5D04-1606 Daniel Cummings v. State

State: Florida

Court: Florida Southern District Court

Docket No: 5D04-1606.op

Case Date: 12/06/2004

Plaintiff: 5D04-1606 Daniel Cummings

Defendant: State

Preview:IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA FIFTH DISTRICT JULY TERM 2004
DANIEL KUHN CUMMINGS , Appellant,
v. Case No. 5D04-1606 STATE OF FLORIDA ,
Appellee. __________________________________________/ Decision filed December 10, 2004 Appeal from the Circuit Court
for Citrus County,
Richard A. Howard, Judge.
Loren D. Rhoton, of Rhoton & Hayman,
P.A., Tampa, for Appellant.

Charles J. Crist, Jr., Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Rebecca R. Wall, Assistant Attorney General, Daytona Beach, for Appellee.
PER CURIAM.
AFFIRMED.
PLEUS , J. and WALSH, J.D., Associate Judge, concur. TORPY, J., concurs and concurs specially with opinion.
TORPY, J., concurring and concurring specially. 5D04-1606
In my opinion, the sentence in this case, which involves a non-violent, property crime, is unduly harsh. Having sat in a trial judge's chair, however, I am sympathetic to the decision the judge faced. The only authorized basis for departing from the 10-year minimum mandatory sentence for this 19-year-old boy (18 at the time of the offense) with no prior record (adult or juvenile) was to sentence him as a Youthful Offender. This sentencing alternative was apparently not palatable to the trial judge, perhaps because of the statutory limitation on the length of the permissible sentence. Thus, the trial judge was forced to make a

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