Title: Cherry v. Jones

State: florida

Issuer: Florida Supreme Court

Document:

Supreme Court of Florida 
 
 
____________ 
 
No. SC15-957 
____________ 
 
ROGER LEE CHERRY, 
Petitioner, 
 
vs. 
 
JULIE L. JONES, etc., 
Respondent. 
 
[December 1, 2016] 
 
PER CURIAM. 
 
This case is before the Court on the petition of Roger Lee Cherry for a writ 
of habeas corpus.  We have jurisdiction.  See art. V, § 3(b)(9), Fla. Const.  For the 
following reasons, we grant Cherry’s petition and remand to the circuit court for an 
evidentiary hearing on Cherry’s claim of intellectual disability. 
Roger Lee Cherry was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder, after 
which a jury recommended the sentence of death by a vote of seven to five for the 
first count and nine to three for the second count.  We affirmed the convictions and 
one of the death sentences but vacated the other sentence with instructions to enter 
a life sentence.  Cherry v. State, 544 So. 2d 184 (Fla. 1989). 
 
 
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In a 2005 evidentiary hearing, Drs. Gregory Prichard and Peter Bursten 
testified that Cherry met the criteria for intellectual disability.  The experts testified 
that Cherry received a full scale IQ score of 72.  The experts also found that Cherry 
met the other two prongs for establishing that he is intellectually disabled.  
Nevertheless, the circuit court denied relief, finding that Cherry did not meet the 
statutory definition of intellectual disability.  We affirmed in Cherry v. State, 959 
So. 2d 702 (Fla. 2007). 
 
Cherry asserts that we should revisit our prior decision in which the Court 
found that Cherry was not intellectually disabled under the first prong of Cherry, 
thereby precluding consideration of the remaining Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 
(2002), factors.  Similar to the defendant in Hall v. Florida, 134 S. Ct. 1986 (2012), 
Cherry took multiple IQ tests over the course of thirty-seven years.  Cherry, 959 
So. 2d at 712 n.6.  Based on the new standard imposed by Hall and taking into 
account the standard error of measurement of IQ tests, we find that Cherry is 
entitled to an evidentiary hearing on the remaining prongs to establish whether he 
has an intellectual disability.  See Hall, 134 S. Ct. at 1993, 2000, 2001 (stating that 
a determination of intellectual disability requires a court to “take into account the 
standard error of measurement” of IQ tests rather than implement a “rigid rule” 
characterizing intellectual disability as an IQ of 70 or below.)  We therefore grant 
Cherry’s petition and remand this case to the circuit court for an evidentiary 
 
 
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hearing in accordance with Hall.  See Walls v. State, 41 Fla. L. Weekly S466 (Fla. 
Oct. 20, 2016). 
It is so ordered. 
LABARGA, C.J., and PARIENTE, LEWIS, QUINCE, and PERRY, JJ., concur. 
PARIENTE, J., concurs with an opinion. 
CANADY, J., dissents with an opinion, in which POLSTON, J., concurs. 
 
NOT FINAL UNTIL TIME EXPIRES TO FILE REHEARING MOTION, AND 
IF FILED, DETERMINED. 
 
PARIENTE, J., concurring. 
 
In 2007, this Court unanimously denied Roger Lee Cherry relief on his claim 
of intellectual disability because Cherry had a full scale IQ score of 72.  Cherry v. 
State, 959 So. 2d 702 (Fla. 2007).  The Court was wrong, as we have now been 
told by the United States Supreme Court in Hall v. Florida, 134 S. Ct. 1986 (2014), 
and the error is of such constitutional magnitude that the Eighth Amendment 
demands that the error be corrected.  I was part of the Court in Cherry that made a 
legal error—one that could literally mean the difference between life and death.   
Yet Justice Canady, in his dissent in this case, which he elaborates on in his 
dissent in Walls v. State, 41 Fla. L. Weekly S466, 2016 WL 6137287 (Fla. Oct. 20, 
2016), states that Cherry should not get the benefit of Hall—even though the 
United States Supreme Court specifically disapproved of the bright-line IQ cutoff 
set forth in the very case involving Roger Lee Cherry:   
 
 
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In summary, every state legislature to have considered the issue 
after Atkins—save Virginia’s—and whose law has been interpreted 
by its courts has taken a position contrary to that of Florida.  Indeed, 
the Florida Legislature, which passed the relevant legislation prior to 
Atkins, might well have believed that its law would not create a fixed 
cutoff at 70.  The staff analysis accompanying the 2001 bill states that 
it “does not contain a set IQ level. . . .  Two standard deviations from 
these tests is approximately a 70 IQ, although it can be extended up to 
75.”  Fla. Senate Staff Analysis and Economic Impact Statement, 
CS/SB 238, p. 11 (Feb. 14, 2001).  But the Florida Supreme Court 
interpreted the law to require a bright-line cutoff at 70, see Cherry, 
959 So. 2d, at 712-713, and the Court is bound by that interpretation. 
Hall, 134 S. Ct. at 1998 (emphasis supplied). 
Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority in Hall, also explained the flaw in 
looking only at IQ as conclusive evidence of intellectual disability: 
It is not sound to view a single factor as dispositive of a 
conjunctive and interrelated assessment.  See DSM–5, at 37 (“[A] 
person with an IQ score above 70 may have such severe adaptive 
behavior problems . . . that the person’s actual functioning is 
comparable to that of individuals with a lower IQ score”).  The 
Florida statute, as interpreted by its courts, misuses IQ score on its 
own terms; and this, in turn, bars consideration of evidence that must 
be considered in determining whether a defendant in a capital case has 
intellectual disability.  Florida’s rule is invalid under the 
Constitution’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause. 
Id. at 2001 (emphasis supplied). 
 
And further directing that intellectual disability could not be determined by a 
number but by a consideration of all factors, including adaptive functioning, the 
Supreme Court warned: 
Intellectual disability is a condition, not a number.  See DSM–
5, at 37.  Courts must recognize, as does the medical community, that 
 
 
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the IQ test is imprecise.  This is not to say that an IQ test score is 
unhelpful.  It is of considerable significance, as the medical 
community recognizes.  But in using these scores to assess a 
defendant’s eligibility for the death penalty, a State must afford these 
test scores the same studied skepticism that those who design and use 
the tests do, and understand that an IQ test score represents a range 
rather than a fixed number.  A State that ignores the inherent 
imprecision of these tests risks executing a person who suffers from 
intellectual disability.  See APA Brief 17 (“Under the universally 
accepted clinical standards for diagnosing intellectual disability, the 
court’s determination that Mr. Hall is not intellectually disabled 
cannot be considered valid”). 
Id. (emphasis supplied).   
As this Court recognized in Oats v. State, Hall changed the manner in which 
courts must consider evidence of intellectual disability.  We stated that: “courts 
must consider all three prongs in determining an intellectual disability, as opposed 
to relying on just one factor as dispositive . . . [t]hese factors are interdependent, if 
one of the prongs is relatively less strong, a finding of intellectual disability may 
still be warranted based on the strength of other prongs.”  Oats, 181 So. 3d 457, 
467-68 (Fla. 2015). 
 
Justice demands that Roger Lee Cherry have an opportunity to establish that 
he is intellectually disabled under the standards established by the United States 
Supreme Court under the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits the execution of 
those who are, in fact, intellectually disabled.  As we stated in Thompson v. State, 
SC15-1752, 2016 WL 6649950, at *1 (Fla. Nov. 10, 2016), “to fail to give [the 
defendant] the benefit of Hall, which disapproved of Cherry, would result in a 
 
 
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manifest injustice, which is an exception to the law of the case doctrine.”  More 
than fundamental fairness, the risk of executing a person who is not 
constitutionally eligible for the death penalty surpasses any other considerations 
that this Court looks to in attempting to ensure the even-handed administration of 
the death penalty.  This principle could not be better expressed than in the words of 
Justice Kennedy writing for the majority in Hall: 
The death penalty is the gravest sentence our society may 
impose.  Persons facing that most severe sanction must have a fair 
opportunity to show that the Constitution prohibits their execution.  
Florida’s law contravenes our Nation’s commitment to dignity and its 
duty to teach human decency as the mark of a civilized world.  The 
States are laboratories for experimentation, but those experiments may 
not deny the basic dignity the Constitution protects. 
Hall, 134 S. Ct. at 2001.  I concur with the majority that Cherry is entitled to a new 
evidentiary hearing pursuant to the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Hall 
and our decision in Oats. 
CANADY, J., dissenting. 
 
For the reasons I have explained in my dissent in Walls v. State, 41 Fla. L. 
Weekly S466, 2016 WL 6137287 (Fla. Oct. 20, 2016) (Canady, J., dissenting), I 
have concluded that Hall v. Florida, 134 S. Ct. 1986 (2014), should not be given 
retroactive effect.  I would therefore deny Cherry relief. 
POLSTON, J., concurs. 
 
 
 
 
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Original Proceeding – Habeas Corpus 
 
Linda McDermott of McClain & McDermott, P.A., Estero, Florida, 
 
 
for Petitioner 
 
Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, Tallahassee, Florida; and Stacey E. Kircher, 
Assistant Attorney General, Daytona Beach, Florida,  
 
 
for Respondent