Not
final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing.
Appeal
from the Circuit Court for the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit,
Palm Beach County; Charles E. Burton, Judge; L.T. Case Nos.
2015CF005546AXX and 2015CF007683AXX.
Antony
P. Ryan, Director, and Paul O'Neil, Assistant Regional
Counsel, Office of Criminal Conflict and Civil Regional
Counsel, West Palm Beach, for appellant.
Pamela
Jo Bondi, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Rachael Kaiman,
Assistant Attorney General, West Palm Beach, for appellee.
Damoorgian, J.
Appellant,
Eddie Tyler, appeals the trial court's order summarily
denying his motion to withdraw his plea after sentencing. We
reverse.
In
2014, Appellant was charged with one count of being a
delinquent in possession of ammunition. After the trial court
denied Appellant's motion to suppress certain evidence,
Appellant pled guilty and thereafter appealed the suppression
ruling. While his appeal was pending and his sentence stayed,
Appellant was charged in cases 15-5546CF and 15-7683CF with
committing fourteen new offenses, [1] including two counts of felon in
possession of a firearm. The being a delinquent in possession
of ammunition conviction served as the predicate felony to
the two possession of a firearm charges. Appellant and the
State ultimately entered into a negotiated plea deal for both
cases. Pursuant to the plea deal, Appellant pled guilty to
some of the charges, including the two felon in possession of
a firearm charges, and the State nolle prossed the remaining
counts. Appellant ultimately received a combined ten year
prison sentence.
Five
days after Appellant entered his plea and was sentenced in
the underlying two cases, we reversed his being a delinquent
in possession of ammunition conviction. Tyler v.
State, 185 So.3d 659, 664 (Fla. 4th DCA 2016). Shortly
thereafter, Appellant timely moved to withdraw his plea in
the underlying two cases. In his motion, Appellant argued
that had he known the predicate felony was going to be
reversed, he may not have agreed to the terms of the plea
deal, especially because without that prior felony conviction
he would have been eligible for a youthful offender sentence.
The trial court summarily denied the motion and this timely
appeal follows.
"Where
a motion to withdraw a plea is filed after sentencing, the
defendant has the burden of proving that a manifest injustice
has occurred and that withdrawal is necessary to correct the
manifest injustice." Panchu v. State, 1 So.3d
1243, 1245 (Fla. 4th DCA 2009). "This is a more
stringent standard than a motion to withdraw a plea filed
before sentencing; the burden falls on the defendant to prove
that withdrawal is necessary to correct the manifest
injustice." Snodgrass v. State, 837 So.2d 507,
508 (Fla. 4th DCA 2003).
Our
holding in Johnson v. State, 664 So.2d 986 (Fla. 4th
DCA 1995), disapproved in part on other grounds by 668 So.2d
194 (Fla. 1996), is instructive. In that case, while the
defendant's conviction for battery on two law enforcement
officers was pending on appeal, he was arrested and charged
with one count of possession of a firearm by a felon and one
count of possession of cocaine. Id. at 987. The two
pending battery convictions served as the predicate felony
for the felon in possession of a firearm charge. Id.
The defendant ultimately pled no contest to the firearm
charge in exchange for the State agreeing to nolle prosse the
possession of cocaine charge. Id. After the court
withheld adjudication on the firearm charge and sentenced the
defendant, we reversed the defendant's battery
conviction. Id. The defendant thereafter moved to
set aside the felon in possession of a firearm conviction
based on the predicate felony having been reversed.
Id. The trial court denied the motion and the
defendant appealed. Id.
This
Court ultimately reversed with directions to vacate the
defendant's conviction of possession of a firearm by a
convicted felon, reasoning as follows:
[I]n the instant case, the conviction for possession of a
firearm by a convicted felon is based solely on the validity
of the appellant's conviction for battery, which was
reversed on appeal. Convictions which are reversed are
considered a nullity. Therefore, since there is no predicate
conviction upon which the charge of possession of a firearm
by a convicted felon can be based, the conviction must
necessarily be vacated.
Id. at 988 (internal citations omitted); see
also State v. Snyder, 673 So.2d 9, 11 (Fla. 1996)
(reiterating that "even though a defendant is
'convicted' when adjudicated guilty, fairness
requires that he or she be permitted to attack a conviction
for possession of a firearm when the predicate felony
conviction is subsequently reversed on appeal").
Thus,
in the present case, regardless of the voluntariness of the
plea, fairness requires that Appellant be permitted to
withdraw his plea as to the two felon in possession of a
firearm counts in light of this Court's reversal of the
predicate felony. See Snyder, 673 So.2d at 11. Because the
plea bargain in this case was based on multiple charges,
however, permitting Appellant to withdraw his plea on two of
the charges abrogates the entire plea bargain. See
Whitaker v. State,881 So.2d 80, 82 (Fla. 5th DCA 2004);
see also Taylor v. State,132 So.3d 882, 885 (Fla.
2d DCA 2014) (holding that although an ambiguity in the
...