley Moody, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Cerese Crawford
Taylor, Assistant Attorney General, Tampa, for Appellee.

NORTHCUTT, Judge.

     The circuit court contemporaneously entered criminal judgments
and sentences against Darryl Daniels in five different cases—
denominated 19-CF-323, 19-CF-403, 20-CF-241, 20-CF-266, and 20-CF-
551—pursuant to a negotiated plea agreement. Daniels has appealed
them. We affirm the judgments without further comment. However, we
reverse and remand the sentences because the court erred by failing to
credit all of Daniels's jail time that was orally pronounced at his plea and
sentencing hearing.
     Daniels incurred the five charges at issue while he was
incarcerated for other unrelated convictions. The first new charge arose
when Daniels was confined at the Florida Civil Commitment Center.
After Daniels was sent to the DeSoto County Jail to await a disposition of
that charge, he accumulated four more charges. Between Daniels's
arrival at the DeSoto County Jail and the date of his sentencing for all
five cases, 797 days elapsed.
     Daniels pleaded nolo contendere in exchange for negotiated
sentences in all five cases. During Daniels's plea and sentencing hearing
for the five cases, defense counsel advised that Daniels had "over 700
days" in jail credit attributable to the charges. In an exchange on the
record, counsel assured Daniels, and the court announced, that he was
to receive all of this jail credit. However, the written sentencing
documents did not award Daniels the 797 days of jail credit for all cases
as pronounced at his hearing. Instead, the sentencing documents listed
varying awards of jail credit based on different arrest dates.
     During his direct appeal, Daniels filed a motion under Florida Rule
of Criminal Procedure 3.800(b)(2) to correct sentencing error and
preserved the jail credit issue for appeal. See Bustos v. State, 351 So. 3d
180, 180-81 (Fla. 2d DCA 2022) (holding that a discrepancy between the
oral pronouncement and the written sentence makes the current
sentence illegal and thus falls under the scope of a rule 3.800(b)(2)
motion to correct sentencing error). The circuit court denied Daniels's
motion.
     When a written sentence conflicts with the sentencing court's oral
pronouncement, the oral pronouncement controls. Ashley v. State, 850

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So. 2d 1265, 1268 (Fla. 2003) (noting the "longstanding principle of law-
that a court's oral pronouncement of sentence controls over the written
document"); see also, e.g., Tillman v. State, 346 So. 3d 728, 730 (Fla. 2d
DCA 2022) (holding the court's oral pronouncement that defendant
would receive jail credit for time served controls over written sentences
that did not indicate an award of jail time).
          In this case, the court orally pronounced that Daniels would receive
credit for all the time he spent in the DeSoto County Jail. But the
written sentences that followed gave Daniels credit for only a portion of
that time, and they must be corrected. See Tillman, 346 So. 3d at 730
(collecting cases supporting the proposition that "while [defendant] was
not entitled to jail credit . . . the trial court nonetheless had the
discretion to award it"); Doland v. State, 310 So. 3d 1051, 1053 (Fla. 2d
DCA 2020) ("The State concedes that Doland's plea agreement clearly
stated that he was to receive jail credit on each of the first four counts
and that he was sentenced accordingly. Thus, DOC's reduction of
Doland's jail credit was contrary to his sentence and was
unauthorized."); Sylvester v. State, 842 So. 2d 977, 979 (Fla. 2d DCA
2003) (defendant was entitled to the 369 days of jail credit negotiated in
the plea agreement and trial court erred by reducing the award to the
actual time served); Barbesco v. State, 264 So. 3d 338, 340 (Fla. 1st DCA
2019) (trial court was required to award jail credit which was a condition
of a plea agreement, regardless of whether defendant was legally entitled
to it).
          We reverse and remand for the entry of amended sentences that
provide Daniels with 797 days of credit in all five cases to reflect the total
time he served in the DeSoto County Jail.
          Affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded.

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SLEET, C.J., and KELLY, J., Concur.

Opinion subject to revision prior to official publication.

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