Court Opinion

ID: 9950168
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-03-13 15:05:14.681386+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:35:53.923827
License: Public Domain

DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA
                              FOURTH DISTRICT

                              SHELY OCEAN,
                                Appellant,

                                     v.

                          STATE OF FLORIDA,
                               Appellee.

                             No. 4D2023-0705

                             [March 13, 2024]

  Appeal from the Circuit Court for the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit, Palm
Beach County; Jeffrey Dana Gillen, Judge; L.T. Case No.
502020CF008950.

  Carey Haughwout, Public Defender and Virginia Murphy, Assistant
Public Defender, West Palm Beach, for appellant.

  Ashley Moody, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Anesha Worthy,
Senior Assistant Attorney General, West Palm Beach, for appellee.

WARNER, J.

    Appellant challenges her sentence imposed following her conviction for
driving without a valid driver’s license causing serious bodily injury. At
sentencing, appellant argued for a downward departure based upon her
need for treatment of a mental disorder unrelated to substance abuse, for
which she was amenable to treatment. She also argued the victim’s need
for restitution outweighed the State’s need for a prison sentence. The trial
court denied a downward departure and imposed the maximum sentence
for the crime. Appellant then filed this appeal.

    During the appellate process, she moved to correct an illegal sentence
pursuant to Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.800(b)(2).              She
contended that the law had changed recently when this court held in Coto
v. State, 366 So. 3d 1 (Fla. 4th DCA 2023), that a trial court could consider
comparative negligence as a non-statutory factor to justify a downward
departure sentence. Appellant suggested that comparative negligence
could be found in this case. The trial court denied her motion, deciding
not to exercise its discretion to downward depart.         Appellant now
challenges this ruling. We affirm.

    Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.800(b)(2) permits correction of an
illegal sentence when an appeal is pending. As our supreme court has
consistently maintained, an illegal sentence “imposes a kind of
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) (quoting Blakley v. State, 746 So.
2d 1182, 1187 (Fla. 4th DCA 1999)). Appellant’s sentence was not illegal,
and her grounds for her motion to correct her sentence did not even claim
that it was.

   Moreover, appellant never raised at sentencing the ground upon which
her later-filed rule 3.800(b)(2) motion asked the court to reconsider a
downward departure, as did the defendant in Coto. Rule 3.800(b)(2) does
not allow a defendant a second bite at the apple. See Jackson v. State,
983 So. 2d 562, 573 (Fla. 2008) (holding that rule 3.800(b) was not meant
to allow defendants “to resurrect unpreserved errors in the sentencing
process”). Therefore, appellant cannot raise a new ground for downward
departure by way of rule 3.800(b)(2).

   In addition, she claims she was entitled to be tried by a jury of twelve
persons. We rejected this argument in Guzman v. State, 350 So. 3d 72,
73 (Fla. 4th DCA 2022), rev. denied, No. SC2022-1597, 2023 WL 3830251
(Fla. June 6, 2023).

   For the foregoing reasons, we affirm appellant’s conviction and
sentence.

   Affirmed.

LEVINE and ARTAU, JJ., concur.

                           *         *        *

   Not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing.

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