Christopher Van Hatcher v. the State of Florida

• Court: District Court of Appeal of Florida
• Decided: February 26, 2025
• Docket: 3D2023-1252
• Status: Published

Opinion

Third District Court of Appeal State of Florida

Opinion filed February 26, 2025. Not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing.

________________

No. 3D23-1252 Lower Tribunal No. F11-20254 ________________

Christopher Van Hatcher, Appellant,

vs.

The State of Florida, Appellee.

An Appeal from the Circuit Court for Miami-Dade County, Ramiro C. Areces, Judge.

Carlos J. Martinez, Public Defender, and Nicholas A. Lynch, Assistant Public Defender, for appellant.

James Uthmeier, Attorney General, and Yolande M. Samerson and Camilo Montoya, Assistant Attorneys General, for appellee.

Before LINDSEY, BOKOR and GOODEN, JJ.

BOKOR, J. Christopher Van Hatcher appeals his sentence imposed after a

violation of probation, alleging that the trial court failed to conduct a

presentence investigation (PSI) before sentencing him as a habitual felony

offender (HFO). Because Hatcher’s original sentence was imposed pursuant

to a negotiated plea waiving his right to a PSI, we affirm.

Hatcher accepted a negotiated guilty plea to charges of burglary, grand

theft, and second-degree arson. In his plea form, Hatcher waived his right to

a PSI and did not dispute his eligibility for HFO sentencing. After committing

new law violations while on release, the trial court revoked his probation and

sentenced him to a term of incarceration as an HFO and violent felony

offender of special concern. He subsequently brought a Fla. R. Crim. P.

3.800(b)(2) motion to correct sentence, arguing in pertinent part that the

court violated section 775.084(3)(a)1., Florida Statutes, by failing to conduct

a PSI before sentencing him as an HFO. The trial court denied the motion in

part as to that issue, finding the statute inapplicable to the probation

revocation proceeding and that Hatcher waived his right to a PSI by

accepting the plea. This appeal followed.

Section 775.084(3)(a)1. provides that “[t]he court shall obtain and

consider a presentence investigation prior to the imposition of a sentence as

a habitual felony offender or a habitual violent felony offender.” Hatcher

2 argues that the “shall obtain” language imposes a clear obligation not met

here. But we examine this language in the context of the entire statutory

scheme, as “[i]t would be a mistake to think that our law of statutory

interpretation requires interpreters to make a threshold determination of

whether a term has a ‘plain’ or ‘clear’ meaning in isolation, without

considering the statutory context.” Conage v. United States, 346 So. 3d 594,

598 (Fla. 2022).

As the Florida Supreme Court explained, “[t]he plainness or ambiguity

of statutory language is determined by reference to the language itself, the

specific context in which that language is used, and the broader context of

the statute as a whole.” Id. (quoting Robinson v. Shell Oil Co., 519 U.S. 337,

341 (1997)). So we analyze the statutory language against the backdrop that

all but the most fundamental statutory requirements “can be waived, as can

all of the procedural rights under the statute.” Ortiz v. State, 9 So. 3d 774,

775 (Fla. 4th DCA 2009) (noting also that “[f]ailure to obtain an on-the-record

personal waiver of the right to a PSI is not required under current supreme

court precedent” and affirming HFO sentence imposed after PSI waiver by

defendant’s counsel during sentencing proceeding); see also Culver v. State,

163 So. 3d 622, 623 (Fla. 4th DCA 2015) (same); Leach v. State, 914 So. 2d

519, 521 (Fla. 4th DCA 2005) (“A defendant may waive constitutional,

3 statutory, or procedural rights during the criminal process.”); Jefferson v.

State, 571 So. 2d 70, 71 (Fla. 1st DCA 1990) (analogizing to other contexts

in which “defendants have been recognized as having the option to waive

numerous substantive rights in the criminal justice area, even though waiver

is not expressly provided by statute”); State v. Singletary, 549 So. 2d 996,

997 (Fla. 1989) (declining to require “on-the-record waiver by the defendant

to anything but those rights which go to the very heart of the adjudicatory

process, such as the right to a lawyer”).

We also examine the temporal context of the proceedings. Sentencing

after a revocation of probation is a “deferred sentencing proceeding” at which

the court may impose any sentence it might have originally imposed before

placing the defendant on probation. Green v. State, 463 So. 2d 1139, 1140

(Fla. 1985); see also Shields v. State, 296 So. 3d 967, 971 (Fla. 2d DCA

2020) (“When a court resentences a defendant after revoking his probation,

then, it is sentencing the defendant for the original offense, not for the

conduct constituting the violation.”); § 948.06(2)(b), Fla. Stat. Here, the

record establishes that Hatcher waived his right to a PSI in the original

negotiated plea resulting in probation, and the parties do not dispute that he

qualifies for sentencing as an HFO and could not have challenged his original

sentence because of a lack of a PSI. Nothing in section 775.084(3)(a)

4 indicates that the statute would otherwise require a duplicative (or, in this

case, an initial) PSI before resentencing in a probation revocation

proceeding, where, as here, the parties agree he wouldn’t have been entitled

to a PSI before the original sentencing. The trial court properly denied

postconviction relief on this basis.

Affirmed.