Title: Hernandez v. State

State: florida

Issuer: Florida Supreme Court

Document:

Supreme Court of Florida 
 
 
____________ 
 
No. SC13-718 
____________ 
 
MICHAEL A. HERNANDEZ, JR.,  
Appellant, 
 
vs. 
 
STATE OF FLORIDA, 
Appellee. 
 
____________ 
 
No. SC13-2330 
____________ 
 
MICHAEL A. HERNANDEZ, JR., 
Petitioner, 
 
vs. 
 
JULIE L. JONES, etc.,  
Respondent. 
 
[September 17, 2015] 
 
PER CURIAM. 
 
Michael A. Hernandez, Jr., appeals an order of the circuit court denying his 
motion to vacate his conviction of first-degree murder and sentence of death filed  
 
 
 
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under Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.851.  He also petitions this Court for a 
writ of habeas corpus, alleging ineffective assistance of appellate counsel.  We 
have jurisdiction.  See art. V, § 3(b)(1), (9), Fla. Const.  For the reasons explained 
below, we affirm the order denying postconviction relief and deny his petition for a 
writ of habeas corpus. 
BACKGROUND AND FACTS 
Michael A. Hernandez, Jr., age twenty-three at the time of the crime, was 
convicted of the November 18, 2004, first-degree murder of Ruth Everett 
(“Everett”) in Milton, Florida.  Hernandez and a friend, Christopher Shawn 
Arnold, went to the home of Everett and her son David Everett, also known as 
“Snapper,” from whom Arnold sometimes obtained drugs.  Arnold and Hernandez 
went there looking for crack cocaine.  When Everett answered the door and told 
them that her son was not home, Hernandez grabbed her and forced her into the 
house.  Once Hernandez and Arnold were inside, Arnold demanded money and 
then went looking around the house for drugs.  He returned, however, with a 
pillow, which he put over Everett’s face in an attempt to smother her while 
Hernandez held her.  During the struggle or thereafter she suffered a broken neck.   
 
 
 
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Arnold left the house with the victim’s purse and Hernandez then stabbed her in 
the neck.  Hernandez returned to the car with blood on his clothes, and he and 
Arnold drove away.  They used her ATM card several times to withdraw money 
which they used to buy crack cocaine.   
 
The evidence presented at trial showed that Hernandez’s former stepfather 
Richard Hartman, Sr., his wife Tammy Hartman, and Arnold’s girlfriend Michelle 
Rose, who is Tammy Hartman’s daughter, were told by Arnold about the murder.  
Richard and Tammy then went to Hernandez’s home and confronted him.1  
Subsequently, both Arnold and Hernandez turned themselves in to police and gave 
statements.  Hernandez was indicted for one count of first-degree premeditated or 
felony murder while carrying a knife and one count of robbery with a deadly 
weapon.  He was later also charged with burglary with an assault or battery.  
Arnold, who was also charged, entered a plea and received a sentence of life in 
prison and Hernandez proceeded to trial.  At trial, the medical examiner testified 
that Everett died from the combined effects of blunt and sharp force injuries to the  
 
 
                                          
 
 
1.  Hernandez is the son of Richard Hartman’s former wife Cheryl and 
Michael Hernandez, Sr.   
 
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neck, and that either the broken neck with laceration of the spinal cord or the slash 
through her neck could have been fatal, but also could have been survivable if 
medical help had been summoned.  Hernandez was convicted on February 6, 2007, 
of all three counts.   
 
At the penalty phase proceeding, the defense called two family members and 
two mental health experts to present evidence in mitigation, including statutory 
mental health mitigation.  The State presented evidence of statutory aggravation 
and also presented its own expert, Dr. Harry McClaren, who disagreed that 
statutory mental health mitigation was present.  The jury recommended death by a 
vote of eleven to one and a Spencer2 hearing was held before sentencing.  On 
March 22, 2007, the trial court entered an order sentencing Hernandez to death, 
finding four aggravating circumstances and giving each great weight, as follows: 
(1) the defendant was convicted of prior violent felonies (§ 921.141(5)(b), Fla. 
Stat. (2007)); (2) the murder was committed during a robbery with a deadly 
weapon and a burglary of an occupied dwelling with an assault or battery while  
 
 
                                          
 
 
2.  Spencer v. State, 615 So. 2d 688 (Fla. 1993) (providing for a hearing 
after trial at which the parties may present to the sentencing judge any additional 
information or evidence pertinent to the appropriate sentence to be imposed and to 
afford the defendant an opportunity to be heard in person). 
 
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armed with a dangerous weapon (§ 921.141(5)(d), Fla. Stat. (2007)); (3) the 
murder was committed to avoid or prevent a lawful arrest (§ 921.141(5)(e), Fla. 
Stat. (2007)); and (4) the murder was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel (HAC) 
(§ 921.141(5)(h), Fla. Stat. (2007)).  The trial court rejected the statutory mental 
health mitigators that the murder was committed while Hernandez was under the 
influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance (section 921.141(6)(b), 
Florida Statutes (2007)), and that Hernandez’s capacity to appreciate the 
criminality of his conduct or conform his conduct to the law was substantially 
impaired (section 921.141(6)(f), Florida Statutes (2007)).  The trial court did find 
the statutory mitigator of lack of significant criminal history and gave it some 
weight.  See § 921.141(6)(a), Fla. Stat. (2007).  The trial court also found 
nonstatutory mitigating circumstances, which were given varying degrees of 
weight.3  See § 921.141(6)(h), Fla. Stat. (2007).  
                                          
 
 
3.  Hernandez offered twenty-eight mitigating circumstances, and the court 
added a twenty-ninth, and found the following: (1) dysfunctional, neglectful, and 
impoverished childhood (some weight); (2) no normal family home, no regular 
schooling, parents were separated, abusive foster homes, and abandonment 
(substantial weight); (3) his parents were outlaws, motorcycle gang members, hard 
drug dealers and abusers, who were under threat of death from the motorcycle 
gang (substantial weight); (4) his parents introduced him to narcotics at an early 
age (substantial weight); (5) his mother’s live-in paramours were physically, 
mentally, and emotionally abusive to her and to defendant (some weight); (6) he 
witnessed physical abuse of his mother on many occasions (some weight); (7) he 
was abandoned by his mother on more than several occasions (substantial weight); 
(8) his father fatally overdosed on drugs at the hands of a girlfriend while 
 
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On direct appeal, Hernandez raised eight claims,4 and this Court also 
decided sufficiency of the evidence and proportionality.  We affirmed in 
                                          
 
defendant was living with him (some weight); (9) defendant was mentally, 
physically, emotionally, and sexually abused in foster care over a four year period 
as a pre-teen/early teen (some weight); (10) he ran away from a foster home 
because of abuse and because his mother would not come to his aid and told him 
she was going to commit suicide (some weight); (11) he was dysfunctional and 
began to live on the streets and continued to use drugs (some weight); (12) he lived 
with his half-brother for a period of time, but was subjected to continued drug 
exposure and use at the hands of his half-brother’s father, Richard Hartman (some 
weight); (13) when he did attend school he was in learning disabled classes (some 
weight); (14) he was able to marry and support his family for two years (some 
weight); (15) he was characterized as a loving person, loving father, and husband 
(some weight); (16) he has a life-long addiction to controlled substances due to his 
involuntary exposure to them at an early age (some weight); (17) he was enticed 
into bingeing on cocaine at the time of the instant offense by the codefendant (not 
proven; no weight); (18) he had been drinking the night before and was still under 
the influence of alcohol on the morning of the offense (some weight); (19) the 
offense was unplanned and was initiated by the codefendant (not proven; no 
weight); (20) the homicide was a spontaneous, unplanned act (not proven; no 
weight); (21) the codefendant took the property of the decedent in hopes of finding 
money or means to get money to purchase cocaine (not mitigating; no weight); 
(22) when confronted, the defendant accepted responsibility for taking part in the 
offense (substantial weight); (23) he has continuously shown remorse for his 
conduct (slight weight); (24) he has cooperated with the police (some weight); 
(25) he has attempted suicide (some weight); (26) the codefendant was offered a 
life sentence and was equally culpable, and actually initiated the entire episode (not 
mitigating; no weight); (27) the defendant is not worthy of the death penalty for his 
participation in this crime (argumentative; no weight); (28) he has mental and 
cognitive disorders that do not qualify as statutory mitigating circumstances (some 
weight); and (29) his family members have attested to his good character (some 
weight).   
 
4.  The claims raised on direct appeal by Hernandez were: (1) trial court 
error in failing to strike the venire and failing to declare a mistrial after one 
prospective juror saw Hernandez in shackles, although that juror was excused for 
cause; (2) trial court error in refusing to excuse juror L for cause due to her 
 
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Hernandez v. State, 4 So. 3d 642 (Fla. 2009), and in the opinion, we recounted 
Hernandez’s statement given to law enforcement shortly after the murder as 
follows: 
According to Hernandez’s statements, the following events 
occurred on November 18 and 19, 2004.  Hernandez left his house at 
8:30 a.m. on November 18 to go to work, but he and [Shawn] Arnold 
instead “went to a crack friend’s house and got some crack . . . with 
the gas money and cigarette money [Hernandez] had for the day.”  
Although he had used crack before moving to Florida, Hernandez had 
not used it since moving to Florida.  They were “doing crack,” and 
Arnold suggested going to the house of “Snapper,” an individual 
whom Arnold knew.  Arnold had done cocaine with “Snapper” before, 
but Hernandez did not know him.  Arnold told him “he was going to 
try and get some money.”  Hernandez and Arnold drove to 
“Snapper’s” house in Arnold’s car.  They went to the door and spoke 
with an “old lady” at the house.  Arnold told Hernandez to “grab her,” 
and Hernandez grabbed the lady by the mouth and pulled her into the 
house.  Hernandez “got her quiet” and told her, “shh, calm down, 
calm down.  We ain’t going to hurt you.”  The lady sat down in a 
chair.  Arnold told the lady that “Snapper” owed him $300 and that 
Arnold had a gun put to his head over this money.  Arnold had made 
up this story.  Arnold told her that they would try to get the money 
from her and that they would leave her son alone if they got the 
money.  The lady told them that all she had was $20.  Arnold said, 
“All right,” and then asked to use the bathroom and came back with a 
                                          
 
personal encounters with substance abuse problems in her family and her contacts 
with law enforcement; (3) trial court error in excusing Dr. McClaren, the State’s 
mental health expert, from the rule of sequestration during both lay and expert 
testimony in the penalty phase; (4) trial court error in failing to dismiss the 
indictment, which did not allege aggravating circumstances, and failing to require 
specific jury findings regarding aggravators; (5) trial court error in giving the jury 
instruction on victim impact evidence; (6) trial court error in finding the avoid 
arrest aggravator; (7) trial court error in finding the HAC aggravator; and (8) 
disparate sentence given because codefendant Arnold received life in prison after 
pleading nolo contendere and Hernandez received death. 
 
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pillow.  Arnold stuck the pillow over the lady’s face while she was 
still in the chair.  Arnold told Hernandez to grab the lady’s hands, and 
Hernandez did.  Hernandez and Arnold were “suffocating her” and 
she was “struggling.”  While Hernandez and Arnold were “choking 
her,” “she stopped moving for a minute.”  Hernandez said the 
following then occurred: “And we let her up and tried to drag her over 
to the couch and lay her down.  And she drops, and I go to grab her, 
and I grab her head.  And her head cracked.  And Shawn helped me 
get her on the couch.  And I . . . got the knife from him and cut her 
neck . . . . After she was dead.”  Hernandez had grabbed Arnold’s 
pocket knife before entering the house and had used it to “chop up a 
crack block earlier.”  Hernandez said he did not know why he cut the 
lady’s neck. 
 
Hernandez, 4 So. 3d at 649-50.  In affirming, the majority of the Court found that 
the claims were without merit, the evidence was sufficient, and the sentence was 
proportionate.5  The United States Supreme Court denied certiorari in Hernandez v. 
Florida, 558 U.S. 860 (2009). 
Postconviction Proceedings 
 
Hernandez filed his initial motion for postconviction relief under Florida 
Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.851 in September 2010 in the circuit court of Santa 
Rosa County.  The motion alleged ineffective assistance of lead trial counsel Ted 
                                          
 
 
5.  Justice Pariente concurred in result only with an opinion in which 
Justices Lewis and Quince concurred.  Justice Pariente agreed that the conviction 
and sentence should be affirmed but concluded that the trial court abused its 
discretion in allowing the State’s expert, Dr. McClaren, to remain in the courtroom 
during the testimony of the defense’s penalty phase witnesses, although she found 
the error harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.  Id. at 674-75 (Pariente, J., 
concurring in result only). 
 
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Stokes and lead penalty phase counsel Michael Rollo.6  The motion also alleged a 
Brady/Giglio claim.7 
                                          
 
 
6.  In claim one of the motion, Hernandez contended that he was denied 
adequate adversarial testing in the guilt and penalty phases and was denied 
adequate investigation, preparation, and presentation of a defense case in the 
following respects: (A) trial counsel declined the opportunity to select a jury in a 
manner that would allow counsel to save a peremptory challenge for a specific 
juror; (B) trial counsel failed to object to incriminating testimony of Hernandez’s 
wife on the grounds of marital privilege; (C) trial counsel failed to investigate or 
prepare a meaningful challenge to testimony of Tammy Hartman; (D) trial counsel 
failed to preserve for appeal the issue of Tammy’s daughter’s unsolicited testimony 
that Hernandez threatened to kill someone the night after the murder; (E) trial 
counsel failed to object to overbroad victim impact testimony and elicited 
testimony critical of the victim; (F) trial counsel failed to investigate or prepare to 
challenge the evidence in support of the prior violent felony aggravator; (G) trial 
counsel failed to ensure that Hernandez and Shawn Arnold were separated 
following their arrests and incarceration; (H) trial counsel failed to sufficiently 
develop evidence that the victim’s neck was likely broken by Arnold when he was 
trying to smother the victim; (I) trial counsel failed to object to improper 
prosecutorial argument, failed to develop a coherent theory in the guilt phase, 
failed to coordinate the guilt phase presentation with the penalty phase 
presentation, failed to recognize the impact of guilt phase evidence on the penalty 
phase, and failed to realize that poorly-conceived denial as a defense can increase 
the likelihood of a death sentence; (J) trial counsel performed an inadequate 
investigation and presentation of Hernandez’s personal and family background and 
improperly allowed the State’s expert witness to observe the penalty phase 
testimony; and (K) penalty phase counsel failed to prepare his mental health 
experts and failed to obtain and present adequate mental health mitigation. 
In claim two, Hernandez claimed that the State withheld material and 
exculpatory evidence in violation of Brady, and presented false and misleading 
evidence in violation of Giglio, regarding, in part, the testimony of Tammy 
Hartman.  By agreement of the parties during the evidentiary hearing, a claim was 
added that trial counsel was ineffective in failing to argue that Hernandez was told 
he would not be given the death penalty if he surrendered. 
 
7.  Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963) (when favorable, material 
evidence is willfully or inadvertently not disclosed by the government); Giglio v. 
 
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A case management conference was held on February 25, 2011, and the 
circuit court entered an order granting an evidentiary hearing on most of the 
subclaims raised in claim one of the motion and on the Brady claim raised in claim 
two of the motion.  The claims raised in claim one, subclaims A and G, and the 
Giglio claim raised in claim two were denied by the court without an evidentiary 
hearing.  The circuit court held an evidentiary hearing in four different sessions, on 
January 9-13, 2012; May 25, 2012; July 16, 2012; and July 25, 2012, and denied 
postconviction relief on all claims in an order entered on March 28, 2013.  Thus, 
the court denied the Defendant’s Motion to Vacate Conviction and Sentence in its 
entirety, although not all of those claims have been appealed here.  Because most 
of the postconviction claims contend that trial counsel was ineffective in 
representation of Hernandez in either the guilt phase or the penalty phase, the 
standard of review for those claims is set forth next. 
Standard of Review for Claims of Ineffective Assistance of Counsel 
Pursuant to the Supreme Court’s decision in Strickland v. Washington, 466 
U.S. 668 (1984), two requirements must be satisfied to establish ineffective 
assistance of counsel: 
 
First, the claimant must identify particular acts or omissions of 
the lawyer that are shown to be outside the broad range of reasonably 
                                          
 
United States, 405 U.S. 150 (1972) (when prosecution presents or fails to correct 
false, material testimony that the prosecutor knew was false). 
 
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competent performance under prevailing professional standards. 
Second, the clear, substantial deficiency shown must further be 
demonstrated to have so affected the fairness and reliability of the 
proceeding that confidence in the outcome is undermined.  Strickland 
v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984); Downs v. State, 453 So. 2d 1102 
(Fla. 1984).  A court considering a claim of ineffectiveness of counsel 
need not make a specific ruling on the performance component of the 
test when it is clear that the prejudice component is not satisfied. 
 
Maxwell v. Wainwright, 490 So. 2d 927, 932 (Fla. 1986).  Because both prongs of 
Strickland present mixed questions of law and fact, this Court employs a mixed 
standard of review.  The Court will defer to the circuit court’s factual findings that 
are supported by competent, substantial evidence, and will review the circuit 
court’s application of the law to those facts de novo.  See Johnson v. State, 135 So. 
3d 1002, 1013 (Fla. 2014).  There is a strong presumption that trial counsel’s 
conduct falls within the “wide range of reasonable professional assistance,” and “a 
fair assessment of attorney performance requires that every effort be made to 
eliminate the distorting effects of hindsight, to reconstruct the circumstances of 
counsel’s challenged conduct, and to evaluate the conduct from counsel’s 
perspective at the time.”  Deparvine v. State, 146 So. 3d 1071, 1097 (Fla. 2014) 
(quoting Strickland, 466 U.S. at 689).  “[S]trategic decisions do not constitute 
ineffective assistance of counsel if alternative courses have been considered and 
rejected and counsel’s decision was reasonable under the norms of professional 
conduct.”  Occhicone v. State, 768 So. 2d 1037, 1048 (Fla. 2000).  The defendant 
must “overcome the presumption that, under the circumstances, the challenged 
 
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action ‘might be considered sound trial strategy.’ ”  Deparvine, 146 So. 3d at 1083 
(quoting Michel v. Louisiana, 350 U.S. 91, 101 (1955)).  “The reasonableness of 
counsel’s actions may be determined or substantially influenced by the defendant’s 
own statements or actions.”  Strickland, 466 U.S. at 691.   
Under the prejudice prong of Strickland, the defendant must prove that 
“there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s unprofessional errors, the 
result of the proceeding would have been different.”  White v. State, 964 So. 2d 
1278, 1285 (Fla. 2007) (quoting Strickland, 466 U.S. at 694).  Importantly, that 
reasonable probability is one “sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome.”  
Id.  Where the defendant claims that counsel provided ineffective assistance in the 
penalty phase, “the question is whether there is a reasonable probability that, 
absent the errors, the sentencer . . . would have concluded that the balance of 
aggravating and mitigating circumstances did not warrant death.”  State v. Woodel, 
145 So. 3d 782, 798 (Fla. 2014) (quoting Sochor v. State, 883 So. 2d 766, 771 (Fla. 
2004) (quoting Strickland, 466 U.S. at 695)), cert. denied, 135 S. Ct. 1735 (2015).  
As we reiterated in Foster v. State, 132 So. 3d 40 (Fla. 2013), a defendant is not 
required “to show ‘that counsel’s deficient conduct more likely than not altered the 
outcome’ of his penalty proceeding, but rather that he establish ‘a probability 
sufficient to undermine confidence in [that] outcome.’ ”  Id. at 52 (quoting Porter 
v. McCollum, 558 U.S. 30, 44 (2009) (quoting Strickland, 466 U.S. at 693-94)). 
 
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Within this framework, we turn to the claim that trial counsel was ineffective 
in handling the testimony of Tammy Hartman. 
ANALYSIS 
Testimony of Tammy Hartman 
Hernandez first contends that trial counsel was ineffective in failing to 
investigate and develop a meaningful challenge to the testimony of Tammy 
Hartman (“Tammy”).  Hernandez argues, as he did below, that reasonably 
competent counsel would have investigated her pretrial statements and been 
prepared to cross-examine her in detail about certain inconsistencies between her 
pretrial statements, her deposition, and her trial testimony.  Hernandez also claims 
that counsel should have moved to exclude any of her testimony that related what 
Arnold told her, as opposed to what Hernandez told her—and that when she 
expressed confusion over which one told her, counsel should have objected based 
on hearsay.   
Hernandez cites several examples of Tammy’s testimony that he contends 
trial counsel should have impeached as inconsistent or objected to as inadmissible 
hearsay.  For example, he cites Tammy’s trial testimony that Hernandez told her 
Arnold tried to revive the victim by having her breathe into a bag after Arnold tried 
to smother her with the pillow.  She amended that testimony by noting that it might 
have been Arnold who told her that.  This trial testimony was also in conflict with 
 
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her first statement to police, and Arnold’s deposition, which indicate that Arnold 
gave a bag to the victim to breathe into before the smothering incident began.  In 
another example, Hernandez contends that counsel was deficient in failing to 
object to hearsay when Tammy testified she was not sure who told her that Arnold 
complained to Hernandez at the time of the incident that they “weren’t going to do 
this.”  Hernandez cited other specific examples of testimony he contends counsel 
should have impeached or to which he should have objected.  The postconviction 
court denied the claim, finding that counsel did object to hearsay statements told to 
her by Arnold, that he did obtain a copy of her deposition and read it before she 
testified, and that it was trial counsel’s reasonable strategy to allow Tammy to 
show she was confused and inconsistent in her testimony.  
Without doubt, Tammy’s trial testimony was sometimes inconsistent with 
earlier statements and was often confused.  In fact, trial counsel Stokes testified at 
the evidentiary hearing that it was his strategy to use her confusion to argue that 
“she did not know what she was talking about” and, thus, her testimony was not 
reliable.  Stokes explained that it was also his trial strategy to show that Tammy 
was partial to Arnold because he was the father of her granddaughter, and that “we 
weren’t so concerned with her inconsistencies as we were her motivation.”  
Hernandez also argues that trial counsel should have attempted to present Arnold 
to testify because his deposition and evidentiary hearing testimony showed 
 
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conflicts with some of Tammy’s testimony.  Even if counsel should have objected 
to more of her testimony when it was inconsistent with earlier statements or when 
she was not sure if the facts she was testifying to were told to her by Arnold or 
Hernandez, prejudice has not been shown.  Nor was prejudice shown in counsel’s 
failure to secure Arnold’s trial testimony.   
First, Tammy’s testimony was consistent that Hernandez told her he initially 
had the victim in a choke hold and that he slit the victim’s throat because she 
would not die.  Further, much of what Tammy testified to was confirmed in the 
statement Hernandez gave police soon after the murder.  Moreover, we agree with 
the postconviction court that Tammy’s confused testimony was more helpful to 
Hernandez than Arnold’s deposition testimony.  After entering his plea in this 
murder, Arnold gave a May 25, 2006, deposition, prior to Hernandez’s trial, taken 
by Hernandez’s first attorney.  Arnold testified that when they went to the victim’s 
home looking for David Everett and found he was not home, Hernandez pushed 
the victim into the house into a recliner chair.  Arnold testified in his deposition 
that he went in and Hernandez had the victim in “a neck hold sort of kind of 
pushing on her neck.”  He further testified that he told Hernandez, “Come on, don’t 
do this” and that Hernandez released the victim, who was still in the recliner and 
was hysterical.  Arnold said that is when he gave the victim the bag to breathe into 
because she was very upset as he was asking her where her son was.  Arnold said 
 
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the victim was still in the recliner, and did calm down some.  Arnold said he asked 
to use the bathroom, but came back with a pillow which he “put . . . over Ms. 
Everett’s head. . . . over her face.”  Arnold testified that when he did that, 
Hernandez had his hands around the victim’s throat.   
Arnold also testified in his deposition that when he pulled the pillow off the 
victim’s face and announced he “could not do this,” Hernandez asked him to hold 
her arms because she was struggling.  Arnold then said Hernandez “grabbed her 
[by her head] and sort of slung her onto the floor. . . .  Pulled her out of the chair 
and slung her on the floor.”  Arnold testified that he took the pillow and her purse 
and left.  He also testified that when Hernandez returned to the car, he had blood 
on his clothes and told him he had stabbed the victim in the neck because he 
wanted to make sure she was dead.  The sworn statement Arnold gave on 
November 19, 2004, the day after the murder, was consistent in most respects with 
this later deposition.  Postconviction counsel also contends that if trial counsel had 
questioned Arnold prior to trial, he could have used his testimony to dispute 
Tammy’s testimony that Hernandez knocked Arnold out of the way after Arnold 
said they “weren’t going to do this.”  Arnold testified at the evidentiary hearing 
that it was the action of the recliner after Hernandez jumped on it during the 
smothering incident that knocked Arnold back against the wall.  Because Arnold’s 
pretrial statement to police and his deposition taken before trial show he did not 
 
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address the issue of being knocked aside—either by Hernandez or by the action of 
the recliner, the claim that counsel could have obtained this testimony to dispute 
Tammy’s version is speculative.   
Even if some of his testimony could have disputed portions of Tammy’s 
version of events, the overall effect of his testimony would have been more 
damaging to Hernandez’s defense than Tammy’s confused and inconsistent 
testimony.  Further, postconviction counsel did not establish that Arnold would 
have testified at Hernandez’s trial.  Arnold testified at the evidentiary hearing that 
he had advised his attorney that he was not going to testify at Hernandez’s trial, 
and trial counsel also believed that if Arnold had been forced to testify at trial, his 
testimony would not have been helpful to Hernandez.  Even if counsel was 
deficient in several minor respects in failing to bring out discrepancies in portions 
of Tammy’s testimony, or discrepancies between her testimony and Arnold’s, 
prejudice has not been shown.  Hernandez’s own confession disclosed that he 
forced the victim into the house and into the recliner, he held her while Arnold 
tried to smother her, he grabbed the victim’s head and felt a snap, and he cut the 
victim’s neck after Arnold left.   
Hernandez also argues briefly in this appeal that Stokes should have retained 
an expert such as Dr. Leroy Riddick, a medical examiner, who testified in the 
evidentiary hearing that the victim’s neck was not broken by “a violent twisting” as 
 
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Tammy had testified Hernandez reported having done.  Dr. Riddick testified at the 
hearing that of three hypothetical scenarios—where the neck was broken by 
twisting, by having the head pushed back by force with the pillow, and by the head 
hitting the floor—the “most reasonable would be the pillow with a lot of force 
being pushed against her face” and that due to spinal shock and lack of oxygen, she 
“could” have been “brain dead” at that point.  Postconviction counsel contends that 
this type of testimony would have shown that the victim’s neck was broken when 
the pillow was forcefully pushed against her face by Arnold, and that she “could 
have been” brain dead, but with a beating heart, before Hernandez cut her throat 
and she bled profusely.  However, on cross-examination at the evidentiary hearing, 
Dr. Riddick stated that he did not disagree with any of the testimony and opinions 
of Dr. Andrea Minyard, the medical examiner who testified at trial.  He also agreed 
that the victim’s neck could have broken when Hernandez was “manhandling” her 
head, as Hernandez stated in his confession.   
Furthermore, the jury did hear from Dr. Minyard that the victim’s neck 
could have been broken by having her head forced back by the pillow when she 
was in the recliner or when her head hit the floor when she was dropped.8  
                                          
 
 
8.  Dr. Minyard testified at trial that the victim had bruising all over her face 
and her gums caused by hard pressure by a soft surface on her face.  Dr. Minyard 
also testified that the victim could have died from suffocation by a pillow, but that 
if the victim had died from suffocation, she would not have bled so much when her 
throat was cut.  Dr. Minyard testified that the victim had a fractured fifth vertebrae 
 
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Dr. Minyard testified that the victim was not dead, however, when the knife cut 
was made to her neck because, had she been dead, she would not have bled so 
much.  Trial counsel did argue to the jury in closing that Dr. Minyard testified the 
broken neck could have resulted from Arnold forcefully smothering her with the 
pillow.  Trial counsel also argued that the evidence showed Hernandez thought the 
victim was dead after Arnold smothered her and that when they went to move her, 
she was accidentally dropped and could have broken her neck then, according to 
the medical examiner.  Thus, trial counsel was not deficient in failing to call an 
independent medical expert to say that the twisting motion to the victim’s neck that 
Tammy testified about could not have caused the injury.  The jury heard testimony 
and argument that would have allowed them to conclude the victim’s neck was 
broken while Arnold was attempting to forcefully suffocate her.  Trial counsel 
argued that is how it most likely occurred and no deficiency has been shown.   
                                          
 
in her neck and a laceration to the spinal cord inside the vertebrae.  When asked if 
the broken vertebrae in the victim’s neck was consistent with the head being 
twisted, she testified, “Any upward motion would be consistent, if it’s a twist, if 
it’s straight up, it really wouldn’t matter, but the upward motion is why it is 
important.”  On cross-examination, Dr. Minyard testified that the vertebrae in the 
victim’s neck could have been broken by being forced backward during the 
suffocation in the recliner chair.  Dr. Minyard also agreed on cross-examination 
that the broken neck could have occurred when the victim was dropped on the 
floor. 
 
- 20 - 
As to the claim that trial counsel was deficient in failing to object to 
Tammy’s testimony based on hearsay when she expressed uncertainty if certain 
statements were made by Arnold or by Hernandez, prejudice has not been 
demonstrated.  Hernandez’s sworn statement to Detective Shuler given on 
November 19, 2004, admitted the main points of the attack and the murder.  From 
Hernandez’s own statement it can be seen that even though it was Arnold’s idea to 
go to Everett’s house, it was Hernandez who forced the victim into the home by 
grabbing her throat and mouth; it was Hernandez who pushed her into the recliner; 
and it was Hernandez who helped subdue her and was “choking her” while Arnold 
was attempting to smother her.  By his own statement, Hernandez told police that 
when Everett ended up on the floor, he picked her up or dragged her by the head 
and heard something snap, and that after Arnold left, Hernandez stabbed the victim 
in the throat.  Hernandez said in his statement that Arnold helped him get her to the 
couch and that after Arnold left with her purse and the pillow, Hernandez took the 
knife that he had obtained earlier from Arnold to chop up crack and “stuck her in 
the neck” with it.  These statements by Hernandez were consistent with some of 
the most harmful aspects of Tammy’s testimony, and objections to her testimony 
when she related events that she thought either Arnold or Hernandez told her, even 
if sustained, would not have overcome the damaging effects of Hernandez’s own 
statements to police.  Further, it would have been clear to the jury from the totality 
 
- 21 - 
of Tammy’s testimony and Stokes’ closing argument that she was confused in her 
recitation of events and that she favored Arnold, who was the father of her 
grandchild.     
Under the prejudice prong of Strickland, the defendant must prove that 
“there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s unprofessional errors, the 
result of the proceeding would have been different.”  White, 964 So. 2d at 1285 
(quoting Strickland, 466 U.S. at 694).  A reasonable probability is one that is 
“sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome.”  Id.  Even if trial counsel was 
deficient in failing to impeach Tammy’s testimony by showing each inconsistency, 
and failing to object to hearsay every time Tammy was unsure which defendant 
told her the facts she was relating, such are insufficient to undermine this Court’s 
confidence in the guilty verdict and the sentence.  For all these reasons, the 
postconviction court’s denial of this claim is affirmed.   
Giglio Claim Concerning Tammy Hartman’s Testimony 
Hernandez also contends that the prosecutor presented testimony of Tammy 
Hartman about numerous statements she attributed to Hernandez, but knew at the 
time that Tammy had been inconsistent about whether it was Hernandez or Arnold 
who made the statements.  In earlier statements, Tammy had identified Arnold as 
the source of some of the statements, not Hernandez.  He argues that the prosecutor 
refreshed her recollection in one instance using a portion of her pretrial deposition 
 
- 22 - 
when he knew that she said something contrary on a later page of her deposition.  
Hernandez contends that this amounts to presentation of testimony that the 
prosecutor knew was untrue, and thus violates Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 
150 (1972).  
We have explained, as the Supreme Court held in Giglio, that a violation 
occurs if (1) the prosecutor presented or failed to correct false testimony; (2) the 
prosecutor knew the testimony was false; and (3) the false evidence was material.  
Foster, 132 So. 3d at 64.  If the first two elements are proven, materiality is 
presumed and the State must prove that there is no reasonable possibility that the 
testimony affected the verdict because it was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.  
Conahan v. State, 118 So. 3d 718, 728 (Fla. 2013).  The Court applies a mixed 
standard of review, deferring to the trial court’s findings of fact that are supported 
by competent, substantial evidence and reviewing de novo the application of the 
law to those facts.  Id. at 729. 
The postconviction court denied the claim, finding that Hernandez failed to 
prove that Tammy Hartman’s trial testimony was false.  The court based this 
finding in part on the fact that Tammy’s evidentiary hearing testimony did not 
show that her trial testimony was false, but showed only that she was confused 
over who told her certain things.  The court concluded that confusion is not the 
equivalent of a Giglio violation.  We agree.  The circuit court also found that 
 
- 23 - 
Hernandez failed to prove that the prosecutor knew any of Tammy’s testimony was 
false, especially where other witnesses corroborated much of her testimony.   
At the evidentiary hearing, the trial prosecutor testified that he had no reason 
to believe Tammy’s trial testimony was false.  He testified, “There’s no statement 
that she’s made that I could look at and say, I know that statement is false.”  He 
explained that she was a witness who had great difficulty giving specific testimony 
about her recollections.  He agreed there were inconsistencies in her statements 
made in her deposition and between her trial testimony and portions of the 
deposition.  He also noted that she said several times she could not recall whether 
Arnold or Hernandez had told her certain things, but that if any of her trial 
testimony was in fact false, he did not knowingly present it.   
Citing page thirty-five of the deposition, the prosecutor was asked at the 
evidentiary hearing about why he did not refresh Tammy’s recollection at trial with 
that part of her deposition concerning whether Hernandez told her he “knocked 
Shawn back” during the attack.  The prosecutor agreed that he did not bring to 
Tammy’s attention, or to the attention of defense counsel, Tammy’s statements on 
page forty-two of the same deposition.  There, Tammy had testified, “I want to say 
that Shawn told me that Michael knocked him back, but I don’t know if Michael 
told me that or Shawn told me that.”  In the deposition excerpt on page forty-two, 
the prosecutor cautioned Tammy, “If you’re not sure, I don’t want you to tell me,” 
 
- 24 - 
to which she responded, “I don’t know then.”  The fact that Tammy gave two 
inconsistent statements in her deposition and was asked about only one of them at 
trial does not prove that the trial testimony was false.  She admitted that she did not 
recall whether Arnold or Hernandez told her; thus, either version could have been 
true—and no evidence has been provided to conclusively establish which version 
is the true one.  Hernandez does not cite any other specific examples of alleged 
false testimony but makes reference generally to inconsistencies in her various 
statements.     
 
Even though Tammy’s testimony and her earlier statements and deposition 
demonstrate that there were inconsistencies, and some confusion in her rendition of 
events, such “mere inconsistences” have been held insufficient to establish a Giglio 
violation.  See Franqui v. State, 59 So. 3d 82, 104-06 (Fla. 2011); Maharaj v. State, 
778 So. 2d 944, 956 (Fla. 2000) (citing United States v. Bailey, 123 F.3d 1381, 
1395-96 (11th Cir. 1997)).  “[A] challenge to evidence through another witness or 
prior inconsistent statements [is] insufficient to establish prosecutorial use of false 
testimony.”  United States v. Martin, 59 F.3d 767, 770 (8th Cir. 1995) (bracketed 
material added) (quoting United States v. White, 724 F.2d 714, 717 (8th Cir. 
1984).  “[M]ere differences in testimony found in witness statements made at 
different times, or between witnesses on the same subject, are not alone sufficient 
to show perjury.”  Ferguson v. State, 101 So. 3d 895, 897 (Fla. 2012).  See also 
 
- 25 - 
Barwick v. State, 88 So. 3d 85, 104-05 (Fla. 2011) (finding that witness’s 
description of events at different trials represented reinterpretation of facts, not 
false testimony); Ferrell v. State, 29 So. 3d 959, 978 (Fla. 2010) (finding no Giglio 
violation merely on showing that two witnesses contradict each other.).  “In the 
Giglio context, the suggestion that a statement may have been false is simply 
insufficient; the defendant must conclusively show that the statement was actually 
false.”  Maharaj v. Sec’y Dept. of Corrs., 432 F.3d 1292, 1313 (11th Cir. 2005) 
(citing Moon v. Head, 285 F.3d 1301, 1315 (11th Cir. 2002), and Brown v. Head, 
272 F.3d 1308, 1317-18 (11th Cir. 2001)).  
 
The most that can be said is that Tammy Hartman gave inconsistent versions 
of several things she thinks she was told either by Arnold or Hernandez, and that 
she admitted at trial and in her deposition that she could not recall the exact details 
of some of the conversations.  However, this does not prove that the version the 
prosecutor presented at trial was actually false.  The fact that a different version 
may have been marginally more favorable to Hernandez’s theory of defense or 
mitigation does not make the trial version of Tammy’s testimony false.  Nor does it 
establish prejudice.  Whether Hernandez or Arnold told her that Hernandez 
knocked Arnold back after he expressed a desire not to go forward with the murder 
did not change the fact that Arnold left the home before the victim was killed, and 
Hernandez went forward with cutting the victim’s throat.  Moreover, Tammy is not 
 
- 26 - 
the only witness that testified Hernandez cut the victim’s throat.  Hernandez 
confessed to cutting her throat in his statement to police.  His wife, Stephanie, and 
Tiffany Telin also heard and testified about his statement.  Because Hernandez has 
failed to establish that any of Tammy Hartman’s testimony was actually false, and 
has failed to demonstrate that the prosecutor knowingly presented false evidence, 
his Giglio claim fails and was properly denied by the postconviction court. 
Trial Counsel’s Performance Regarding Aggravating Circumstances 
 
Hernandez next raises three claims of ineffective assistance of penalty phase 
counsel in regard to the evidence of aggravation.  We discuss each in turn. 
1.  The conviction for battery on a jail detainee. 
 
Hernandez contends that penalty phase counsel was deficient in preparing to 
rebut the State’s evidence of prior violent felony convictions offered as 
aggravation.  The State first presented evidence that Hernandez was convicted of 
battery on a jail detainee, Shawn Arnold, which occurred while the two were in jail 
after their arrests.  Battery by a jail detainee on another jail detainee is a third-
degree felony.9  Hernandez contends that because penalty phase counsel did not 
                                          
 
 
9.  Section 784.082(3), Florida Statutes (2007), provides in pertinent part 
that whenever a person who is being detained in a prison, jail, or other detention 
facility is charged with a battery upon any visitor to the facility or upon another 
detainee in the facility, the offense of battery is reclassified to a felony of the third 
degree.  § 784.082(3), Fla. Stat. (2007).    
 
- 27 - 
familiarize himself with the trial of this charge, he was not prepared to rebut the 
penalty phase testimony of Deputy Matthew Bartley that he saw Hernandez 
“strangling” Arnold in their shared cell.  Hernandez also contends that had counsel 
reviewed the medical records for Arnold’s injury, he could have shown that Arnold 
had no neck injury; and that counsel should have presented Arnold to testify that 
Hernandez did not “strangle” him.  Finally, Hernandez contends that if counsel had 
properly prepared to challenge this aggravator, he would have realized that the 
copy of the judgment of conviction that was entered into evidence stated that 
Hernandez had also been charged with attempted first-degree murder—a charge on 
which the jury could not reach a verdict.  After the verdict on battery on a jail 
detainee was entered, the State entered a nolle prosequi on the attempted murder 
charge.  Hernandez contends that although the judgment mentioned that the State 
had entered a nolle prosequi, the document was still confusing as to whether 
Hernandez was also convicted of attempted first-degree murder.  
The circuit court denied relief on this claim, finding prejudice was not 
shown because the prosecutor made clear in the penalty phase that the conviction 
was for battery on a jail detainee, and that even if the judgment had been redacted 
to remove any reference to the charge of attempted first-degree murder, the jury 
would still have heard the details of the crime from Deputy Bartley.  We agree.  
The court also denied relief on the claim that counsel should have objected to 
 
- 28 - 
Deputy Bartley’s testimony that he saw Hernandez “strangling” Arnold.  First, the 
court correctly noted that Deputy Bartley did not use the word “strangling” in his 
testimony and said only that he saw Hernandez and Arnold “wrestling around” and 
Hernandez “squeezing” Arnold’s throat.  Second, the circuit court noted that the 
prosecutor did not use the term “strangling” in his closing argument but referred to 
the fact that Hernandez had his hands around Arnold’s neck.  The postconviction 
court also found that Deputy Bartley’s testimony that he saw Hernandez squeezing 
Arnold’s neck and blood on Arnold’s face was not refuted by the medical records.  
The court noted that, at the evidentiary hearing, Arnold testified he was asleep 
when the attack began and did not know if Hernandez had his hands on his neck.   
The circuit court was correct in denying relief on this claim based on 
Hernandez’s failure to demonstrate prejudice.  Penalty phase counsel should have 
sought redaction of the reference in the judgment to the fact that Hernandez was 
originally charged with both attempted first-degree murder and battery upon a jail 
detainee.  However, the judgment entered into evidence did indicate, immediately 
below reference to attempted first-degree murder, the phrase “nol prossed 9-18-
06.”  Moreover, the prosecutor only argued to the jury that Hernandez had been 
convicted of “battery upon a jail visitor or detainee.”  Even if the judgment had 
been redacted, there were no grounds to exclude Deputy Bartley’s description of 
what he witnessed.  And, the jury also had before it a conviction for a separate 
 
- 29 - 
prior violent felony, which is sufficient to support the prior violent felony 
aggravator found by the trial court at sentencing.  For these reasons, Hernandez 
failed to meet the second prong of Strickland and relief was properly denied.  
2.  The conviction for battery on a law enforcement officer. 
Hernandez also contends that trial counsel was deficient in failing to 
familiarize himself with Hernandez’s separate trial on charges that he committed 
aggravated battery on a law enforcement officer.  Thus, he contends, counsel was 
unprepared to rebut the jury’s belief in the penalty phase that Hernandez was 
convicted of aggravated battery “with great bodily harm.”  At the penalty phase, 
the State presented, as evidence of a prior violent felony conviction aggravator, 
Hernandez’s judgment of conviction for an aggravated battery on Deputy John 
Wade Jarvis.  Deputy Jarvis testified that when Hernandez was in jail prior to the 
trial in this case, the deputy transported him to the office of a Dr. Larson for an 
evaluation.  Deputy Jarvis removed Hernandez’s handcuffs and waist chain at the 
request of the doctor’s staff, but Hernandez still had on ankle shackles.  About an 
hour into the evaluation, Hernandez was escorted to the restroom without incident.  
About ninety minutes later, he was escorted to the restroom again and Deputy 
Jarvis waited outside the door.  Deputy Jarvis testified that Hernandez opened the 
door and when Deputy Jarvis glanced away, Hernandez hit him on the head with 
the ceramic toilet tank lid, which shattered on impact.  Deputy Jarvis then 
 
- 30 - 
struggled with Hernandez until he was subdued and another deputy had a Taser 
aimed at Hernandez.  When asked to describe his injuries, Deputy Jarvis said he 
“was scraped up, little small lacerations, and of course a big knot on my head.”  
The trial court admitted into evidence at the penalty phase, without objection, a 
copy of the judgment of conviction, which stated that Hernandez was convicted of 
“aggravated battery on a law enforcement officer with great bodily harm and with 
a weapon.”   
Hernandez points out that the jury verdict in the aggravated battery trial 
found him guilty of aggravated battery on Deputy Jarvis with a “deadly weapon” 
and only “slight injury.”  (Emphases added).  Hernandez contends that trial counsel 
was deficient in failing to inform the penalty phase jury that the verdict did not find 
“great bodily harm.”  The postconviction court denied the claim, stating that it 
would have been clear to the penalty phase jury, based on his testimony, that 
Deputy Jarvis did not suffer great bodily harm; thus, no prejudice has been shown.  
The postconviction court also found no prejudice had been demonstrated because, 
in light of the other aggravators, there was no reasonable probability of a life 
sentence even if the jury’s verdict in the battery trial had been shown to the jury.  
As the State points out, there are two forms of aggravated battery—one 
involving great bodily harm and one involving a deadly weapon.  See 
§ 784.045(1)(a), Fla. Stat. (2007).  The jury found the heavy porcelain toilet lid 
 
- 31 - 
was a deadly weapon but found only slight injury.  On this basis, Hernandez was 
convicted of aggravated battery on a law enforcement officer, which properly 
served as a basis for the prior violent felony conviction aggravator regardless of 
whether the judgment incorrectly led the jury to believe the aggravated battery 
resulted in great bodily harm. 
We agree with the postconviction court that Hernandez has failed to 
demonstrate prejudice.  Even if trial counsel should have become more familiar 
with the trial proceedings in which Hernandez was convicted of aggravated battery 
on Deputy Jarvis, and should have clarified the discrepancy between the verdict 
and the judgment, prejudice has not been shown.  The jury heard the direct 
testimony of Deputy Jarvis that after he was struck, he was able to subdue 
Hernandez and that his injury was a laceration and a big knot.  Moreover, the 
conviction for aggravated battery supports the prior violent felony aggravator.  
There is no reasonable probability that, even if the matter had been clarified for the 
jury, a lesser sentence would have been recommended or imposed—a reasonable 
probability being measured in terms of whether our confidence in the outcome is 
undermined.  For these reasons, relief on this claim was properly denied. 
3.  The Marital Privilege.     
The State presented the testimony of Hernandez’s wife, Stephanie, at the 
penalty phase of trial.  Stephanie was asked if Hernandez told her what happened 
 
- 32 - 
to the victim when she, Hernandez, Tammy Hartman, and Richard Hartman were 
at the home of Hernandez and Stephanie discussing the incident.  Penalty phase 
counsel Rollo objected and asked for a proffer to determine if marital privilege 
applied.  When asked on proffer if she had had a private conversation with 
Hernandez about what happened, Stephanie replied, “It was always in front of 
somebody else. . . . in front of Tammy and Richard Hartman.”  Stephanie testified 
that Hernandez told her and the Hartmans at the same time that he cut the victim’s 
throat “because he was afraid she wasn’t dead yet.”  Penalty phase counsel did not 
object to her testimony after this proffer.  When she testified before the penalty 
phase jury, Stephanie said that Hernandez told her “and the Hartmans” that he cut 
the victim’s throat “[t]o make sure she was dead.”  Hernandez contends that 
counsel was ineffective in failing to object to her penalty phase testimony on the 
ground of marital privilege.  Section 90.504(1), Florida Statutes (2007), provides 
that “[a] spouse has a privilege during and after the marital relationship to refuse to 
disclose, and to prevent another from disclosing, communications which were 
intended to be made in confidence between spouses while they were husband and 
wife.”  § 90.504(1), Fla. Stat.  (Emphasis added).  
In the postconviction evidentiary hearing, Stephanie confirmed that the 
statement that Hernandez cut the victim’s throat because he was afraid she was not 
dead yet was made by Hernandez in front of her, but was directed to Tammy in 
 
- 33 - 
response to her questions, and that it was not a private conversation between 
Stephanie and her husband.  The postconviction court denied the claim that penalty 
phase counsel was deficient in failing to object to Stephanie’s testimony on the 
basis of the marital privilege, citing the fact that the statement was made in the 
presence of third parties and was directed to Tammy Hartman, not Stephanie.  We 
conclude the circuit court was correct.  
Stephanie testified both at trial and at the postconviction evidentiary hearing 
that Hernandez told her and the Hartmans that he cut the victim’s throat to make 
sure she was dead.  Hernandez contends that even if the statement was overheard 
or recorded, it is still privileged if the spouse is the only person who can testify to 
it—and he contends that neither Tammy nor Richard Hartman testified that 
Hernandez made that statement.  Richard Hartman testified at the evidentiary 
hearing that when they were at the Hernandez’s home and Tammy was confronting 
Hernandez about what had occurred with the victim, Hartman did “not think 
[Hernandez] said any details.”  Tammy had testified at trial that when she 
confronted Hernandez at his home that morning, he did not tell her what happened 
at the victim’s home.  However, Stephanie’s sister, Tiffany, testified in the guilt 
phase that she was present at the Hernandez home the day after the murder and that 
the other persons present were Stephanie, Tammy and Richard Hartman, and 
Tiffany’s husband.  Tiffany testified that Hernandez told them all that he and 
 
- 34 - 
Arnold had gone to the victim’s home for crack, that Arnold put a pillow over the 
victim’s face, and that Hernandez said he stabbed the victim in the throat when she 
was “almost dead.”  Even if Tammy or Richard Hartman did not hear or recall 
Hernandez making the statement at his home that he cut the victim’s throat, the 
marital privilege does not apply if the statement was knowingly made in their 
presence without any reasonable expectation of privacy or intent that the statement 
be made only to the spouse.  Tiffany was also present and remembered hearing 
Hernandez discuss, in front of Stephanie and others, cutting the victim’s throat.  
Hernandez cites Boyd v. State, 17 So. 3d 812 (Fla. 4th DCA 2009), for the 
premise that the recording of a conversation does not compromise the privilege if 
the only person who can testify regarding its contents is a spouse.  In Boyd, 
however, the husband and wife were conversing, ostensibly privately, in a police 
interrogation room.  Id. at 814-15.  Moreover, we noted in Boyd that section 
90.507, Florida Statutes, provides that a privilege will be waived if a holder of the 
privilege makes the communication in circumstances in which he has no 
reasonable expectation of privacy.  Id. at 817.  Hernandez also cites Taylor v. 
State, 855 So. 2d 1, 26 (Fla. 2003), to contend that the privilege still applies if there 
are third parties nearby.  In Taylor, the statements were made in the jail, but we 
noted that “there was no third party involved, no one overheard the conversation.”  
Id. at 27 n.30.  We also stated that, “[a]s a general rule, when third party 
 
- 35 - 
eavesdroppers hear otherwise privileged communications, the communications are 
not privileged unless the communicating parties had reasonable expectation of 
privacy.”  Id. at 27 n.30.   
We have held that a communication between spouses is not privileged where 
the parties were aware of the presence of a third party and were “speaking in a 
manner and place where they had a reasonable chance of being overhead, and they 
knew the possibility at that time.”  Proffitt v. State, 315 So. 2d 461, 465 (Fla. 
1975).  We noted in Proffitt that there was “no testimony indicating that either the 
appellant or his wife made any attempt, no matter how little, to keep the 
conversation from being overheard.”  Id.  Similarly, in this case, there was no 
indication that Hernandez or his wife attempted to keep the conversation private.  
Stephanie made clear in her testimony that Hernandez was telling her as well as 
Tammy and Richard Hartman what happened at the victim’s home.  Whether 
Tammy or Richard Hartman recalled Hernandez making the statements does not 
change the fact that Hernandez made the statements in the obvious presence of 
third parties and exhibited no intent that the communication be in confidence, as 
required by statute; thus, he had no reasonable expectation of privacy in making 
the statements.    
Moreover, even if counsel had objected, there is no reasonable probability 
that the outcome of the penalty phase would have been different—that being a 
 
- 36 - 
probability sufficient to undermine this Court’s confidence.  A wealth of other 
testimony was admitted that Hernandez stated that he stabbed the victim in the 
throat, and why.  Tammy Hartman testified that Hernandez told her later, from the 
jail, that he cut the victim’s throat because she would not die and because she had 
seen their faces.  Tiffany Telin also heard, and testified to, Hernandez’s statement 
about cutting the victim’s throat.  Thus, even if Stephanie’s testimony in the 
penalty phase had been excluded, the jury had ample testimony on which to find 
that Hernandez stabbed the victim in the throat to make sure she was dead and 
because she had seen their faces.  Because neither deficiency nor prejudice has 
been established, relief was properly denied on this claim. 
Trial Counsel’s Performance Regarding Background and Family Mitigation 
In his next claim, Hernandez contends that trial counsel was ineffective in 
the investigation and presentation of background and family mitigation evidence in 
the penalty phase.  He argues that counsel should have located and presented 
numerous friends, family members, and other significant persons from 
Hernandez’s childhood to present a complete picture of the defendant’s life.  He 
criticizes the fact that penalty phase counsel let Hernandez complete a 
“Confidential Assessment” form by himself.  On the form, Hernandez did list 
 
- 37 - 
persons who had a significant role in the family, including Floyd Wayne Merritt, 
Deana Merritt, Joe Rudis, Tiffany Merritt (Telin), Amber Merritt, and his mother.      
 
The postconviction court denied this claim, finding that trial counsel was not 
deficient in investigation and presentation of mitigation in the penalty phase.  The 
circuit court found that penalty phase counsel presented two mental health experts 
who discussed Hernandez’s exceptionally dysfunctional childhood and exposure to 
drugs and alcohol at an early age.  The circuit court noted that penalty phase 
counsel also presented the testimony of Hernandez’s mother Cheryl Walker and his 
half-brother Richard Travis Hartman.  Further, a social services report from the 
Calaveras Works and Human Services Agency of California, which detailed the 
abuse Hernandez received when he was informally “fostered” by Dan and Leola 
Estabrook, was admitted into evidence and discussed by the defense experts. 
Penalty phase counsel Rollo testified at the evidentiary hearing that he was 
able to furnish the experts with all the information they needed to establish the 
mitigators in the best and most credible way, in accord with his strategy to have the 
background information come in primarily through the experts who could rely on 
reports, hearsay, and testing.  The court found that in preparation for the penalty 
phase, Rollo spoke with Hernandez as well as other potential witnesses, and 
rejected the idea of calling some because their testimony would have been 
cumulative.  The circuit court stated in its order, “Given the amount of evidence 
 
- 38 - 
Rollo was able to present in this manner, it was not necessary for him to identify 
and interview every other family member, friend, or other person involved in 
Defendant’s life.”  The court also noted that numerous mitigating factors were 
supported by the evidence Rollo did present in the penalty phase.  Based on that 
mitigation, the trial court found twenty-four nonstatutory factors that were to 
varying degrees mitigating.  The postconviction court also found prejudice was not 
established because the additional lay testimony presented at the postconviction 
evidentiary hearing “provided nothing dramatically different than what was 
established at trial.”  Further, the court concluded that “[t]o the extent the 
additional background information presents anything new, it would not have 
altered the sentencing profile presented to the judge and jury.”  We agree with all 
these assessments and find relief is not warranted on this claim. 
At the penalty phase of trial, counsel presented the testimony of Dr. John 
Bingham, a mental health counselor who met with Hernandez on three different 
occasions and was provided with the Calaveras County report and Arnold’s 
statement.  Dr. Bingham also interviewed Hernandez’s wife and read the 
deposition of Hernandez’s mother.  Dr. Bingham testified about Hernandez’s 
physical and emotional abuse as a child, his childhood introduction to drug use, his 
dysfunctional family life, his chronic substance dependency, and his cocaine 
intoxication on the day of the murder.  Hernandez was exposed to drugs at a very 
 
- 39 - 
early age and was taught how to use crack cocaine by his father.  He was required 
to roll marijuana cigarettes for him at the age of five, and started smoking 
marijuana and using other illegal substances on a daily basis.  His father introduced 
him to crack at age ten.  Dr. Bingham testified that Hernandez first used alcohol at 
age nine, and continued to use it until he got married.  Dr. Bingham explained that 
Hernandez also used hallucinogens, crystal methamphetamine, heroin, and 
tranquilizing pills as a teenager, and that he met the diagnostic criteria for a 
chemical dependency to marijuana and cocaine.  Dr. Bingham described for the 
jury the effects on the brain when crack cocaine is smoked and when an individual 
becomes dependent upon it—chronic crack cocaine use blocks the ability to have 
empathy or compassion, and causes aggressive behavior. 
Dr. Bingham also testified about the records provided by the Calaveras 
Works and Human Services Agency of California, which detailed the abuse 
Hernandez received while living with the Estabrook family.  Dr. Bingham related 
reports of physical and psychological abuse, including Hernandez being slapped, 
spanked, dragged by the hair, and punched in the face, chest, and stomach, all on 
an inconsistent basis without any understanding of what he had done wrong.  This 
abuse lasted about three years, until the social services agency removed Hernandez 
from the Estabrook home. 
 
- 40 - 
Based on information learned from the Calaveras County report, Dr. 
Bingham testified that Hernandez received no psychological care and that 
“[b]ecause of the abuse he was placed in protective custody in May of 1996.”  Dr. 
Bingham told the jury that he believed Hernandez “definitely was affected by the 
different types of abuse that he has experienced it [sic] in his lifetime, as well as 
other things that have occurred in his lifetime.”  The jury heard that Hernandez was 
essentially abandoned by his parents and subjected to violence by his mother’s 
boyfriends when he was with her.  Dr. Bingham also related that Hernandez’s step-
grandmother, Barbara, confirmed that Hernandez’s parents were members of a 
motorcycle gang and continuously used drugs.  When his father died, Hernandez 
went to live with his mother but was unable to stay because of her dangerous 
lifestyle, resulting in his going to live with the Estabrooks.  Dr. Bingham also 
testified that Hernandez had a good relationship with his wife, Stephanie, and was 
a good, loving father to his two daughters.   
As to statutory mental health mitigation, Dr. Bingham testified at trial that 
Hernandez’s actions on November 18, 2004, appeared to reflect “an absence of 
thinking and more reaction to the situation as it unfolded. . . .  All they were 
interested in is responding in the sense of getting crack cocaine.”  Dr. Bingham 
testified that Hernandez’s ability to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or 
conform his conduct to the requirements of law was substantially impaired as a 
 
- 41 - 
result of his chronic cocaine use and being under the influence at the time, as well 
as because of the psychological and physical abuse he had experienced.      
As the postconviction court noted, a second defense mental health expert 
was presented in the penalty phase.  Dr. Brett Turner, a neuropsychologist, became 
involved after Dr. Bingham identified a history of possible brain injuries and 
sought further testing to confirm brain damage.  Dr. Turner explained that because 
of Hernandez’s lack of participation and lack of motivation during his testing, 
several of the tests were invalid, including the neurological testing.  Although he 
was not able to substantiate damage to Hernandez’s frontal lobe because of the 
invalid neurological test score, Dr. Turner testified that Hernandez’s history 
suggested it.  Dr. Turner also explained that Hernandez’s IQ score was accurate 
and was a full scale IQ score of 89, which is in the low-average range, and that 
Hernandez’s achievement testing identified a learning disability.  The penalty 
phase jury heard from Dr. Turner that Hernandez was also diagnosed with 
polysubstance dependence disorder, meaning that he had a potential addiction to 
most drugs because of his lengthy drug history that started at an early age, as well 
as depressive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, impulse control disorder or 
cognitive disorder not otherwise specified, and antisocial personality disorder.   
Dr. Turner opined that Hernandez was “under extreme emotional 
disturbance at the time of the offense as a result of a chronic history of emotional 
 
- 42 - 
instability deficits and behavior control and deficits in his reasoning and cognitive 
abilities all acutely exacerbated by the effects of cocaine intoxication.”  He 
explained, “[Hernandez’s] anxious and even manic state was also likely even more 
acute in the midst of even possibly recognizing that they were out of cocaine at the 
time, which again, would even inflame and exacerbate the anxiety and the feelings 
that were probably there . . . .”  Dr. Turner also opined that Hernandez’s capacity 
to appreciate the criminality of his conduct was substantially impaired “because 
appreciate actually means to be fully aware, and I do not believe that he was fully 
aware at the time of the incident offense.  I believe he was engaged in a string of 
behavioral responses, one leading to the next . . . .”   
In addition to the two mental health defense experts, defense counsel also 
presented mitigation testimony at trial from Hernandez’s half-brother, Richard 
Hartman, Jr., and Hernandez’s mother Cheryl Walker.  We discussed their 
testimony in the direct appeal opinion as follows: 
The defense then presented testimony from Hernandez’s half-
brother, Richard Hartman Jr., and Hernandez’s mother, Cheryl 
Walker,FN5 about Hernandez’s dysfunctional childhood in which he 
was exposed to drugs and violence from a young age.  According to 
their testimony, Cheryl and Hernandez’s father, Michael Hernandez 
Sr., used marijuana on a regular basis in Hernandez’s presence when 
he was a child and also used crystal methamphetamine and cocaine.  
They wandered around the country and were in hiding from the 
Bandidos, a motorcycle group from which they had fell out of favor.  
Cheryl later left Michael Sr. and relocated to California with 
Hernandez.  In California, Cheryl, who was no longer using 
methamphetamines but was drinking heavily, briefly reunited with 
 
- 43 - 
Michael Sr.  They later separated, and Cheryl left Hernandez, who 
was approximately three years old at the time, with his father while 
she sold drugs.  Michael Sr. lived with the Esterbrooks (sic), who 
were also using and dealing drugs. 
FN5. Cheryl testified through a videotaped 
deposition because she was serving a sentence in a 
correctional facility for killing her husband, Anthony 
Walker. 
Richard Jr. and Cheryl testified that Hernandez returned to live 
with Cheryl several years later after she met and married Michael 
Murphy.  Murphy, who also abused drugs, beat Cheryl in front of her 
children and was jailed for putting a gun in her mouth.  Cheryl sent 
Hernandez back to his father because she was afraid for his life when 
she was with Murphy.  Hernandez lived with his father in a hotel 
room until his father’s death from a drug overdose. 
Richard Jr. and Cheryl also testified that Hernandez lived with 
Cheryl and her new husband, Anthony Walker.  Anthony was verbally 
and physically abusive, and Hernandez witnessed him choke, beat, 
and shake Cheryl.  Anthony also once punched Hernandez so hard 
that he needed an appendectomy.  Furthermore, both Cheryl and 
Anthony used alcohol and marijuana. 
According to the testimony of Hernandez’s relatives, Cheryl 
later sent Hernandez to live with the Esterbrooks (sic) once more, and 
Hernandez never lived with her again.  Hernandez reported being 
beaten and molested at the Esterbrooks’ (sic) home, and he eventually 
left their home and was in the custody of the state. 
In addition, Richard Jr. and Cheryl testified that Hernandez’s 
paternal grandparents, Al and Barbara Hernandez, later took him to 
live with them, and he never saw his mother again until he testified for 
her at her trial for killing Anthony.  Hernandez then stayed with 
Richard Jr. as well as with his other half-brother, Shawn Hartman.  
Hernandez also lived on the streets.  After Richard Jr. found this out, 
he talked Hernandez into living with him again in Florida, where 
Hernandez alternated living with Richard Jr. and Richard Sr.  
Hernandez used cocaine during this time and smoked marijuana. 
Hernandez later moved to Tennessee with his wife. 
 
Hernandez, 4 So. 3d 652-53. 
 
- 44 - 
At trial, the defense also offered into evidence as mitigation Shawn Arnold’s 
judgment and sentence for the crimes he committed in this incident.  This evidence 
showed that Arnold pleaded nolo contendere to felony murder with a deadly 
weapon and was sentenced to a term of natural life without the possibility of 
parole.  The postconviction court denied the claim, concluding that there is no 
showing that counsel was deficient in supplying the experts with sufficient 
information as to Hernandez’s background or in preparing them to testify.  In 
addition, the court found that even if all the mitigation had been corroborated by 
other witnesses and records, it would not have resulted in a life sentence.   
The additional family and background mitigation that Hernandez now 
contends should have been presented at trial was presented to the circuit court at 
the postconviction evidentiary hearing.  These witnesses included a number of 
family and childhood friends that postconviction counsel contends should have 
been presented, or at least consulted by trial counsel, regarding mitigation.  Joe 
Rudis, Stephanie’s stepfather, testified at the postconviction evidentiary hearing 
that he introduced Hernandez to Stephanie, whom Hernandez later married.  Rudis 
testified that Hernandez was a hard worker and a “normal guy,” and was good to 
Stephanie and the children.  Rudis was formerly married to Stephanie Hernandez’s 
mother, Deana Merritt, who testified at the evidentiary hearing that she was 
impressed with Hernandez, who was a hard worker around the church and was a 
 
- 45 - 
loving father.  She described Hernandez as a humble person who was a follower, 
not a leader, and that the murder was completely out of character for him.  Floyd 
Wayne Merritt, Stephanie’s father, testified at the evidentiary hearing that 
Hernandez “seemed like a pretty good fellow” who would “give the shirt off his 
back,” and was a hard worker.  Merritt said Hernandez had low self-esteem, was a 
follower, and that the murder was completely out of character.     
Hernandez’s half-brother, Shawn Hartman, who is nine years older than 
Hernandez, testified at the evidentiary hearing that their mother drank alcohol daily 
while she was pregnant with Hernandez.  He described how, when Hernandez was 
a young teen, he was drinking alcohol and “participating in the marijuana that 
would go around the room.”  Later, when Hartman was about fifteen, he lived with 
their mother Cheryl, Michael Murphy, and Hernandez.  Their brother Richard 
Travis Hartman also came to live with them after about six months.  The boys were 
allowed to drink alcohol and smoke marijuana at home.  When Murphy went to 
jail, their mother would go away for weeks at a time to see him and Shawn 
Hartman was responsible for taking care of all the boys.  Hartman also confirmed 
that Hernandez stole drugs from him and took some of his tools.  He testified that 
Hernandez was a follower and was never violent.  Jennifer Hartman, who was 
married to Shawn Hartman testified that he was “cooking” and selling 
methamphetamine when Hernandez lived with them.  She said Hernandez began to 
 
- 46 - 
show signs of drug use and that Hernandez was a follower, not a leader, and was 
not violent.     
Postconviction counsel also presented the testimony of Brandy 
Kahl-Hayman, who lived in same apartment complex in California as Shawn 
Hartman.  She testified that Hernandez, who was about age sixteen at the time, was 
not violent or mean, but was helpful and always had a smile on his face.  At one 
point, she noticed he was losing weight and she thought he was doing 
methamphetamines, which she knew Shawn Hartman was involved in producing.  
Kahl-Hayman testified that one time when Hernandez was staying with her and her 
ex-husband, Hernandez tried to protect her when her husband attacked her.  Later, 
after Hernandez moved to Tennessee, she was able to see him again.  She said he 
looked like he was no longer using methamphetamines, but when she later 
socialized with Hernandez and his wife, she noticed signs that he appeared to be 
using drugs again, suggesting to her a pattern of using, stopping, and 
recommencing drug use.  She said Hernandez was a great father to his children and 
loved them.      
Brandi Lori Higashi testified by deposition that her parents were friends with 
Michael Hernandez, Sr., and she spent much of her time baby-sitting Hernandez 
while their parents got high.  She testified that Hernandez had blackouts that his 
father attributed to a “really bad” bicycle accident.  She said that for Hernandez’s 
 
- 47 - 
ninth or tenth birthday, his father gave him cocaine, and that until his father died, 
she believed Hernandez got high on crack cocaine every day.   
Sean Skehan, who originally went under the name Sean Estabrook, was 
presented at the evidentiary hearing.  He testified that Hernandez came with his 
father to live with the Estabrook family for a period of time, and later lived there 
again after his father died.  At that time, Hernandez was about eleven years old.  
Skehan testified that Hernandez’s father had never mistreated or abused him and 
that Hernandez took his father’s death very hard.  When Hernandez was younger, 
he told Skehan about the times he lived with his mother and how she left him alone 
with men and drugs, and that he was sexually abused by the men.  Once, Skehan 
was told, Hernandez was visiting his mother and one of her boyfriends or husbands 
punched Hernandez in the stomach and ruptured his appendix.  Another time 
Hernandez returned from a visit with his mother and had two broken front teeth.     
Skehan testified that Hernandez was being abused in the Estabrook 
household and was treated “like a slave” and “like dirt.”  His mother called 
Hernandez terrible names and told him he was dumb and worthless.  Skehan said 
the Estabrooks received money from Social Security to care for Hernandez, but it 
was not spent on him.  Leola Estabrook made Hernandez wear her son’s hand-me-
down clothes and made him eat after everyone else, and he was not given school 
lunch money like the other boys.  Skehan said his stepfather, Dan Estabrook, 
 
- 48 - 
would whip Hernandez, and probably resented Hernandez because Estabrook, 
Hernandez’s father, and Dan Estabrook’s wife, Leola, had been in a “love 
triangle.”  Dan Estabrook would slap, punch, kick, and pick Hernandez up by the 
hair almost daily.  Skehan testified that Hernandez was bullied in school but would 
never fight back.  He cried a lot and tried to run away, and when he returned he 
was beaten.  Skehan ultimately reported the abuse to the social welfare authorities 
of Calaveras County and both he and Hernandez were placed in foster care.  He 
described Hernandez as a follower lacking self-esteem and a feeling of self-worth.   
Skehan’s brother, Eric Estabrook, also testified at the evidentiary hearing.  
He is about four or five years older than Hernandez.  Eric testified that his mother 
and stepfather treated Hernandez very badly and would call him terrible names, 
and that Leola made Hernandez rub her feet for lengthy periods of time.  Eric said 
he treated Hernandez badly too, which he regrets, and that Hernandez was bullied 
at school and teased about his father.  Eric said that in spite of all the abuse, 
Hernandez “stayed the person that he was.  A heart of gold.  And he would do 
anything for anybody.”   
Leola Estabrook testified at the postconviction evidentiary hearing that 
Hernandez first came to live with them as a toddler with his father and then later 
after his father died.  She testified that Hernandez’s father was loving and a great 
father, but he went back to using drugs after receiving a settlement in some matter.  
 
- 49 - 
He died shortly thereafter when a companion gave him an overdose of drugs.  She 
said Hernandez stayed with the Estabrooks until he was in high school.  She 
admitted that she was “not exactly perfect” in her treatment of Hernandez, in that 
she yelled at him and “smacked him” a lot.  When asked if she treated Hernandez 
like a slave, she answered, “Yes and no.”  She said all the boys had chores but she 
was harder on Hernandez.  However, she denied he had to eat last and explained 
that Hernandez got smaller portions because he was overweight.  She agreed she 
had him rub her feet sometimes because she was on her feet all day at work.  She 
denied treating Hernandez “like dirt,” and said the social workers took Hernandez 
away only because she “had no legal guardianship over him.”  She did agree that 
her husband abused Hernandez, and threatened him not to report the abuse.     
Hernandez’s step-grandmother Barbara Walker [formerly Barbara 
Hernandez] testified at the evidentiary hearing that she would have testified in the 
penalty phase of trial if she had been asked.  She did speak with penalty phase 
counsel Rollo prior to trial and she spoke with Dr. Bingham.  She described her 
stepson, Michael Hernandez, Sr.’s, struggle with drug use after returning from 
service in Vietnam.  She also testified that defendant Hernandez lived with her and 
her husband for a time after he left the Estabrooks, but he would not attend class 
and began associating with people on “the street.”  She described how he went to 
live with an uncle but got drunk and crashed a truck that belonged to his uncle’s 
 
- 50 - 
employer.  Rollo testified that prior to trial, Barbara Walker told him she did not 
want to testify at trial.  Even so, Rollo presented her testimony to the judge in the 
Spencer hearing.   
Finally, postconviction counsel presented the testimony of Richard Travis 
Hartman, Hernandez’s half-brother, who did testify in the penalty phase of trial.  
He related an incident in which their mother made them hide because someone was 
trying to kill them.  Richard Travis testified that one of his mother’s boyfriends, 
Anthony Walker, treated Hernandez badly, and that that later in life, when 
Hernandez worked for Richard Hartman, Sr., on handyman jobs, Hernandez was 
doing most of the work but getting very little of the money.  Richard Travis 
described Tammy Hartman as a liar who lied to his father about him, and said that 
Tammy favored her daughter Michelle over everyone else.   
The testimony of these family members and friends did paint Hernandez in a 
sympathetic light and added some specific incidents illustrating the childhood 
abuse Hernandez suffered, which the defense experts and two family members 
testified about in the penalty phase.  However, this evidence was essentially a 
reiteration of what the penalty phase jury heard through the mitigation witnesses.  
The postconviction court was correct in concluding that trial counsel was not 
deficient in failing to present these additional witnesses at trial.  Further, 
presentation of these witnesses would have provided the prosecutor with an 
 
- 51 - 
opportunity to cross-examine them regarding the information about abuse set forth 
in the Calaveras County report and would have allowed Leola Estabrook to deny 
many of the allegations that Sean (Estabrook) Skehan made, which were discussed 
in the report.     
As the circuit court found, penalty phase counsel made a strategic decision 
to present the very strong mitigation concerning Hernandez’s abusive childhood 
and his early and continued drug use and dependency mainly through the experts 
and the Calaveras County report.  Many of the important details were also brought 
in at trial through the testimony of his mother and brother, and much of the 
evidentiary hearing testimony was cumulative or simply expanded on the details.  
We have held that “[c]ounsel cannot be found ineffective for failing to provide 
cumulative evidence.”  Kilgore v. State, 55 So. 3d 487, 504 (Fla. 2010) (quoting 
Gudinas v. State, 816 So. 2d 1095, 1108 (Fla. 2002)).  We explained in Kilgore 
that “although the evidence presented during the postconviction hearing enhanced 
much of the evidence presented during the 1994 penalty phase, it did not really add 
anything new.  The evidence presented during the 2005 evidentiary hearing painted 
Kilgore’s childhood more clearly, but the basic elements that were relevant to 
mitigation were revealed and presented during the 1994 penalty phase 
proceedings.”  Kilgore, 55 So. 3d at 504.  See also Valle v. State, 705 So. 2d 1331, 
1334 (Fla. 1997) (finding claim without merit that counsel was ineffective for 
 
- 52 - 
failing to call mother and former wife to buttress the expert testimony regarding 
Valle’s difficult childhood and failure to discover corroborative evidence, all of 
which would have been cumulative).  These same characterizations and 
conclusions apply to the instant case.   
Even if all this additional detail had been presented, there is no reasonable 
probability that Hernandez would have received a life sentence, that probability 
being expressed in terms of whether the Court’s confidence in the outcome of the 
penalty phase is undermined.  Even if the mitigation evidence had been presented 
in greater detail, the jury and judge would have heard essentially the same type of 
mitigation, which was outweighed by the heavy, serious aggravators in the case.  
For these reasons, trial counsel was not ineffective in the presentation of family 
and background mitigation at trial.  
Trial Counsel’s Performance Regarding Proof of Brain Damage 
Hernandez next contends that trial counsel was ineffective in failing to 
obtain quantitative electroencephalography (qEEG) testing to determine if he had 
brain damage for the purpose of mitigation.  When the qEEG testimony was 
offered at the evidentiary hearing, the State filed a “Motion to Prohibit the Use of 
Quantitative (qEEG) Testing,” and the trial court conducted a Frye10 hearing 
                                          
 
 
10.  Frye v. United States, 293 F. 1013 (D.C. Cir. 1923). 
 
- 53 - 
during the evidentiary hearing to determine if the opinions based on qEEG testing 
would have been admissible in the 2007 trial of this case if trial counsel had 
obtained the testing and offered the opinions in mitigation.  The postconviction 
court denied this claim, finding that the technology and opinions stemming from it 
would not have met the Frye test for admissibility at trial.  
The postconviction court cited the testimony of the State’s expert, Dr. Peter 
Kaplan, a medical doctor and neurologist who is board certified in psychiatry, 
neurology, and neurophysiology, and is a professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins 
University School of Medicine.  He is an expert in the use of electroencephalogram 
(EEG) technology, and he explained that qEEG is a computer program that uses 
data provided by and chosen from the EEG test and compares that chosen EEG 
data to a database made up of an aggregate of subjects.  Dr. Kaplan testified during 
the Frye portion of the evidentiary hearing that neurologists use EEG to help 
diagnose neurological conditions, although qEEG has been used in different 
settings to diagnose epilepsy.  Dr. Kaplan testified that qEEG is not widely 
accepted by neurologists, who are the professionals who diagnose neurologic 
disease or brain damage.  He testified that when qEEG is performed, it is often not 
done by a doctor or neurologist, and that “one doesn’t reach a diagnosis by 
 
- 54 - 
comparing to a clinical data base.”11  Dr. Kaplan testified these flaws in qEEG 
were present in 2007 as well as currently.  
On cross-examination, Dr. Kaplan agreed that the Veterans Administration 
has been using qEEG in relation to traumatic brain injury and some universities use 
the proprietary qEEG program, NeuroGuide, for some purpose.  He explained, 
“You can use the [qEEG] technique to examine data.  It’s then how you apply the 
data to make a diagnosis” and “if you have other ways of interpreting those data to 
reach a clinical diagnosis, it could be, of course, completely valid.”  Dr. Kaplan 
also testified that if an individual did not cooperate or follow instructions during 
the EEG that is done to obtain the raw data, which is then fed into the qEEG 
software for quantification, the results could contain invalid data, although such 
lack of cooperation would be fairly obvious.   
In denying relief on this claim, the postconviction court also cited testimony 
of Hernandez’s witnesses.  Dr. Gerald Gluck, a psychotherapist who testified that 
he has been using qEEG since the 1980’s primarily for “neuro feedback” or 
                                          
 
 
11.  Dr. Kaplan also discussed an article by Marc Nuwer, M.D., Ph.D., 
Assessment of Digital EEG; Quantitative EEG and EEG Brain Mapping: Report of 
the American Academy of Neurology and the American Clinical 
Neurophysiological Society, 49 NEUROLOGY 277 (1997).  Dr. Kaplan agreed with 
the statement in the report that qEEG should not be used in judicial settings 
because of the propensity of false positives and because results can be dramatically 
altered during the subjective process of selecting portions of the EEG for 
quantitative analysis.   
 
- 55 - 
“biofeedback,” agreed that many neurologists do not use qEEG.  He began using 
“NeuroGuide” software with its “normative data base” in 2001, and said qEEG 
was more common in the psychological community in 2001.  Dr. Gluck performed 
a qEEG examination on Hernandez and concluded that Hernandez has “frontal, 
temporal, central deregulation, which is associated with brain injury and damage.”   
The postconviction court also cited the testimony of Hernandez’s witness, 
Dr. J. Lucas Koberda, a neurologist who testified that he began using qEEG around 
2010.  The court cited Dr. Koberda’s testimony that most neurologists do not use 
qEEG and that he did not use it in 2007.  Dr. Koberda testified that he examined 
the EEG data collected by Dr. Gluck and the qEEG report he generated, and noted 
that  the “regular EEG . . . showed abnormalities in the frontal and temporal lobes 
indicating potential brain damage there.”  In denying relief on this claim, the 
postconviction court also cited Dr. Koberda’s testimony that there was not really 
any controversy in using qEEG to help diagnose memory problems, Alzheimer’s 
disease, dementia, or epilepsy, but that there is controversy over use of it to 
diagnose brain damage.   
Dr. Turner, one of Hernandez’s trial experts, testified at the evidentiary 
hearing that he had difficulty in assessing whether Hernandez had brain damage at 
the time of trial primarily because Hernandez was uncooperative.  He did not 
recommend qEEG testing to trial counsel, and he noted that, at that time, there was 
 
- 56 - 
a dispute about the validity of qEEG testing.  Penalty phase counsel Rollo testified 
at the evidentiary hearing that if he had presented qEEG testimony, and if it had 
been challenged as not being valid or efficacious, he would have been “injecting 
another level of uncertain nebulous evidence” in a case in which he was trying to 
maintain a coherent theme.   
“Under Frye, ‘[t]he proponent of the evidence bears the burden of 
establishing by a preponderance of evidence the general acceptance of the 
underlying scientific principles and methodology.’ ”  Marsh v. Valyou, 977 So. 2d 
543, 547 (Fla. 2007) (quoting Castillo v. E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Inc., 854 
So. 2d 1264, 1268 (Fla. 2003)).  The postconviction court held that Hernandez 
failed to establish that the qEEG analysis would have passed the Frye test at the 
time of trial by failing to demonstrate that qEEG was widely accepted by the 
relevant scientific community in 2007.  Thus, the court held that trial counsel was 
not deficient in failing to pursue qEEG testing to show Hernandez suffered from 
brain damage.   
Hernandez argues here that the proper test to apply for the admissibility of 
qEEG is Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, 509 U.S. 579 (1993), based on 
the Legislature’s 2013 amendment to section 90.702, Florida Statutes.  He also 
contends that the admissibility of qEEG should be measured by the date of the 
original appeal in 2009, not trial in 2007.  The State counters that under either Frye 
 
- 57 - 
or Daubert, qEEG was not admissible at the 2007 trial, which is the date on which 
this issue should be examined, citing Mendoza v. State, 87 So. 3d 644 (Fla. 2011).  
We held in Mendoza that because the claim was one of ineffective assistance of 
trial counsel, the postconviction court did not abuse its discretion in excluding 
evidence of qEEG results because that technology had not passed the Frye test at 
the time Mendoza was tried in 1992.  Id. at 666.  Thus, the relevant time frame for 
determining if qEEG met the test for admissibility was the time of trial because the 
issue is raised here in a claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel.   
Section 90.702 was amended in 2013 to provide that testimony by an expert 
who is qualified by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education may testify 
in the form of opinion if (1) the testimony is based upon sufficient facts or data; 
(2) the testimony is the product of reliable principles and methods; and (3) the 
witness has applied the principles and methods reliably to the facts of the case.  
See § 90.702(1)-(3), Fla. Stat. (2013).  The intent of the amendment, it has been 
said, is to tighten the rules for admissibility of any expert opinion.  See Perez v. 
Bell South Telecommunications, Inc., 138 So. 3d 492, 497 (Fla. 3d DCA 2014).  
However, the Supreme Court in Daubert actually criticized Frye and its “exclusive 
test” imposing a “rigid ‘general acceptance’ requirement” as being at odds with the 
liberal thrust of the Federal Rules and their “general approach of relaxing the 
traditional barriers to ‘opinion’ testimony.”  Daubert, 509 U.S. at 588-89 (quoting 
 
- 58 - 
Beech Aircraft Corp. v. Rainey, 488 U.S. 153, 169 (1988)).  Moreover, general 
acceptance in the relevant scientific community remains one factor among several 
even when the Daubert test is the applicable test.  See Marsh, 977 So. 2d at 546.    
Hernandez contends that the relevant scientific community is not limited to 
neurologists, as Dr. Kaplan testified and the trial court found.  The postconviction 
court disagreed with this same contention, applied the Frye test to the expert 
testimony presented at the evidentiary hearing, and concluded that Hernandez 
failed to prove by a preponderance of evidence that qEEG was generally accepted 
in the relevant scientific community—that community being neurologists—at the 
time of trial.  We agree.  Dr. Kaplan testified that qEEG is not a reliable method 
for determining brain damage and is not widely accepted by those who diagnose 
neurologic disease or brain damage.  His testimony provided competent, 
substantial evidence on which the court could conclude that the relevant scientific 
community was neurologists who generally diagnose brain damage and whose 
training and experience include conducting an EEG and reading and understanding 
the raw EEG data.  Dr. Koberda also testified that most neurologists do not use 
qEEG and that he did not use it in 2007.  Dr. Gluck testified that he has been using 
qEEG since the 1980’s, primarily for “neuro feedback,” but agreed that many 
neurologists do not use qEEG.     
 
- 59 - 
Furthermore, a number of judicial decisions in existence at the time of trial 
also held that qEEG testing was not admissible.  For example, in In re Breast 
Implant Litigation, 11 F. Supp. 2d 1217 (D. Colo. 1998), the court found that 
qEEG did not meet the Daubert standard because the evidence showed the 
scientific community was not in agreement on its value.  Id. at 1238.  In Craig v. 
Orkin Exterminating Co., Inc., 2000 WL 35593214 at *3 (S.D. Fla. 2000), the 
court noted a number of court decisions that have found qEEG inadmissible.  See 
also Falsen v. Secretary of Dept. of Health and Human Services, 2004 WL 785056 
*11 (FED. CL. 2004) (qEEG found not “generally accepted within the medical 
sphere of neurology”). 
Because the postconviction court had competent, substantial evidence on 
which to find that the relevant scientific community was neurologists whose job it 
is to diagnose brain damage, and because all the testifying experts agreed that 
qEEG was not generally accepted by that scientific community as a method of 
diagnosing brain damage, the court was correct in finding Hernandez’s trial 
counsel was not deficient in failing to obtain qEEG testing on Hernandez as a way 
of demonstrating brain damage in 2007.  Moreover, Rollo’s penalty phase experts 
did not recommend qEEG testing at the time.  Even if trial counsel had presented 
this qEEG evidence, and even if it had been found admissible, the most that could 
be said from the qEEG test done on Hernandez was that the findings were 
 
- 60 - 
“associated” with brain damage or indicated “potential” brain damage.  At trial, Dr. 
Turner testified similarly based on his evaluation and testing of Hernandez that he 
found the “likelihood of some sort of brain damage.”  Adding potential brain 
damage as indicated by qEEG testing to that testimony would not have altered the 
balance of aggravators and mitigators to such an extent as to undermine this 
Court’s confidence in the result of the penalty phase trial.   
Hernandez also contends that even if the qEEG test would not have been 
accepted in 2007 as not being fully established in the relevant scientific 
community, it should now be considered newly discovered evidence that requires a 
new trial.  The postconviction court rejected this argument as well, holding that 
Hernandez did not prove wide acceptance of the technology in 2012.  Moreover, 
the qEEG technology is not newly discovered evidence.  It was in existence at the 
time, but would not have met the Frye test for admissibility.  Moreover, as noted 
above, even if it were now admissible, it would probably not result in a life 
sentence.  See Kormondy v. State, 154 So. 3d 341, 351 (Fla. 2015) (“If the 
defendant is seeking to vacate a sentence, the second prong [of the test] requires 
that the newly discovered evidence would probably yield a less severe sentence.”). 
The postconviction court found that even if the testing were admissible as 
newly discovered evidence, it would not result in a life sentence when considered 
in light of the heavily weighted aggravators.  To obtain a new trial based on newly 
 
- 61 - 
discovered evidence, the evidence must have been unknown by the court, party, or 
counsel at the time of trial and the defendant or counsel could not have discovered 
it by due diligence; further, the newly discovered evidence must be of such nature 
that it would probably result in a less severe sentence.  Riechmann, 966 So. 2d at 
316.  The evidence presented at the hearing did not establish that qEEG would be 
admissible even if a new trial is granted.  Further, the evidence of possible brain 
damage about which Hernandez’s experts testified is not substantially stronger or 
more conclusive than that presented by defense experts in the penalty phase.  For 
all the foregoing reasons, the circuit court did not err in denying relief on this 
claim. 
Mental Health Mitigation 
Hernandez next contends that penalty phase counsel was deficient in 
investigating and presenting mental health mitigation.  The circuit court heard 
evidentiary hearing testimony from Dr. Deborah Mash, Dr. J. Lucas Koberda, 
Dr. Gerald Gluck, Dr. Peter Kaplan, and Hernandez’s trial experts, Drs. John 
Bingham and Brett Turner.  The circuit court denied the claim, concluding that 
penalty phase counsel Rollo supplied the two trial defense experts, Drs. Bingham 
and Turner, with extensive information about Hernandez’s background and, after 
their examinations, they were able to diagnose him with a number of mental 
disorders.  The court also noted Dr. Turner’s testimony at the penalty phase that he 
 
- 62 - 
was unable to complete some of the tests because of Hernandez’s failure to 
cooperate.  For this reason, he was unable to confirm brain damage, although he 
suspected it as he testified at trial.  The circuit court noted that the two defense 
experts presented at trial testified that two statutory mental health mitigators were 
present, although the trial court rejected those mitigators.  Based on the evidence 
presented at the penalty phase and in the postconviction hearing, the circuit court 
held that penalty phase counsel was not deficient, and that even if the additional 
mental health mitigation presented at the evidentiary hearing had been presented at 
trial, it would not have resulted in a life sentence.  The court found that “[t]here is 
no showing the trial court would have changed its rejection of the mental health 
mitigators based on this additional evidence.”  The court also found that Hernandez 
failed to show that the additional information presented in the evidentiary hearing 
“would have enabled Turner to confirm his diagnosis of possible brain damage or 
otherwise changed the expert’s diagnoses and opinions.”  We agree that trial 
counsel was not deficient in the preparation of the experts or in the presentation of 
mental health mitigation at trial. 
Dr. Bingham, a mental health counselor who was one of Hernandez’s trial 
experts, testified in the penalty phase of trial that based on the information he had 
reviewed and the evaluations and testing done on Hernandez, he “definitely was 
affected by the different types of abuse that he [had] experienced [in] his lifetime, 
 
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as well as other things that have occurred in his lifetime.”  At the evidentiary 
hearing, Dr. Bingham testified that Rollo provided him with medical records, a 
partial psychological evaluation by a Dr. Larson,12 three offense reports, records 
provided by the Calaveras Works and Human Services Agency, some school 
records, a telephone conversation with Stephanie Hernandez, a deposition of 
defendant’s mother Cheryl Walker, statements of the defendant’s step-
grandparents, and the taped statement given police by Hernandez.  He also 
performed various tests and examinations on Hernandez prior to testifying in the 
penalty phase of trial.   
Based on all the information he received, Dr. Bingham testified at trial that 
Hernandez was exposed to drugs at a very early age and had used marijuana, 
alcohol, and crack cocaine as a child, and used hallucinogens, crystal 
methamphetamine, heroin, and tranquilizing pills as a teenager.  Dr. Bingham 
reported that Hernandez was taught how to use crack cocaine by his father, and 
was required to roll marijuana cigarettes for him at the age of five.  The jury heard 
that Hernandez started smoking marijuana and using other illegal substances on a 
daily basis at an early age, and that his father even introduced him to crack cocaine 
                                          
 
 
12.  Dr. Larson was first retained by the defense, but when Hernandez went 
to his office to be evaluated, Hernandez attacked Deputy Jarvis with the toilet tank 
lid.  Dr. Larson did not continue on as a defense expert. 
 
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at age ten.  Hernandez first used alcohol at age nine, and continued to use it until 
around age twenty-one, when he got married.  Dr. Bingham testified at trial that 
Hernandez was also subjected to physical, mental, emotional, and possibly sexual 
abuse, which could prevent a person from “fully developing and having the 
internal resources to make good decisions,” and he opined that Hernandez self-
medicated with drugs to take away the emotional pain.  Dr. Bingham also opined 
that Hernandez met the diagnostic criteria for a chemical dependency to marijuana 
and cocaine, and he described for the jury the effects on the brain when crack 
cocaine is smoked—chronic crack cocaine use blocks the ability to have empathy 
or compassion, and causes aggressive behavior.      
 Finally, in the penalty phase, Dr. Bingham testified that Hernandez’s 
actions on the day of the murder appeared to reflect “an absence of thinking and 
more reaction to the situation as it unfolded. . . .  All they were interested in is 
responding in the sense of getting crack cocaine.”  He believed that Hernandez’s 
ability to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or conform his conduct to the 
requirements of law was substantially impaired as a result of his chronic cocaine 
use, being under the influence at the time, and because of the psychological and 
physical abuse he had experienced.  Dr. Bingham confirmed that prior to the 
penalty phase of trial, he did not recommend any brain imaging to trial counsel as a 
way to confirm brain damage that he suspected.   
 
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Dr. Brett Turner, the second mental health expert who testified at trial, 
testified in the evidentiary hearing that in preparation for his penalty phase 
testimony he reviewed Hernandez’s background documents collected by 
Dr. Bingham.  Dr. Turner also interviewed Hernandez, and performed various 
tests.  Dr. Turner told the penalty phase jury that although he was not able to 
substantiate damage to Hernandez’s frontal lobe because of the invalid 
neurological test score, he believed that Hernandez’s history suggested it.  
Dr. Turner also diagnosed Hernandez as having polysubstance dependence 
disorder, meaning that Hernandez had a potential addiction to most drugs because 
of his lengthy drug history that started at an early age.  He testified that he 
diagnosed Hernandez with depressive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.  
Dr. Turner further testified at trial that Hernandez had impulse control disorder or 
cognitive disorder not otherwise specified, and antisocial personality disorder.   
Dr. Turner also opined in the penalty phase that Hernandez was “under 
extreme emotional disturbance at the time of the offense as a result of a chronic 
history of emotional instability deficits and behavior control and deficits in his 
reasoning and cognitive abilities all acutely exacerbated by the effects of cocaine 
intoxication.”  Dr. Turner explained, “His anxious and even manic state was also 
likely even more acute in the midst of even possibly recognizing that they were out 
of cocaine at the time, which again, would even inflame and exacerbate the anxiety 
 
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and the feelings that were probably there . . . .”  He told the jury that Hernandez’s 
capacity to appreciate the criminality of his conduct was substantially impaired 
“because appreciate actually means to be fully aware, and I do not believe that he 
was fully aware at the time of the incident offense.  I believe he was engaged in a 
string of behavioral responses, one leading to the next . . . .”  At the evidentiary 
hearing, Dr. Turner testified that he was asked by trial counsel to evaluate 
Hernandez for brain damage, but was unable to conclusively determine it.  
Dr. Turner did continue to suspect “some type of mild, traumatic brain injury,” as 
he testified at trial.   
Postconviction counsel presented several other mental health experts at the 
evidentiary hearing who he contends should have been presented at trial to 
substantiate the suspicion that Hernandez had brain damage and other mental 
health mitigation.  Deborah C. Mash, Ph.D., professor of neurology and molecular 
cellular pharmacology at the University of Miami School of Medicine, testified as 
an expert in the area of substance abuse and the effect of abused drugs on the 
human brain.  Based on a psychosocial assessment about Hernandez’s historical 
drug use and a review of his neuro-developmental timeline of exposure to drugs 
and alcohol, Dr. Mash testified that, in her opinion, he suffers from post-traumatic 
stress disorder, poly-substance abuse disorder involving cocaine and alcoholism, 
genetic risk for substance abuse and neuropsychiatric disabilities, and neuro-
 
- 67 - 
developmental disability beginning in utero due to the drug and alcohol abuse by 
his mother.  Dr. Mash also testified that Hernandez’s pyloric stenosis as a baby—a 
fact not brought out in the penalty phase of trial—was important because that 
condition is an indicator of third-trimester maternal drug abuse, poor nutrition, 
socioeconomic factors, and general health problems in the mother.      
She testified that the level of stress and abuse Hernandez was subjected to 
was extreme, and there was never a time in his life when he was in a stable neuro-
developmental state.  She testified the physical and drug abuse he suffered would 
have affected his amygdala, which is the seat of the brain’s limbic system—
governing the fight or flight reaction.  She opined that he is very impaired in his 
ability to deal with novel situations, and being involved in murder and being jailed 
are such novel situations that would have caused extreme stress and could account 
for the violence Hernandez displayed after his arrest.  She explained that his 
withdrawal from the cocaine he had been ingesting the day before would have 
made him “more reactive” with “heightened anxiety.”  She said that once the 
normal testing to discover the extent of suspected brain damage was unsuccessful, 
as occurred in this case, the experts should have pursued a different course to 
determine the extent of damage.  She testified that Hernandez’s exposure to drugs 
and alcohol, and dysfunction in the circuit of his brain were what contributed to the 
 
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mitigator of lack of ability to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or conform 
his conduct to the requirements of the law.     
At the postconviction evidentiary hearing, Dr. Koberda, a board certified 
neurologist, testified that he took raw EEG data from an EEG performed on 
Hernandez by Dr. Gluck, and put it through a “NeuroGuide” qEEG software 
program to analyze it.  Dr. Koberda opined that the qEEG results showed deviation 
from the norm, and that the EEG alone indicated the “very high likelihood that 
there is brain damage” in the frontal and temporal regions of the brain.  He did not 
examine Hernandez, but concluded from the history given and the qEEG testing 
that there is a high likelihood of brain damage or organic brain damage.  
Hernandez also presented the testimony of Dr. Gluck, who performed qEEG 
testing on Hernandez for the postconviction hearing.  Dr. Gluck concluded, based 
on the qEEG testing, that Hernandez has “frontal, temporal, central deregulation, 
which is associated with brain injury and damage.”   
Thus, Hernandez contends that penalty phase counsel was deficient for 
failing to obtain further testing to confirm suspected brain damage, which he 
argues could have been done by a more thorough neurological evaluation and 
testing, or by use of qEEG testing as testified to at the evidentiary hearing.  He 
contends that testimony similar to Dr. Mash’s testimony would have been a critical 
component of proper mental health mitigation because she could have made clear 
 
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that his neurological deficits began in utero as a result of his mother’s drug and 
alcohol abuse, and that he had an extreme genetic risk of substance abuse.  
Hernandez contends that Dr. Mash could more fully explain how his brain damage 
and drug abuse made him incapable of dealing in a coherent way with novel or 
stressful situations, and would have countered the trial testimony of State’s penalty 
phase witness, Dr. Harry McClaren, who testified that Hernandez did not meet the 
statutory mitigator of extreme mental or emotional disturbance.   
The circuit court denied relief and found that Hernandez failed to show the 
additional information presented in the evidentiary hearing would have enabled 
Dr. Turner to confirm his diagnosis of possible brain damage or otherwise changed 
the experts’ diagnoses and opinions.  We have held many times that “defense 
counsel is entitled to rely on the evaluations conducted by qualified mental health 
experts, even if, in retrospect, those evaluations may not have been as complete as 
others may desire.”  Stewart v. State, 37 So. 3d 243, 251-52 (Fla. 2010) (quoting 
Darling v. State, 966 So. 3d 266, 377 (Fla. 2007)); see also Rodgers v. State, 113 
So. 3d 761, 770 (Fla. 2013) (same); Wyatt v. State, 71 So. 3d 86, 110 (Fla. 2011) 
(same).  We noted in Wyatt that the defendant “did not prove that a reasonable trial 
attorney should have known to not rely on the conclusions offered by the mental 
health experts who evaluated him.  Thus, he did not prove that his counsel was 
deficient.”  Id. (quoting Stewart, 37 So. 3d at 253).  Moreover, we have held 
 
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repeatedly that the fact that postconviction counsel has “now secured the testimony 
of [a] more favorable mental health expert[] simply does not establish that the 
original evaluations were insufficient.”  Johnson, 135 So. 3d at 1030 (quoting 
Carroll v. State, 815 So. 2d 601, 618 (Fla. 2002)).   
In the present case, Hernandez failed to prove that either of his trial counsel 
were deficient in providing records and information to the experts or in relying on 
their evaluations.  Dr. Bingham suspected possible brain damage and counsel 
retained Dr. Turner to further investigate possible brain damage, but he was unable 
to make conclusive findings primarily because Hernandez was uncooperative.  
Both defense experts did testify in the penalty phase that they saw indications of 
possible brain damage.  Even after the testing that Hernandez obtained for the 
postconviction hearing, the new experts were not any more conclusive on the 
question of whether Hernandez had brain damage than the trial experts.  For these 
reasons and based on this Court’s precedent, we conclude that the postconviction 
court did not err in finding trial counsel was not deficient in failing to obtain 
further testing to confirm brain damage or provide additional mental health 
mitigation.  Further, even if counsel had obtained testimony similar to that 
presented at the evidentiary hearing regarding brain damage, such testimony, if 
found admissible and submitted to the jury or judge, does not demonstrate a 
 
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probability that Hernandez would have received a life sentence—that probability 
being one that undermines this Court’s confidence in the result. 
Trial Counsel’s Theory of Defense 
Hernandez claims that Stokes was deficient in his presentation of the guilt 
phase defense because it did not coordinate well with the penalty phase strategy.  
He argues that trial counsel should have conceded a lesser offense, such as second-
degree murder, rather than arguing that Hernandez was not guilty of the crimes 
charged.  Because the closing argument in the guilt phase sets forth Stokes’ guilt 
phase strategy, those pertinent arguments are discussed next.  In the guilt phase 
closing arguments, Stokes portrayed Hernandez as new to the area and with few 
friends.  He had stopped using crack cocaine until he met Shawn Arnold.  Stokes 
argued that Tammy Hartman envisioned her daughter married to Arnold and 
raising their child together, but Arnold was using drugs and buying drugs from 
David Everett.  Stokes argued that Arnold knew David Everett while Hernandez 
did not, and that Arnold, not Hernandez, had met Ruth Everett in the past and was 
the one “running the show.”  Counsel argued that Arnold had the car and knew 
where to buy drugs, and that “Shawn Arnold was the classic bad guy in this story.”     
 
Stokes argued that it was Arnold who attempted to smother the victim with 
the pillow, bruising her face in the process.  He argued that “the broken neck could 
have been caused by Shawn Arnold pushing that pillow against her neck so that it 
 
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was forced backward in the recliner,” a concession Stokes obtained from the 
medical examiner.  Stokes contended that Hernandez thought Arnold had killed her 
and asked Arnold to help move the body.  When she was dropped, that could have 
broken her neck, he contended.  He argued it was Arnold who stole the victim’s 
purse; it was Arnold’s knife that was used to stab the victim in the neck; and it was 
Arnold’s dumpster where the purse and credit cards were found and then moved by 
Tammy Hartman.   
 
Stokes argued that Tammy Hartman was the matriarch of the family and 
thought herself an amateur detective.  Stokes contended, “Tammy ran the show.  
Everybody did what Tammy said.”  She got the knife from the car and put it in a 
towel, he contended, to wipe off the fingerprints.  She threw the knife in a garbage 
bag with the purse, check book, and ATM cards found in the dumpster outside 
Arnold’s house, put the bag in her truck, and drove to Hernandez’s house.  Stokes 
contended that when she found Hernandez, he was intoxicated on crack cocaine.  
Stokes argued, “Tammy Hartman was able to manipulate Michael Hernandez just 
as she had been manipulating everyone else because, see, Michael Hernandez in 
this state, couldn’t remember what happened the day before. . . . she filled in the 
blanks” in such a way as to protect Arnold.  Stokes argued that Tammy “planted in 
his mind the idea that he was the one that cut the lady’s throat.”  Stokes also 
emphasized Tammy’s confusion in recounting who told her details of the crime.   
 
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Stokes’ theory, which he reemphasized for the jury, was that Hernandez was 
just along for the ride, did not know the victim, and had no reason to want to kill 
her.  He argued it was not premeditated for those reasons, and that it was not 
felony murder because there was no robbery or burglary—Arnold never told 
Hernandez they were going to rob anyone and Arnold was the one who took the 
purse.  While Stokes did not expressly concede second-degree murder, he did 
argue to the jury that they could consider lesser included offenses.  He also argued 
that they might find the victim was killed when she was accidentally dropped, 
which would be manslaughter by culpable negligence.  He argued lack of 
evidence, conflicts in the evidence, and the State’s burden of proof.    
In Stokes’ rebuttal guilt phase closing argument, he disagreed with the 
State’s argument that everything Arnold did could be attributed to Hernandez as a 
principal.  He again contended that Tammy Hartman “hijacked” Hernandez’s will 
when he was intoxicated on crack cocaine in order to get him to confess.  Stokes 
reiterated many of the arguments he made in his first closing statement, and 
claimed that Tammy made Hernandez the “sacrificial lamb.”  Stokes also criticized 
Tammy’s actions in talking to witnesses and gathering evidence, and said that 
when she first learned what Arnold told her, she should have just called the police.  
Stokes again argued that everything that transpired was attributable to Arnold.     
 
- 74 - 
 
At the evidentiary hearing, Stokes agreed that the guilt phase defense and 
strategy can have an effect on the penalty phase, but said, “My opinion was to go 
for it.  I mean, I’ve had too many that came back with a lesser included.  You 
know, you never know what a jury is going to do; and my opinion was that I 
agreed with Mr. Hernandez, that you shouldn’t give up your right to a jury trial.”  
Stokes testified in the evidentiary hearing that relative culpability was a big issue 
as it is in any multiple defendant case, and his primary strategy was to rebut any 
attempt to portray Hernandez as the more culpable.  To support following this 
strategy, he cited evidence that the victim might have been killed by being 
smothered, which raised a question as to whether she was already dead when 
Hernandez stabbed her throat.  Stokes agreed that his strategy was to raise enough 
doubts to convince the jury to come in with a lesser-included offense verdict.  He 
said Tammy’s bias was the primary focus of his trial strategy.   
Hernandez contends that Stokes was ineffective in failing to concede 
second-degree murder, and that the defense presented in the guilt phase, which 
contested all the crimes charged, was incoherent and not credible, prejudicing the 
defendant in the penalty phase.  Citing Florida v. Nixon, 543 U.S. 175 (2004), 
Hernandez argues that Stokes could have and should have conceded guilt to the 
crime charged or to a lesser included offense.  The circuit court denied relief, 
finding that Stokes’ guilt phase strategy was to contest all the crimes charged, and 
 
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to establish reasonable doubt in hopes of conviction for a lesser offense, and that 
Stokes and Rollo did discuss strategy before and during trial.  Finally, the circuit 
court found Hernandez failed to show this strategy was unreasonable under the 
norms of professional conduct or that, but for counsel’s strategy, the jury would 
have come back with a lesser offense conviction. 
In Nixon, the facts showed that trial counsel attempted to explain the 
strategy of conceding the overwhelming evidence of guilt to Nixon several times 
but he was unresponsive, so trial counsel exercised his professional judgment to 
concede guilt and focus on the penalty phase.  The Supreme Court in Nixon did not 
hold that trial counsel should, in every case in which the evidence of guilt is 
overwhelming, concede murder and focus only on the penalty phase.  Id. at 181.  
Further, Nixon held “when a defendant, informed by counsel, neither consents nor 
objects to the course counsel describes as the most promising means to avert a 
sentence of death, counsel is not automatically barred from pursuing that course.”  
Nixon, id. at 178.  In the present case, Stokes concluded that, even though there 
was strong evidence against Hernandez, including a confession, the evidence was 
subject to challenge, and that he might be able to raise a reasonable doubt whether 
this murder was premeditated.   
Further, there is no indication in the present case that Hernandez was 
unresponsive in discussions of guilt phase strategy, or that he did or did not object 
 
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to conceding guilt.  Clearly, Hernandez exhibited a desire to have a jury trial on 
guilt when he disagreed with his first lawyer’s advice to enter a plea, resulting in 
Stokes being appointed.  Postconviction counsel failed to demonstrate that the 
strategy employed by Stokes—to challenge the evidence of all the crimes charged 
and to attempt to shift blame to Shawn Arnold—was not the strategy that 
Hernandez desired.  
The circuit court was correct in denying relief on this claim.  A reading of 
the closing argument given by Stokes discloses a clear strategy to place more 
culpability on Shawn Arnold—a strategy that was consistent with a penalty phase 
strategy that Hernandez should get a life sentence as did Arnold.  The argument 
also shows a strong attack on the actions of the main prosecution witness, Tammy 
Hartman, in an attempt to show she was protecting Arnold at the expense of 
Hernandez.  Stokes pointed out how she browbeat Hernandez, tampered with 
evidence, and gave a confused version of events in attempting to ascribe statements 
and actions to Hernandez.  It was clear in her testimony that much of what she said 
may have been related to her by Arnold.  Under the circumstances, this strategy, 
although not ultimately a successful one, appears reasonable under the norms of 
professional conduct and was not in conflict with the penalty phase strategy that 
showed Hernandez was a follower, not a leader, and had a serious drug abuse 
problem that was exacerbated by his association with Arnold.  
 
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Stokes was faced with strong evidence of guilt and attempted to place the 
worst of the evidence in such a light as to cast doubt on its reliability.  Nothing 
Stokes said in closing argument would necessarily impair the credibility of the 
mitigation witnesses.  Stokes argued in the guilt phase that Arnold was the 
ringleader who took all the major steps in the process that resulted in the victim’s 
death.  The mitigation evidence attempted to show that Hernandez was not a leader 
and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from his abusive 
childhood—and that because of his childhood abuse, he would tend to disconnect 
from things happening around him.  This was all consistent with the guilt phase 
case that portrayed Hernandez as being led by Shawn Arnold and manipulated by 
Tammy Hartman.  
Moreover, contrary to what postconviction counsel argues here, Stokes did 
not deny that Hernandez was guilty of any crimes at all.  Stokes did attempt to put 
all the evidence into a scenario showing that Hernandez had no premeditated intent 
to kill the victim, that he did not go there with any intent to rob the victim, that 
Arnold was the one who robbed the victim as an afterthought, and that 
Hernandez’s actions may not even have been the actions that resulted in the 
victim’s death.  Stokes did ask the jury to consider lesser offenses.  He asked if the 
evidence was consistent with a depraved mind, suggesting second-degree murder.  
He asked the jury to consider manslaughter by culpable negligence, arguing that 
 
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the victim’s neck may have been broken when she was accidentally dropped while 
being moved her after Hernandez thought she was already dead.  None of these 
arguments conflicted with any of the mitigation presented by penalty phase 
counsel.  We agree with the postconviction court that Stokes was not ineffective in 
his choice of trial strategy and that his guilt phase strategy was not conflict with the 
penalty phase strategy in this case.    
Admissibility of Trial Counsel’s Disciplinary Record 
Hernandez next contends that the circuit court erred in refusing to admit trial 
counsel Ted Stokes’ professional disciplinary history in order to support 
allegations that Stokes’ performance was deficient in this case and to support the 
contention that penalty phase counsel was unjustified in relying on Stokes as lead 
guilt phase counsel.  The disciplinary cases that Hernandez sought to admit, and 
which were proffered, consisted of disciplinary orders of this Court entered in 1992 
(two matters), 1994, 2001 (two matters), and 2005.13  The discipline was imposed 
for Stokes’ failure to file notices of appeal in two criminal cases, failure to 
maintain a law office trust account and trust account records, failure to timely file 
documents in a probate matter and failure to properly communicate with the client, 
                                          
 
 
13.  The Florida Bar v. Ted A. Stokes, Case Number 77,030; The Florida 
Bar v. Ted Alan Stokes, SC82,636; The Florida Bar v. Ted Alan Stokes, SC00-71; 
The Florida Bar v. Ted Alan Stokes, SC04-424. 
 
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failure to file a petition for adoption for which he was retained, and failure to 
properly investigate and diligently represent a defendant in a criminal case.14   
The State contends that the circuit court properly excluded the orders 
because the disciplinary proceedings and orders are not relevant to Stokes’ or 
Rollo’s performance in this instant case, where the issue is ineffective assistance of 
trial counsel.  In a different context, we have held that it was in the trial court’s 
discretion to prevent cross-examination of the State’s expert witness about his 
examination of a defendant in a different case in which we found the expert 
rendered an incompetent medical evaluation.  The earlier finding was considered a 
“collateral matter.”  See Cruse v. State, 588 So. 2d 983, 988 (Fla. 1991).  We 
cautioned in Cruse that allowing such earlier finding into evidence would turn the 
trial into a battle over the merits of the prior ruling.  Id.  Similarly, in Secada v. 
Weinstein, 563 So. 2d 172 (Fla. 3d DCA 1990), that court cautioned that allowing 
prior collateral findings might have “the inevitable tendency of causing the jury in 
                                          
 
 
14.  Stokes’ representation was also discussed in Coleman v. State, 64 So. 3d 
1210 (Fla. 2011), where the jury recommended life but sentences of death were 
imposed.  Stokes failed to retain an investigator or obtain a mental health 
evaluation of the defendant, and relied solely on the defendant’s alibi defense.  Id. 
at 1219.  Evidence presented in postconviction showed that the defendant had an 
impoverished background, poor relationship with his father, loss of family 
members, special education, substance abuse, head injury, and mental illness.  
Counsel could have presented this mitigation to the judge to support the life 
sentence recommended by the jury; thus, we vacated the death sentences and 
remanded for life in prison.   
 
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the present case to defer to decisions made in a previous one.”  Id. at 173.  The 
federal district court in Moore v. Chrones, 687 F. Supp. 2d 1005, 1030 n.13 (C.D. 
Cal. 2010), held that “the relevant inquiry on an ineffective assistance claim is 
whether counsel’s performance was deficient and caused prejudice in connection 
with the particular defendant and trial in issue, not what occurred in other cases.”   
Because the admission of these prior disciplinary orders was a matter within 
the trial court’s discretion, and was not directly relevant to Stokes’ and Rollo’s 
performance in representing Hernandez in this case, the circuit court did not err in 
sustaining the State’s objection.  Further, such matters are not the proper subject 
for impeachment under section 90.608, Florida Statutes (2007).  That provision 
allows impeachment with prior inconsistent statements, evidence of bias, evidence 
of defect of capacity, ability, or opportunity to observe, remember, or recount 
matters, and proof by other witnesses that material facts are not as testified to by 
the witness being impeached.  Section 90.608(3) allows impeachment of the 
character of the witness by evidence of character relating to truthfulness under 
section 90.609(1), Florida Statutes, and relating to evidence of certain crimes under 
section 90.610, Florida Statutes.  None of these provisions are met in the evidence 
of Stokes’ prior disciplinary history to require admission of the disciplinary 
history.  For all these reasons, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in 
excluding evidence of Stokes’ disciplinary history.  
 
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Trial Counsel’s Performance Regarding Victim Impact Evidence 
Hernandez next contends that although penalty phase counsel filed a pretrial 
motion to exclude all victim impact evidence from the jury, he was deficient in not 
objecting to any specific victim impact testimony.  The United States Supreme 
Court held in Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U.S. 808 (1991), that the State may 
introduce victim impact evidence in the sentencing phase of trial to show “each 
victim’s ‘uniqueness as an individual human being,’ whatever the jury might think 
the loss to the community resulting from [her] death might be.”  Id. at 823.  We 
have held that “[t]he admission of victim impact evidence is protected by article I, 
section 16, of the Florida Constitution, and is also specifically governed by section 
921.141(7), Florida Statutes.”  Kalisz v. State, 124 So. 3d 185, 211 (Fla. 2013).  
That statute provides that once evidence has been admitted to show the existence 
of one or more aggravating circumstances, the prosecution may introduce evidence 
“designed to demonstrate the victim’s uniqueness as an individual human being 
and the resultant loss to the community’s members by the victim’s death.”  
§ 921.141(7), Fla. Stat. (2007).   
The victim impact evidence presented by the State consisted of testimony of 
two of Ruth Everett’s friends, Elaine Simpson and Judy Morrissey.  Simpson 
testified that she met Ruth Everett in 1966 or 1967 and remained friends until her 
death in 2004.  She said that Everett was a hard worker and could be counted on, 
 
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was quiet and helpful, and enjoyed family get-togethers for birthdays and holidays.  
Everett checked on family and friends when they were sick or bereaved and always 
gave help when it was needed.  Simpson explained that Everett’s son James died at 
age sixteen, leaving her son David as her only relative in the area.  Defense counsel 
did object when Simpson testified that Everett had sadness in her life and had 
experienced a bad marriage.  He also objected to testimony by Simpson that 
Everett’s death was a loss because she was like a family member, and Simpson’s 
life is now “like a fabric with a hole ripped in it.”  Simpson testified that Everett 
was encouraging to her, and was a “support system” when Simpson had to care for 
her mother for almost ten years. 
Simpson also testified that Everett’s loss to the community was large—she 
paid her taxes, worked hard, and took care of her son.  Simpson concluded, “She 
had what most people would consider a small life, but it was in no way an 
unimportant life, when you think of how many lives her life touched and the fact 
that she was so humble with her own problems.”  On cross-examination, Simpson 
agreed that Ruth Everett “was very concerned about [David’s] ongoing drug 
dealing and drug-using activities . . . .”  After Simpson’s testimony, the trial court 
instructed the jury that the evidence of the victim’s “uniqueness” and the “loss to 
the community members,” including her family, by her death is not to be 
considered as an aggravating circumstance.   
 
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The State also presented the testimony of Judy Morrissey, who had known 
Everett for about twenty-seven years, and lived in the same neighborhood for about 
twelve years before Everett’s death.  Morrissey had a close friendship with Everett 
and visited with her almost every day.  She said they were more like family than 
just friends.  Everett worked in retail and day care, where she was a very sweet, 
loving lady who grew attached to the children.  Morrissey said Everett was a big 
part of the lives of Morrissey’s own children, and was involved in church and 
enjoyed gospel music.  Morrissey explained, “It’s like a loss of a family member.  
She was a very, very close friend.  She was a very big part of my day-to-day life.”  
In cross-examination of Morrissey, she said the victim was concerned about her 
son’s drug-related activities.   
Hernandez contends that counsel’s failure to object to victim impact 
evidence about Ruth Everett’s difficult life, the fact that her son James died at age 
sixteen, and that she had been good to a friend’s parents constituted deficient 
performance by penalty phase counsel.  Hernandez contends that evidence that the 
victim was a hard worker, and a good citizen who paid taxes and voted was not 
relevant to her uniqueness or to her loss to the community and was outside the 
scope of section 921.141(7), Florida Statutes.  He also argues that some of the 
testimony related events that occurred years before the murder and thus could not 
be relevant to any current loss.  The postconviction court denied this claim, finding 
 
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that some of the testimony was objected to by penalty phase counsel, and that 
counsel’s lack of objection to other testimony, such as the fact that the victim was 
concerned about her son’s drug dealing, was not deficient performance because 
that evidence was in accord with the defense theory of the case.  Hernandez does 
not contend that this victim impact evidence was unduly voluminous or became a 
feature of the trial.  Instead, he contends that it is not the type of evidence that is 
permitted by section 921.141(7) and thus is not relevant and should have been 
objected to by counsel.  As can be seen, counsel did object to several areas of 
victim impact evidence.  Moreover, the victim impact evidence in this case was 
proper under section 921.141(7) and under the precedent of the United States 
Supreme Court and this Court.  
We held in Franklin v. State, 965 So. 2d 79, 97 (Fla. 2007), that victim 
impact evidence that the victim’s friends were “hurt pretty bad” by the loss, that 
the victim served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam, was loving and generous and 
helped family and friends, and was a good guy who helped neighborhood children 
was all within the purpose of section 921.141(7) to demonstrate the uniqueness of 
the victim and loss to the community.  Franklin, 965 So. 2d at 97-98.  In Victorino 
v. State, 127 So. 3d 478, 496 (Fla. 2013), we found victim impact evidence that the 
victim’s family members were grieving was proper.  We have also held that 
evidence the victim, long before his death, was a police officer who tried to help 
 
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others and had been a U.S. Army Paratrooper demonstrated the uniqueness of the 
victim.  Peterson v. State, 94 So. 3d 514, 530 (Fla. 2012).  Thus, the fact that the 
victim possesses characteristics or experience similar to that of others does not 
defeat a showing of the uniqueness of the particular victim at issue.  Further, the 
fact that some of those characteristics were demonstrated in the past does not 
defeat the purpose of the victim impact statute.  
Here, Ruth Everett was described as extremely helpful to friends and their 
families, loved caring for children, and would be missed.  This was exactly the 
type of testimony that demonstrated her particular characteristics and thus her 
uniqueness, as well as the loss to the community occasioned by her death.  
Evidence that she suffered sadness and losses in a difficult life was proper because 
it demonstrated her unique ability to think and act positively with her friends and 
her community in spite of her own personal difficulties.  The sum total of these 
personal characteristics is what illustrates Everett’s uniqueness and the loss to the 
community and to the people who relied on and were helped by her.   
We explained in Bonifay v. State, 680 So. 2d 413, 420 (Fla. 1996), that 
“[f]amily members are unique to each other by reason of the relationship and the 
role each has in the family.”  This same characterization applies to the relationship 
between the victim and her closest friends, who described Everett as being more 
“like family.”  Because the victim impact evidence in this case was not a focus of 
 
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the penalty phase, was not voluminous, and was relevant and proper within the 
confines of section 921.141(7), penalty phase counsel was not deficient in failing 
to make more specific objections to the evidence.  The postconviction court 
correctly denied this claim.  
 
PETITION FOR HABEAS CORPUS 
Claims of ineffective assistance of appellate counsel are appropriately raised 
in a petition for writ of habeas corpus, as Hernandez has done in this case.  See 
Jackson v. State, 127 So. 3d 447, 476 (Fla. 2013).  The alleged error by appellate 
counsel must be of “such magnitude as to constitute a serious error or substantial 
deficiency falling measurably outside the range of professionally acceptable 
performance. . . .”  Id. (quoting Pope v. Wainwright, 496 So. 2d 798, 800 (Fla. 
1986)).  Further, the deficiency must have “compromised the appellate process to 
such degree as to undermine confidence in the correctness of the result.”  Id. 
(quoting Pope, 496 So. 2d at 800).  We have held many times that “appellate 
counsel cannot be deemed ineffective for failing to raise nonmeritorious claims on 
appeal.”  Id. (quoting Freeman v. State, 761 So. 2d 1055, 1070 (Fla. 2000)).  “The 
reviewing court must presume that [appellate] counsel’s conduct was within the 
broad range of reasonable professional conduct, and the defendant bears the burden 
of overcoming this presumption.”  Conahan, 118 So. 3d at 733.  The standard of 
 
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review for claims of ineffective assistance of appellate counsel “mirrors the 
Strickland standard for ineffective assistance of trial counsel.”  Id. at 732. 
Hernandez contends that appellate counsel was ineffective in failing to raise 
on appeal a preserved claim of error concerning the trial testimony of Dr. Harry 
McClaren, who was called by the State to testify in the penalty phase of trial.  
Hernandez contends that Dr. McClaren made a misstatement of law concerning 
what mental conditions might rise to the level of the statutory mitigating 
circumstance that the murder was committed while the defendant was under the 
influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance.  See § 921.141(6)(b), Fla. 
Stat. (2007).  Hernandez contends that Dr. McClaren suggested that only psychosis 
or insanity proves that statutory mental health mitigator.  Hernandez is correct that 
“sanity does not eliminate consideration of the statutory mitigating factors 
concerning mental condition,” Mines v. State, 390 So. 2d 332, 337 (Fla. 1980), and 
the two concepts should not be confused, see Coday v. State, 946 So. 2d 988, 1003 
(Fla. 2006).  However, we find that appellate counsel was not deficient in failing to 
raise on direct appeal a claim that Dr. McClaren’s testimony concerning the 
statutory mental health mitigator was an incorrect statement of law.   
Dr. McClaren, a psychologist specializing in criminal forensic psychology, 
evaluated Hernandez prior to trial by meeting with him for about four hours.  In the 
evaluation, Hernandez also told Dr. McClaren he was drunk and high on crack 
 
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cocaine when the murder occurred.  Dr. McClaren investigated Hernandez’s 
background and reviewed results of psychological tests.  He also reviewed 
“voluminous documents” relevant to Hernandez’s past behavior, including witness 
reports, jail medical records, records from California, and the incident for which 
Hernandez was on trial.  Dr. McClaren administered a number of psychological 
tests to Hernandez, and reviewed results of some testing performed by defendant’s 
expert, Dr. Brett Turner, that showed Hernandez appeared to be malingering.       
 
Dr. McClaren testified at trial that he found Hernandez suffered from post-
traumatic stress disorder resulting from his abusive childhood, had some form of 
depression, and suffered polysubstance abuse involving crystal methamphetamine, 
crack cocaine, and marijuana.  He also diagnosed Hernandez with antisocial 
personality disorder and borderline personality disorder—and opined that 
Hernandez may have a cognitive disorder not otherwise specified.  Dr. McClaren 
noted that these diagnoses were consistent with those given by the defense experts 
at trial.  In Dr. McClaren’s opinion, Hernandez was not under extreme mental or 
emotional disturbance at the time of the murder, but was intoxicated by cocaine.  
When he was asked to give an example of an extreme mental or emotional 
disturbance, Dr. McClaren responded, “A person . . . suffering from psychosis, a 
break from reality, experiencing delusions, false beliefs that someone was 
poisoning him, controlling him with witchcraft, voodoo, cosmic rays, hearing 
 
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voices or seeing things that were scaring him, urging him to do things that were 
wrong to the extent - - ”  At this point, defense counsel Rollo objected in part that 
the “State is raising the issue of an insanity defense to knock it down.  We’ve never 
raised it, and that’s what we are talking about here.  So this isn’t relevant to 
anything that we’ve brought up.  Any mitigation whatsoever.”  Counsel 
subsequently argued, “There’s nothing in the [statutory] mitigator that says 
anything about psychosis, and that’s what he’s describing.  We haven’t attempted 
to establish that.”  The trial court overruled the objection, concluding it was an 
issue that went to the weight of the testimony and not admissibility.   
 
Dr. McClaren then continued to give more examples of conditions that he 
believed would rise to the level of the statutory mitigator, describing “[s]omeone 
who is suffering from a major depression, a postpartum depression, the various 
kinds of brain injuries that very significantly affect impulse control, these sorts of 
things, are the kinds of things that I would associate with extreme mental or 
emotional disturbance.”  Dr. McClaren also testified that an extreme emotional 
disturbance could arise when a person observes traumatic or shocking events.  We 
conclude that Dr. McClaren did not make a misstatement of law concerning what 
diagnoses or conditions would qualify as proof of the statutory mitigator.  
First, it can be seen from Dr. McClaren’s full testimony that he did not limit 
his description of what diagnoses might rise to the level of extreme mental or 
 
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emotional disturbance to psychosis, as Hernandez now contends.  Dr. McClaren 
expanded the list of examples from psychosis and delusions to include a number of 
other diagnoses and circumstances that, in his opinion, could meet the standard for 
the statutory mitigator.  Thus, Hernandez’s first premise—that Dr. McClaren was 
testifying that only insanity or psychosis rises to the level of extreme mental or 
emotional disturbance—is incorrect.  Second, Dr. McClaren simply did not believe 
Hernandez’s cocaine intoxication or addiction in this case was a condition or 
circumstance that rose to the level of the statutory mitigator.  On cross-
examination, Dr. McClaren conceded he was not testifying that it is impossible that 
Hernandez could meet the statutory criteria, just that he disagreed with the defense 
experts on this point.   
In rejecting the finding of the statutory mitigator in this case, the trial court 
did not cite Dr. McClaren’s testimony concerning psychosis as the only condition 
meeting the requirements of the statute.  Furthermore, the trial court found that 
Dr. McClaren testified that Hernandez’s cocaine intoxication “did cause a lesser 
degree of mental (but not emotional) disturbance” and recognized that Hernandez 
suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, depressive disorder, polysubstance 
abuse, antisocial personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, impulse 
control disorder, cognitive disorder, and possible brain damage.  The trial court 
stated, “Considering the expert testimony combined with the other evidence 
 
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presented in this case, the Court finds insufficient evidence to support the existence 
of these two mitigating circumstances,” but did conclude that the cocaine 
intoxication was proven and would be considered in the nonstatutory mitigation 
section of the order.  We conclude that the claim, if raised on appeal, would have 
been found meritless.  Even if the claim could have had some possibility of 
success, “appellate counsel is not ‘necessarily ineffective for failing to raise a 
claim that might have had some possibility of success; effective appellate counsel 
need not raise every conceivable nonfrivolous issue.’ ”  Zack v. State, 911 So. 2d 
1190, 1204 (Fla. 2005) (quoting Valle v. Moore, 837 So. 2d 905, 908 (Fla. 2002)).  
Finally, our confidence in the result of the appeal is not undermined by counsel’s 
failure to raise this claim.  For these reasons, the petition for writ of habeas corpus 
alleging ineffective assistance of appellate counsel must be denied.   
CONCLUSION 
 
For all the foregoing reasons, the order of the circuit court denying 
postconviction relief is hereby affirmed, and the petition for writ of habeas corpus 
is denied.   
 
It is so ordered. 
LABARGA, C.J., and PARIENTE, LEWIS, QUINCE, POLSTON, and PERRY, 
JJ., concur. 
CANADY, J., concurs in result. 
 
NOT FINAL UNTIL TIME EXPIRES TO FILE REHEARING MOTION, AND 
IF FILED, DETERMINED.   
 
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Two Cases:  
 
An Appeal from the Circuit Court in and for Santa Rosa County,  
David Harold Rimmer, Judge - Case No. 572004CF001184XXAXMX 
And an Original Proceeding – Habeas Corpus  
 
Curtis Mitchell French, Tallahassee, Florida, 
 
for Appellant/Petitioner 
 
Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, and Charmaine Millsaps, Assistant Attorney 
General, Tallahassee, Florida, 
 
for Appellee/Respondent