Court Opinion

ID: 9958895
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-04-10 14:03:27.557185+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:17:55.554593
License: Public Domain

FIRST DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL
                 STATE OF FLORIDA
                  _____________________________

                         No. 1D2023-1527
                  _____________________________

DALE E. FOLSOM,

    Appellant,

    v.

STATE OF FLORIDA,

    Appellee.
                  _____________________________

On appeal from the Circuit Court for Leon County.
Francis J. Allman, Jr., Judge.

                           April 10, 2023

TANENBAUM, J.

     In September 2021, Dale Folsom entered an open plea of no
contest to, among other crimes, trafficking in methamphetamines.
For Folsom’s cooperation with the State, the trial court departed
significantly downward and sentenced him to eight years in prison
on the trafficking offense, followed by ten years of probation. Of
those ten years of probation, the first five years were to be “felony
drug offender probation,” and the next five were to be “regular
probation.” Folsom did not appeal. Later, however, he filed a
motion with the trial court that asserted the drug-offender
probation was illegal because it was not authorized by section
948.20, Florida Statutes (2021), for an offense as serious as his.
The trial court denied that motion, and we have that denial before
us on appeal.
     According to Folsom’s motion, he had over 300 points on his
sentencing scoresheet, making him ineligible for the drug-offender
probation under the statute. Cf. § 948.20(1), Fla. Stat. (stating that
the trial court may “stay and withhold the imposition of sentence
and place the defendant on drug offender probation or into a
postadjudicatory treatment-based drug court program” if the trial
court determines “that the defendant is a chronic substance abuser
whose criminal conduct is a violation of s. 893.13(2)(a) or (6)(a), or
other nonviolent felony . . . and . . . the defendant’s Criminal
Punishment Code scoresheet total sentence points are 60 points or
fewer”). In his initial brief, Folsom relies on a decision from the
Fifth District Court of Appeal to support his request to vacate the
trial court’s order. See State v. Winbush, 121 So. 3d 1165, 1166
(Fla. 5th DCA 2013) (“Because he scored more than 60 points on
his sentencing scoresheet and he was not convicted of an offense
specifically referenced in the drug offender probation statute,
Winbush was ineligible to receive drug offender probation.”). We
reject his position.

      The essence of Folsom’s argument is not that the trial court
did not have the authority to impose probation. (Notably, he does
not challenge the next five years of “regular probation.”) His
disagreement is with the special conditions of the first five years
of probation. For the probation he challenges to be cognizable as
“illegal” under Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.800(a), it
must constitute punishment “that no judge under the entire body
of sentencing statutes could possibly inflict under any set of factual
circumstances.” Carter v. State, 786 So. 2d 1173, 1181 (Fla. 2001).
Section 948.20(1) is permissive: Under the stated circumstances,
the trial court may impose drug-offender probation in lieu of a
sentence of incarceration. In Folsom’s case, the trial court did not
substitute drug offender probation for a prison sentence. Instead,
it imposed a prison sentence followed by probation. Cf. Poore v.
State, 531 So. 2d 161, 164 (Fla. 1988) (approving as “one of five
basic sentencing alternatives in Florida . . . a ‘probationary split
sentence’ consisting of a period of confinement, none of which is
suspended, followed by a period of probation”).

    Section 948.03(1), Florida Statutes, gives the trial court the
authority to “determine the terms and conditions of probation.”
That subsection enumerates a variety of standard conditions, but

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that “enumeration . . . does not prevent the court from adding
thereto such other or others as it considers proper.” Id. (2). Indeed,
the trial court “may determine any special terms and conditions of
probation or community control.” § 948.039, Fla. Stat. There is
nothing in the law that prevented the trial court from including
the terms and conditions of drug-offender probation as part of
Folsom’s overall probation. On its face, then, Folsom’s rule 3.800(a)
motion failed to state a basis for relief.

     The only challenge Folsom conceivably could make regarding
the special terms and conditions is that they are not “reasonably
related to the circumstances of the offense committed and
appropriate for the offender” or that the court failed to set them
out as part of an “oral pronouncement at sentencing and include
the terms and conditions in the written sentencing order.”
§ 948.039, Fla. Stat. That type of challenge, however, is not one
that goes to the legality of the sentence itself—that is, a legal
deficiency in the sentence so fundamental that the supreme court
has provided a rule permitting the deficiency to be raised at any
time. Instead, it is a challenge to the sentencing process or to the
order that resulted from that process. Cf. Jackson v. State, 983 So.
2d 562, 572 (Fla. 2008) (describing rule 3.800(b) as being available
to correct “sentencing errors”—“those apparent in orders entered
as a result of the sentencing process”); id. at 574 (acknowledging
that rule 3.800(b) “encompasses any claim that could be raised
under rule 3.800(a)” but explaining that subdivision (b) “is not
limited to errors resulting in an ‘illegal’ sentence” and “[t]here are
‘sentencing errors’ to which the defendant may have had an
opportunity to object that do not result in an ‘illegal’ sentence or a
sentence otherwise subject to correction under rule 3.800(a)”).

    Because the error that Folsom claimed in his motion was not
cognizable under rule 3.800(a), the record before us “shows
conclusively that [Folsom] is entitled to no relief.” Fla. R. App. P.
9.141(b)(2)(D). We have no need for an answer brief to help us
reach this determination. Cf. id. (2)(C)(i) (stating that the

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“appellee need not file an answer brief unless directed by the
court”). The trial court was correct to deny the motion. *

    AFFIRMED.

LONG, J., concurs; BILBREY, J., dissents with opinion.
                 _____________________________

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

BILBREY, J., dissenting.

     Appellant was convicted of various crimes including
trafficking in methamphetamine in violation of section 893.135,
Florida Statutes (2018). On the trafficking count, Appellant was
sentenced to eight years in prison followed by five years of drug
offender probation and then five years standard probation.

     Appellant filed a timely motion to correct this sentence
claiming that it was illegal. See Fla. R. Crim. P. 3.800(a). He
claimed that since he scored 300 points on his Criminal
Punishment Code scoresheet, he could not be sentenced to drug

    * We disagree that State v. Winbush, 121 So. 3d 1165 (Fla. 5th

DCA 2013) applies, and this disposition should not be read as being
in conflict. Winbush involved a direct appeal by the State after the
trial court imposed drug offender probation in lieu of a prison
sentence, even though the lowest permissible sentence was 26.25
months in prison. The defendant in that case did not qualify under
section 948.20 for such a substitute sentence, and the appellate
court found that reversible error in the context of direct review of
the sentence. The circumstances of this appeal are different: We
have here a departure sentence that included prison time, and this
appeal comes here pursuant to Florida Rule of Appellate Procedure
9.141, with respect to denial of a motion under rule 3.800(a). Our
scope of review here is much more narrow.

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offender probation. See § 948.20(1), Fla. Stat. (allowing a
defendant to be placed on drug offender probation for certain
offenses when the “scoresheet total sentence points are 60 or
fewer”).

     The Fifth District Court has held that a defendant whose
scoresheet exceeded 60 points was ineligible for drug offender
probation. See Taylor v. State, 227 So. 3d 1252 (Fla. 5th DCA
2017); State v. Winbush, 121 So. 3d 1165 (Fla. 5th DCA 2013). As
allowed by rule 9.141(b)(2)(C)(ii), Florida Rules of Appellate
Procedure, I would therefore direct the State to file an answer
brief. I respectfully dissent from the majority’s decision to affirm
the denial of Appellant’s claim of an illegal sentence without first
hearing from the State and then allowing Appellant to serve a
reply. See id.

                 _____________________________

Dale E. Folsom, pro se, for Appellant.

Ashley Moody, Attorney General, and Miranda L. Butson
Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, for Appellee.

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