Florida/Georgia Personal Injury & Workers Compensation

...2 The Florida Legislature permits judges to use the sentencing process to obtain restitution for crime victims. In 1974, the legislature passed a statute that explicitly allows a judge to mitigate a sentence where a defendant makes restitution. Ch. 74-125, Laws of Florida. For crimes “involving property,” section 921.185, Florida Statutes (2010), provides that a sentencing court has the discretion to “consider any degree of restitution a mitigation of the severity of an otherwise appropriate sentence.” (Emphasis added)....

...In pertinent part, the rule provides: A court may reduce or modify ... a legal sentence imposed by it ... within 60 days after the imposition .... The judges’ offers to mitigate the sentences in DeLuise and in this case were both authorized under rule 3.800(c) and section 921.185....

...secutors negotiate behind the scenes for restitution without involving the court except by a “wink and a nod” at the sentencing hearing where unwritten policies are “understood.” Judges would be precluded from actively using statutes such as section 921.185 to encourage restitution; the prosecution and defense would have to broach the subject by way of Rule 3.800(c). An important public policy of the state would be frustrated; statutes like sections 921.185 and 921.0026(2)(e) would be constitutionally neutered, not because they are unfair to a defendant who wants to make restitution to obtain a lesser sentence, but because they may not offer the same assistance to a defendant who cannot....

...e his sentence through the payment of restitution cannot, as the dissents insinuate, be said to equate to punishment. Rather, such exhibition of leniency serves to balance the penological interests of the victim and the state, within the confines of section 921.185, by facilitating the controlled exchange of betterments between the defendant and victim, a result neither condemned by Williams, Tate, and Bearden nor Florida case law....

...ppropriate given the magnitude of the defendant’s crime. The sentence was well within the statutory maximum. The trial judge did not say that she imposed a greater sentence because the defendant did not pay restitution. The opinion did not mention section 921.185 and rule 3.800(c), which authorize precisely what the judge did — an offer to use restitution to mitigate the severity of an otherwise appropriate sentence....

...when calculating scoresheets). The trial court further erred in departing downward based on the fact that the defendant's crimes were non-violent felonies involving property. The defendant argued below that this departure reason was proper based on the language of section 921.185 of the Florida Statutes (2017). That statute reads: 921.185....

...njury to persons, the court, in its discretion, shall consider any degree of restitution a mitigation of the severity of an otherwise appropriate sentence. 4 Section 921.185 does not justify the downward departure sentences in this case because the trial court did not impose a sentence which used restitution to mitigate the severity of the defendant's "otherwise appropriate sentence." Instead, the court merely entered an order directing the defendant to pay $463.77 in restitution....

...Although the amendment to the guidelines which specifically permits this basis for departure, § 921.0016(4)(e), Fla. Stat. (1997), became effective only after the crime in question, the ground was nevertheless permissible under the more general statute which then applied. See § 921.185, Fla....

...The Fourth District found that the trial court imposed an appropriate sentence based not on Noel’s ability to pay restitution, but on his prior record and the extent of the criminal scheme employed. Id. at 777 . *374 The district court explained that Noel’s sentence was authorized by section 921.185, Florida Statutes (2010), which provides, as to crimes involving property, that a trial court, “in its discretion, shall consider any degree of restitution a mitigation of the severity of an otherwise appropriate sentence,” and Fl...

...ANALYSIS Noel claims that his sentence — which provided that if he were to make a restitution payment of $20,000 within sixty days, then his prison term would be mitigated from ten years to eight years — violates his equal protection and due process rights secured under the United States Constitution.' Noel asserts that section 921.185, which affords discretion to the trial courts to consider restitution as mitigation, was unconstitutionally applied....

...State, 80 So.3d 999, 1006 (Fla.2011). 6 In sentencing a defendant for the conviction of a crime involving property, a trial court, “in its discretion, shall consider any degree of restitution a mitigation of the severity of an otherwise appropriate sentence.” § 921.185, Fla....