Opinion
No. 1D21-694
06-22-2022
STATE of Florida, Appellant, v. Courtnei Alexis BRYANT, Appellee.
Ashley Moody, Attorney General, and Damaris E. Reynolds, Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, for Appellant. Jessica J. Yeary, Public Defender, and Glen P. Gifford, Assistant Public Defender, Tallahassee, for Appellee.
Ashley Moody, Attorney General, and Damaris E. Reynolds, Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, for Appellant.
Jessica J. Yeary, Public Defender, and Glen P. Gifford, Assistant Public Defender, Tallahassee, for Appellee.
Osterhaus, J.
The State appeals the trial court's decision that it could not award restitution to a victim in a criminal case because a sixty-day deadline established at sentencing for resolving the amount of restitution elapsed. We reverse and remand because Florida law establishes no jurisdictional deadline for courts to set the final restitution amount after restitution is ordered at sentencing. And even though the court set a deadline at sentencing for finalizing the restitution amount, the date it set did not bar the State from requesting a hearing regarding the amount, or the court from resolving the restitution amount, after that date.
I.
The State charged Appellee with burglary and battery after she kicked in the front door of the victims’ home and attacked them. Appellee ultimately reached a plea agreement with the State, including agreeing to pay restitution for the damaged door and doorframe. The plea agreement stated that jurisdiction would be reserved for sixty days to determine the amount of restitution (evidently the State had offered $3000 and Appellee sought documentation supporting that figure). When accepting the plea, the court imposed restitution upon Appellee. But after Appellee told the court that she could buy the door and pay for installation for less money than what the State was seeking, the court left it to the parties to reach agreement on the amount of restitution. The court concluded that it would retain jurisdiction for a limited time over the amount of restitution as follows: "There's 60 days where I'll retain jurisdiction to impose a restitution amount, so I am imposing restitution .... If there's no agreement within 60 days, the State has the burden of petitioning the Court for a hearing .... If they fail to do so within 60 days, I'll lose jurisdiction on that issue, and no determination—no restitution will be required. I'll early terminate the probation after the payment." In turn, the "special conditions" portion of the probation order included a checked box indicating that restitution was reserved for 60 days and provided for early termination "after restitution is paid and no violations."
The restitution-amount issue then fell through the cracks. Several months passed before the issue re-surfaced and the State sought a hearing. Appellee remained on probation at the time. At a hearing, Appellee argued that restitution should be denied in view of the missed sixty-day deadline. The State responded that the deadline did not implicate the court's authority to order the restitution amount. The court sided with the defendant. It concluded that the restitution amount could not be set because it had lost jurisdiction due to the sixty-day deadline. It considered the State's restitution request "barred and, therefore, denied." The State appealed after its rehearing motion was denied.
II.
Before getting to the merits, we briefly address our appellate jurisdiction. Because the trial court's order denied restitution to the victim, appellate jurisdiction is conferred pursuant to § 924.07(1)(k). See also Fla. R. App. P. 9.140(c)(1)(O) (permitting appeals from orders denying restitution); State v. Maddex , 159 So. 3d 267, 269 (Fla. 4th DCA 2015) (same). Because the main issue in this case involves a question of law—whether the trial court was barred by a self-imposed deadline from further considering the amount of restitution to be made to the victims—we review this appeal de novo. Maddex , 159 So. 3d at 270.
The sixty-day reservation of jurisdiction approved in the plea agreement did not bar the State from seeking, or the trial court from finalizing the restitution amount for the victims’ losses. Consistent with Florida law, the defendant agreed to make restitution to the victim in the plea agreement, which the trial court approved at sentencing. Florida law mandates that trial courts "shall order the defendant to make restitution to the victim" for damage caused by an offense "unless it finds clear and compelling reasons not to order such restitution." § 775.089(1)(a), Fla. Stat.; see also Art. I, § 16(b)(9), Fla. Const. (affording crime victims the "right to full and timely restitution in every case ... for all losses suffered, both directly and indirectly, ... as a result of the criminal conduct"). The payment of restitution is a condition of probation. § 775.089(1)(a), Fla. Stat. And if restitution isn't ordered, or if it doesn't fully address a victim's losses, courts must "state on the record in detail the reasons therefor." § 775.089(1)(b), Fla. Stat. The probation statute, § 948.03, reiterates these restitution requirements, identifying it as a standard probation condition that "do[es] not require oral pronouncement at the time of sentencing." § 948.03(1)(f), Fla. Stat. As to setting restitution amounts after sentencing, the statutes establish no hard deadlines. The only text-based time requirement appears to lie in the Florida Constitution's requirement for "timely" restitution. Art. I, § 16(b)(9), Fla. Const.
Although the plea agreement's sixty-day reservation of jurisdiction adopted by the trial court lapsed before the restitution amount was set, no legal deadline barred the trial court from finalizing the amount after that date. In Gladfelter v. State , 618 So. 2d 1364, 1365 (Fla. 1993), for instance, the Florida Supreme Court rejected an argument that the restitution amount couldn't be set beyond sixty days of sentencing where the defendant argued that Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.800(b) required the amount to be set within that time. See also State v. Sanderson , 625 So. 2d 471, 473 (Fla. 1993) ("If an order of restitution has been entered in a timely manner, a court can determine the amount of restitution beyond the sixty-day period."). The Court in Gladfelter approved an order that had set the restitution amount more than a year after sentencing had occurred. Gladfelter , 618 So. 2d at 1365. See also Maddex , 159 So. 3d at 270 (approving a trial court's jurisdiction to determine the restitution amount about a year after sentencing); cf. Fairweather v. State , 596 So. 2d 1276, 1277 (Fla. 1st DCA 1992) (recognizing that "[a] court does not abuse its discretion in leaving determination of the amount of restitution to a future date").
In view of the constitutional and statutory requirements to make restitution, as well as the time flexibility given courts to finalize specific amounts, a case-imposed deadline established at sentencing for finalizing the amount of restitution is not jurisdictional. In other words, the State was not "barred" from seeking restitution beyond the sixty-day period set forth in the plea agreement. In the closest case factually to this one, the Second District considered whether a restitution amount could be set after the parties missed a deadline that was denominated to be "jurisdictional" at sentencing. State v. Witthaus , 944 So. 2d 505, 506 (Fla. 2d DCA 2006). As in this case, the trial court in Witthaus ordered restitution but announced that it would retain jurisdiction for a limited time, ninety days, to establish the amount. Id. The Witthaus court delegated to the State the responsibility to followup about any necessary hearings, but the State failed to do so by the deadline. Id. After the State missed the deadline, the defendant filed a motion to strike restitution because "the trial court announced it would retain jurisdiction for ninety days [and] the State presented the restitution amount outside the ninety-day period set by the trial court." Id. After the trial court agreed with the defendant and struck the restitution order, the appeals court reversed. Id. The Second District concluded that the trial court's self-imposed deadline was a procedural, discretionary matter that "did not act to divest the trial court of its jurisdiction to determine the amount of restitution." Id. at 507 (citing McCaskill v. State , 520 So. 2d 664, 665 (Fla. 1st DCA 1988) ). It noted, similar to the facts here, that the defendant had agreed to make restitution, which had been ordered at sentencing and was still a condition of the defendant's currently effective probationary sentence. Id. Following Witthaus , we likewise conclude that the trial court didn't lose jurisdiction because of the sixty-day jurisdictional reservation set forth in the plea agreement and adopted at sentencing. The trial court was not barred from carrying out the constitutional and statutory duty to order restitution arising from Appellee's attack on the victims’ home.
Finally, the parties present arguments relating to the amount of restitution that is owed. But these are factual issues on which the trial court has not yet spoken. It would be inappropriate to take up these issues at this juncture instead of remanding the case for further proceedings. We therefore reverse and remand to the trial court for a hearing to set the proper amount of restitution.
REVERSED and REMANDED with directions.
Winokur, J., concurs; Long, J., concurs with opinion.
Long, J., concurring.
I write separately to address two points. First, the Court's opinion, which I join, addresses and resolves the case on a straightforward legal question. The Florida Supreme Court has concluded that trial courts cannot set jurisdictional deadlines for restitution orders. But the same cases make clear that a trial court has the discretion to set procedural deadlines. There is an important distinction between a court's formal loss of jurisdiction and the exercise of discretion.
Trial courts have wide discretion to set reasonable deadlines (or, as happened here, to adopt the deadlines proposed and agreed to by the parties). And they have a corresponding discretion to enforce those deadlines. The genesis of the trouble below was the use of a legal term of art—jurisdiction. The term carries a specific legal meaning. See Jurisdiction , Black's Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019) ("A court's power to decide a case or issue a decree."). The term denotes the court's legal authority to act, distinct from a court's exercise of discretion within that authority. Here, the parties’ written plea agreement (which was accepted and enforced by the trial court) purported to set a time limit on the court's jurisdiction to enter an order setting the amount of restitution. Because that cannot be done, that term of the plea agreement was unenforceable. Second, because the controlling plea agreement included an unenforceable limit on the trial court's jurisdiction, the nature of the agreement has changed. As a result, Bryant should be permitted to move to withdraw her plea on the ground that it was involuntary.