Case Title: Jack R. Sliney v. State of Florida

Citation: 

Docket Number: SC2022-0700

State: florida

Court: Florida Supreme Court

Date: 2023-05-25T00:00:00Z

Document:
Supreme Court of Florida 
 
____________ 
 
No. SC2022-0700 
____________ 
 
JACK R. SLINEY, 
Appellant, 
 
vs. 
 
STATE OF FLORIDA, 
Appellee. 
 
May 25, 2023 
 
PER CURIAM. 
 
 
Three decades ago, then-19-year-old Jack Sliney murdered 
George Blumberg during a robbery of Mr. Blumberg’s pawn shop.  
Sliney’s conviction and death sentence for the murder became final 
in 1998.1  In January 2022, Sliney filed a second successive 
postconviction motion under Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 
3.851.2  Sliney challenges the constitutionality of his death 
 
 
1.  Sliney v. State, 699 So. 2d 662, 672 (Fla. 1997), cert. 
denied, 522 U.S. 1129 (1998).  
 
2.  We previously denied Sliney’s initial postconviction motion 
and first successive postconviction motion.  See Sliney v. State, 944 
 
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sentence, arguing that the Eighth Amendment should be 
understood to categorically preclude the execution of offenders who 
were under age 22 at the time of their crimes.  The trial court 
summarily denied Sliney’s motion, Sliney appealed the ruling to this 
Court, and we now affirm.3 
I. 
 
The decision in Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005), sets 
the baseline here.  In Roper, the United States Supreme Court held 
that “[t]he Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments forbid imposition of 
the death penalty on offenders who were under the age of 18 when 
their crimes were committed.”  Id. at 578.  To get to that holding, 
the Court first conducted “a review of objective indicia of consensus, 
as expressed in particular by the enactments of legislatures that 
have addressed the question.”  Id. at 564.  Then the Court applied 
its “own independent judgment” to conclude that “the death penalty 
 
So. 2d 270, 289 (Fla. 2006); Sliney v. State, 235 So. 3d 310, 310 
(Fla. 2018).  
 
3.  We have jurisdiction.  See art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. 
 
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is disproportionate punishment for offenders under 18.”  Id. at 564, 
575. 
The Supreme Court identified three differences between 
juveniles and adults that, in the Court’s view, “render suspect any 
conclusion that a juvenile falls among the worst offenders”: 
juveniles’ relative lack of maturity and underdeveloped sense of 
responsibility; their increased vulnerability to outside influences 
and peer pressure; and their incompletely formed character.  Id. at 
569-70.  And given juveniles’ “diminished culpability,” the Court 
reasoned that “the penological justifications for the death penalty 
apply to them with lesser force than to adults.”  Id. at 571.  The 
Court acknowledged that “[t]he qualities that distinguish juveniles 
from adults do not disappear when an individual turns 18.”  Id. at 
574.  But it concluded that “18 is the point where society draws the 
line for many purposes between childhood and adulthood,” and that 
is “the age at which the line for death eligibility ought to rest.”  Id. 
Sliney’s second successive postconviction motion alleges that 
under the logic (if not the holding) of Roper, the Eighth Amendment 
should be understood to categorically prohibit the execution of any 
offender aged 18 through 21 at the time of his crime.  Sliney 
 
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emphasizes that his motion does not seek reweighing of age as a 
mitigator in his case.  Instead, Sliney claims to be a member of a 
class for whom the death penalty is categorically off limits. 
Sliney’s motion purports to raise two claims, each asserting a 
reason why his death sentence violates the Eighth Amendment—
whether it would be more accurate to characterize the motion as 
raising a single Eighth Amendment claim is something we need not 
decide to resolve this appeal.  The first claim invokes supposedly 
new scientific evidence about brain development to support the 
proposition that offenders aged 18 to 21, like juveniles, have 
diminished culpability.  The alleged “newly discovered evidence” 
consists of the 2021 version of the Intellectual Disability Manual 
issued by the American Association of Intellectual and 
Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD).  Sliney says that the manual 
raised the age of onset for diagnosing individual disability from 18 
to 22.  According to Sliney, the manual shows “a firm and 
conclusive recognition by the scientific community that there is no 
functional difference between the brain of an older adolescent and a 
juvenile offender.”  Sliney’s second claim alleges that his death 
sentence is disproportionate punishment prohibited by the Eighth 
 
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Amendment.  The basis for this claim is an alleged national 
consensus against the death penalty for individuals aged 18 
through 21. 
The trial court held a Huff4 hearing to consider these 
arguments and to determine whether resolution of Sliney’s motion 
would require an evidentiary hearing.  The court then summarily 
denied Sliney’s claims, concluding that the claims were untimely, 
procedurally barred, and substantively precluded by this Court’s 
precedent.  See, e.g., Branch v. State, 236 So. 3d 981, 987 (Fla. 
2018) (“[U]nless the United States Supreme Court determines that 
the age of ineligibility for the death penalty should be extended, we 
will continue to adhere to Roper.”).  This appeal followed. 
II. 
 
Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.851(f)(5)(B) authorizes 
the trial court to deny a successive postconviction motion without 
an evidentiary hearing if “the motion, files, and records in the case 
conclusively show that the movant is entitled to no relief.”  Sliney 
argues that an evidentiary hearing was required in his case and 
 
 
4.  Huff v. State, 622 So. 2d 982 (Fla. 1993). 
 
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that the court below erred by summarily denying his motion.  We 
disagree. 
To sustain the trial court’s ruling, we need only explain our 
agreement with the court’s conclusion that Sliney’s claims are 
untimely.  The general rule is that a motion seeking relief under 
rule 3.851 must be filed “within 1 year after the judgment and 
sentence become final.”  Fla. R. Crim. P. 3.851(d)(1).  An exception 
applies when “the facts on which the claim is predicated were 
unknown to the movant or the movant’s attorney and could not 
have been ascertained by the exercise of due diligence.”  Fla. R. 
Crim. P. 3.851(d)(2)(A).  A motion traveling under this provision 
must be filed within one year of the date such facts become 
discoverable through due diligence.  Jimenez v. State, 997 So. 2d 
1056, 1064 (Fla. 2008). 
Sliney filed his motion on January 14, 2022, decades after his 
death sentence became final.  He argues that the motion is timely 
because he filed it within one year of the January 15, 2021, release 
of the updated AAIDD manual.  Sliney urges us to conclude that the 
“new” evidence of the alleged scientific consensus reflected in the 
manual transcends long-available studies indicating that brain 
 
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development continues beyond age 18.  To be clear, Sliney relies on 
the publication of the 2021 AAIDD manual to justify the timeliness 
of both his “newly discovered evidence” claim and his 
“proportionality” claim, both of which are ultimately grounded in 
the Eighth Amendment. 
We cannot agree that, for purposes of rule 3.851(d)(2)(A), the 
2021 AAIDD manual contains previously unknown “facts on which 
[Sliney’s claims are] predicated.”  Similar facts have long been 
available to support the argument—successful or not—that young 
adults are like older juveniles in terms of brain development and, by 
extension, moral culpability.  Sliney’s motion itself cites a February 
5, 2018, American Bar Association resolution that, citing then-
current brain research, says:  “These and other large-scale 
advances in the understanding of the human brain[] have led to the  
current medical recognition that brain systems and structures are 
still developing into an individual’s mid-twenties.” 
Sliney’s attempted reliance on the publication of the new 
AAIDD manual ignores the important distinction between the facts 
on which his claims are predicated and the evidence used to prove 
those facts.  See generally Flanagan v. Johnson, 154 F.3d 196, 199 
 
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(5th Cir. 1998) (explaining the difference).  The updated AAIDD 
manual might provide additional support for Sliney’s claims, but 
the scientific facts underlying those claims have been available 
since well before 2021.  If we were to accept Sliney’s timeliness 
argument, every new study or publication related to brain 
development in young adults could be invoked to restart the clock 
for filing a successive rule 3.851 motion.  That would be at odds 
with the finality interests served by the rule. 
Our analysis here does not break new ground.  Other young 
adult offenders have relied on arguments like Sliney’s as a gateway 
to escaping the time bar in rule 3.851 and arguing for an extension 
of Roper.  In their cases, we similarly refused to treat materials like 
the 2021 AAIDD manual as “newly discovered evidence” in this 
context.  See, e.g., Deviney v. State, 322 So. 3d 563, 573 (Fla. 
2021); Branch, 236 So. 3d at 985-87.  Sliney’s argument that the 
manual is qualitatively different—because it supposedly cements a 
scientific consensus—is unpersuasive.  As a federal appeals court 
has observed, “[n]othing in Roper leads us to believe that the 
Justices drew the line at age eighteen based exclusively on their 
perception of a scientific certainty that an individual’s brain and 
 
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cognitive functions undergo a metamorphosis at precisely that age.”  
United States v. Gonzalez, 981 F.3d 11, 20 (1st Cir. 2020). 
III. 
For the reasons we have explained, we affirm the trial court’s 
denial of Sliney’s Eighth Amendment claims.  
It is so ordered. 
MUÑIZ, C.J., and CANADY, LABARGA, COURIEL, GROSSHANS, 
and FRANCIS, JJ., concur. 
SASSO, J., did not participate. 
 
NOT FINAL UNTIL TIME EXPIRES TO FILE REHEARING MOTION 
AND, IF FILED, DETERMINED. 
 
An Appeal from the Circuit Court in and for Charlotte County 
 
Donald Mason, Judge 
Case No. 081992CF0004510001XX 
 
Eric Pinkard, Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, Julissa Fontán, 
Assistant Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, and Nicholas M. 
Bedy, Assistant Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, Middle Region, 
Temple Terrace, Florida, 
 
 
for Appellant 
 
Ashley Moody, Attorney General, Tallahassee, Florida, and Scott A. 
Browne, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Tampa, Florida, 
 
 
for Appellee