Appeals Court Reverses Convictions For Jury Tampering On Double Jeopardy Grounds – 10 Years Slashed Off Prison Sentence – Immediate Release Ordered
Arcadia, FL (August 2, 2019) – Our client, Patrick Gammage, was convicted of three counts of attempted tampering with jurors. The judge sentenced him to three 5-year consecutive terms of imprisonment for a total of 15-years behind bars. After losing his appeal, Gammage hired my firm to conduct a review to determine what, if any, grounds existed for him to file a motion for post-conviction relief pursuant to Rule 3.850. After reviewing our client’s entire file, we arranged a secure, legal call to speak to him in prison. We determined that the statute had been misapplied by the State Attorney and that Mr. Gammage should have only been convicted of one, not three counts. The trial court rejected our argument and summarily denied our 3.850 motion without an evidentiary hearing. We appealed.
In granting our appeal, Florida’s Second District Court of Appeal reversed the trial court’s denial of the 3.850 motion to vacate the sentence. Specifically, the court reversed two of Gammage’s three convictions and remanded his case back to the trial court to resentence him using a corrected scoresheet. In other words, Gammage’s prison sentence dropped from 15-years to 5-years.
The District Court of Appeal decided an issue of first impression in determining whether a defendant could be convicted of each separate act of tampering with individual jurors or whether tampering with any juror – whether one or more – constitutes the completed offense. After a detailed analysis of the “a/any” unit of prosecution rule, the court determined that the language of the statute supported a determination that the legislature intended only one prosecution regardless of the number of jurors involved.
If you’d like to read the opinion in its entirety, click here.
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Reversed & Remanded