Scott v. State · No. 3D2024-2211 (Fla. 3d DCA) · Decided October 14, 2026
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The Third District Court of Appeal has affirmed a life sentence imposed on a probationer as a prison releasee reoffender (PRR) after his probation was revoked, applying its own decision in Foulks v. State to hold that the State could seek the PRR sentence upon revocation, and holding that his five-year probation did not begin to run until he was released from an unrelated prison sentence. The court certified conflict with the First District’s decision in Hill v. State, 403 So. 3d 505 (Fla. 1st DCA 2025).
What Happened
Renardo Scott appealed an order revoking his probation and sentencing him to life in prison as a PRR. According to the majority opinion, he had been sentenced to five years of probation, to begin after he served a ten-year minimum mandatory prison sentence. He was released from that sentence in Miami-Dade on October 28, 2017, but remained imprisoned serving a concurrent prison sentence in an unrelated Broward County case until November 3, 2022. The State filed its probation violation affidavit on December 13, 2023.
Judge Miller’s concurrence supplies more of the background. Scott was charged in four cases with armed robbery, armed burglary with an assault or battery, and other offenses, and the State timely filed notice of its intent to seek a PRR sentence in three of them. In 2008 he accepted a negotiated plea: guilty as charged, in exchange for an adjudication and ten years in prison followed by five years of reporting probation as a habitual felony offender. The State waived PRR sentencing as part of the plea. The trial judge told Scott, “[the] State is waiving that designation, but your record will start catching up to you, sir.” The State presented no evidence that Scott qualified as a PRR, and Scott did not stipulate that he qualified.
Judge Miller also wrote that, at the plea colloquy, the trial court told Scott that if he violated probation he “could still be looking at up to possibly life in the state penitentiary on all these cases,” and that “[a]t no time was he informed a life sentence would be mandatory upon a finding of violation.” At the violation hearing, the prosecutor announced she would seek a PRR sentence on all four cases. Scott objected that any enhancement was subject to a jury determination and that the State had waived it. The trial court overruled the jury objection, the State presented evidence that Scott qualified as a PRR, and the court imposed mandatory life sentences on multiple counts. It later denied Scott’s motion to correct sentence.
What the Court Held
In an opinion by Judge Fernandez, the Third District first addressed Scott’s probation. It affirmed the trial court’s finding that his imprisonment in the unrelated Broward case tolled his probation until his release on November 3, 2022, because “the commencement of his probationary period was properly tolled pending the completion of his incarceration on all sentences.” The court cited section 948.012(1), Florida Statutes (2007), which provides that probation “shall commence immediately upon the release of the defendant from incarceration,” and Lawson v. State, 969 So. 2d 222, 229 (Fla. 2007), for the point that the purpose of probation is rehabilitation while the purpose of imprisonment is punishment. It quoted the Fourth District’s reasoning in State v. Fiddemon, 301 So. 3d 243, 247-48 (Fla. 4th DCA 2020), that holding the probation term completed during a later prison term “would be inconsistent with the rehabilitative concept of probation which presupposes that the probationer is not in prison,” and cited decisions from the First, Second, and Fifth Districts.
The court then held that the trial court “did not err in finding that the State met its burden and designated Scott a PRR on all eligible convictions in all four of his cases.” It reasoned that “[b]ecause Scott qualified for PRR at the time of sentencing, which he does not dispute, it was proper for the trial court to impose PRR as a result of the revocation of his probation.” It relied on section 948.06(2)(b), Florida Statutes (2024), which directs that on revocation the court “impose any sentence which it might have originally imposed,” and on the Third District’s own decision in Foulks v. State, 306 So. 3d 1178, 1185 (Fla. 3d DCA 2020), which it quoted for the proposition that a sentencing after revocation is “just a resentencing on the original offense.” It also cited Duggans v. State, 432 So. 3d 671, 672 (Fla. 3d DCA 2026), which read Foulks to mean the State may seek a PRR sentence on revocation despite having waived it in a plea, “if the State can establish the defendant qualified as a PRR at the time of his initial sentencing.”
Finally, the court agreed with the trial court that the PRR determination is “an administerial [sic] one” that does not require jury findings. It cited Maye v. State, 368 So. 3d 531, 532 (Fla. 6th DCA 2023), aff’d, 436 So. 3d 416 (Fla. 2026), which held that the date a defendant was released from prison or jail and the nature of the qualifying offense “are ministerial in nature and thus do not require jury findings,” citing Robinson v. State, 793 So. 2d 891, 893 (Fla. 2001). The court thus rejected the need for jury findings on those facts. It did not separately analyze the argument, based on Erlinger v. United States, 602 U.S. 821 (2024), that judicial factfinding of PRR eligibility violates the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments; it quoted Duggans, where the court affirmed “[w]ithout reaching the merits of this argument” because any error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
The court affirmed the revocation and the life sentence. “Consistent with Judge Miller’s recommendation in the concurring opinion, we certify conflict with Hill v. State, 403 So. 3d 505 (Fla. 1st DCA 2025).” Judge Lobree concurred.
Judge Miller’s Concurrence
Judge Miller concurred in the majority opinion but wrote separately “to highlight the unresolved conflict” between Foulks and Hill. “The inconsistent holdings in these cases,” Judge Miller wrote, “have resulted in vastly different outcomes for similarly situated defendants.” Judge Miller acknowledged that the Equal Protection Clause does not require similarly situated defendants to receive the same punishment in different appellate districts, but wrote that resolving the conflict “will foster the lauded goal of greater uniformity.”
Judge Miller described Foulks as holding that the State may seek a PRR sentence after revocation even though it waived PRR at the original sentencing, relying on the principle that on revocation a court may impose any sentence it might originally have imposed. The concurrence described Hill as reaching the opposite result on “virtually identical” facts. According to Judge Miller, the First District in Hill relied on Mack v. State, 823 So. 2d 746, 750 (Fla. 2002), which held that a trial court may not impose a habitual felony offender sentence for the first time after a probation revocation, and held that where the State waived and did not prove PRR eligibility and “did not make any explicit statement at the original sentencing hearing about maintaining the ability to seek a PRR sentence upon revocation,” the availability of the enhanced sentence “expired” once the trial court imposed a guidelines sentence.
Judge Miller also noted the special concurrence in Hill by then-Judge Tanenbaum, who concluded that because the State did not prove PRR eligibility up front, the enhancement could not have been imposed originally, and who wrote that “[t]he State cannot change this by then trying to prove PRR after the fact, after the original sentence was imposed and served—and have it apply nunc pro tunc to qualify Hill for the enhanced sentence.” Then-Judge Tanenbaum added that after Erlinger, imposing a PRR sentence without a jury determination of the qualifying facts “might also now be constitutionally dubious.” Judge Miller concluded: “Here, Scott’s mandatory life PRR sentences were authorized under Foulks but impermissible under Hill.”
Why It Matters
The court’s certification identifies a direct split between the Third and First Districts over whether the State, having waived a PRR sentence in a plea, can obtain a mandatory PRR sentence after the defendant’s probation is revoked. The opinion is not final until disposition of any timely motion for rehearing.
The Opinion
Download the full opinion (PDF)
| Court | Third District Court of Appeal |
| Case No. | 3D2024-2211 |
| Lower Court | Circuit Court, Miami-Dade County (Judge Ramiro C. Areces) |
| Opinion by | Judge Fernandez (Judge Lobree concurring; Judge Miller concurring with opinion) |
| Decided | October 14, 2026 |
| Result | Affirmed; conflict certified with Hill v. State, 403 So. 3d 505 (Fla. 1st DCA 2025) |