Opinion
No. 1D19-4281
01-14-2021
Ryan Wade MASSEY, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
Jessica J. Yeary, Public Defender, and Joel Arnold, Assistant Public Defender, Tallahassee, for Appellant. Ashley Moody, Attorney General, Jennifer J. Moore, Assistant Attorney General, and Jovona I. Parker, Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, for Appellee.
Jessica J. Yeary, Public Defender, and Joel Arnold, Assistant Public Defender, Tallahassee, for Appellant.
Ashley Moody, Attorney General, Jennifer J. Moore, Assistant Attorney General, and Jovona I. Parker, Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, for Appellee.
Per Curiam.
AFFIRMED . See Owens v. State , 303 So. 3d 993, 994–95 (Fla. 1st DCA 2020) (holding that regardless of whether section 948.06(2) applies to a defendant who committed an offense before the statute was amended, when imposing sentence for a violation of probation, a trial court is limited under subsection 948.06(2)(f)1. to modifying or continuing probation or imposing a sentence of up to ninety days in county jail only when a defendant "compl[ies] with all four conditions in subsection 948.06(2)(f)1").
Kelsey and M.K. Thomas, JJ., concur; Tanenbaum, J., concurs with opinion.
Tanenbaum, J., concurring.
The trial court correctly determined that Massey was not entitled to the application of section 948.06(2)(f), Florida Statutes (2019), in his case. Just as this court concluded in Owens , Massey in this case had to meet "all four conditions in section 948.06(2)(f) 1. to receive the benefit of the statute." Owens v. State , 303 So. 3d 993, 994–95 (Fla. 1st DCA 2020). From a textualist perspective, that conclusion is appropriate for one simple reason. To conclude otherwise would be to say that "everyone on probation would meet the requirement of subsection 948.06(2)(f)1.a." and "[t]he conditions in b. through d. would be superfluous." Id. at 997 ; see also id. n.5 (noting use of the plural "criteria" as a conjunctive reference to the conditions in paragraph 1 that need to be satisfied to trigger "mandatory modification or continuation"); cf. ANTONIN SCALIA & BRYAN A. GARNER , READING LAW 174 (2012) ("If possible, every word and every provision is to be given effect .... None should needlessly be given an interpretation that causes it to duplicate another provision or to have no consequence.").
In this context, there can be no doubt that "any" was a scrivener's error and should have been "all," so we as a court have the very narrow authority to apply the statute with this correction in order to fully effectuate all of its terms. Cf. SCALIA & GARNER , supra , at 237–38 (explaining that to avoid "error-correction for absurdity [becoming] a slippery slope," which "can lead to judicial revision of public and private texts to make them (in the judges’ view) more reasonable," there need to be limiting conditions to its application: the so-called "absurdity" must be "a disposition that no reasonable person could intend"; and the "absurdity must be reparable by changing or supplying a particular word or phrase whose inclusion or omission was obviously a technical or ministerial error" (emphasis supplied)); ANTONIN SCALIA , Common-Law Courts in a Civil-Law System , in A MATTER OF INTERPRETATION 17 (Amy Gutmann ed., 1997) (highlighting importance of looking for " ‘objectified’ intent—the intent that a reasonable person would gather from the text of the law, placed alongside the remainder of the corpus juris "—in order to avoid having "the meaning of a law determined by what the lawgiver meant, rather than by what the lawgiver promulgated").