FL: Florida Court Decisions from Last Week

[floridaactioncommittee.org – 6/12/18]

Last week the Florida Supreme Court rendered an opinion in Levandoski v. State a case that resolved the conflict between the 1st and 4th District Court of Appeals over whether ‘sex offender probation’ conditions had to be disclosed to the defendant at sentencing. The Supreme Court upheld the 4th DCA’s opinion that, “the court’s oral pronouncement that Levandoski would be subject to ‘sex offender probation’ was sufficient to impose each of the components contained in section 948.30″.

In other words, telling the defendant that he would be subject to ‘sex offender probation’ without detailing all the extra conditions that ‘sex offender probation’ is comprised of, is sufficient.

Two interesting items to point out in the decision. The opinion refers to the Statute which sets forth the conditions of ‘sex offender probation’ as “§ 948.30, Fla. Stat. (2010)” – 2010 being the year. As such, the court is alluding to the fact that the statute, in effect in 2010, when Levandoski was sentenced, was what he should look to when determining what his conditions of probation are. As we know; the 2010 version is different from the 2018 version, which has a lot of “extras” piled on.

Second, in the dissenting opinion, Justice Pariente, says, “this Court has made clear that “special conditions, which are those not specifically authorized by statute, must be orally pronounced at sentencing before they can be placed in the probation order.” Lawson, 969 So. 2d at 227 n.3. This requirement is a safeguard to protect the criminal defendant’s right to due process. “Because a defendant is not on notice of special conditions of probation, these conditions must be pronounced orally at sentencing in order to be included in the written probation order.” State v. Williams, 712 So. 2d 762, 764 (Fla. 1998).”

This raises an interesting point. New conditions and requirements that are added to the sex offender registry are imposed without any court determination as to whether an individual should be subject to them. Its the role of the courts to determine whether someone should be subject to a specific notification requirement or restriction that was not part of the statute when they were sentenced. This is something that will unquestionably be explored.

Read more

 

Related posts

Subscribe
Notify of

We welcome a lively discussion with all view points - keeping in mind...

 

  1. Submissions must be in English
  2. Your submission will be reviewed by one of our volunteer moderators. Moderating decisions may be subjective.
  3. Please keep the tone of your comment civil and courteous. This is a public forum.
  4. Swear words should be starred out such as f*k and s*t and a**
  5. Please avoid the use of derogatory labels.  Always use person-first language.
  6. Please stay on topic - both in terms of the organization in general and this post in particular.
  7. Please refrain from general political statements in (dis)favor of one of the major parties or their representatives.
  8. Please take personal conversations off this forum.
  9. We will not publish any comments advocating for violent or any illegal action.
  10. We cannot connect participants privately - feel free to leave your contact info here. You may want to create a new / free, readily available email address that are not personally identifiable.
  11. Please refrain from copying and pasting repetitive and lengthy amounts of text.
  12. Please do not post in all Caps.
  13. If you wish to link to a serious and relevant media article, legitimate advocacy group or other pertinent web site / document, please provide the full link. No abbreviated / obfuscated links. Posts that include a URL may take considerably longer to be approved.
  14. We suggest to compose lengthy comments in a desktop text editor and copy and paste them into the comment form
  15. We will not publish any posts containing any names not mentioned in the original article.
  16. Please choose a short user name that does not contain links to other web sites or identify real people.  Do not use your real name.
  17. Please do not solicit funds
  18. No discussions about weapons
  19. If you use any abbreviation such as Failure To Register (FTR), Person Forced to Register (PFR) or any others, the first time you use it in a thread, please expand it for new people to better understand.
  20. All commenters are required to provide a real email address where we can contact them.  It will not be displayed on the site.
  21. Please send any input regarding moderation or other website issues via email to moderator [at] all4consolaws [dot] org
  22. We no longer post articles about arrests or accusations, only selected convictions. If your comment contains a link to an arrest or accusation article we will not approve your comment.
  23. If addressing another commenter, please address them by exactly their full display name, do not modify their name. 
ACSOL, including but not limited to its board members and agents, does not provide legal advice on this website.  In addition, ACSOL warns that those who provide comments on this website may or may not be legal professionals on whose advice one can reasonably rely.  
 

3 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

I guess there is no general yet for June so I went and registered at school today and they are using a 2018 version of the requirements and they added a few things on it.
First they put a privacy notice which I have not looked at yet but it is Cal Civ. Code 1798.17
The only other one that is important for some of you guys is the exclusions.
basically all pc 311s can be excluded if the victim was at least 16 pc 290(e) I do not know if it matters but there it is. The other exclusions are the same ones that were there before.