Title: Asay v. State

State: florida

Issuer: Florida Supreme Court

Document:

Supreme Court of Florida 
____________ 
 
No. SC16-223 
____________ 
 
MARK JAMES ASAY, 
Appellant, 
 
vs. 
 
STATE OF FLORIDA, 
Appellee. 
____________ 
 
No. SC16-102 
____________ 
 
MARK JAMES ASAY, 
Petitioner, 
 
vs. 
 
JULIE L. JONES, etc., 
Respondent. 
____________ 
 
No. SC16-628 
____________ 
 
MARK JAMES ASAY,  
Petitioner, 
 
vs. 
 
JULIE L. JONES, etc.,  
Respondent. 
 
 
 
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[December 22, 2016] 
 
PER CURIAM. 
 
Mark James Asay, a prisoner under sentence of death for whom a warrant 
has been signed,1 appeals from the summary denial of his second successive 
postconviction motion.  Asay has also filed two petitions for a writ of habeas 
corpus.  We have jurisdiction.  See art. V, § 3(b)(1), (9), Fla. Const.  For the 
reasons that follow, we affirm the circuit court’s denial of postconviction relief.  
We also deny the petitions for a writ of habeas corpus. 
FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY 
The facts of this case are set forth in Asay’s direct appeal: 
According to testimony of Asay’s brother, Robbie, and 
Robbie’s friend, “Bubba” McQuinn, on July 17, 1987, the three met 
at a local bar where they drank beer and shot pool.  They left the bar 
around 12:00 a.m. and went to a second bar where they stayed until 
closing at 2:00 a.m.  Although Asay drank a number of beers, both 
Bubba and Robbie testified that Asay did not appear drunk or 
otherwise impaired. 
After the bar closed, Robbie said he wanted to try to “pick up a 
girl” he had seen at the bar, so Bubba and Asay drove around the 
corner in Asay’s truck.  They returned to discover that Robbie had 
been unsuccessful with the girl he had seen, so Bubba suggested that 
they go downtown to find some prostitutes and he would pay for oral 
sex for them all.  Asay and Bubba left in Asay’s truck and Robbie left 
in his.  Once downtown, Asay and Bubba soon spotted Robbie who 
was inside his truck talking to a black man, Robert Lee Booker.  
Robbie was telling Booker who was standing at the driver’s side 
                                          
 
 
1.  The execution was originally scheduled for March 17, 2016, but was 
stayed indefinitely by this Court on March 2, 2016. 
 
 
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window of Robbie’s truck that he and his friends were looking for 
prostitutes. 
After spotting Booker standing by Robbie’s truck, Asay told 
Bubba to pull up next to the truck.  Asay immediately got out of his 
truck, proceeded to Robbie’s truck, and told Robbie “You know you 
ain’t got to take no s--t from these f---ing niggers.”  Although Robbie 
told Asay that “everything is cool,” Asay began to point his finger in 
Booker’s face and verbally attack him.  When Booker told him “Don’t 
put your finger in my face,” Asay responded by saying “F--k you, 
nigger” and pulling his gun from his back pocket, shooting Booker 
once in the abdomen.  Booker grabbed his side and ran.  According to 
the medical examiner, the bullet perforated the intestines and an artery 
causing internal hemorrhaging.  Booker’s body was later found under 
the edge of a nearby house. 
Robbie drove away immediately after the shooting.  Asay 
jumped into the back of his truck, as Bubba drove off.  When Asay 
got into the cab of the truck, Bubba asked him why he shot Booker.  
Asay responded, “Because you got to show a nigger who is boss.”  
When asked if he thought he killed Booker, Asay replied, “No, I just 
scared the s--t out of him.” 
Bubba testified that after the shooting, Asay and Bubba 
continued to look for prostitutes.  According to Bubba, he saw 
“Renee” who he knew would give them oral sex.  It appears that at the 
time neither Bubba nor Asay was aware that “Renee” was actually 
Robert McDowell, a black man dressed as a woman.  According to 
Bubba, he negotiated a deal for oral sex for them both.  Bubba drove 
the truck into a nearby alley.  McDowell followed.  Bubba testified 
that McDowell refused to get into the truck with them both, so Asay 
left the truck and walked away to act as a lookout while Bubba and 
McDowell had sex.  As McDowell started to get into the truck with 
Bubba, Asay returned, grabbed McDowell’s arm, pulled him from the 
truck and began shooting him.  McDowell was shot six times while he 
was backing up and attempting to get away.  Asay jumped back in his 
truck and told Bubba to drive away.  When asked why he shot 
McDowell, Asay told Bubba that he did it because “the bitch had beat 
him out of ten dollars” on a “blow job.”  McDowell’s body was found 
on the ground in the alley soon after the shots were heard.  According 
to the medical examiner, any of three wounds to the chest cavity 
would have been fatal. 
 
 
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Asay later told Charlie Moore in the presence of Moore’s 
cousin, Danny, that he shot McDowell because McDowell had 
cheated him out of ten dollars on a drug deal and that he had told 
McDowell, “if he ever got him that he would get even.”  Asay told 
Moore that he was out looking for “whores,” when he came across 
McDowell.  According to Moore’s cousin, Danny, Asay also told 
Moore that his plan was to have Bubba get McDowell in the truck and 
they “would take her off and screw her and kill her.”  Moore testified 
that Asay told him that when Bubba “didn’t have [McDowell] in the 
truck so they could go beat him up,” Asay “grabbed [McDowell] by 
the arm and stuck the gun in his chest and shot him four times, and 
that when he hit the ground, he finished him off.”  As a result of tips 
received from Moore and his cousin after McDowell’s murder was 
featured on a television Crime Watch segment, Asay was arrested and 
charged by indictment with two counts of first-degree murder. 
The state also presented testimony of Thomas Gross, who was 
Asay’s cellmate while he was awaiting trial.  Gross testified that when 
the black prisoners, who were also housed in their cell, were out in the 
recreation area, Asay told him he was awaiting trial for a couple of 
murders.  According to Gross, Asay then showed him some 
newspaper articles and told him, “I shot them niggers.”  While they 
were discussing the murders, Asay showed Gross his tattoos, which 
included a swastika, the words “White Pride,” and the initials “SWP” 
which Gross said stand for supreme white power. 
 
Asay v. State (Asay I), 580 So. 2d 610, 610-12 (Fla. 1991). 
The jury found Asay guilty of both murders and recommended a death 
sentence by a vote of nine to three.  The trial court followed the recommendation 
and imposed a sentence of death for each conviction.  Id. at 612.  The court found 
two aggravating factors established in connection with both murders: that Asay 
was under sentence of imprisonment at the time of the murders and had been 
previously convicted of a capital felony (based on the contemporaneous murder 
conviction).  Id.  In addition, the trial court found a third aggravator as to the 
 
 
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McDowell murder only: that the murder was committed in a cold, calculated, 
premeditated manner (CCP).  Id.  As to both murders, the trial court found Asay’s 
age of twenty-three at the time of the murders to be the only mitigation for his 
offenses.  Id. 
On direct appeal, Asay raised seven issues.2  This Court summarily denied 
the first four claims and also found, after some discussion, that no relief was 
warranted as to the remaining three claims.  Id. at 612 n.1, 613-14.  On June 21, 
1991, this Court denied Asay’s motion for rehearing, and the United States 
Supreme Court denied certiorari on October 7, 1991.  Asay v. Florida, 502 U.S. 
895 (1991). 
In 1993, Asay filed a motion for postconviction relief3 pursuant to Florida 
Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850 and an amended motion, raising twenty claims.  
                                          
 
 
2.  The issues raised on appeal were (1) the trial court erred by allowing 
racial prejudice to be injected into the trial; (2) the trial court erred in failing to 
advise Asay of his right to represent himself and to conduct an inquiry when Asay 
asked to discharge court-appointed counsel; (3) the trial court erred in denying 
Asay’s pro se motion for continuance of the penalty phase of the trial to enable him 
to secure additional mitigation witnesses; (4) the prosecution improperly 
diminished the jury’s role in sentencing; (5) the trial court judge erred by failing to 
grant his motion for judgment of acquittal on count I of the indictment charging 
him with the first-degree premeditated murder of Robert Lee Booker; (6) the trial 
court erred in finding CCP established as to the McDowell murder; and (7) Asay’s 
death sentence was disproportionate.  Id. at 612 n.1, 613-14. 
 
3.  While his postconviction motion was pending, Asay—along with other 
capital defendants—appealed the Florida Board of Executive Clemency’s denial of 
Asay’s public records requests, but this Court held that the obligation of the State 
 
 
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Asay v. State (Asay II), 769 So. 2d 974, 977-78 & n.5 (Fla. 2000).4  He also filed a 
motion to disqualify the trial judge from presiding over the postconviction 
proceedings, primarily based on comments the judge made during Asay’s 1988 
                                          
 
to disclose exculpatory material under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), 
does not apply to clemency records.  See Asay v. Fla. Parole Comm’n, 649 So. 2d 
859, 860 (Fla. 1994), cert. denied, 516 U.S. 1017 (1995). 
 
4.  These claims were (1) state agencies withheld public records; (2) the trial 
judge was biased and trial counsel should have sought to have him disqualified; (3) 
the original trial judge was biased and should have recused himself from presiding 
over the postconviction proceedings; (4) trial counsel was ineffective during the 
guilt phase; (5) the jury instructions for the CCP aggravator did not limit the jury’s 
consideration and was not supported by the evidence; (6) the CCP jury instruction 
was unconstitutional and counsel’s failure to object rendered his performance 
ineffective; (7) Florida’s sentencing scheme is unconstitutional; (8) the State’s 
aggravating circumstances argument was overbroad; (9) the trial judge erred in 
failing to find mitigation present in the record; (10) the penalty phase jury 
instructions shifted the burden of proof to the defendant; (11) Asay’s trial was 
fundamentally unfair due to the prosecutor’s inflammatory comments; (12) Asay 
did not receive an adequate mental health evaluation as required by Ake v. 
Oklahoma, 470 U.S. 68 (1985); (13) Asay’s counsel was ineffective during the 
penalty phase; (14) Asay’s due process rights were violated and his counsel’s 
performance was rendered ineffective when his motion for a continuance before 
the penalty phase to secure additional mitigation witnesses was denied; (15) the 
trial court prevented Asay from presenting mitigation evidence in violation of 
Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586 (1978); (16) Asay’s guilt phase counsel was 
ineffective for not presenting a voluntary intoxication defense; (17) the 
prosecutor’s statement that sympathy could not be considered by the jury was 
improper; (18) the jury instructions unconstitutionally diluted the jury’s sense of 
sentencing responsibility and counsel was ineffective for not ensuring that the jury 
received adequate instructions; (19) prosecutorial misconduct rendered Asay’s 
conviction unreliable; and (20) Asay’s trial court proceedings, when considered as 
a whole, were fraught with errors that could not be considered harmless.  Id. at 978 
n.5. 
 
 
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trial.  Asay II, 769 So. 2d at 978.  The trial judge denied the motion to disqualify 
and, after holding a Huff5 hearing, summarily denied most of Asay’s claims, 
granting an evidentiary hearing on only the ineffective assistance of trial counsel 
claims.  Id.  Following the evidentiary hearing, the trial court denied relief on those 
claims as well.  Id.6  Asay appealed the denial of relief, raising six issues.7  We 
denied the appeal, affirming the trial court’s denial of postconviction relief.  Id. at 
                                          
 
 
5.  Huff v. State, 622 So. 2d 982 (Fla. 1993). 
 
6.  During the pendency of Asay’s appeal from the denial of his 
postconviction motion, Asay also joined a mandamus class action suit to stay 
application of the Florida Death Penalty Reform Act of 2000, of which this Court 
found certain sections to be unconstitutional.  Allen v. Butterworth, 756 So. 2d 52, 
67 (Fla. 2000). 
 
7.  These issues were (1) judicial bias during the trial and postconviction 
proceedings denied Asay “a fair and impartial tribunal throughout his proceedings 
in violation of his due process rights;” (2) the trial court improperly limited the 
scope of the evidentiary hearing by limiting the testimony of some of Asay’s 
siblings concerning mitigating evidence not presented during the sentencing phase, 
limiting the scope of Asay’s examination of his trial counsel regarding his 
knowledge of prior inconsistent statements of key witnesses, and refusing to hear 
the testimony of Thomas Gross recanting his trial testimony; (3) Asay’s guilt phase 
counsel was ineffective for failing to adequately impeach the State’s key witnesses, 
present a voluntary intoxication defense, and rebut the State’s arguments that he 
committed the crime due to his racial animus; (4) penalty phase counsel was 
ineffective for failing to investigate and present statutory mitigating evidence that 
Asay was acting under extreme emotional distress and his capacity to appreciate 
the criminality of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of law 
was substantially impaired, and failing to present nonstatutory mitigating evidence 
of physical and emotional abuse and poverty during his childhood, alcohol abuse, 
and his history of “huffing” inhalants; (5) the trial court’s summary denial of 
several claims was improper; and (6) cumulative error.  Id. at 978-89. 
 
 
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989.  We denied Asay’s motion for rehearing on October 26, 2000.  Asay then 
filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus in this Court on October 25, 2001, raising 
five claims.8  Asay v. Moore (Asay III), 828 So. 2d 985, 989 n.8 (Fla. 2002).  We 
denied relief on June 13, 2002, and denied Asay’s motion for rehearing on October 
4, 2002.  Id. at 993. 
On October 17, 2002, Asay filed his first successive postconviction motion, 
in which he contended Florida’s capital sentencing procedure was unconstitutional 
pursuant to Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584 (2002).  The circuit court denied the 
motion on February 23, 2004.  Asay appealed, and on December 20, 2004, this 
Court affirmed the circuit court’s order.  Asay v. State (Asay IV), 892 So. 2d 1011 
(Fla. 2004) (table).  Asay filed a petition for writ of certiorari, which the Supreme 
Court denied on November 2, 2009.  McNeil v. Asay, 558 U.S. 1007 (2009). 
On February 11, 2005, Asay filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in 
the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida, raising eleven 
                                          
 
 
8.  The claims raised were (1) appellate counsel was ineffective in failing to 
argue that Asay was absent during critical stages of the proceedings; (2) Asay’s 
death sentences are unconstitutional because Asay was impermissibly prevented 
from presenting mitigation, the trial court failed to consider or weigh mitigation, 
and the prosecutor made impermissible arguments regarding aggravation; (3) 
appellate counsel was ineffective for failing to raise the trial court’s failure to give 
the requested instruction on CCP; (4) appellate counsel was ineffective for failing 
to argue that the penalty phase instructions improperly shifted the burden of proof 
regarding the appropriateness of a life sentence; and (5) Florida’s capital 
sentencing statute and jury instructions are unconstitutional.  Id. 
 
 
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claims. 9  Asay v. Sec’y, Fla. Dep’t of Corr. (Asay V), No. 3:05-cv-147-J-32PDB, 
2014 WL 1463990, *6 (M.D. Fla. April 14, 2014).  On April 14, 2014, the federal 
district court found that Asay was not entitled to relief and denied the petition.  Id. 
at *28.  A certificate of appealability was entered as to whether Asay received 
ineffective assistance during the penalty phase because his counsel failed to 
investigate, obtain, and present additional mitigating evidence.  Id.  On April 28, 
2014, Asay filed an appeal in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, but on July 8, 
2014, the appeal was voluntarily dismissed. 
                                          
 
 
9.  Asay raised the following claims: (1) Asay’s Sixth Amendment rights 
were violated when, during the trial, Asay informed the trial court that he wanted 
to terminate the services of defense counsel, yet the trial court neither provided 
substitute counsel nor advised Asay that he had the right to proceed pro se; (2) 
Asay’s counsel was ineffective for delegating the investigation of Asay’s case to 
an investigator and failing to supervise or follow up on that investigator’s work 
product; (3) Asay’s counsel was ineffective for failing to meaningfully consult 
with Asay, failing to obtain and use relevant information about Asay and dropping 
all defense preparation when he was informed that Asay had confessed to the 
defense investigator; (4) Asay’s counsel was ineffective for failing to meaningfully 
prepare for trial; (5) Asay’s counsel was ineffective for believing that a first degree 
murder conviction in Asay’s case was impossible and therefore failing to prepare 
for the trial and penalty phase, and laboring under the misconception that there 
could be no defense if Asay confessed; (6) racial evidence and argument tainted 
the trial process and denied Asay his right to a fair trial; (7) a State witness, 
Thomas Gross, admitted after trial that his testimony that Asay was a racist was a 
lie, that his testimony was coached, and the prosecutor suborned this conduct; (8) 
Asay’s counsel was ineffective for advising Asay not to testify at trial and at 
the Spencer hearing; (9) Asay’s counsel was ineffective for conceding Asay’s guilt 
during closing argument; (10) Florida’s capital sentencing scheme is 
unconstitutional under Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584 (2002); and (11) defense 
counsel failed to convey an offer of a plea to second degree murder.  Id. at *1. 
 
 
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On January 8, 2016, Governor Rick Scott signed a death warrant setting 
Asay’s execution for Thursday, March 17, 2016, at 6:00 p.m.  Asay filed his 
second successive postconviction motion on January 27, 2016, asserting four 
grounds for relief: (1) newly discovered evidence exists that diminishes the 
reliability of firearms identification evidence presented at trial; (2) Asay’s due 
process and equal protection rights were violated because he did not have state 
counsel at the time the Governor signed his death warrant and for the previous 10 
years; (3) Asay is entitled to relief under Hurst v. Florida, 136 S. Ct. 616 (2016), 
and that Hurst v. Florida applies retroactively so that the execution should be 
stayed; and (4) the State violated Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), by 
suppressing numerous documents Asay recently received.  The circuit court 
summarily denied all four claims and Asay’s motion for a stay of execution.  Asay 
now appeals the denial to this Court. 
ANALYSIS 
Asay raises four claims in this appeal: (1) Asay’s death sentence is 
unconstitutional under Hurst v. Florida because a judge, rather than a jury, made 
certain findings to make Asay eligible for a sentence of death; (2) the circuit court 
erred in denying an evidentiary hearing as to Asay’s newly discovered evidence, 
 
 
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Brady,10 and Strickland11 claims; (3) Asay was denied due process when the circuit 
court considered extra record material and conducted an ex parte hearing with the 
State; and (4) Asay was denied due process, equal protection, and his right to 
effective collateral representation under Spalding v. Dugger, 526 So. 2d 71 (Fla. 
1988), when his death warrant was signed while no registry counsel was in place 
and had not been in place for over a decade.  Asay also filed a habeas petition 
before this Court, raising the same issue as in claim three above; thus, the habeas 
petition will be addressed in our discussion of Asay’s third postconviction claim. 
Additionally, Asay filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus alleging that he is 
entitled to relief pursuant to chapter 2016-13, Laws of Florida, which requires that 
at least ten jurors agree with the recommendation of death before a sentence of 
death can be imposed.  We deny Asay’s petition based on our decision in Perry v. 
State, 41 Fla. L. Weekly S449 (Fla. Oct. 14, 2016), that chapter 2016-13, Laws of 
Florida, is unconstitutional and based on our decision today that Hurst cannot be 
applied retroactively to Asay. 
I.  CONSTITUTIONALITY UNDER HURST v. FLORIDA 
                                          
 
 
10.  Brady, 373 U.S. 83. 
 
11.  Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984). 
 
 
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Asay argues that his death sentence is unconstitutional under the United 
States Supreme Court’s decision in Hurst v. Florida.  In that case, the Supreme 
Court reversed our decision in Hurst v. State, 147 So. 3d 435 (Fla. 2014), which 
denied a Ring claim based on prior Supreme Court precedent that upheld Florida’s 
capital sentencing scheme, and held that Florida’s “capital sentencing scheme [is] 
unconstitutional [because the] Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to 
find each fact necessary to impose a sentence of death.”  Hurst v. Florida, 136 S. 
Ct. at 619.12  On remand from the United States Supreme Court, we held “that the 
Supreme Court’s decision in Hurst v. Florida requires that all the critical findings 
necessary before the trial court may consider imposing a sentence of death must be 
found unanimously by the jury.”  Hurst v. State, 202 So. 3d 40, 44 (Fla. 2016).  We 
also held “that in order for the trial court to impose a sentence of death, the jury’s 
recommended sentence of death must be unanimous.”  Id.  Asay contends that he is 
entitled to retroactive application of Hurst v. Florida, and thus, his death sentences 
must be vacated.  For the reasons explained below, we conclude that Hurst v. 
Florida should not apply retroactively to cases that were final when Ring was 
decided. 
                                          
 
 
12.  Asay raised Ring claims in both his first successive motion for 
postconviction relief and his subsequent habeas petition before the U.S. District 
Court for the Middle District of Florida.  He did not raise a Sixth Amendment 
challenge to his death sentence at any time prior to Ring. 
 
 
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A.  Ring and Hurst v. State 
 In Ring, the United States Supreme Court held the Arizona capital 
sentencing statute unconstitutional “to the extent that it allows a sentencing judge, 
sitting without a jury, to find an aggravating circumstance necessary for imposition 
of the death penalty.”  Id. at 609.  The Court endorsed the holding of Apprendi v. 
New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000), and overruled in relevant part Walton v. 
Arizona, 497 U.S. 639 (1990), explaining that “[c]apital defendants, no less than 
non-capital defendants, . . . are entitled to a jury determination of any fact on which 
the legislature conditions an increase in their maximum punishment.”  Ring, 536 
U.S. at 590.  In reaching this result, the Supreme Court discussed both Arizona law 
and Florida law, noting that Arizona law did not permit a defendant to be 
sentenced to death until the judge presided over a separate sentencing hearing and 
made factual findings on its own that aggravators existed, while under Florida law, 
“the jury recommends a sentence but makes no explicit findings on aggravating 
circumstances.”  Id. at 598. 
 When discussing its prior holdings pertaining to Florida and Arizona, the 
Supreme Court cited both Walton, 497 U.S. at 649, and Hildwin v. Florida, 490 
U.S. 638, 640-41 (1989), for its prior holding that “the Sixth Amendment does not 
require that the specific findings authorizing the imposition of the sentence of 
death be made by the jury.”  Ring, 536 U.S. at 598.  However, despite recognizing 
 
 
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that the Arizona court “was bound by the Supremacy Clause to apply Walton,” the 
Supreme Court overruled only Walton—not Hildwin.  Ring, 536 U.S. at 596. 
In determining that Arizona’s capital sentencing scheme violated the Sixth 
Amendment, the Supreme Court rejected Arizona’s claim that because the capital 
sentencing statute prescribed “death or life imprisonment” for first-degree murder, 
Ring had been sentenced to no more than the maximum punishment authorized by 
the jury verdict.  Id. at 604.  The Court instead found that “the required finding of 
an aggravated circumstance exposed Ring to a greater punishment than that 
authorized by the guilty verdict.”  Id. at 586 (citations and brackets omitted).  The 
Supreme Court noted that if this argument prevailed, “Apprendi would be reduced 
to a ‘meaningless and formalistic’ rule of statutory drafting.”  Id.  In addition, the 
Court rejected a distinction between elements of an offense and sentencing factors.  
Id.  In a dissent by Justice O’Connor, in which Chief Justice Rehnquist joined, 
Justice O’Connor stated her concern that prisoners in states like Florida would 
seize on the Ring holding to challenge their sentences, despite the fact that those 
sentences involve a hybrid sentencing scheme.  Id. at 621 (O’Connor, J., 
dissenting). 
Once Ring was issued, this Court was required to determine its application 
to Florida since, at the time, the Supreme Court had initially stayed the execution 
of two Florida inmates and then lifted the stays after Ring was decided without 
 
 
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mentioning that case.  In a sharply divided opinion issued in Bottoson v. Moore, 
833 So. 2d 693 (Fla. 2002), this Court declined to apply the principles espoused in 
Ring to an ongoing death warrant—in which the conviction and sentence were 
affirmed in 1983.13  Bottoson, 833 So. 2d at 694, abrogated by Hurst v. Florida, 
136 S. Ct. 616.  In reaching that result, the plurality decision relied on the fact that 
in Hildwin—a decision that was mentioned in Ring but not overruled like 
Walton—the United States Supreme Court expressly held the Florida death penalty 
scheme did not violate the Sixth Amendment.  See Bottoson, 833 So. 2d at 695, 
n.4.  Further, this Court emphasized that the Supreme Court summarily denied 
Bottoson’s petition for certiorari and lifted his stay.  Id.  By doing so, the Supreme 
Court did not provide this Court with an opportunity to reconsider our earlier 
decision in Bottoson in light of Ring, thus leading to this Court’s conclusion that 
Ring did not impact Florida because Florida has a hybrid capital sentencing 
scheme, in contrast with Arizona’s law in which the jury is not involved.  
However, this Court was deeply divided regarding the impact of Ring in Florida; 
each Justice wrote a special opinion setting forth his or her reasoning.  The Court 
reached a similar decision in King v. Moore, 831 So. 2d 143 (Fla. 2002). 
                                          
 
 
13.  See Bottoson v. State, 443 So. 2d 962, 963 (Fla. 1983) (affirming 
conviction and sentence). 
 
 
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On direct appeal in Hurst v. State, this Court addressed a resentencing in 
which a jury recommended death but made no explicit findings as to whether the 
defendant qualified for a death sentence, and then the judge, in a separate hearing, 
followed the recommendation, concluding that sufficient aggravators were present 
and were not outweighed by the mitigation.  Hurst v. State, 147 So. 3d at 452.  The 
defendant raised a Ring claim, asserting that “capital defendants are entitled to a 
jury determination of any fact on which the legislature conditions an increase in the 
maximum punishment.”  Id. at 445.  In a 4-3 decision, this Court rejected Hurst’s 
argument, relying on Bottoson and King and emphasizing that in Hildwin, the 
United States Supreme Court stated, “[T]he Sixth Amendment does not require 
that the specific findings authorizing the imposition of the sentence of death be 
made by the jury.”  Hurst v. State, 147 So. 3d at 446 (quoting Hildwin, 490 U.S. at 
640-41).  Justice Pariente, joined by Justices Labarga and Perry, dissented in part 
as to the Ring analysis and stated that “Florida’s death penalty statute, as applied in 
circumstances like those presented in this case where there is no unanimous jury 
finding as to any of the aggravating circumstances, is unconstitutional.”  Id. at 449-
50 (Pariente, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). 
The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari and reversed this 
Court’s decision, holding that Florida’s sentencing scheme in death penalty cases 
is unconstitutional because “[t]he Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to 
 
 
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find each fact necessary to impose a sentence of death.  A jury’s mere 
recommendation is not enough.”  Hurst v. Florida, 136 S. Ct. at 619.  The Supreme 
Court described Florida’s capital procedure: 
First-degree murder is a capital felony in Florida.  See Fla. Stat. 
§ 782.04(1)(a) (2010).  Under state law, the maximum sentence a 
capital felon may receive on the basis of the conviction alone is life 
imprisonment.  § 775.082(1).  “A person who has been convicted of a 
capital felony shall be punished by death” only if an additional 
sentencing proceeding “results in findings by the court that such 
person shall be punished by death.”  Ibid.  “[O]therwise such person 
shall be punished by life imprisonment and shall be ineligible for 
parole.”  Ibid. 
 
The additional sentencing proceeding Florida employs is a 
“hybrid” proceeding “in which [a] jury renders an advisory verdict but 
the judge makes the ultimate sentencing determinations.”  Ring v. 
Arizona, 536 U.S. 584, 608, n.6 (2002).  First, the sentencing judge 
conducts an evidentiary hearing before a jury.  Fla. Stat. § 921.141(1) 
(2010).  Next, the jury renders an “advisory sentence” of life or death 
without specifying the factual basis of its recommendation.  
§ 921.141(2).  “Notwithstanding the recommendation of a majority of 
the jury, the court, after weighing the aggravating and mitigating 
circumstances, shall enter a sentence of life imprisonment or death.”  
§ 921.141(3).  If the court imposes death, it must “set forth in writing 
its findings upon which the sentence of death is based.”  Ibid.  
Although the judge must give the jury recommendation “great 
weight,” Tedder v. State, 322 So. 2d 908, 910 (Fla. 1975) (per 
curiam), the sentencing order must “reflect the trial judge’s 
independent judgment about the existence of aggravating and 
mitigating factors,” Blackwelder v. State, 851 So. 2d 650, 653 (Fla. 
2003) (per curiam ). 
 
Id. at 620. 
The Supreme Court recognized that this Court rejected the defendant’s Sixth 
Amendment argument on the basis that Ring was inapplicable in light of the 
 
 
- 18 - 
Supreme Court’s “repeated support of Florida’s capital sentencing scheme in pre-
Ring cases,” including Hildwin, which held that the Sixth Amendment “does not 
require that the specific findings authorizing the imposition of the sentence of 
death be made by the jury.”  Id. at 620-21 (quoting Hildwin, 490 U.S. at 640-641).  
However, the Supreme Court also noted that since its decision in Apprendi, it has 
consistently held that “any fact that ‘expose[s] the defendant to a greater 
punishment than that authorized by the jury’s guilty verdict’ is an ‘element’ that 
must be submitted to a jury.”  Id. at 621 (quoting Apprendi, 530 U.S. at 494).  The 
Court then held that the analysis in Ring applied equally to Florida’s statutory 
scheme: 
The analysis the Ring Court applied to Arizona’s sentencing 
scheme applies equally to Florida’s.  Like Arizona at the time of Ring, 
Florida does not require the jury to make the critical findings 
necessary to impose the death penalty.  Rather, Florida requires a 
judge to find these facts.  Fla. Stat. § 921.141(3).  Although Florida 
incorporates an advisory jury verdict that Arizona lacked, we have 
previously made clear that this distinction is immaterial: “It is true 
that in Florida the jury recommends a sentence, but it does not make 
specific factual findings with regard to the existence of mitigating or 
aggravating circumstances and its recommendation is not binding on 
the trial judge.  A Florida trial court no more has the assistance of a 
jury’s findings of fact with respect to sentencing issues than does a 
trial judge in Arizona.”  Walton v. Arizona, 497 U.S. 639, 648 (1990); 
accord, State v. Steele, 921 So. 2d 538, 546 (Fla. 2005) (“[T]he trial 
court alone must make detailed findings about the existence and 
weight of aggravating circumstances; it has no jury findings on which 
to rely”). 
As with Timothy Ring, the maximum punishment Timothy 
Hurst could have received without any judge-made findings was life 
in prison without parole.  As with Ring, a judge increased Hurst’s 
 
 
- 19 - 
authorized punishment based on her own factfinding.  In light of Ring, 
we hold that Hurst’s sentence violates the Sixth Amendment. 
 
Id. at 621-22 (emphasis added). 
In explicitly rejecting the argument that the jury’s death recommendation 
“necessarily included a finding of an aggravating circumstance,” the Supreme 
Court turned to Florida’s sentencing statute, which “does not make a defendant 
eligible for death until ‘findings by the court that such person shall be punished by 
death’ ” and requires that “the trial court alone must find ‘the facts . . . [t]hat 
sufficient aggravating circumstances exist’ and ‘[t]hat there are insufficient 
mitigating circumstances to outweigh the aggravating circumstances.’ ”  Id. at 621-
22 (quoting § 921.141(3), Fla. Stat.) (last emphasis added).  Accordingly, the High 
Court concluded that in Florida, the advisory recommendation by the jury could 
not be considered the necessary factual finding that Ring requires.  Id. 
The Supreme Court further rejected the claim that stare decisis required 
Florida’s capital sentencing scheme to be upheld.  Id. at 623.  Instead, the Court 
expressly overruled its prior decisions in Hildwin and Spaziano v. Florida, 468 
U.S. 447 (1984), as irreconcilable with Apprendi.  The Court did not address 
whether Florida’s sentencing scheme violated the Eighth Amendment.  The 
Supreme Court also left to this Court the decision of whether and how to apply 
Hurst v. Florida and whether any Hurst v. Florida error can be harmless. 
 
 
- 20 - 
B.  Meaning of Hurst v. Florida 
  
Asay and the State fundamentally disagree as to the meaning of Hurst v. 
Florida.  The State asserts that only one aggravator must be found by the jury to 
satisfy Hurst v. Florida, pointing to language in the Hurst v. Florida opinion that 
supports this interpretation.  Asay, on the other hand, asserts that under section 
921.141, Florida Statutes the jury must find both that “sufficient aggravators” exist 
and that there are insufficient mitigating factors because those are the “facts” 
required to be found before the death penalty can be imposed.  As we have 
explained fully in Hurst, “Hurst v. Florida requires that all the critical findings 
necessary before the trial court may consider imposing a sentence of death must be 
found unanimously by the jury.”  Hurst, 202 So. 3d at 44.  Also, “based on 
Florida’s requirement for unanimity in jury verdicts, and under the Eighth 
Amendment to the United States Constitution,  . . . the jury’s recommended 
sentence of death must be unanimous.”  Id.  Accordingly, we next consider 
whether Hurst v. Florida applies retroactively to Asay. 
C.  Retroactivity 
Now that the United States Supreme Court has overruled Hildwin and held 
that Florida’s hybrid sentencing scheme violates the Sixth Amendment right to trial 
by jury, Asay contends that this Court should apply Hurst v. Florida retroactively.  
In order to answer this question, we must first look to our decision in Johnson v. 
 
 
- 21 - 
State, 904 So. 2d 400, 409 (Fla. 2005), which held that Ring does not apply 
retroactively.  While that decision would seem to answer the question presented 
here—since Hurst v. Florida derives from Ring—a retroactivity analysis hinges on 
an accurate understanding of the underlying decision, and in Johnson, this Court 
did not fully apply the holding of Ring because we were attempting to reconcile 
the United States Supreme Court’s holdings in Ring and Hildwin. 
In addressing whether Ring should apply retroactively, this Court announced 
in Johnson that despite the federal courts’ use of Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288 
(1989), to determine retroactivity, this Court would “continue to apply our 
longstanding Witt14 analysis, which provides more expansive retroactivity 
standards than those adopted in Teague.”  Johnson, 904 So. 2d at 409 (emphasis 
added).15  However, our application of Witt v. State, 387 So. 2d 922 (Fla. 1980), 
was significantly impacted by our attempt to reconcile the holding of Ring with the 
holding of Hildwin.  First, we relied on the Supreme Court’s Teague analysis in 
Schriro v. Summerlin, 542 U.S. 348 (2004), finding that the decision in Ring “was 
                                          
 
14.  Witt v. State, 387 So. 2d 922 (Fla. 1980). 
 
15.  The Supreme Court has also acknowledged that a Teague analysis is 
very narrow, particularly if a court considers the new rule to be procedural.  See 
Montgomery v. Louisiana, 136 S. Ct. 718, 728 (2016) (“Teague requires the 
retroactive application of new substantive and watershed procedural rules in 
federal habeas proceedings.”); Schriro v. Summerlin, 542 U.S. 348, 352 (2004). 
 
 
- 22 - 
not a substantive change to the law, but rather a ‘prototypical procedural rule[],’ in 
that it regulates the manner in which culpability is determined but does not alter 
the range of conduct or class of persons that the law punishes.  Johnson, 904 So. 2d 
at 409 (quoting Summerlin, 542 U.S. at 353).  However, such analysis derives 
from the much narrower Teague test, which utilizes completely different factors 
from Florida’s Witt test. 
In addition, our retroactivity analysis in Johnson hinged upon our 
understanding of Ring’s application to Florida’s capital sentencing scheme at that 
time.  Thus, we did not treat the aggravators, the sufficiency of the aggravating 
circumstances, or the weighing of the aggravating circumstances against the 
mitigating circumstances as elements of the crime that needed to be found by a 
jury to the same extent as other elements of the crime.  Specifically, because we 
were still bound by Hildwin, we did not properly analyze the purpose of the new 
rule in Ring, which was to protect the fundamental right to a jury in determining 
each element of an offense.  With the issuance of Hurst v. Florida, in which the 
United States Supreme Court overruled its decision in Hildwin, we conclude that 
this Court must now reconsider its prior decision in Johnson.  Accordingly, we 
now turn to a retroactivity analysis in this case. 
Applying cases retroactively is a “thorny” issue, “requiring that [this Court] 
resolve a conflict between two important goals of the criminal justice system 
 
 
- 23 - 
ensuring finality of decisions on the one hand, and ensuring fairness and 
uniformity in individual cases on the other within the context of post-conviction 
relief from a sentence of death.”  Witt, 387 So. 2d at 924-25.  On the one hand, this 
Court has recognized the vast importance of finality in the justice system: 
It has long been recognized that, for several reasons, litigation must, at 
some point, come to an end.  In terms of the availability of judicial 
resources, cases must eventually become final simply to allow 
effective appellate review of other cases.  There is no evidence that 
subsequent collateral review is generally better than contemporaneous 
appellate review for ensuring that a conviction or sentence is just.  
Moreover, an absence of finality casts a cloud of tentativeness over 
the criminal justice system, benefiting neither the person convicted 
nor society as a whole.  
Id. at 925.  Yet, on the other hand, ensuring fairness and uniformity is an 
underpinning of the same justice system:   
[S]ociety recognizes that a sweeping change of law can so drastically 
alter the substantive or procedural underpinnings of a final conviction 
and sentence that the machinery of post-conviction relief is necessary 
to avoid individual instances of obvious injustice.  Considerations of 
fairness and uniformity make it very difficult to justify depriving a 
person of his liberty or his life, under process no longer considered 
acceptable and no longer applied to indistinguishable cases. 
Id.  In any retroactivity analysis, this Court must determine where finality yields to 
fairness based on a change in the law.  To apply a newly announced rule of law to 
a case that is already final at the time of the announcement, this Court must 
conduct a retroactivity analysis pursuant to the dictates of Witt. 
 
 
- 24 - 
Under Witt, a change in the law does not apply retroactively “unless the 
change: (a) emanates from this Court or the United States Supreme Court, (b) is 
constitutional in nature, and (c) constitutes a development of fundamental 
significance.”  Id. at 931.  To be a “development of fundamental significance,” the 
change in law must “place beyond the authority of the state the power to regulate 
certain conduct or impose certain penalties,” or, alternatively, be “of sufficient 
magnitude to necessitate retroactive application as ascertained by the three-fold 
test of Stovall16 and Linkletter.”17  Id. at 929.  The Stovall/Linkletter test requires 
courts to analyze three factors: (a) the purpose to be served by the rule, (b) the 
extent of reliance on the prior rule, and (c) the effect that retroactive application of 
the new rule would have on the administration of justice.  Id. at 926; Johnson, 904 
So. 2d at 408. 
As with Ring, it is not in dispute that Hurst v. Florida satisfies the first two 
prongs of Witt because it emanates from the Supreme Court and is constitutional in 
nature.  However, the third prong turns entirely on whether the decision represents 
a “development of fundamental significance” or is “of sufficient magnitude.”  
                                          
 
 
16.  Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S. 293, 297 (1967). 
 
17.  Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U.S. 618, 636 (1965). 
 
 
- 25 - 
Again, like Ring, this last prong turns on the Stovall/Linkletter test, which we 
address below. 
1.  Purpose of the New Rule 
The first factor under the Stovall/Linkletter test is the purpose to be served 
by the new rule.  Witt, 387 So. 2d at 926.  In this case, the purpose of the new rule 
is to ensure that a criminal defendant’s right to a jury is not eroded and encroached 
upon by sentencing schemes that permit a higher penalty to be imposed based on 
findings of fact that were not made by the jury.  See Hurst, No. SC12-1947, slip 
op. at 21-23 (discussing the necessity of a unanimous jury decision regarding the 
finding of aggravators and whether those aggravators outweigh any mitigation). 
The importance of the right to a jury trial has been recognized since this 
country’s inception and is the only right to appear in both the body of the 
Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  Art. III, § 2, U.S. Const.; U.S. Const. amend. 
VI.  In fact, in the very line of cases at issue here, the United States Supreme Court 
has recognized that the right to a jury’s determination of all the elements of an 
offense is of utmost importance, thereby changing its previous position that 
“sentencing considerations” were an exception to the rule.  See Apprendi, 530 U.S. 
at 476 (“At stake in this case are constitutional protections of surpassing 
importance.”); see also Ring, 536 U.S. at 609 (“Because . . . aggravating factors 
operate as ‘the functional equivalent of an element of a greater offense,’ the Sixth 
 
 
- 26 - 
Amendment requires that they be found by a jury.” (citation omitted) (emphasis 
added)). 
Likewise, in Florida, this Court has “always considered the right to jury trial 
an indispensable component of our system of justice.”  Blair v. State, 698 So. 2d 
1210, 1213 (Fla. 1997).  In fact, Florida’s first Constitution declared, “That the 
great and essential principles of liberty and free government, may be recognized 
and established, we declare: . . . That the right of trial by jury, shall for ever remain 
inviolate.”  Art. I, § 6, Fla. Const. (1838).  This Court has consistently recognized 
the importance of a defendant’s right to a jury trial, calling it “indisputably one of 
the most basic rights guaranteed by our constitution.”  State v. Griffith, 561 So. 2d 
528, 530 (Fla. 1990). 
The underpinnings of Hurst v. Florida, requiring that the jury make all the 
factual findings necessary to impose a death sentence, are based on the critical 
right to a jury trial: one of the guarantees set forth in the Bill of Rights since our 
country’s—and this State’s—inception.  The right to a jury trial not only ensures a 
defendant’s guilt is accurately determined, but also that any decision on the matter 
is made by a group of the defendant’s peers—as opposed to a member of the 
government.  Our citizens place their trust in our criminal justice system in large 
part because the citizens themselves are the crucial element in determining a 
defendant’s guilt or innocence. 
 
 
- 27 - 
Further, as is apparent, the ultimate decision of whether a defendant lives or 
dies rests on these factual findings, only strengthening the purpose of the new rule.  
Both this Court and the Supreme Court have recognized that “death is different.”  
See, e.g., Yacob v. State, 136 So. 3d 539, 546 (Fla. 2014) (quoting Fitzpatrick v. 
State, 527 So. 2d 809, 811 (Fla. 1988)); Ring, 536 U.S. at 605.  Thus, in death 
cases, this Court has taken care to ensure all necessary constitutional protections 
are in place before one forfeits his or her life, and the purpose of the new rule 
weighs in favor of applying Hurst v. Florida retroactively to Asay. 
2.  Reliance on the Old Rule 
The next and most important factor is the extent of reliance on the old rule—
in this case, the principle that the judge could make the factual determinations 
necessary to impose death and that a jury determination of those facts was not 
required.  Florida was the first state to revise its death penalty statute in 1972 after 
the death penalty was declared unconstitutional in all states as violative of the 
Eighth Amendment in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972).  In keeping with 
the holding of Furman, which was to substantially narrow the class of murders 
eligible for the sentence of death, Florida’s statute included specified aggravators, 
which were intended to be specific and unambiguous.  A challenge immediately 
arose, and in a 5-2 decision, this Court upheld the death penalty in State v. Dixon, 
283 So. 2d 1 (Fla. 1973).  There, the Court focused on whether the new statute 
 
 
- 28 - 
adequately curbed the discretion of judges to impose the ultimate punishment to 
avoid violating the Eighth Amendment: 
Death is a unique punishment in its finality and in its total 
rejection of the possibility of rehabilitation.  It is proper, therefore, 
that the Legislature has chosen to reserve its application to only the 
most aggravated and unmitigated of most serious crimes.  In so doing, 
the Legislature has also recognized the inability of man to predict the 
myriad tortuous paths which criminality can choose to follow.  If such 
a prediction could be made, the Legislature could have merely 
programmed a judicial computer with all of the possible aggravating 
factors and all of the possible mitigating factors included—with 
ranges of possible impact of each—and provided for the imposition of 
death under certain circumstances, and for the imposition of a life 
sentence under other circumstances.  However, such a computer could 
never be fully programmed for every possible situation, and computer 
justice is, therefore, an impossibility.  The Legislature has, instead, 
provided a system whereby the possible aggravating and mitigating 
circumstances are defined, but where the weighing process is left to 
the carefully scrutinized judgment of jurors and judges. 
Id. at 7.  In discussing the role of the jury as one of the five steps in Florida’s death 
penalty scheme, this Court in Dixon elaborated: 
The second step of the sentencing procedure is that the jury—
the trial jury if there was one, or a specially called jury if jury trial was 
waived—must hear the new evidence presented at the post-conviction 
hearing and make a recommendation as to penalty, that is, life or 
death.  With the issue of guilt or innocence disposed of, the jury can 
then view the question of penalty as a separate and distinct issue.  The 
fact that the defendant has committed the crime no longer determines 
automatically that he must die in the absence of a mercy 
recommendation.  They must consider from the facts presented to 
them—facts in addition to those necessary to prove the commission of 
the crime—whether the crime was accompanied by aggravating 
circumstances sufficient to require death, or whether there were 
mitigating circumstances which require a lesser penalty. 
 
 
- 29 - 
Id. at 8.  Ultimately, the Court upheld Florida’s revised capital sentencing statute 
as constitutional under the Eighth Amendment.   
Rather than viewing aggravators as part of the jury’s ultimate 
determination—such as guilt or innocence, which has always been recognized as 
within the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury—states treated aggravators as 
“sentencing factors” and gave the trial judge, with mandatory review by this Court, 
the ultimate responsibility for finding them.  Our sentencing scheme was 
challenged and upheld by the United States Supreme Court in Hildwin and Walton, 
where the Supreme Court specifically rejected broad challenges to Florida’s and 
Arizona’s sentencing schemes under the Sixth Amendment, and later in Spaziano, 
where Florida’s statute was also upheld against an Eighth Amendment challenge. 
Over time, however, various legislatures extended a trial court’s authority to 
make factual determinations in a way that exposed defendants to higher sentences 
than authorized by a jury’s verdict alone, amending criminal statutes in noncapital 
cases to include “sentencing factors” where the judge found specified facts after 
the jury’s verdict to increase the sentence.  See, e.g., Apprendi, 530 U.S. at 476-87 
(setting forth the history of legislatures providing trial judges with the authority to 
make factual findings on matters classified as “sentencing factors”).  Thus, in cases 
where a defendant was brandishing a firearm or committed a crime based on hate, 
a higher sentence was authorized if the trial judge made certain factual findings.  In 
 
 
- 30 - 
Apprendi, the United States Supreme Court held for the first time that a state law 
was unconstitutional when it permitted the judge—rather than the jury—to make a 
factual finding as to whether a defendant committed a crime to intimidate the 
victim based on a particular characteristic the victim possessed and thus impose a 
greater punishment based on this finding.  Id. at 496.  However, in reaching this 
decision, the Supreme Court distinguished capital cases from its holding in 
Apprendi to the extent that capital cases permitted a judge to find specific 
aggravating factors before imposing a sentence of death.  Id. at 497. 
This Court relied upon that precedent, which had categorically rejected Sixth 
Amendment challenges to the capital sentencing statute and held Florida’s capital 
sentencing scheme to be constitutional.  See Hildwin, 490 U.S. 638.  Further, while 
the reasoning of Apprendi appeared to challenge the underlying prior reasoning of 
Walton and similar cases, the United States Supreme Court expressly excluded 
death penalty cases from its holding.  Apprendi, 530 U.S. at 496 (“[T]his Court has 
previously considered and rejected the argument that the principles guiding our 
decision today render invalid state capital sentencing schemes requiring judges, 
after a jury verdict holding a defendant guilty of a capital crime, to find specific 
aggravating factors before imposing a sentence of death.”).  Based on the whole of 
the jurisprudence at the time Asay’s conviction and sentence were affirmed on 
 
 
- 31 - 
direct appeal, this Court and the State of Florida had every reason to believe that its 
capital sentencing scheme was constitutionally sound.18 
This prong does not only focus on whether this Court’s reliance on the old 
rule was in good faith, but also requires us to consider the breadth of our prior 
reliance.  In this context, this Court’s reliance on the old rule has spanned decades’ 
worth of capital cases, with 386 inmates currently residing on death row and 92 
executions carried out since 1976.  See Fla. Dep’t of Corrections, Death Row Fact 
Sheet, available at http://www.dc.state.fl.us/oth/deathrow/index.html (under 
“Death Row” heading, click on link to “Death Row List” and “Execution List”) 
(last visited October 13, 2016).  As this Court stated in Johnson, “That Florida has 
reasonably relied on its longstanding capital sentencing scheme is an important 
factor weighing against the retroactive application of Ring.”  Johnson, 904 So. 2d 
at 411; see also Williams v. State, 421 So. 2d 512, 515 (Fla. 1982) (“It was 
                                          
 
 
18.  In fact, our reliance on the old rule was well-placed up until the decision 
in Ring, after which point this Court struggled with how Ring should be properly 
interpreted in Florida, since the Supreme Court deliberately did not make broad 
pronouncements and chose to overrule only its decision in Walton.  This meant 
that the Supreme Court left intact its prior pronouncements in Hildwin and 
Spaziano, which had previously held Florida’s statutory scheme to be 
constitutional.  Thus, this Court was faced with competing holdings in Hildwin and 
Ring—a difference that could be explained by the difference in the two state 
statutes at issue.  Based on the uncertainty, however, we urged the Legislature to 
amend the capital sentencing scheme in order to ensure any possible constitutional 
infirmities could be avoided.  In other words, only after the issuance of Ring was 
the law on this point no longer clear. 
 
 
- 32 - 
reasonable . . . to rely upon [the old] law.  That significant reliance has been placed 
on the old rule is an important factor supporting prospective application of the new 
rule.”). 
Thus, when considering this prong in the context of Asay’s sentence, which 
was final before Ring, we determine that this Court, the State of Florida in 
prosecuting these crimes, and the families of the victims, had extensively relied on 
the constitutionality of Florida’s death penalty scheme based on the decisions of 
the United States Supreme Court.  This factor weighs heavily against retroactive 
application of Hurst v. Florida to this pre-Ring case. 
3.  Effect on the Administration of Justice 
The last prong of the Stovall/Linkletter test analyzes the effect of applying 
the new rule on the administration of justice.  As the Court stated in Ferguson v. 
State, 789 So. 2d 306 (Fla. 2001), “This final consideration in the retroactivity 
equation requires a balancing of the justice system’s goals of fairness and finality.”  
Id. at 312.  As a part of this analysis, this Court must review the risk of whether 
applying the new rule retroactively could “destroy the stability of the law, render 
punishments uncertain and therefore ineffectual, and burden the judicial machinery 
of our state, fiscally and intellectually, beyond any tolerable limit.”  Id. (quoting 
Witt, 387 So. 2d at 929-30). 
 
 
- 33 - 
As this Court recognized in Johnson, this factor weighs heavily against 
retroactive application.  At the time Johnson was decided, approximately 367 
defendants were on Florida’s Death Row, and at the present time, there are 386 
defendants on death row.  See Fla. Dep’t of Corrections, Death Row Fact Sheet, 
available at http://www.dc.state.fl.us/oth/deathrow/index.html (under “Death Row” 
heading, click on link to “Death Row List”) (last visited October 13, 2016).  Of 
those defendants currently on death row, approximately 45 percent have sentences 
that were final before the Supreme Court issued Ring.  In addition to the fact that 
there are a substantial number of death sentences the finality of which would be 
upended, nearly half of those defendants committed their crimes and had their 
sentences upheld decades ago.  As this Court explained in Johnson: 
The retroactive application of Ring in Florida would require 
reconsideration of hundreds of cases to determine whether a new 
penalty phase is warranted.  This reconsideration alone would be a 
major undertaking.  Even though we have rejected numerous Ring 
claims in postconviction proceedings on grounds other than non-
retroactivity, such as existence of a prior violent felony conviction 
aggravator or a unanimous death recommendation, the United States 
Supreme Court has not addressed whether these distinctions comport 
with the Sixth Amendment.  One member of this Court, relying on the 
decision of the Arizona Supreme Court on remand in Ring, has 
dissented from our conclusion that a single Ring-exempt aggravator 
permits reliance on other aggravators found solely by the trial judge.   
See Duest v. State, 855 So. 2d 33, 56 (Fla. 2003) (Anstead, C.J., 
concurring in part and dissenting in part).  Thus, if Ring were made 
retroactive its impact on Florida’s death-row population would remain 
unclear. 
Resentencing hearings necessitated by retroactive application of 
Ring would be problematic.  For prosecutors and defense attorneys to 
 
 
- 34 - 
reassemble witnesses and evidence literally decades after an earlier 
conviction would be extremely difficult.  We fear that any new 
penalty phase proceedings would actually be less complete and 
therefore less (not more) accurate than the proceedings they would 
replace.  As we explained in State v. Glenn, 558 So. 2d 4 (Fla. 1990), 
where we declined to apply retroactively the double jeopardy ruling of 
Carawan v. State, 515 So. 2d 161 (Fla. 1987): 
 
Granting collateral relief . . . would have a strong impact 
upon the administration of justice.  Courts would be 
forced to reexamine previously final and fully 
adjudicated cases.  Moreover, courts would be faced in 
many cases with the problem of making difficult and 
time-consuming factual determinations based on stale 
records.  We believe that a court’s time and energy would 
be better spent in handling its current caseload. . . . 
Glenn, 558 So. 2d at 8; see also Reed v. State, 837 So. 2d 366, 370 
(Fla. 2002) (refusing to apply a new rule retroactively to child abuse 
cases because it “would require courts to revisit numerous final 
convictions and to extensively review stale records”); Williams, 421 
So. 2d at 515 (refusing to apply a new rule retroactively because it 
would entail hearings with “evidence possibly long since destroyed, 
misplaced, or deteriorated” and witnesses who “may not be available 
or [whose] memory might be dimmed”); [State v. Towery, 64 P.3d 
828, 835 (Ariz. 2003)] (recognizing that “[c]onducting new 
sentencing hearings [for Arizona’s 90 death row prisoners], many 
requiring witnesses no longer available, would impose a substantial 
and unjustified burden on Arizona’s administration of justice”). 
 
904 So. 2d at 411-12.  Thus, we concluded that “[t]o apply Ring retroactively in 
Florida would . . . ‘consume immense judicial resources without any corresponding 
benefit to the accuracy or reliability of penalty phase proceedings.’ ”  Id. at 412. 
Although we recognize that Johnson’s analysis of the first prong of Witt was 
impacted by an incorrect understanding of the Sixth Amendment claim, the 
 
 
- 35 - 
analysis as to the impact on the administration of justice holds the same force.  
Penalty phase resentencing is a time-intensive proceeding that requires significant 
preparation and discovery, death-qualifying a jury, and generally, a multi-day trial.  
Further, penalty phase proceedings require juries to have a full understanding of 
the crime committed, so the State would be required to present evidence from the 
guilt phase as well.  While some of the prior witnesses’ statements could be 
admitted based on the transcripts from the prior sentencing, the jury’s ability to 
weigh the strength of those witnesses would clearly be impacted.  Finally, there is 
an important consideration regarding the impact a new sentencing proceeding 
would have on the victims’ families and their need for finality.  Thus, we conclude 
that this factor also weighs heavily against applying Hurst v. Florida retroactively 
to Asay. 
4.  Conclusion of Retroactivity Analysis 
After weighing all three of the above factors, we conclude that Hurst should 
not be applied retroactively to Asay’s case, in which the death sentence became 
final before the issuance of Ring.  We limit our holding to this context because the 
balance of factors may change significantly for cases decided after the United 
States Supreme Court decided Ring.  When considering the three factors of the 
Stovall/Linkletter test together, we conclude that they weigh against applying 
 
 
- 36 - 
Hurst retroactively to all death case litigation in Florida.  Accordingly, we deny 
Asay relief. 
II.  DENIAL OF EVIDENTIARY HEARING ON ASAY’S CLAIMS 
Asay argues that the circuit court erred in summarily denying his newly 
discovered evidence and Brady/Strickland claims.  Because a circuit court’s 
decision to grant an evidentiary hearing on a rule 3.851 motion is ultimately based 
on written materials before the court, its ruling is tantamount to a pure question of 
law, subject to de novo review.  Long v. State, 183 So. 3d 342, 344 (Fla. 2016).  
Accordingly, when reviewing a court’s summary denial of a successive rule 3.851 
motion, this Court accepts the movant’s factual allegations as true to the extent 
they are not refuted by the record and will affirm the ruling if the record 
conclusively shows that the movant is entitled to no relief.  See Van Poyck v. 
State, 116 So. 3d 347, 354 (Fla. 2013); Jones v. State, 998 So. 2d 573, 587 (Fla. 
2008); McLin v. State, 827 So. 2d 948, 954 (Fla. 2002); see generally Fla. R. Crim. 
P. 3.851(f)(5)(B) (“If the motion, files, and records in the case conclusively show 
that the movant is entitled to no relief, the motion may be denied without an 
evidentiary hearing.”). 
A.  Newly Discovered Evidence 
 
Asay raises his newly discovered evidence claim based on the sworn 
affidavit of ballistics expert William A. Tobin, Ph.D.  The summary denial of a 
 
 
- 37 - 
newly discovered evidence claim will be upheld if the motion is legally insufficient 
or its allegations are conclusively refuted by the record.  McLin, 827 So. 2d at 954.  
To prevail on a claim of newly discovered evidence, a defendant must show: 
(1) the asserted facts “must have been unknown by the trial court, by 
the party, or by counsel at the time of trial, and it must appear that 
defendant or his counsel could not have known [of it] by the use of 
due diligence”; and (2) the newly discovered evidence “must be of 
such nature that it would probably produce an acquittal on retrial.” 
 
Lambrix v. State, 124 So. 3d 890, 896 (Fla. 2013).  The newly discovered evidence 
will probably produce an acquittal on retrial if it “weakens the case against [the 
defendant] so as to give rise to a reasonable doubt as to his culpability.”  Hildwin 
v. State, 141 So. 3d 1178, 1181 (Fla. 2014) (quoting Jones v. State, 709 So. 2d 512, 
526 (Fla. 1998)). 
Applying the standard to this case, we agree with the circuit court’s 
conclusion that Tobin’s affidavit does not qualify as newly discovered evidence.  
New opinions or new research studies have routinely been rejected as newly 
discovered evidence.  See Henry v. State, 125 So. 3d 745, 750-51 (Fla. 2013).  
Merely obtaining a new expert to review the same records does not create newly 
discovered evidence.  See Howell v. State, 145 So. 3d 774, 775 (Fla. 2013). 
However, this Court has found that a case-specific letter from the FBI based 
on a 2004 report by the National Research Council is newly discovered evidence.  
Wyatt v. State, 71 So. 3d 86, 100 (Fla. 2011).  The 2004 report discredited the 
 
 
- 38 - 
science supporting the trial testimony of the FBI’s own agent on comparative 
bullet lead analysis, and the letter provided a case-specific assessment from the 
FBI on how the report’s findings could affect Wyatt’s case.  Id. at 95, 99.  We 
found the letter to be newly discovered evidence because “[a]lthough the FBI did 
not actually write the letter until August 2008, more than fifteen years after 
Wyatt’s trial, the flaws inherent in CBLA science were unknown or not publicly 
acknowledged at the time of trial.”  Id. at 100. 
Here, Tobin’s affidavit asserts that National Research Council reports from 
2008 and 2009 show ballistic testimony in Asay’s case was misleading.  However, 
that affidavit cannot be considered newly discovered evidence in the same way as 
the case-specific letter from the FBI in Wyatt.  Tobin is not a law enforcement 
agent seeking to correct his agency’s prior testimony.  See id. at 101; Smith v. 
State, 75 So. 3d 205, 206 (Fla. 2011).  Further, one of the reports on which Tobin 
bases his affidavit was already itself rejected as newly discovered evidence in 
Johnston v. State, 27 So. 3d 11 (Fla. 2010), because the report cited to existing 
publications published years before Johnston raised his claim.  Id. at 20-21.  
Obtaining an expert to review that same report does not convert it or the expert’s 
report into newly discovered evidence.  See generally, Howell, 145 So. 3d at 775.  
Thus, Asay has not provided any newly discovered evidence on which to base his 
claim.  Because the record conclusively shows that he is not entitled to relief on his 
 
 
- 39 - 
newly discovered evidence claim, the circuit court did not err in denying an 
evidentiary hearing.  Therefore, we deny relief on this claim. 
B.  Strickland Claims 
In the alternative to his Brady claims, discussed below, Asay alleges 
generally that if the evidence was not suppressed in violation of Brady, trial 
counsel was ineffective under Strickland for failing to adequately investigate or 
introduce the evidence at trial.  The Brady/Strickland evidence concerns three 
circumstances that Asay alleges affect the facts of his case as presented at trial: 
initial police investigation into another suspect for the Booker murder, a witness’s 
ownership of a gun fitting the profile of the murder weapon, and information 
impeaching Charlie Moore’s testimony that Asay confessed to the McDowell 
murder. 
The summary denial of an ineffective assistance of counsel claim will be 
upheld where the motion is legally insufficient or where the record conclusively 
refutes the allegations.  See Jones, 998 So. 2d at 587.  To succeed on a claim of 
ineffective assistance of trial counsel, a movant must show that trial counsel’s 
performance fell “outside the broad range of reasonably competent performance 
under prevailing professional standards,” and that this deficiency affected the 
proceeding so as to undermine confidence in the outcome at trial such that the 
 
 
- 40 - 
defendant was prejudiced by the deficiency.  Maxwell v. Wainwright, 490 So. 2d 
927, 932 (Fla. 1986). 
The impeachment evidence of Charlie Moore may not be considered for the 
purposes of this claim because it was previously raised as part of an ineffective 
assistance of counsel claim within Asay’s initial postconviction motion.  See Asay 
II, 769 So. 2d at 978 n.5.  Asay’s initial postconviction claim was based on an 
inconsistency about which trial counsel failed to question state witness Charlie 
Moore—specifically that Moore’s testimony was presented at trial as a single 
conversation with law enforcement when, in fact, Moore did not tell police that 
Asay confessed to the McDowell murder until after he learned that his cousin 
Danny had done so in response to a television show, Crime Watch.  This is the 
exact piece of impeachment evidence which Asay offers in this proceeding.  
Having reviewed the initial postconviction record, we find that as to this piece of 
evidence, the claim “fails to allege new or different grounds for relief and the prior 
determination was on the merits.”  Fla. R. Crim. P. 3.851(e)(2).  Therefore, Asay’s 
claim as to this evidence is procedurally barred. 
As to the remaining evidence underlying Asay’s Strickland claims, Asay did 
not plead his Strickland claim separately from his Brady claim before the circuit 
court, except to allege generally that “[t]o the extent that counsel was or should 
have been aware of this [Brady] information, counsel was ineffective in failing to 
 
 
- 41 - 
discover it and utilizing [sic] it.”  In addition, for the instant appeal, the 
Brady/Strickland claims were grouped with the newly discovered evidence claim, 
and Asay argued that this Court must find a Strickland violation if the evidence 
was not suppressed under Brady because Brady and Strickland are “two sides of 
the same coin.” 
We find that these conclusory allegations fail to demonstrate that trial 
counsel’s performance was deficient or prejudiced Asay.  See Jones 998 So. 2d at 
587; Connor v. State, 979 So. 2d 852, 862 (Fla. 2007).  Asay does not demonstrate 
how trial counsel was deficient or that counsel’s performance fell outside of 
reasonable professional standards.  As to prejudice, Asay alleges that the evidence 
would have allowed counsel to convey a narrative that, if believed by the jury, 
would probably undermine confidence in his conviction or sentence.  However, 
whether the jury would believe this narrative is “mere speculation that fails to rise 
to the level of prejudice needed to establish an ineffective assistance of trial 
counsel claim.”  Nelson v. State, 73 So. 3d 77, 85 (Fla. 2011) (citing Johnson v. 
State, 921 So. 2d 490, 503-04 (Fla. 2005)).  Because Asay has not demonstrated 
deficiency or prejudice, his Strickland claim is legally insufficient and the circuit 
court properly denied an evidentiary hearing.  Jones, 998 So. 2d at 587.  We deny 
relief on this claim. 
C.  Brady Claims 
 
 
- 42 - 
The summary denial of a Brady claim is upheld if the motion is legally 
insufficient or its allegations are conclusively refuted by the record.  See id.  This 
Court discussed the elements of this claim in Franqui v. State, 59 So. 3d 82 (Fla. 
2011): 
To demonstrate a Brady violation, the defendant has the burden to 
show (1) that favorable evidence, either exculpatory or impeaching, 
(2) was willfully or inadvertently suppressed by the State, and (3) 
because the evidence was material, the defendant was prejudiced.  To 
meet the materiality prong of Brady, the defendant must demonstrate 
a reasonable probability that, had the evidence been disclosed to the 
defense, the result of the proceeding would have been different. . . . 
[M]ateriality under Brady requires a probability sufficient to 
undermine confidence in the outcome.  [For t]he materiality inquiry . . 
. the question is whether the favorable evidence could reasonably be 
taken to put the whole case in such a different light as to undermine 
confidence in the verdict.  It is the net effect of the evidence that must 
be assessed.   
 
Id. at 101-02 (internal citations omitted). 
As noted above, Asay previously raised a Strickland claim based on the 
Charlie Moore impeachment evidence.  See Asay II, 769 So. 2d at 978 n.5.  
Because Asay has previously argued before this Court that trial counsel had this 
evidence and was deficient in failing to use it, he cannot now argue that the State 
suppressed the information for the purposes of a Brady claim.  Therefore, the 
record conclusively shows he is not entitled to relief based on that evidence.  See 
Jones, 998 So. 2d at 587. 
 
 
- 43 - 
As to the other Brady/Strickland evidence, Asay contends that the existence 
of another initial suspect and a witness’s ownership of a gun fitting the profile of 
the murder weapon support speculation that Asay did not shoot Booker.  Asay 
pleads generally that it is exculpatory, was suppressed by the State, and is material, 
such that he was prejudiced.  However, the record conclusively shows that the 
alleged evidence is not material such that its alleged suppression prejudiced him.  
Franqui, 59 So. 3d at 102.  The existence of another initial suspect and the fact that 
a witness owned a gun similar to the murder weapon cannot “reasonably be taken 
to put the whole case in such a different light as to undermine confidence in the 
verdict.”  Id.  Nor does that evidence create any dispute with the evidence the jury 
heard at trial.  It does not refute medical examiner and witness testimony which 
link Asay to both murders.  Because the record conclusively refutes Asay’s Brady 
claim as to this remaining evidence, the circuit court properly denied an 
evidentiary hearing.  See Jones, 998 So. 2d at 587.  We affirm the denial. 
D.  Cumulative Prejudice 
 
Asay contends that his newly discovered evidence, when considered 
cumulatively with his Brady/Strickland evidence, undermines confidence in the 
results of his proceeding.  See Swafford v. State, 125 So. 3d 760, 775 (Fla. 2013); 
Parker v. State, 89 So. 3d 844, 867 (Fla. 2011); Suggs v. State, 923 So. 2d 419, 441 
(Fla. 2005); Jones, 709 So. 2d at 526.  However, in this case, the record 
 
 
- 44 - 
conclusively shows that Asay’s alleged newly discovered evidence does not 
constitute newly discovered evidence.  The Brady/Strickland evidence with 
potential impeachment value against Charlie Moore is procedurally barred.  Asay’s 
Strickland claim is insufficient for failing to demonstrate deficiency or prejudice.  
Therefore, the only alleged error this Court could review for cumulative prejudice 
is Asay’s Brady claim based on the evidence showing another initial suspect and a 
witness’s ownership of a gun similar to the murder weapon.  As noted in the Brady 
discussion above, the record conclusively shows that this evidence is not material 
such that it prejudiced Asay.  As such, we find no cumulative prejudice. 
III.  EXTRA RECORD MATERIAL AND EX PARTE HEARING 
Asay next argues the circuit court violated his right to due process when it 
considered extra record material and conducted an ex parte hearing with the State.  
According to Asay, this demonstrates bias on behalf of the trial judge and requires 
her removal from the case.  Each of these claims will be addressed in turn. 
A.  Extra Record Material 
Asay argues the circuit court considered extra record material in deciding his 
Brady claim.  During the warrant litigation, the State Attorney’s Office and the 
Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office recreated their original disclosures of public records.  
The State attached these public records to an e-mail, sent them to Asay’s counsel, 
and copied the e-mail to the circuit court.  The attachments were not introduced 
 
 
- 45 - 
into evidence.  At the Huff hearing, the State read from the deposition of Detective 
Housend in support of its position that it did not suppress information regarding 
Roland Pough as a possible suspect.  The State also repeatedly referred to a 
homicide continuation report from the public records provided by the Jacksonville 
Sheriff’s Office.  The circuit court relied on these records to deny Asay’s Brady 
claim that Detective Housend failed to provide trial counsel with information about 
Roland Pough as a suspect in Booker’s shooting.  Both documents were part of the 
public records sent to Asay’s counsel and the circuit court via e-mail, and defense 
counsel made no objection to the use of the records during the hearing. 
Generally, to raise an error on appeal, a contemporaneous objection must be 
made at the trial level when the alleged error occurs.  J.B. v. State, 705 So. 2d 
1376, 1378 (Fla. 1998).  Only when an error is fundamental can it be raised on 
appeal in the absence of a contemporaneous objection.  Crump v. State, 622 So. 2d 
963, 972 (Fla. 1993).  An error is fundamental when it goes to the foundation of 
the case or the merits of the cause of action and is equivalent to a denial of due 
process.  State v. Johnson, 616 So. 2d 1, 3 (Fla. 1993).  Further, it is “ ‘[t]he 
essence of due process . . . that fair notice and reasonable opportunity to be heard 
must be given to interested parties before judgment is rendered.’ ”  Huff v. State, 
622 So. 2d 982, 983 (Fla. 1993) (quoting Scull v. State, 569 So. 2d 1251, 1252 
(Fla. 1990)). 
 
 
- 46 - 
Here, Asay failed to object to the circuit court’s receipt of the public records 
via e-mail.  He also failed to object when the State read from the public records 
during the Huff hearing.  If Asay had objected at either time, he would have had 
the opportunity to be heard.  Consequently, Asay fails to establish a lack of notice 
and opportunity to be heard as to the circuit court’s receipt of the public records.  
Because there was no violation of due process, the circuit court’s reliance on the 
public records in its final order does not amount to fundamental error, and Asay is 
barred from raising this issue on appeal. 
B.  Ex Parte Hearing 
Asay also contends that the circuit court conducted an ex parte hearing with 
the State.  On February 4, 2016, at approximately 12:45 p.m., Asay’s counsel e-
mailed the State, writing that he intended to file a proffer containing unredacted 
materials.  The Office of the Attorney General e-mailed back at 12:58 p.m. that the 
State objected because any proffer after the circuit court’s ruling was improper.  
Asay’s counsel responded that he still intended to file the proffer.  At 2:31 p.m., 
the State filed a motion to prohibit the proffer.  The trial judge’s judicial assistant 
attempted to arrange a hearing on the State’s motion; however, Asay’s counsel 
responded that he would not be available at all that day. 
At 3:02 p.m., the State e-mailed Asay’s counsel a notice of hearing via the e-
portal.  At 3:14 p.m., the judge e-mailed Asay’s counsel that the hearing could be 
 
 
- 47 - 
moved to a later time but needed to be held before 5 p.m. that day.  At 3:15 p.m., 
the trial court held a hearing on the State’s motion without opposing counsel 
present.  During the hearing, the circuit court noted that it received e-mails from 
Asay’s counsel that he intended to file unredacted police reports along with a 
Notice of Proffer.  The circuit court also noted, however, that all proceedings were 
to be completed by February 3 according to this Court’s Scheduling Order.  Thus, 
the circuit court stated that it had not reviewed and would not review the e-mails, 
and then sealed, filed, and labeled the e-mails as exhibits Two and Three to be 
submitted to this Court to preserve the matter.  After the hearing, at 4:06 p.m., 
Asay’s counsel e-mailed the judge that he was not available and had not been 
given adequate notice. 
Generally, a judge should not engage in ex parte communications with any 
party.  See Smith v. State, 708 So. 2d 253, 255 (Fla. 1998).  The hearing at issue 
here was an ex parte communication, a fact the State conceded during the hearing.  
However, Asay was not prejudiced by this non-substantive hearing.  The circuit 
court only went on record to acknowledge it received the e-mails and the State’s 
motion and to explain that review of the proffered material would not be possible 
in order to adhere to this Court’s Scheduling Order.  While due process requires 
notice and opportunity to be heard before judgment is rendered, no judgment was 
rendered at the hearing.  The court did not review the e-mails or rule on the State’s 
 
 
- 48 - 
motion.  Instead, the court sealed the e-mails to preserve the issue for this Court.  
Consequently, Asay fails to establish how he was adversely affected by the hearing 
or how the proceedings establish bias on the part of the circuit court judge. 
Although the circuit court reviewed extra record material and conducted an 
ex parte hearing with the State, Asay is not entitled to relief as to either claim.  
Moreover, because Asay fails to establish prejudice, his claim that the circuit court 
judge was biased is meritless.  Additionally, Asay did not file a motion to 
disqualify the judge.  Therefore, the claim of bias is also procedurally barred.  
Asay is not entitled to relief as to this second issue. 
IV.  DUE PROCESS, EQUAL PROTECTION, AND SPALDING V. 
DUGGER CLAIMS 
 
Next, Asay argues he was denied due process, equal protection, and the right 
to effective collateral representation under Spalding, 526 So. 2d at 72, when his 
death warrant was signed while no registry counsel was in place and had not been 
in place for over a decade.  In 2005, Asay’s postconviction counsel, Dale Westling, 
withdrew from the case when it moved into federal court.  Asay was not 
represented by registry counsel again until his death warrant was signed in January 
2016.  Following that appointment, it was discovered that many of Asay’s records 
were lost or damaged. 
Asay contends that the lack of counsel for ten years violated his right to due 
process and equal protection.  Moreover, Asay argues that the court’s late 
 
 
- 49 - 
appointment of counsel and the lack of records rendered his counsel’s performance 
ineffective.  In response, the State argues that defendants have no constitutional 
right to postconviction counsel, Asay was represented by counsel at every stage of 
his proceedings, and neither late appointment of registry counsel nor lost records 
violate due process.  The standard of review is de novo. 
A.  Due Process 
Due process requires that a defendant be given notice and an opportunity to 
be heard on a matter before it is decided.  Huff, 622 So. 2d at 983.  While Asay 
argues that his lack of registry counsel violated his right to due process, he fails to 
state when he was denied notice or opportunity to be heard at any stage of his 
postconviction proceedings.  Asay appears to suggest that postconviction counsel 
was required to actively investigate his case for the preceding ten years and 
continuously bring forth new arguments.  However, this is not mandated by section 
27.710, Florida Statutes.  Instead, counsel is only required to represent the 
defendant “until the sentence is reversed, reduced, or carried out or until released 
by order of the trial court.”  § 27.710(4), Fla. Stat. 
Here, Asay was represented by counsel at every stage of his postconviction 
proceedings.  Steve Kissinger represented Asay during the initial postconviction 
proceedings, and Dale Westling represented Asay during the successive 
postconviction proceedings.  In 2005, Mr. Westling filed a motion to withdraw 
 
 
- 50 - 
when the case moved from state court to federal court.  The trial court granted the 
motion.  In federal court, at least two attorneys represented Asay at various stages 
of the proceedings.  When the death warrant was signed in January of 2016, the 
trial court appointed new registry counsel.  At no point was Asay not represented 
by counsel.  Furthermore, Asay had notice of each postconviction proceeding and 
the opportunity to have counsel argue his claims before the court.  Thus, his due 
process argument fails. 
B.  Equal Protection 
Asay’s equal protection argument also fails.  Disparate treatment of similarly 
situated defendants is a violation of equal protection.  See Duncan v. Moore, 754 
So. 2d 708, 712 (Fla. 2000).  However, Asay does not demonstrate how he was 
treated differently from similarly situated defendants.  As previously explained, 
Asay has been represented by counsel at every stage of his proceedings as required 
by statute.  While he contends that counsel’s withdrawal resulted in disparate 
treatment, the statute allows counsel to withdraw from the case with permission of 
the trial court.  Here, Asay does not show how withdrawal of counsel resulted in 
disparate treatment when any defendant’s postconviction counsel can withdraw 
with permission from the trial court.  Thus, we find that Asay is not entitled to 
relief on this claim. 
C.  Ineffective Assistance of Counsel 
 
 
- 51 - 
Finally, Asay argues that the late appointment of registry counsel and the 
lack of records rendered counsel’s assistance ineffective and violated his right to 
due process.  Asay cites Spalding in support of his claim.  However, Spalding only 
requires that a defendant be represented by an attorney during postconviction 
proceedings.  Id. at 72.  Therefore, Spalding does not entitle Asay to the relief he 
requests.  To the extent that Asay is instead attempting to argue ineffective 
assistance of counsel, this Court has repeatedly held that defendants are not entitled 
to effective assistance of collateral counsel.  See Gore v. State, 91 So. 3d 769, 778 
(Fla. 2012) (explaining that there is no independent cause of action for ineffective 
assistance of collateral counsel in Florida); Zack v. State, 911 So. 2d 1190, 1203 
(Fla. 2005) (“Under Florida and federal law, a defendant has no constitutional right 
to effective collateral counsel.”). 
Furthermore, the lack of records does not amount to a due process violation.  
This is a pre-repository case, so the documents from the initial postconviction 
proceedings in state court were not archived.  However, the Office of the Attorney 
General copied the entire appellate record in state court including the direct appeal, 
the initial postconviction proceedings, and the successive postconviction 
proceedings.  The Department of Corrections provided counsel with Asay’s entire 
medical record, as well as the entire inmate file.  The State Attorney’s Office 
provided counsel with its entire file, which included many of the original public 
 
 
- 52 - 
records requests made during the initial postconviction proceedings.  Additionally, 
the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office 
provided counsel with all the materials they had.  Every state agency involved 
attempted to recreate the records. 
However, even if some records have been permanently lost or destroyed, the 
loss or destruction of files does not necessarily amount to a due process violation.  
See, e.g., Jones v. State, 928 So. 2d 1178, 1192 (Fla. 2006) (rejecting a due process 
challenge to the capital collateral proceedings where trial counsel’s files were 
destroyed in a fire).  Additionally, Asay’s counsel does not identify what records 
were not available, or what particular argument he is prevented from making due 
to a lack of records.  Consequently, we deny relief as to this issue. 
CONCLUSION 
Because Asay has failed to demonstrate that he is entitled to relief as to any 
of his claims, we affirm the circuit court’s summary denial of his motion for 
postconviction relief and deny his petition to this Court for a writ of habeas corpus.  
Additionally, we lift the stay entered on March 2, 2016. 
It is so ordered. 
LABARGA, C.J., and QUINCE, and POLSTON, JJ., concur. 
LABARGA, C.J., concurs with an opinion. 
POLSTON, J., concurs with an opinion. 
LEWIS, J., concurs in result with an opinion. 
CANADY, J., concurs in result only. 
PARIENTE, J., concurs in part and dissents in part with an opinion. 
 
 
- 53 - 
PERRY, J., dissents with an opinion. 
 
NOT FINAL UNTIL TIME EXPIRES TO FILE REHEARING MOTION, AND 
IF FILED, DETERMINED. 
 
LABARGA, C.J., concurring. 
 
I concur in the conclusion of the majority that Hurst v. Florida and Hurst do 
not apply retroactively to those defendants whose death sentences became final 
prior to the issuance of Ring.  However, I write separately to express my view that 
our decision today does not apply to those defendants whose death sentences were 
imposed based upon, and who are facing execution solely as a result of, a judicial 
override.  There are only two death row defendants who satisfy this criteria—
Matthew Marshall and William Zeigler, Jr.19  The impact of Hurst v. Florida and 
Hurst upon their death sentences is an issue for another day.   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                                          
 
 
19.  There is a third defendant who has a death sentence as a result of an 
override—Edward J. Zakrzewski, II.  However, Zakrzewski received two 
additional death sentences for murders for which a jury issued recommendations of 
death.  See Zakrzewski v. State, 717 So. 2d 488, 491 (Fla. 1998).  Therefore, 
Zakrzewski is not subject to execution purely by virtue of the actions of a judge.   
 
 
- 54 - 
 
POLSTON, J., concurring. 
 
I agree with the majority that Hurst v. Florida, 136 S. Ct. 616 (2016), does 
not apply retroactively to cases that were final when Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584 
(2002), was decided.  To be clear, this decision does not address whether Hurst v. 
Florida applies retroactively to those cases that were not final when Ring was 
decided but were final when Hurst v. Florida was decided. 
 
However, while I agree with the majority that Hurst v. Florida is not 
retroactive to pre-Ring cases under Witt v. State, 387 So. 2d 922 (Fla. 1980), I 
believe that the retroactivity analysis the United States Supreme Court announced 
in Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288 (1989), is the proper and applicable test.  See 
Johnson v. State, 904 So. 2d 400, 413 (Fla. 2005) (Cantero, J., concurring).  I also 
continue to dissent to the majority’s expansion of the meaning of Hurst v. Florida 
as well as the majority’s holding that chapter 2016-13, Laws of Florida, is 
unconstitutional.  See Hurst v. State, 202 So. 3d 40, 77-83 (Fla. 2016) (Canady, J., 
dissenting); Perry v. State, 41 Fla. L. Weekly S449 (Fla. Oct. 14, 2016) (Canady, 
J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).     
LEWIS, J., concurring in result. 
 
I agree with most of the conclusions set forth in the majority opinion.  
However, in my view, the majority opinion has incorrectly limited the retroactive 
 
 
- 55 - 
application of Hurst by barring relief to even those defendants who, prior to Ring, 
had properly asserted, presented, and preserved challenges to the lack of jury 
factfinding and unanimity in Florida’s capital sentencing procedure at the trial 
level and on direct appeal, the underlying gravamen of this entire issue.  In this 
case, Asay did not raise a Sixth Amendment challenge prior to the case named 
Ring arriving.  See majority op. at 12 n.12.  Therefore, I agree that he is not 
entitled to relief, and I concur in result.  However, I write separately to explain my 
disagreement with the Hurst retroactivity issue as adopted by this Court. 
Many courts struggle with the “staggeringly intricate body of law governing 
the question whether new constitutional doctrines should be ‘retroactively’ or 
‘prospectively’ applied.”  Witt v. State, 387 So. 2d 922, 925 (Fla. 1980) (quoting 
Paul M. Bator et al., Hart & Wechsler’s The Federal Court and the Federal System 
1477 (2d ed. 1973)).  This Court need not tumble down the dizzying rabbit hole of 
untenable line drawing; instead, the Court could simply entertain Hurst claims for 
those defendants who properly presented and preserved the substance of the issue, 
even before Ring arrived.  This is consistent with the precedent of this Court.  In 
James v. State, 615 So. 2d 668, 669 (Fla. 1993), we granted relief to a defendant 
who had asserted at trial and on direct appeal that the jury instruction pertaining to 
the heinous, atrocious, or cruel aggravating circumstance was unconstitutionally 
vague before the United States Supreme Court ultimately reached that same 
 
 
- 56 - 
conclusion in Espinosa v. Florida, 505 U.S. 1079 (1992).  We concluded that—
despite his case becoming final before the principle of law had a case name—it 
would be unjust to deprive James of the benefit of the Supreme Court’s holding in 
Espinosa after he had properly presented and preserved such a claim.  James, 615 
So. 2d at 669.  Similarly, I believe that defendants who properly preserved the 
substance of a Ring challenge at trial and on direct appeal prior to that decision 
should also be entitled to have their constitutional challenges heard.   
 
  Preservation of the issue is perhaps the most basic tenet of appellate 
review, see Steinhorst v. State, 412 So. 2d 332, 338 (Fla. 1982); and this Court 
should be particularly cognizant of preservation issues for capital defendants.  
Accordingly, the fact that some defendants specifically cited the name Ring while 
others did not is not dispositive.  Rather, the proper inquiry centers on whether a 
defendant preserved his or her substantive constitutional claim to which and for 
which Hurst applies.20  This preservation approach—enshrined in James—
ameliorates some of the majority’s concern with the effect on the administration of 
justice.  Defendants, like Asay, who did not properly preserve their constitutional 
challenges, forfeited them just as any other defendant who fails to raise and 
preserve a claim.  However, those defendants who challenged Florida’s 
                                          
 
 
20.  See L. Anita Richardson & Leonard B. Mandell, Fairness Over Fortuity: 
Retroactivity Revisited and Revised, 1989 Utah L. Rev. 11, 56-57 (1989). 
 
 
- 57 - 
unconstitutional sentencing scheme based on the substantive matters addressed in 
Hurst are entitled to consideration of that constitutional challenge.   
Jurists have echoed this type of approach as a remedy to the more exacting 
federal Teague standard.21  Federal courts have employed a similar preservation 
approach, and it is “one of the dominant means by which federal courts limit the 
disruptive effects of legal change in the context of direct review of federal criminal 
convictions.”22  Regardless of the limited federal approach, scholars urge state 
courts to pull retroactivity off Teague’s constitutional floor,23 which the Supreme 
Court expressly permitted in Danforth v. Minnesota.  552 U.S. 264, 280 (2008). 
 
 This Court’s adoption of the Stovall/Linkletter standard was intended to 
provide “more expansive retroactivity standards” than those of Teague.  Johnson v. 
State, 904 So. 2d 400, 409 (Fla. 2005).  However, the Court’s retroactivity decision 
today eschews that intention.  Further, it illuminates Justice Harlan’s famous 
critique of Linkletter:  
                                          
 
 
21.  Tung Yin, A Better Mousetrap: Procedural Default as a Retroactivity 
Alternative to Teague v. Lane and the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty 
Act of 1996, 25 Am. J. Crim. L. 203, 232 (1998). 
 
22.  Toby J. Heytens, Managing Transitional Moments in Criminal Cases, 
115 Yale L.J. 922, 942 (2006). 
 
23.  Christopher N. Lasch, The Future of Teague Retroactivity, or 
“Redressability,” After Danforth v. Minnesota: Why Lower Courts Should Give 
Retroactive Effect to New Constitutional Rules of Criminal Procedure in 
Postconviction Proceedings, 46 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 1, 51-54 (2009). 
 
 
- 58 - 
Simply fishing one case from the stream of appellate review . . . and 
then permitting a stream of similar cases subsequently to flow by 
unaffected by that new rule constitute[s] an indefensible departure 
from this model of judicial review.   
 
Williams v. United States, 401 U.S. 667, 679 (1971) (Harlan, J., concurring in part 
and dissenting in part).  As Justice Perry noted in his dissent, there is no salient 
difference between June 23 and June 24, 2002—the days before and after the case 
name Ring arrived.  See Perry, J., dissenting op. at 73.  However, that is where the 
majority opinion draws its determinative, albeit arbitrary, line.  As a result, Florida 
will treat similarly situated defendants differently—here, the difference between 
life and death—for potentially the simple reason of one defendant’s docket delay.  
Vindication of these constitutional rights cannot be reduced to either fatal or 
fortuitous accidents of timing.24 
 
Every pre-Ring defendant has been found by a jury to have wrongfully 
murdered his or her victim.  With full knowledge that some defendants properly 
preserved challenges to their unconstitutional sentences, this Court now limits the 
application of Hurst, resulting in the State wrongfully executing those defendants.  
It seems axiomatic that “two wrongs don’t make a right”; yet, this Court essentially 
                                          
 
 
24.  See generally, Christopher M. Smith, Schriro v. Summerlin: A Fatal 
Accident of Timing, 54 DePaul L. Rev. 1325 (2005). 
 
 
- 59 - 
condones that outcome with its very limited interpretation of Hurst’s retroactivity 
and application. 
PARIENTE, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part. 
 
Our recent decision in Hurst25 is undoubtedly a decision of fundamental 
constitutional significance based not only on the United States Supreme Court’s 
decision in Hurst v. Florida,26 but also on Florida’s separate constitutional right to 
trial by jury under article I, section 22, of the Florida Constitution.  Not only did 
the United States Supreme Court hold that Florida’s capital sentencing scheme was 
unconstitutional based on the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, 
but this Court also held in Hurst that capital defendants are entitled to unanimous 
jury findings of each aggravating factor, that the aggravating factors are sufficient 
to impose death, and that the aggravating factors outweigh the mitigating 
circumstances and a unanimous jury recommendation of death as part of Florida’s 
constitutional right to a trial by jury under article I, section 22, of the Florida 
Constitution.  Hurst, 202 So. 3d at 44. 
Applying decisions of fundamental constitutional significance retroactively 
to defendants in similar circumstances is essential to “ensuring fairness and 
                                          
 
25.  Hurst v. State (Hurst), 202 So. 3d 40 (Fla. 2016). 
 
26.  Hurst v. Florida (Hurst v. Florida), 136 S. Ct. 616 (2016). 
 
 
- 60 - 
uniformity in individual adjudications.”  Witt v. State, 387 So. 2d 922, 925 (Fla. 
1980).27  This Court has always recognized that “death is different,” so we must be 
extraordinarily vigilant in ensuring that the death penalty is not arbitrarily 
imposed.28  Therefore, I dissent from the majority’s holding not to apply Hurst 
retroactively to all death sentences that were imposed under Florida’s 
unconstitutional capital sentencing scheme.29   
In Hurst, we emphasized the importance of unanimity in jury decisions, 
stating: “If death is to be imposed, unanimous jury sentencing recommendations, 
when made in conjunction with the other critical findings unanimously found by 
the jury, provide the highest degree of reliability in meeting these constitutional 
requirements in the capital sentencing process.”  202 So. 3d at 60.  In fact, the 
majority acknowledges the importance of our holding in Hurst: 
[T]he ultimate decision of whether a defendant lives or dies rests on 
these factual findings, only strengthening the purpose of the new rule.  
Both this Court and the Supreme Court have recognized that “death is 
                                          
 
 
27.  See Witt, 387 So. 2d at 925 (“Considerations of fairness and uniformity 
make it very difficult to justify depriving a person of his liberty or his life, under 
process no longer considered acceptable and no longer applied to indistinguishable 
cases.”). 
 
28.  See, e.g., Johnson v. State, 904 So. 2d 400, n.14 (Fla. 2005) (Anstead, 
J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (explaining other contexts in which 
this Court has granted retroactive application of new precedent).   
 
29.  I agree with the majority’s denial of relief on Asay’s second, third, and 
fourth claims respectively, and thus would not overturn Asay’s conviction.  
Majority op. at 10-11, 52. 
 
 
 
- 61 - 
different.”  See, e.g., Yacob v. State, 136 So. 3d 539, 546 (Fla. 2014) 
(quoting Fitzpatrick v. State, 527 So. 2d 809, 811 (Fla. 1988)); Ring, 
536 U.S. at 605.  Thus, in death cases, this Court has taken care to 
ensure all necessary constitutional protections are in place before one 
forfeits his or her life, and the purpose of the new rule weighs in favor 
of applying Hurst v. Florida retroactively to Asay. 
Majority op. at 27. 
 
The majority’s decision will have an immediate effect on Asay, who is the 
subject of a pending death warrant.  Majority op. at 2.  In my view, by limiting the 
retroactivity of the rights explained in Hurst v. Florida and Hurst, the majority 
discounts the significance of the unanimity requirement imposed by this Court’s 
holding in Hurst and applied in our holding in Perry v. State, 41 Fla. L. Weekly 
S449 (Fla. Oct. 14, 2016), invalidating Florida’s revised 2016 death penalty 
sentencing statute for its failure to require unanimity in the jury’s final 
recommendation of death.  While I cannot agree with Justice Perry’s interpretation 
and application of section 775.082(2), Florida Statutes, which would reduce every 
final death sentence to life after Hurst v. Florida, I agree that a faithful application 
of the Witt test for retroactivity compels full retroactivity of Hurst.  A faithful Witt 
analysis includes consideration of the uniqueness and finality of the death penalty, 
together with the fundamental constitutional rights at stake when the State 
sentences someone to death—namely the right to trial by jury and sentencing by a 
unanimous jury as guaranteed by both the Sixth Amendment to the United States 
Constitution and article I, section 22, of the Florida Constitution.  
 
 
- 62 - 
Ultimately, when applying the retroactivity equation of balancing “the 
justice system’s goals of fairness and finality” in this circumstance, fairness must 
prevail over finality.  Ferguson v. State, 789 So. 2d 306, 312 (Fla. 2001).  I 
recognize, as does the majority, the victims and their families’ “need for finality” 
but stress, as does Justice Perry in his dissent, that no conviction shall be disturbed.  
Majority op. at 35; see Asay, No. SC16-223, slip op. at 75 (Perry, J., dissenting).  
The question is not of guilt or innocence but, rather, of life or death.   
A retroactivity analysis under Witt consists of three prongs.  Witt, 387 So. 
2d at 931.  The majority opinion explains how the Hurst v. Florida decision meets 
the first two prongs of a Witt retroactivity analysis; it undoubtedly emanates from 
the United States Supreme Court and is clearly constitutional in nature.  Majority 
op. at 24; see Witt, 387 So. 2d at 931.  Likewise, our opinion in Hurst interpreted 
the United States Supreme Court’s opinion in Hurst v. Florida and Florida’s own 
constitutional right to jury trial.  See art. I, § 22, Fla. Const.  As to the third prong 
of the Witt analysis, I conclude, as I explain below, that the requirement of jury 
unanimity in the ultimate decision as to whether a defendant is sentenced to death 
is of such fundamental significance that fairness requires us to also apply Hurst 
retroactively to all capital defendants in Florida.  This third prong, which asks 
whether the decision is of sufficient magnitude to require retroactive application, is 
 
 
- 63 - 
reviewed under the three factors of the Stovall30/Linkletter31 test: examining the 
purpose of the rule, the extent of reliance on the prior rule, and the effect of 
retroactive application of the new rule on the administration of justice.  Witt, 387 
So. 2d at 926 (citations omitted). 
As to the importance of the right to trial by jury, the majority appropriately 
explains that the purpose to be served by the rule weighs in favor of applying Hurst 
retroactively: 
The importance of the right to a jury trial has been recognized 
since this country’s inception and is the only right to appear in both 
the body of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  Art. III, § 2, U.S. 
Const.; U.S. Const. amend. VI.  In fact, in the very line of cases at 
issue here, the United States Supreme Court has recognized that the 
right to a jury’s determination of all the elements of an offense is of 
utmost importance, thereby changing its previous position that 
“sentencing considerations” were an exception to the rule.  See 
Apprendi, 530 U.S. at 476 (“At stake in this case are constitutional 
protections of surpassing importance.”); see also Ring, 536 U.S. at 
609 (“Because . . . aggravating factors operate as ‘the functional 
equivalent of an element of a greater offense,’ the Sixth Amendment 
requires that they be found by a jury.” (citation omitted) (emphasis 
added)). 
Likewise, in Florida, this Court has “always considered the 
right to jury trial an indispensable component of our system of 
justice.”  Blair v. State, 698 So. 2d 1210, 1213 (Fla. 1997).  In fact, 
Florida’s first Constitution declared, “That the great and essential 
principles of liberty and free government, may be recognized and 
established, we declare: . . . That the right of trial by jury, shall for 
ever remain inviolate.”  Art. I, § 6, Fla. Const. (1838).  This Court has 
                                          
 
 
30.  Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S. 293 (1967). 
 
31.  Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U.S. 618 (1965). 
 
 
- 64 - 
consistently recognized the importance of a defendant’s right to a jury 
trial, calling it “indisputably one of the most basic rights guaranteed 
by our constitution.”  State v. Griffith, 561 So. 2d 528, 530 (Fla. 
1990). 
The underpinnings of Hurst v. Florida, requiring that the jury 
make all the factual findings necessary to impose a death sentence, are 
based on the critical right to a jury trial: one of the guarantees set forth 
in the Bill of Rights since our country’s—and this State’s—inception.  
The right to a jury trial not only ensures a defendant’s guilt is 
accurately determined, but also that any decision on the matter is 
made by a group of the defendant’s peers—as opposed to a member of 
the government.  Our citizens place their trust in our criminal justice 
system in large part because the citizens themselves are the crucial 
element in determining a defendant’s guilt or innocence. 
 
Majority op. at 25-26.  In light of our recent holding in Hurst, emphasizing the 
fundamental constitutional significance of the right to trial by jury under both the 
United States and Florida Constitutions and the role unanimity plays in ensuring 
fairness and reliability in the imposition of death, I agree with the majority that the 
purpose of the new rule weighs in favor of retroactive application. 
Further emphasizing the importance of the right to trial by jury, Justice 
Anstead explained in his concurring in part and dissenting in part opinion in 
Johnson v. State, 904 So. 2d 400 (Fla. 2005), why Ring should not only apply in 
Florida but should apply retroactively: 
The right to a jury trial is not only recognized as the most important 
right involving our justice system set out in our constitution, its roots 
rest in the most revered legal document of our Anglo-American legal 
tradition, the Magna Carta.  Countless thousands of English and 
American patriots have recognized and defended the right of jury trial 
as the very foundation of our justice system.  In 1762, David Hume, 
the English philosopher, wrote that “trial by jury is the best institution 
 
 
- 65 - 
calculated for the preservation of liberty and the administration of 
justice that was ever devised by the wit of man.”   Similarly, Thomas 
Jefferson declared in 1788, “I consider trial by jury as the only anchor 
ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the 
principles of its constitution.”   See J. Kendall Few, In Defense of 
Trial by Jury 214, 311, American Jury Trial Foundation (1993). . . . 
Indeed, this Court’s first chief justice, Chief Justice Douglas, 
eloquently assessed the importance of this right in 1848 when he 
spoke for a unanimous Court in declaring: 
When however it is remembered with what jealous 
and scrupulous regard “the right of trial by jury” has ever 
been cherished and preserved by our Anglo Saxon 
ancestors, and by the Fathers of the revolution of 1776, a 
regard transmitted to us their descendants not only with 
unabated attachment, but if possible with increased 
interest and regard—a Magna Charta shielding every one 
in the enjoyment of life liberty and property:  When these 
things are borne in mind and a Legislative act in its terms 
abridges this hallowed right, or its provisions are 
subversive of the principles of natural justice and against 
common reason and common right, the duty of the court, 
though unpleasant and even painful, is too obvious to be 
doubted or denied.   
Flint River Steam Boat Co. v. Roberts, Allen & Co., 2 Fla. 102, 115 
(1848).   
Johnson, 904 So. 2d at 427-28.  
Turning to the extent of reliance on the old rule, which the majority states is 
the “most important factor” when determining whether the new rule constitutes a 
development of fundamental significance, the majority determines that this factor 
militates against a finding of retroactivity due to the number of defendants 
currently on Florida’s death row and the number of executions in this State since 
1976.  Majority op. at 27, 31.  Presumably, then, under that same reasoning, if 
 
 
- 66 - 
there were fewer defendants currently on death row and fewer executions in this 
State since 1976, this Court might have held Hurst to be fully retroactive.  But, in 
fact, Witt does not elevate this factor above the others when conducting a 
retroactivity analysis because the three prongs are intertwined to assist the Court in 
determining when fairness must yield to finality.  
I would conclude that Hurst creates the rare situation in which finality yields 
to fundamental fairness in order to ensure that the constitutional rights of all capital 
defendants in Florida are upheld.32  Witt, 387 So. 2d at 925; Ferguson, 789 So. 2d 
at 312.  As Chief Justice Strine of the Supreme Court of Delaware stated in his 
recent concurrence in Rauf v. Delaware, a decision that invalidated Delaware’s 
capital sentencing scheme in light of the United States Supreme Court’s decision in 
                                          
 
 
32.  Even under the majority’s holding today, relief should be granted to the 
two Florida death row inmates whose sentences were a result of a judicial override 
because the jurisprudence on the acceptability of judicial overrides has so 
dramatically changed since their sentences were finalized.  Marshall v. State, 604 
So. 2d 799 (Fla. 1992); Marshall v. State, No. SC16-779 (pending); Zeigler v. 
State, 402 So. 2d 365 (Fla. 1981); see Zeigler v. State, No. SC16-1498 (pending); 
see also Hurst v. Florida, 136 S. Ct. at 626 (Alito, J., dissenting) (“No Florida trial 
court has overruled a jury’s recommendation of a life sentence for more than 15 
years.”); see also Asay, slip op. at 53 (Labarga, C.J., concurring). 
 
 
- 67 - 
Hurst, and which the Delaware Supreme Court recently held applies retroactively 
under the more restrictive Teague33 test:34 
If U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence has and therefore can turn on a 
determination that death is different, it is certainly appropriate to 
recognize that the decision to give death or life is the most important 
one that can be made in any criminal trial, and that the Sixth 
Amendment right was understood as of its adoption and for much of 
our history as allocating that authority to the jury. 
 
Rauf v. Delaware, 145 A.3d 430, 473 (Del. 2016) (Strine, C.J., concurring) 
(footnotes omitted). 
Maintaining the focus on fairness, I turn to the third prong of the 
Stovall/Linkletter test: the effect on the administration of justice.  As this Court 
stated in Witt, “society recognizes that a sweeping change of law can so drastically 
alter the substantive or procedural underpinnings of a final conviction and sentence 
that the machinery of post-conviction relief is necessary to avoid individual 
instances of obvious injustice.”  387 So. 2d at 925.  When determining whether 
someone lives or dies, requiring that a jury determine unanimously that the death 
penalty be imposed—after carefully determining which aggravators exist, 
weighing the sufficiency of the aggravators, determining that the aggravating 
                                          
 
 
33.  Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288 (1989); see Asay, slip op. at 54 (Polston, 
J., concurring). 
 
34.  See Powell v. Delaware, No. 310, 2016, 2016 WL 7243546 (Del. Dec. 
15, 2016). 
 
 
- 68 - 
factors outweigh the mitigating circumstances—“promotes a thorough and 
reasoned resolution,” thereby stabilizing capital sentencing by ensuring that 
sentences of death are constitutional.35  Undoubtedly, the justice system would be 
affected if this Court applied Hurst retroactively to all defendants on death row in 
Florida, but I conclude that this impact does not justify the injustice that results 
from not granting relief to all eligible capital defendants presently on Florida’s 
death row.  
For these reasons, I conclude that Hurst should apply to all defendants who 
were sentenced to death under Florida’s prior, unconstitutional capital sentencing 
scheme.  The majority’s conclusion results in an unintended arbitrariness as to who 
receives relief depending on when the defendant was sentenced or, in some cases, 
resentenced.  For example, many defendants whose crimes were committed before 
2002 will receive the benefit of Hurst because they were previously granted a 
resentencing on other grounds and their newest death sentence was not final when 
Ring was decided.36  To avoid such arbitrariness and to ensure uniformity and 
                                          
 
 
35.  Am. Bar Ass’n Death Penalty Due Process Rev. Project Sec. of 
Inidivudal Rights & Resps., Report to the House of Delegates (Feb. 2015), 
http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/uncategorized/Death_Penalty_Repre
sentation/2015_my_108a.authcheckdam.pdf, at 3-4; accord Ferguson, 789 So. 2d 
at 312. 
 
36.  See, e.g., Johnson v. State, 44 So. 3d 51 (Fla. 2010) (vacating the 
sentences of death and remanding for a new penalty phase hearing on a conviction 
 
 
- 69 - 
fundamental fairness in Florida’s capital sentencing, our opinion in Hurst should 
be applied retroactively to all death sentences.  Thus, I would apply Hurst 
retroactively to Asay. 
Because I would apply Hurst to Asay’s case, I now turn to whether the Hurst 
error in Asay’s penalty phase was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.  On 
remand from the United States Supreme Court, this Court determined that such 
error is capable of harmless error review and set forth the test for such review.  
Hurst, 202 So. 3d at 66-68.  In Asay’s case, the penalty phase jury recommended 
death by a vote of nine to three.  Because there was no special verdict, we do not 
know why the three dissenting jurors did not vote to recommend death—whether 
they did not find that sufficient aggravating factors existed or did not find that 
sufficient aggravating factors outweighed the mitigating circumstances, or whether 
three jurors otherwise determined that death for this twenty-three-year-old was not 
the appropriate punishment.  Thus, it cannot be said that the lack of unanimity was 
harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, and I would therefore conclude that Asay is 
entitled to a new penalty phase. 
PERRY, J., dissenting. 
                                          
 
from a murder in 1981).  Johnson currently has an appeal pending before this Court 
where he claims entitlement to relief based on Hurst.  See case No. SC14-1175. 
 
 
- 70 - 
 
I cannot agree with the majority’s decision to limit the retroactive 
application of Hurst v. Florida to those cases that were not final when the United 
States Supreme Court decided Ring.  In my opinion, the line drawn by the majority 
is arbitrary and cannot withstand scrutiny under the Eighth Amendment because it 
creates an arbitrary application of law to two groups of similarly situated persons.  
Coupled with Florida’s troubled history in applying the death penalty in a 
discriminatory manner,37 I believe that such an application is unconstitutional.  I 
therefore dissent. 
 
Asay will be the first white person executed for the murder of a black person 
in this State.  See Frank R. Baumgartner, The Impact of Race, Gender, and 
Geography on Florida Executions, 
http://www.unc.edu/~fbaum/articles/Baumgartner-Florida-executions-Jan2016.pdf 
(January 14, 2016); (“No White person has been executed in Florida for a 
homicide involving a Black victim.  In contrast, 71 percent of the executions 
carried out against Black inmates were for homicides involving White victims.”); 
see also Michael Radelet, Glenn L. Pierce, Choosing Those Who Will Die: Race 
                                          
 
 
37.  I am aware of the irony of this statement in this particular case.  It does 
not escape me that Mark Asay is a terrible bigot whose hate crimes are some of the 
most deplorable this State has seen in recent history.  However, it is my sworn duty 
to uphold the constitution of this state and of these United States and not to ensure 
retribution against those whose crimes I find personally offensive. 
 
 
- 71 - 
and the Death Penalty in Florida, 43 Fla. L. Rev. 1 (1991).  This sad statistic is a 
reflection of the bitter reality that the death penalty is applied in a biased and 
discriminatory fashion, even today.  Indeed, as my retirement approaches, I feel 
compelled to follow other justices who, in the twilight of their judicial careers, 
determined to no longer “tinker with the machinery of death.”  See, e.g., Callins v. 
Collins, 510 U.S. 1141, 1145 (1994) (Blackmun, J., dissenting).  The majority’s 
decision today leads me to declare that I no longer believe that there is a method of 
which the State can avail itself to impose the death penalty in a constitutional 
manner.  Because the majority of this Court has already determined that Asay will 
be executed for his crimes, I limit the remainder of my discussion to the 
application of Hurst v. Florida to this case. 
I would find that Hurst v. Florida applies retroactively, period.  I therefore 
would not limit its application to cases final after June 24, 2002, when the United 
States Supreme Court issued its decision in Ring.  I can find no support in the 
jurisprudence of this Court where we have previously determined that a case is 
only retroactive to a date certain in time.  Indeed, retroactivity is a binary—either 
something is retroactive, has effect on the past, or it is not. 
The majority’s opinion is inconsistent with our analysis of principles of 
fairness in our recent decision Falcon v. State, 162 So. 3d 954 (Fla. 2015).  In 
Falcon, this Court stated that the principles of fairness underlying the Witt analysis 
 
 
- 72 - 
“make it very difficult to justify depriving a person of his liberty or his life, under 
process no longer considered acceptable and no longer applied to indistinguishable 
cases.”  Falcon, 162 So. 3d at 962.  In Falcon, we found that applying a 
constitutional rule to some juvenile offenders but not to other similarly situated 
juvenile offenders simply because of the date their sentences became final would 
result in unjust disparate treatment of similarly situated persons.  Id.; see also 
Thompson v. Dugger, 515 So. 2d 173 (Fla. 1987) (concluding that all death 
sentenced individuals, regardless of when their sentences became final, were 
entitled to seek relief in light of Hitchcock v. Dugger, 481 U.S. 393 (1987)).  
Accordingly, we concluded that “[t]he patent unfairness of depriving 
indistinguishable juvenile offenders of their liberty for the rest of their lives, based 
solely on when their cases were decided, weighs heavily in favor of 
[retroactivity].”  Falcon, 162 So. 2d at 962. 
Death penalty cases should be treated as a “class apart” from non-death 
penalty cases.  Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 285-87 (1972).  We have 
consistently noted that “death is different” and as such, required careful 
consideration by the judiciary.  Robertson v. State, 143 So. 3d 907, 912 (Fla. 2014) 
(Florida jurisprudence “begins with the premise that death is different.”); Yacob v. 
State, 136 So. 3d 539, 546 (Fla. 2014) (“[T]his Court’s automatic, mandatory, and 
statutorily required review of death penalty cases ‘must begin with the premise that 
 
 
- 73 - 
death is different.’ ”); Ocha v. State, 826 So. 2d 956, 964 (Fla. 2002) (“This Court 
has long adhered to the idea that [i]n the field of criminal law, there is no doubt 
that ‘death is different.’ ”); Swafford v. State, 679 So. 2d 736, 740 (Fla. 1996) 
(“[O]ur jurisprudence also embraces the concept that ‘death is different’ and 
affords a correspondingly greater degree of scrutiny to capital proceedings.”).  In 
its decision today, this Court chooses not to minimize the risk of wholly arbitrary 
and capricious implantation of the death penalty. 
In the present case, the majority strays from its reasoning in Falcon and 
decides that in capital cases where the Sixth Amendment rights of hundreds of 
persons were violated, it is appropriate to arbitrarily draw a line between June 23 
and June 24, 2002—the day before and the day after Ring was decided.  The 
majority does not offer a convincing rationale as to why 173 death sentenced 
persons should be treated differently than those whose sentences became final 
post-Ring, while overestimating the burden that these 173 capital cases will place 
on the judiciary.  Because “death is different,” retroactive application of Hurst v. 
Florida to all death sentenced persons cannot be justified by the mere fact that it 
will be harder to grant a new penalty phase or other relief to 173 additional 
persons. 
 
 
- 74 - 
 
One of the reasons given for this arbitrary line in the sand is the 
administration of justice.38  The majority opines that penalty phase proceedings are 
time intensive endeavors that require the State to present evidence from the guilt 
phase in addition to penalty-phase-specific evidence and that the jurors’ ability to 
weigh the testimony of witnesses who may no longer be available will be 
impacted.  Indeed, the majority claims that the greater the time since the crime, the 
more difficult a new penalty phase will be.  Undoubtedly, there will be situations 
where persons who committed equally violent felonies and whose death sentences 
became final days apart will be treated differently without justification from this 
Court.  However, because death row defendants have succeeded in having 
convictions and sentences vacated for crimes that were committed long before 
Ring was decided and now have new sentences that became final after Ring was 
decided, the majority’s conclusion is undermined and the application is arbitrary. 
 
I submit that there is a more logical way to provide finality to the victims’ 
families without violating the Eighth Amendment.  First, the majority has 
overstated the effect of retroactivity on the administration of justice: the effect 
would not be substantial.  The retroactive application of Hurst v. Florida would 
affect only capital cases.  Although they are generally more complex and require 
                                          
 
 
38.  I agree with the majority that Witt is the appropriate test to determine 
retroactivity. 
 
 
- 75 - 
more judicial resources than other types of cases, capital cases make up only a 
small percentage (0.09 percent) of the 171,414 criminal cases filed in circuit court 
during the fiscal year 2014-15, and an even smaller percentage (0.02 percent) of 
the 753,011 total cases filed in circuit court.  See Office of the State Courts 
Admin’r, Florida’s Trial Courts Statistical Reference Guide: FY 2014-15, ch. 2, at 
4 (2015), http://flcourts.org/core/fileparse.php/541/urlt/20150901-Chapter-
2_Overall-Statistics_accessible.pdf.  In light of this Court’s mandatory jurisdiction 
over capital cases and the statutory requirement that capital cases be prosecuted in 
circuit court, the new rule would have no effect on either the district courts or 
county courts. 
Moreover, because the majority opines that a new penalty phase is required 
in these cases, the burden on state attorneys, defense counsel, and the judiciary is 
not as great as if the convictions were vacated.  However, even this burden could 
be eliminated if the Court were to abide by the Legislature’s directive in section 
775.082(2), Florida Statutes.  In so doing, these capital defendants would receive 
life sentences, new penalty phase proceedings would be unnecessary, and the 
burden on the administration of justice would be nil.  In other words, this Court has 
rejected an available remedy that creates no burden but then pronounces that the 
burden is far too great to provide equal application to similarly situated defendants.  
In short, there will be situations where persons who committed equally violent 
 
 
- 76 - 
felonies and whose death sentences became final days apart will be treated 
differently without justification from this Court. 
For example, Asay committed two murders on the night of July 17, 1987.  
His sentence became final on October 7, 1991, when the United States Supreme 
Court denied certiorari.  See Asay v. Florida, 502 U.S. 895 (1991).  Asay’s nine-to-
three jury recommendation that resulted in a death sentence would not be 
constitutional if Hurst v. Florida applied to him, but the majority holds that he is 
not entitled to the Sixth Amendment protections articulated in Hurst v. Florida.39  
Yet, under the present majority’s decision, another defendant who committed his 
offense on an earlier date but had his sentence vacated and was later resentenced 
                                          
 
 
39.  Furthermore, in today’s decision, the Court declines to extend relief to 
Asay despite the fact that his nine-to-three jury recommendation violates our 
decision in Hurst v. State, which interpreted Hurst v. Florida and state law to 
require both unanimous jury findings and a unanimous jury verdict to impose the 
death penalty.  See Hurst v. State, 202 So. 3d 40, 44 (Fla. 2016) (“In capital cases 
in Florida, these specific findings required to be made by the jury include the 
existence of each aggravating factor that has been proven beyond a reasonable 
doubt, the finding that the aggravating factors are sufficient, and the finding that 
the aggravating factors outweigh the mitigating circumstances.  We also hold, 
based on Florida’s requirement for unanimity in jury verdicts, and under the Eighth 
Amendment to the United States Constitution, that in order for the trial court to 
impose a sentence of death, the jury’s recommended sentence of death must be 
unanimous.”); see also id. at 57 (“[B]efore the trial judge may consider imposing a 
sentence of death, the jury in a capital case must unanimously and expressly find 
all the aggravating factors that were proven beyond a reasonable doubt, 
unanimously find that the aggravating factors are sufficient to impose a death, 
unanimously find that the aggravating factors outweigh the mitigating 
circumstances, and unanimously recommend a sentence of death.”) 
 
 
- 77 - 
after Ring, cannot receive the death penalty without the protections articulated in 
Hurst.40  Timothy Hurst committed his crimes on May 2, 1990, and was originally 
sentenced on April 26, 2000, which was final October 21, 2002, a few short 
months after the decision in Ring.41  The majority’s application of Hurst v. Florida 
makes constitutional protection depend on little more than a roll of the dice.  This 
cannot be tolerated. 
In light of the relatively few number of capital cases in proportion to the 
judiciary’s entire caseload and the fact that Hurst v. Florida requires either only 
new penalty proceedings or no new proceedings at all, the administration of justice 
would not be over-burdened by the retroactive application of Hurst v. Florida.  The 
United States Supreme Court has previously applied new constitutional rules 
retroactively despite significantly greater burdens on judicial administration.  For 
instance, when the United States Supreme Court made retroactive its holding that 
no juvenile may be sentenced to life in prison without some opportunity for 
                                          
 
 
40.  See, e.g., Johnson v. State, No. SC14-1175, 2016 WL 7013856, op. at 1 
(Fla. Dec. 1, 2016) (Johnson was convicted for multiple murders occurring on 
January 8 and 9, 1981, and his sentences became final on February 21, 1984.  
Subsequently, this Court vacated Johnson’s sentences and remanded for a new 
penalty phase.  This Court vacated Johnson’s death sentence “[b]ecause the jury 
that recommended Johnson’s death sentences did not find the facts necessary to 
sentence him to death . . . .” 
 
41.  Hurst’s sentence was later vacated in 2009. 
 
 
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release, it entitled some 2295 prisoners nationwide to resentencing proceedings or 
parole hearings.  See Montgomery v. Alabama, 136 S. Ct. 718, 736 (2016); John R. 
Mills, et al., Juvenile Life Without Parole in Law and Practice: Chronicling the 
Rapid Change Underway, 65 Am. U. L. Rev. 535, 570 n.215 (2016).  Following 
the United States Supreme Court’s decision to require states to provide counsel to 
indigent defendants even in noncapital cases, this Court noted that the decision 
could require not just new sentencing proceedings but entirely new trials for 4542 
prisoners, representing over half of Florida’s entire prison population.  Roy v. 
Wainwright, 151 So. 2d 825, 827 (Fla. 1963) (“The Division of Corrections reports 
that as of June 30, 1962, there were approximately 8,000 State prisoners in 
custody.  Of this group 4,065 entered pleas of guilty without the benefit of counsel. 
Four hundred, seventy-seven (477) entered pleas of not guilty but were convicted 
without benefit of counsel.”).  The impact of Hurst v. Florida to the administration 
of justice pales in comparison. 
Because I would find that Asay is entitled to the constitutional protections 
articulated in Hurst v. Florida, I turn now to what I would find to be the 
appropriate remedy.  As I explained fully in Hurst v. State, 202 So. 3d 40, 75-76 
(Fla. 2016), there is no compelling reason that the plain language of section 
775.082(2), Florida Statutes, does not apply to this case.  Because his death 
sentence is unconstitutional, Asay is entitled to the remedy that the Legislature has 
 
 
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specified: the sentencing court must vacate his death sentence and sentence him to 
life in prison.  See § 775.082(2), Fla. Stat. (2015) (“In the event the death penalty 
in a capital felony is held to be unconstitutional by the Florida Supreme Court or 
the United States Supreme Court, the court having jurisdiction over a person 
previously sentenced to death for a capital felony shall cause such person to be 
brought before the court, and the court shall sentence such person to life 
imprisonment as provided in subsection (1).”). 
The plain language of the statute does not rely on a specific 
amendment to the United States Constitution, nor does it refer to a 
specific decision by this Court or the United States Supreme Court.  
Further, it does not contemplate that all forms of the death penalty in 
all cases must be found unconstitutional.  Instead, the statute uses 
singular articles to describe the circumstances by which the statute is 
to be triggered.  Indeed, the statute repeatedly references a singular 
defendant being brought before a court for sentencing to life 
imprisonment. 
Hurst v. State, 202 So. 3d at 75-76 (Perry, J., concurring in part and dissenting in 
part). 
The sentencing court unconstitutionally imposed the death penalty on Asay.  
Accordingly, “the death penalty in [Asay’s] capital felony [has been] held to be 
unconstitutional,” and accordingly, “the court having jurisdiction over [Asay who 
was] previously sentenced to death for a capital felony shall cause [him] to be 
brought before the court, and the court shall sentence [him] to life imprisonment.”  
Id.  We need conduct no further legal gymnastics to carry out the will of the 
 
 
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Legislature.  See, e.g., English v. State, 191 So. 3d 448, 450 (Fla. 2016) (“When 
the statutory language is clear or unambiguous, this Court need not look behind the 
statute’s plain language or employ principles of statutory construction to determine 
legislative intent.”).  The sentencing court must impose a life sentence pursuant to 
section 775.082(2), Florida Statutes. 
 
Three Cases:  
 
An Appeal from the Circuit Court in and for Duval County,  
Tatiana Radi Salvador, Judge - Case No. 161987CF006876AXXXMA 
And Original Proceedings – Habeas Corpus  
 
Martin J. McClain and Linda McDermott of McClain & McDermott, P.A., Wilton 
Manors, Florida; and John Paul Abatecola, Estero, Florida, 
 
for Appellant/Petitioner 
 
Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, and Charmaine Millsaps, Senior Assistant 
Attorney General, Tallahassee, Florida,  
 
for Appellee/Respondent 
 
Billy Horatio Nolas, Chief, Capital Habeas Unit, Office of the Federal Public 
Defender, Northern District of Florida, Tallahassee, Florida, 
 
for Amicus Curiae The Capital Habeas Unit of the Office of the Federal 
Public Defender for the Northern District of Florida