Case Number: 2022-CA-00529

Judge: Michelle T. Morley

Court: Circuit Court, Sumter County, Florida

Plaintiff's Attorney:

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Defendant's Attorney: Florida Attorney General's Office

Description:

Bushnell, Florida, civil rights lawyer represented the Plaintiff seeking a writ of habeas corpus.

Appellant is serving a forty-year sentence. In June 1994, he entered a plea of guilty to three counts of second-degree murder and one count of attempted first-degree murder, all life felonies. He was sentenced to forty years for each of the second-degree murder charges and five years for the attempted first-degree murder charge, all sentences to run concurrently.

Appellant was released from custody in February 2019, after serving approximately twenty-six years of his forty-year sentence.

Fifteen months later, in May 2020, Appellant was arrested during a routine traffic stop and charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and unlicensed carrying of a concealed firearm. The arresting officer noted Appellant's convictions in the arrest report and that he was "on probation for 2nd Degree Murder." Appellant was returned to state prison.

In October 2022, Appellant filed a sworn Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus in the lower court, claiming he was being illegally detained after wrongfully being found a conditional release violator (the "Petition"). He claimed he had been subject to a fortyyear sentence and was released after completing "the overall 40 years negotiated expired sentence with basic and incentive gain time with other credits," and was not subject to conditional release. Appellant attached as exhibits to the Petition copies of the 1994 judgments and sentences; a calculation of time served, including gain time; the May 2020 traffic citation and arrest report; the Information filed by the State for the May 2020 arrest; and the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office Inmate Charge Summary showing he was charged with (1) possession of a weapon, and (2) violation of probation or community control.

Outcome: Dismissed.

Affirmed

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Defendant's Experts:

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