Walsh v. State

606 So. 2d 636, 1992 Fla. App. LEXIS 9335, 1992 WL 213080
District Court of Appeal of Florida·Decided September 4, 1992·No. No. 91-1867·Published·Cited by 1 cases

Opinion

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING

PER CURIAM.

In consideration of the point raised in the defendant’s motion for rehearing, we withdraw our opinion in this cause dated June 19, 1992, and substitute this opinion in its place.

The defendant appeals, following re-sentencing, from a guideline sentence, asserting that numerous errors were made in the calculation of his guidelines scoresheet.

On January 22, 1990, the defendant was convicted of trafficking in cocaine, conspiracy to traffic in cocaine and sale of a controlled substance, cocaine. The defendant’s sentence as an habitual felony offender was reversed by this court1 and on remand, a guidelines scoresheet was prepared reflecting a total of 389 points, for a recommended sentencing range of 22-27 years. The trial court sentenced the defendant to 27 years in prison on the trafficking count, a concurrent 27 year term of imprisonment on the conspiracy count and a consecutive 15 year probation period on the sale of a controlled substance count.

On appeal the defendant does not challenge the scoring of the primary offense at conviction (164 points) or the scoring of additional offenses at conviction (13 points). Rather, the dispute concerns the scoring of the defendant’s extensive prior record:

(1) Two federal bank robbery convictions entered in 1966 and 1967 respectively, were scored as life felonies for a total point value of 130 points.

Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.701 d. provides in relevant part:

5. a) “Prior record” refers to any past criminal conduct on the part of the offender, resulting in conviction, prior to the commission of the primary offense. Prior record includes all prior Florida, federal, out-of-state, military, and foreign convictions, as well as convictions for violation of municipal or county ordinances that bring within the municipal or [638]*638county code the violation of a state statute or statutes.
* * * * * *
2) When scoring federal, foreign, military, or out-of-state convictions, assign the score for the analogous or parallel Florida Statute.
3) When unable to determine whether an offense at conviction is a felony or a misdemeanor, the offense should be scored as a misdemeanor. Where the degree of the felony is ambiguous or impossible to determine, score the offense as a third-degree felony.

In 1966, our robbery statute, section 813.011, Florida Statutes, provided in its entirety:

Whoever, by force, violence or assault or putting in fear, feloniously robs, steals and takes away from the person or custody of another, money or other property which may be the subject of larceny, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for life or for any lesser term of years, at the discretion of the court.

Thus, in 1966, the crime of robbery in Florida was not divided by degrees and the question is whether under Rule 3.701 d.5.a)3) the degree of the offense was “impossible to determine” and the out of state offenses must be scored as third degree felonies. In Jenkins v. State, 556 So.2d 1239 (Fla.5th DCA 1990), this court held that under Forehand v. State, 537 So.2d 103 (Fla.1989), the sentencing court should look to the elements of the defendant’s prior out of state conviction to determine the appropriate degree. The court went on to hold that the defendant’s prior armed robbery conviction should be scored as a first degree felony and not as a life felony because the court could not determine the type of weapon involved. Contra Johnson v. State, 525 So.2d 964 (Fla. 1st DCA 1988).

In applying Jenkins to this case, consideration must first be given to the federal bank robbery statute.

18 U.S.C. § 2113, in effect, in subpara-graph (a) describes a bank robbery offense, and in subparagraph (d) provides that whoever commits a bank robbery in violation of subsection (a) and in doing so

assaults any person, or puts in jeopardy the life of any person by the use of a dangerous weapon or device,

is guilty of a greater offense in the nature of an aggravated bank robbery with enhanced punishment.

Prior to 1978, the federal circuit courts of appeal were split on whether the dictates of subsection (d) could be implicated either by (1) simply an assault or (2) by putting in jeopardy the life of any person by the use of a dangerous weapon. Various circuits held that an assault itself was not enough to implicate subsection (d) without the need for a dangerous weapon, see, e.g., United States v. Beasley, 438 F.2d 1279 (6th Cir.1971), cert. denied, 404 U.S. 866, 92 S.Ct. 124, 30 L.Ed.2d 110 (1971), United States v. Rizzo, 409 F.2d 400 (7th Cir.1969), cert. denied, 396 U.S. 911, 90 S.Ct. 226, 24 L.Ed.2d 187 (1969), Gant v. United States, 161 F.2d 793 (5th Cir.1947), while other circuits ruled that a dangerous weapon was necessary to implicate subsection (d) in every event. See, e.g., United States v. Crew, 538 F.2d 575 (4th Cir.1978), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 852, 97 S.Ct. 144, 50 L.Ed.2d 127 (1970).

This divergence was not resolved until 1978, when the United States Supreme Court in Simpson v. United States, 435 U.S. 6, 98 S.Ct. 909, 55 L.Ed.2d 70 (1978), construed subsection (d) to require more than an assault and held that the phrase “by the use of a dangerous weapon or device” must be read as modifying both the assault provision and the putting in jeopardy provision. In other words, a conviction under subsection (d) requires a showing that the robber used a dangerous weapon or device as a condition precedent to the imposition of an enhanced sentence whether based on an assault or based on putting life in jeopardy. United States v. Benson, 918 F.2d 1 (1st Cir.1990).

Conceding that in 1966 and 1967 when the defendant was convicted, the federal statute was ambiguous and conceding that that ambiguity resulted in conflicts in lower federal courts’ construction of the feder[639]*639al bank robbery law, and conceding that ambiguity and conflict was resolved in Simpson in 1978, nevertheless, the form of the judgment entered upon the defendant’s 1967 federal robbery conviction leaves a separate and distinctly different ambiguity in that the 1967 robbery judgment does not indicate that the defendant’s conviction was an adjudication that he used a dangerous weapon in that particular case. That ambiguity is illustrated by the difference in the form of the defendant’s 1966 robbery conviction and the form of the 1967 robbery conviction.

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Walsh v. State, 606 So. 2d 636, 1992 Fla. App. LEXIS 9335, 1992 WL 213080 (Fla. Ct. App. 1992).

606 So. 2d 636 (Walsh v. State) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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