III v. State of Florida, Appellee. (2026)

Appellant Emanuel Leon Baker III appeals the summary denial of his motion for postconviction relief filed pursuant to Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850. He raises two grounds of ineffective assistance of counsel: (1) that defense counsel failed to file a pretrial motion to dismiss his charge of attempted second-degree murder invoking immunity under sections 776.032 and 776.012, Florida Statutes; and (2) that defense counsel failed to convey to him a minimum mandatory ten-year plea offer from the State. We affirm on both grounds.

Pertinent Facts

On January 14, 2025, Appellant entered a plea of nolo contendere before the trial court to one count of attempted second-degree murder in case number 2023-CF-1046-A, and admitted to violating his probation in case number 2022-CF-3169-A. The plea resolved both cases simultaneously through a negotiated global resolution. Based on the terms of the plea agreement, which the court accepted, Appellant was sentenced to fifteen years in the Department of Corrections with a mandatory minimum of ten years pursuant to section 775.087(2), Fla. Stat., concurrent with five years imposed upon revocation of probation. Appellant did not file a direct appeal.

On August 6, 2025, approximately seven months after the entry of the plea, Appellant filed the instant Rule 3.850 motion. The judge who handled the postconviction proceedings was the same judge who had presided over the trial proceedings in both cases, including the change of plea and sentencing hearing. The judge denied the postconviction motion without an evidentiary hearing. Appellant's motion for rehearing was subsequently denied. This appeal followed.

Ground One: Failure to File Pretrial Motion

In his initial ground for relief, Appellant argues that defense counsel was ineffective for failing to file a pretrial motion to dismiss the attempted second-degree murder charge invoking immunity under sections 776.032 and 776.012, Fla. Stat. He contends the trial court erred in relying on his plea colloquy to summarily deny this claim. Specifically, he asserts that his general expression of satisfaction with counsel during his plea colloquy is an insufficient reason to summarily deny his motion pursuant to Carver v. State, 385 So. 3d 676 (Fla. 5th DCA 2024). We disagree.

Carver is instructive but factually inapposite. There, the defendant proceeded to trial on charges of attempted second-degree murder. Before the defense rested, the trial court conducted a brief colloquy directed at a single question: whether the defendant wished to testify. At the close of that inquiry, the court asked whether the defendant was satisfied with his attorney's services. The defendant said yes. In the postconviction proceedings, the trial court relied on that satisfaction statement to foreclose the defendant's claim that counsel was ineffective for failing to pursue stand-your-ground immunity before trial. The Fifth District reversed. It held that the satisfaction statement, made in the context of a colloquy focused entirely on the decision to testify, was too general to conclusively refute a claim about a wholly separate pretrial strategic decision. The stand-your-ground immunity question was one that would have been raised, and litigated, before the trial at which the colloquy occurred. Carver, 385 So. 3d at 679. The connection between the two was simply too attenuated: a defendant's in-trial expression of general satisfaction with counsel cannot, without more, be read to ratify or waive every pretrial decision counsel made or failed to make in the months preceding trial.

Here, Appellant entered no such limited colloquy. He entered a comprehensive, negotiated global plea resolving two separate criminal cases simultaneously. During that plea, Appellant confirmed under oath, among other things, that he was explicitly waiving his right to file pretrial motions. Appellant swore under oath that he understood he was relinquishing that precise category of procedural mechanism as part of his knowing and voluntary plea. Appellant's colloquy was not a general satisfaction statement tangentially related to the claim; it was a direct sworn waiver of the specific right at issue.

The distinction is also structural, not merely factual. A plea colloquy is the constitutionally required mechanism by which the court ensures a defendant's waiver of rights is knowing and voluntary. Moorer v. State, 217 So. 3d 1141, 1142 (Fla. 1st DCA 2017) (citing Boykin v. Alabama, 395 U.S. 238, 243 (1969)). When Appellant confirmed under oath that he understood he was waiving his right to file pretrial motions, that exchange was part of the inquiry itself, not a peripheral question appended to an unrelated proceeding. The Fifth District's concern in Carver was that a general satisfaction statement during a testimonial inquiry bore no substantive connection to a pretrial immunity decision. Here, the connection is direct and specific: Appellant was asked about pretrial motions, he answered under oath, and that sworn answer formed part of the basis on which the court accepted his plea as knowing and voluntary.

Defendants are bound by their sworn statements during plea colloquies and may not contradict them in subsequent postconviction proceedings. Iacono v. State, 930 So. 2d 829, 831 (Fla. 4th DCA 2006) (“Defendants have a duty to uphold the solemn oath they take to tell the truth. They are bound by their sworn answers during the colloquy.”). Allowing Appellant to assert ineffective assistance for counsel's failure to file a pretrial motion that Appellant himself swore under oath he was waiving would “undermine the purposes behind the oath to tell the truth, the plea forms, and the plea colloquy's determination of voluntariness.” Id. at 831–32. See also Russ v. State, 937 So. 2d 1199, 1201 (Fla. 1st DCA 2006) (stating “where an appellant makes a clearly and wholly inconsistent affirmance which contradicts his later postconviction claim, such claim may be summarily denied”); Mann v. State, 622 So. 2d 595, 596–97 (Fla. 3d DCA 1993) (affirming summary denial of 3.850 motion, court held that appellant would be bound by terms of plea contracts entered into after extensive negotiations as to both guilt and sentence).

The trial court's summary denial of Ground One is affirmed.

Ground Two: Uncommunicated Plea Offer

In his next ground, Appellant alleges that defense counsel failed to convey to him a minimum mandatory ten-year plea offer from the State, and that he would have accepted it had it been communicated. The trial court denied this claim without an evidentiary hearing, concluding that it would not have accepted a bare ten-year minimum mandatory plea given Appellant's active felony probation status, his violation of the firearm prohibition condition of that probation, and the fact that he shot the victim. We affirm, but write to address how the governing legal framework applies to the specific facts of this record.

Claims of ineffective assistance arising from an uncommunicated or lapsed plea offer are governed by the two-prong test of Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984), as applied to the plea bargaining context in Missouri v. Frye, 566 U.S. 134 (2012), and Alcorn v. State, 121 So. 3d 419 (Fla. 2013). To establish prejudice, a defendant must demonstrate a reasonable probability that: (1) he would have accepted the earlier offer had counsel advised him correctly; (2) the prosecutor would not have withdrawn the offer; (3) the trial court would have accepted it; and (4) the conviction or sentence under the offer's terms would have been less severe than the judgment and sentence imposed. Frye, 566 U.S. at 147–48; Alcorn, 121 So. 3d at 430.

As an initial matter, we note that Frye resolved the constitutional duty to communicate a plea offer in the context of a formal, written offer with fixed terms and an express expiration date. Frye, 566 U.S. at 145. The Supreme Court expressly declined to address whether the same duty extends to informal or unwritten communications, as that question was not presented to the Court. Id. What Frye did address—and what is directly relevant here—is the risk of fabricated postconviction claims arising from the informal and largely unsupervised nature of plea negotiations. To guard against “late, frivolous, or fabricated claims,” the Court recommended that offers be reduced to writing, that their terms be documented, and that they be made part of the record at any subsequent plea proceeding. Id. at 145–46.

Appellant's allegation implicates these concerns. He does not allege that any formal, written offer was ever made. He identifies no specific date on which the offer was communicated, no prosecutor who made it, and no terms beyond a bare reference to a “minimum mandatory 10-year” sentence. His only alleged source is an unspecified representation to unnamed family members, learned at an unidentified point after he had already accepted a less favorable plea. This is precisely the kind of vague and undocumented allegation the Frye Court cautioned against. Under our precedent, such an allegation would generally require remand for an evidentiary hearing, as the defendant's sworn assertion ^* that he would have accepted a better offer, standing alone, may be enough to state a facially sufficient claim. See Ogden v. State, 273 So. 3d 162, 163–64 (Fla. 1st DCA 2019). The specific facts of this record, however, render an evidentiary hearing unnecessary as the third prong of the Alcorn prejudice test—whether the trial court would have accepted the offer—is conclusively resolved against Appellant by the record.

Even assuming deficient performance for purposes of analysis, Appellant cannot establish prejudice because the record conclusively demonstrates a reasonable probability that the trial court would not have accepted a bare ten-year minimum mandatory plea. The operative standard from Frye, as articulated in Key v. State, 357 So. 3d 1227, 1229 (Fla. 4th DCA 2023), requires an “objective assessment of the circumstances at the time of the plea offer” to determine whether any particular fact would have caused judicial nonapproval in the normal course. That objective assessment here is not a close question.

The circumstances known at the time of any alleged offer are fully documented in the record. Appellant was serving felony probation in case number 2022-CF-3169-A, imposed by the same judge who presided over the postconviction proceedings. A standard condition of that probation, expressly required under section 948.03(1)(m)1., Fla. Stat., prohibited Appellant from possessing, carrying, or owning any firearm. Appellant violated that condition by carrying a firearm to the location of the offense, a fact to which he admitted when he entered his admission to violating probation. He then used that firearm to shoot the victim, who suffered a gunshot wound to the torso. These facts were not discovered at a later date. They were known, documented, and part of the record before the court at the time of any alleged offer. The trial court's attachments—the sworn arrest affidavit, the charging information, and the change of plea and sentencing transcript—confirm that Appellant's probation status, the firearm prohibition condition, and the shooting of the victim were matters of record at the time of any alleged offer, not justifications fashioned after the fact to defeat a postconviction claim. Alcorn, 121 So. 3d at 432 (stating that prejudice is determined based upon a consideration of the circumstances as viewed at the time of the offer).

Appellant relies on Montgomery v. State, 231 So. 3d 599 (Fla. 1st DCA 2017), for the proposition that the trial court's reasoning is insufficient to support summary denial. Montgomery is distinguishable in a critical respect that the opinion itself identified. In Montgomery, the postconviction court was not the same judge who had presided over the original proceedings. Montgomery, 231 So. 3d at 600 n.*. The trial court's conclusion in that case about what the sentencing judge would have done therefore rested on one judge speculating about another judge's hypothetical conduct, which this Court found insufficient without record support. Here, by contrast, the postconviction judge is the same judge who imposed the original probation, presided over all aspects of both cases through years of litigation, conducted the change of plea and sentencing hearing, and sentenced Appellant in both cases simultaneously. The court's assessment of whether it would have accepted a bare minimum mandatory plea for a defendant who committed attempted second-degree murder while actively on felony probation rests not on speculation about another jurist's preferences, but on direct, first-person judicial knowledge of proceedings the court personally conducted.

The Frye Court recognized that “in most instances it should not be difficult to make an objective assessment as to whether or not a particular fact or intervening circumstance would suffice, in the normal course, to cause prosecutorial withdrawal or judicial nonapproval of a plea bargain.” Frye, 566 U.S. at 149. This is such an instance. The objective circumstances documented in the record—active felony probation, explicit firearm prohibition, actual possession of a firearm in violation of that prohibition, and the shooting of a victim—constitute the kind of particular facts that would suffice, in the normal course, to cause a trial court to decline a bare minimum mandatory plea for an offense of this gravity. An objective assessment of the contemporaneous record compels that conclusion. See Key, 357 So. 3d at 1229.

The trial court's summary denial of Ground Two is supported by the record. No evidentiary hearing was required under these facts.

Conclusion

The trial court's summary denial of both grounds of Appellant's Rule 3.850 motion is affirmed. Ground One is conclusively refuted by Appellant's specific sworn waiver of pretrial motions during his comprehensive plea colloquy. Ground Two fails because the objective assessment, applied to the fully documented contemporaneous facts of record, supports the trial court's conclusion that it would not have accepted a bare minimum mandatory plea. This conclusion is even more compelling where the same judge who presided over the original proceedings also ruled on the postconviction motion based on direct personal knowledge of those facts.

Affirmed.

FOOTNOTES

FOOTNOTE.   We note that where a claim of this kind proceeds to an evidentiary hearing and the trial court concludes the allegation was fabricated, the court is not without recourse. Florida law provides mechanisms to address false postconviction claims upon a finding that the motion was filed in bad faith or was frivolous, including referral to the Florida Department of Corrections for a determination as to whether forfeiture of gain time is warranted pursuant to section 944.279, Fla. Stat. See, e.g., Luxama v. Florida Dep't of Corr., 399 So. 3d 382 (Fla. 1st DCA 2024); Baca v. State, 313 So. 3d 1177 (Fla. 1st DCA 2021). Trial courts are encouraged to avail themselves of these tools, as the integrity and efficiency of postconviction proceedings depend on ensuring that the filing of a false allegation is more costly than it is beneficial.

Neff, J.

Roberts and M.K. Thomas, JJ., concur.