A Florida appeals court on Wednesday upheld the prison sentences of a man connected to 21 criminal cases involving a sophisticated theft ring that targeted millions of dollars worth of luxury vehicles.
The Third District Court of Appeal rejected an appeal from Odonovah Mairs, who argued that a Miami-Dade County circuit judge improperly factored in dismissed criminal charges when sending him to prison.
The legal saga began in July 2023 when Mairs, who was a juvenile at the time, pleaded guilty to dozens of charges across 21 separate cases, primarily centered on burglary and stealing high-end cars. At the time, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Lody Jean withheld formal adjudication and sentenced Mairs as a youthful offender to two years of community control—a strict form of supervised house arrest—followed by four years of probation.
As a special condition of his release, Mairs was required to complete a juvenile boot camp program.
However, court records show that by May 2024, after Mairs had reached adulthood, his probation officer filed violation affidavits against him. The state alleged that Mairs failed to finish the boot camp and committed a new crime, specifically a battery charge.
Following a June 2024 hearing, Judge Jean revoked Mairs’s community control, finding he had willfully and substantially violated his terms. The judge then stripped his youthful offender status in 20 of the cases, opting instead to sentence him as an adult under Florida’s criminal punishment code. Mairs received concurrent state prison sentences ranging up to 15 years, with credit for time already served.
In his appeal, Mairs challenged the sentences, claiming his due process rights were violated because prosecutors urged the judge to consider prior criminal charges that had been dropped in his original 2023 plea deal. Under Florida case law, judges generally cannot rely on dismissed charges when deciding a defendant’s prison term.
The appellate court reviewed the sentencing hearing transcripts to determine whether the dropped charges significantly influenced Judge Jean’s final decision. The records revealed that the judge focused on the impact and planning of the crimes Mairs actually committed, rather than on the dismissed cases.
During the sentencing, Judge Jean noted that the underlying offenses “shocked the conscience of the court.”
“There was a lot of planning in the underlying offenses. They are sophisticated,” Jean told Mairs, according to the court transcript. “Some of them are semi-sophisticated. And I’ll just reiterate, a lot of them were pretty savvy. So, I understand that you may not be formally educated. But unfortunately, Mr. Mairs, a combination of your lack of appreciation for the harm you’re doing people – taking things that don’t belong to them, violating their homes, trespassing on their property, and quite frankly, taking away their – the – the feeling of safety that they feel in their homes – they don’t deserve that.”
Writing for the three-judge appellate panel, Chief Judge Gary Scales concluded that the state successfully proved the trial judge did not rely on the improper, dismissed charges. Because the longer adult prison sentences were based strictly on competent evidence regarding the car thefts and residential burglaries, the appellate court affirmed the trial court’s rulings, leaving Mairs’s prison terms intact.
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