Weber v. State · No. 1D2025-1427 (Fla. 1st DCA) · Decided September 30, 2026
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A sentencing judge who rejects a defendant’s request for a downward departure does not have to state on the record the reasons for that decision, the First District Court of Appeal has held, expressly disagreeing with the reasoning of a line of Second District Court of Appeal decisions. The court affirmed a twelve-year prison sentence imposed in Alachua County for exploitation of an elderly person.
What Happened
The State charged Bryan Arthur Weber with grand theft of $100,000 or more, racketeering, scheme to defraud or organized fraud, and exploitation of an elderly person involving $50,000 or more. Weber entered an open no contest plea to the exploitation count. His lowest permissible sentence without a departure was 34.5 months in prison; the maximum was 30 years.
Weber asked for a departure on two statutory grounds: that the need for restitution outweighed the need for imprisonment, and that the offense was committed in an unsophisticated manner and was an isolated incident for which he has shown remorse. Both sides presented evidence. The court declined to depart and imposed twelve years. It said the evidence on the restitution ground was insufficient but did not comment at all on the “unsophisticated, isolated, remorse” ground. When imposing sentence, the court told Weber, “You deserve more.”
What the Court Held
The court rejected without comment Weber’s separate argument about a presentence investigation.
On the restitution ground, the court held Weber’s argument foreclosed by its 2025 decision in Gazoombi v. State, 406 So. 3d 371 (Fla. 1st DCA 2025). “Put simply, proof of a departure ground does not establish any entitlement to a departure sentence,” the court wrote. Proving a ground would only lower the bottom of the range from 34.5 months to zero; either way, the twelve-year sentence fell within the range and “does not constitute an abuse of discretion.”
The court also explained its reading of Banks v. State, 732 So. 2d 1065 (Fla. 1999). It said the often-cited two-step description in Banks — whether the court can depart, and then whether it should — was the Supreme Court’s description of the statutory process, not its holding, and that “[n]othing suggests that the Court intended to establish requirements beyond the statutes.” The departure statutes require written reasons when a court departs, but, the panel noted, they do not impose a corresponding duty when a court declines to depart. Relying on its June 2026 decision in Davis v. State, the court repeated that “no rule or statute requires a sentencing court to set forth its reasons for refusing to impose a departure.”
On the unsophisticated-isolated-remorse ground, Weber relied on Second District decisions, including Williams v. State, 286 So. 3d 892 (Fla. 2d DCA 2019), and Manyak v. State, 414 So. 3d 263 (Fla. 2d DCA 2025), which reversed sentences where the record did not reflect that the court applied the “Banks two-step analysis” in rejecting a departure. The First District agreed that those cases and others “suggest that this failure could constitute reversible error. But we disagree with their reasoning.”
The court identified “two issues with the Second District’s approach.” First, Banks “does not establish rules of law independent of statutory requirements,” and neither the statutes nor Banks requires an on-the-record justification for rejecting a departure. Second, although a departure is prohibited unless the defendant shows facts that reasonably justify it, under the Second District’s approach the trial court “bears the burden of explaining why the defendant is not entitled to a departure.” That approach, the First District wrote, “does not apply the presumption of correctness that an appellate court must give to trial court decisions. Indeed, it does just the opposite.”
Using Manyak as an example, the court said the trial judge’s statement there — “I don’t find there’s a valid basis for the downward departure” — could easily be read as legally appropriate, but the Second District “applied a presumption of incorrectness, requiring the trial court to defend its decision not to depart.” The panel concluded: “We find that the Second District’s approach is inconsistent with the presumption of correctness.”
In a footnote, the court noted that when appellate courts have found error in a refusal to depart, it has typically been because the trial court applied an arbitrary blanket policy against departures, wrongly believed it lacked authority to depart, or failed to actually exercise its discretion. “Weber makes no such claim here,” the court wrote. It affirmed.
Why It Matters
The First District and the Second District now take different approaches to a trial court’s silence when it declines a requested downward departure. Under Weber and Davis, the First District will not reverse because a sentencing court failed to explain its refusal or walk through the Banks steps on the record. As the First District described it, the Second District “has held repeatedly that the sentencing court commits reversible error when, in rejecting a request for a departure sentence, it does not clearly indicate on the record that it followed the two-step process.” Weber discusses Williams, Manyak, Dawson, Camacho, and Kezal as examples of that line.
The Opinion
Download the full opinion (PDF)
| Court | First District Court of Appeal |
| Case No. | 1D2025-1427 |
| Lower Court | Circuit Court, Alachua County (Judge William E. Davis) |
| Opinion by | Judge Winokur (Chief Judge Osterhaus and Judge Lewis concurring) |
| Decided | September 30, 2026 |
| Result | Affirmed |