The Criminal Punishment Code Scoresheet Explained

Prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges in Florida's circuit courts rely heavily on scoresheets in the vast majority of their sentencing hearings.  Scoresheets are required by law in most felony sentencings.  A properly filled out, accurate and complete sentencing scoresheet helps to ensure just sentencing and is an important safeguard against sentencing error in circuit court.

Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters and William H. Burgess, III. Further reproduction is prohibited.

By Hon. William H. Burgess, III, B.C.S.

  The State of Florida has, for the past 30 years and through a succession of sentencing schemes involving the vast majority of criminal sentencings in circuit court, used printed scoresheets to collect and report sentencing data, to quantify sentencing factors, and to document sentences imposed. Since October 1, 1998, the State has used the Rule 3.992(a) Criminal Punishment Code Scoresheet and the Rule 3.992(b) Criminal Punishment Code Supplemental Scoresheet, illustrated below.  This post presents a comprehensive explanation of the proper completion and utilization of the Criminal Punishment Code sentencing scoresheet.

Length of Sentence for Juveniles Prosecuted As Adults in Florida

Given Monday’s United States Supreme Court ruling in Miller v. Alabama declaring minimum mandatory life sentences for defendants whose crimes were committed when they were less than 18 years of age unconstitutional, I thought that this would be a good time to summarize the law of sentence length for juveniles prosecuted as adults in Florida.

First of all, how do children get into the adult criminal system in Florida?

Simply put, children come into the adult system either by indictment, information, or waiver or juvenile jurisdiction.

The Apprendi and Blakely Cases

On June 26, 2000, the United States Supreme Court in its review of the case of Charles C. Apprendi against the State of New Jersey ruled that, consistent with the Sixth Amendment, any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum, other than the fact of a prior conviction, must be submitted to a jury and proved beyond a reasonable doubt.(1) In a subsequent review of the case of Ralph Howard Blakely against the State of Washington, the Court clarified Apprendi further by ruling that the “statutory maximum” for Apprendi purposes is the maximum sentence a judge may impose solely on the basis of the facts reflected in the jury verdict or admitted by the defendant, that a defendant can waive his Apprendi rights, and that when a defendant pleads guilty, the State is free to seek judicial sentence enhancements so long as the defendant either stipulates to the relevant facts or consents to judicial fact finding.(2) In other words, the relevant “statutory maximum” is not the maximum sentence a judge may impose after finding additional facts, but the maximum he or she may impose without any additional findings.


When a judge inflicts punishment that the jury’s verdict alone does not allow, the jury has not found all the facts which the law makes essential to the punishment, and the judge exceeds his or her proper authority.(3) The application of the principles of Apprendi to guidelines sentencing schemes was reaffirmed by the Court in United States v. Booker,(4) which held that the imposition of a sentence under the federal sentencing guidelines based on additional facts that the sentencing judge found by a preponderance of the evidence violated the Sixth Amendment.