Florida District Courts of Appeal, 2014

Graham v. State

Graham v. State
Florida District Courts of Appeal · Decided June 18, 2014 · Damoorgian, Stevenson, Warner
143 So. 3d 953; 2014 WL 2740536; 2014 Fla. App. LEXIS 9212 (Southern Reporter, Third Series)

Graham v. State

Opinion of the Court

PER CURIAM.

We affirm the trial court’s denial of appellant’s rule 3.800(a) motion to correct illegal sentence. In 1979, appellant was convicted of first-degree murder and kidnapping. He was sentenced to life without possibility of parole for twenty-five years for the murder and life for the kidnapping. In this motion, filed in September 2013, he claims that his life sentence for the non-homicide offense of kidnapping was illegal because he was seventeen years old at the time of the offenses. Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48, 130 S.Ct. 2011, 176 L.Ed.2d 825 (2010).

The trial court determined that Graham applies only to a life without possibility of parole sentence. For the same reasons discussed in Atwell v. State, 128 So.3d 167, 169 (Fla. 4th DCA 2013), we agree with the trial court. Graham applies only where a juvenile defendant is sentenced to life without possibility of parole for a non-homicide offense.

Affirmed.

DAMOORGIAN, C.J., WARNER and STEVENSON, JJ., concur.

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