Opinion
Case No. 4D99-1772.
Opinion filed August 1, 2001.
Appeal from the Circuit Court for the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit, Broward County; Fred J. Berman, Judge; L.T. Case No. 98-8989CF10A.
Carey Haughwout, Public Defender, and Joseph R. Chloupek, Assistant Public Defender, West Palm Beach, and Eldred Lewis, Blountstown, for appellant.
Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Georgina Jimenez-Orosa, Assistant Attorney General, West Palm Beach, for appellee.
Eldred Lewis was convicted of robbery following a jury trial and was sentenced to a thirty year prison term. He timely appealed his conviction and sentence. The public defender filed a motion to withdraw and brief under Anders v. California, 386 U.S. 738 (1967), asserting that there were no arguable issues for appeal. We found the record on appeal was insufficient to allow the type of independent appellate review required by In re Anders Briefs, 581 So.2d 149 (Fla. 1991), and on February 10, 2000, we ordered the record supplemented with the missing transcripts and pleadings.
After entering numerous additional orders to supplement the record, several crucial transcripts remained missing. This court relinquished jurisdiction to the circuit court on January 24, 2001, for the purpose of conducting a proceeding to determine whether a complete record could be either obtained or reconstructed. The most recent status report indicates that no such proceeding has taken place. The state was then ordered to show cause why Lewis' conviction and sentence should not be reversed and the case remanded for a new trial based on the absence of a complete record. No response to that order was filed.
Without the missing transcripts, this court cannot fulfill its obligation to conduct a complete and independent review of the record as required by Anders. Delap v. State, 350 So.2d 462 (Fla. 1977) (missing portions of the record prevented the supreme court from conducting the complete review required in death penalty cases). We reverse Lewis' conviction and sentence. Since transcripts of the hearings on Lewis' pretrial motions are missing, the circuit court must also conduct new hearings on those motions.
FARMER, TAYLOR and HAZOURI, JJ., concur.