GARDNER v. STATE (2023)

Appellant challenges the circuit court's summary denial of his motion for postconviction relief filed pursuant to Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850. We affirm the order below.

A jury found Appellant guilty of home invasion robbery with a deadly weapon. The facts of this case are found in the direct appeal record in Gardner v. State, 297 So. 3d 525 (Fla. 1st DCA 2020). Evidence at trial showed that Zachary Pilcher, the primary victim, was waiting in his apartment to make a drug sale to a person known as Casey. Instead of Casey, April LeBlanc arrived at approximately 10 p.m., knocked at his door, and asked to use the restroom. Pilcher knew LeBlanc from a prior drug transaction. When LeBlanc entered the apartment, she side-stepped away, and Appellant came around the corner and attacked Pilcher with a knife, stabbing him in the chin and causing the chin to hang off his face. The pair fought throughout the apartment, and fell into sliding glass doors, which broke. Pilcher was also stabbed in the back during the struggle. Pilcher asked Appellant what he wanted, and Appellant said he wanted Xanax and money. When Appellant stopped attacking, Pilcher gave Appellant drugs and his wallet.

Pilcher's girlfriend Angelique Gonzalez-Gilley was at Pilcher's apartment during the attack. Hearing a commotion, she opened the bedroom door to find someone fighting with Pilcher; they had collided with the sliding glass doors. She noticed that Pilcher's chin was hanging down, and there was a lot of blood. She saw a woman with the attacker, and the woman took Gonzalez-Gilley's phone to stop her from calling the police. Gonzalez-Gilley did not get her phone back.

Consistent with the jury's verdict, the trial court adjudicated Appellant guilty of home invasion robbery with a deadly weapon and sentenced him to life in prison. Appellant filed a motion to correct sentencing error pursuant to Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.800(b), arguing that he had been charged by amended information with home invasion robbery, not home invasion robbery with a deadly weapon, and that his life sentence exceeded the maximum allowed sentence of thirty years. The trial court granted the motion, amending the judgment to reflect home invasion robbery and amending the sentence to thirty years in prison. This Court affirmed the judgment and sentence. Gardner v. State, 297 So. 3d 525 (Fla. 1st DCA 2020).

The order now on appeal summarily denied Appellant's claims that the trial court committed a double jeopardy violation and that his trial counsel was ineffective for failing to pursue a judgment of acquittal or dismissal based on the double jeopardy violation. He argued that, by amending the judgment, the trial court had, in effect, acquitted him of home invasion robbery with a deadly weapon and that the subsequent adjudication of guilt for home invasion robbery violated the prohibition against double jeopardy and invaded the jury's function of deciding whether the evidence supported that charge.

The lower court correctly denied relief. Because neither the jury nor the trial court acquitted Appellant of any offenses, the prohibition against double jeopardy was not violated. Furthermore, the jury found Appellant guilty of home invasion robbery as charged and also found he possessed a deadly weapon. Thus, the jury found all the elements of home invasion robbery were proven. Under these circumstances, the trial court did not invade the jury's province.

Accordingly, the record in this case conclusively shows that Appellant is entitled to no relief. Fla. R. App. P. 9.141(b)(2)(D).

Affirmed.

B.L. Thomas, J.

Roberts and Bilbrey, JJ., concur.