Title: Nixon v. State

State: florida

Issuer: Florida Supreme Court

Document:

Supreme Court of Florida 
 
 
____________ 
 
No. SC20-48 
____________ 
 
JOE ELTON NIXON, 
Appellant, 
 
vs. 
 
STATE OF FLORIDA, 
Appellee. 
 
August 26, 2021 
 
PER CURIAM. 
 
Joe Elton Nixon is a prisoner under sentence of death.  He 
appeals a trial court order, entered after a hearing, denying Nixon’s 
claims (1) that he is intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible 
for the death penalty and (2) entitled to relief under Hurst v. Florida, 
577 U.S. 92 (2016), and Hurst v. State, 202 So. 3d 40 (Fla. 2016).  
We affirm the order.1 
 
1.  We have jurisdiction.  See Art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. 
 
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I. 
A. 
 
Nixon was convicted and sentenced to death in 1985 for the 
first-degree murder of Jeanne Bickner.  We detailed the horrific 
facts of Nixon’s crime in our decision affirming the conviction and 
sentence on direct appeal.  Nixon v. State, 572 So. 2d 1336 (Fla. 
1990), cert. denied, 502 U.S. 854 (1991).  Later we affirmed the 
denial of Nixon’s initial postconviction motion.  Nixon v. State, 932 
So. 2d 1009 (Fla. 2006).  Later still, we affirmed the denial of 
Nixon’s initial motion claiming that he is intellectually disabled.  
Nixon v. State, 2 So. 3d 137 (Fla. 2009). 
 
Before us now is Nixon’s successive motion under Florida Rule 
of Criminal Procedure 3.203 raising an intellectual disability claim.  
“[T]o establish intellectual disability as a bar to execution, a 
defendant must demonstrate (1) significantly subaverage general 
intellectual functioning; (2) concurrent deficits in adaptive behavior; 
and (3) manifestation of the condition before age eighteen.”  
Haliburton v. State, 46 Fla. L. Weekly S177, S178 (Fla. June 17, 
2021); see also § 921.137, Fla. Stat. (2019); Fla. R. Crim. P. 3.203.  
“[S]ignificantly subaverage intellectual functioning” means 
 
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“performance that is two or more standard deviations from the 
mean score on a standardized intelligence test.”  § 921.137(1), Fla. 
Stat; see also Fla. R. Crim. P. 3.203(b).  Given that the mean IQ test 
score is 100 points and the standard deviation is approximately 15 
points, this definition translates to an IQ test score of approximately 
70 points.  Hall v. Florida, 572 U.S. 701, 711 (2014). 
 
Nixon filed his successive intellectual disability claim in 2015, 
after the Supreme Court’s decision in Hall.  Hall is a successor case 
to Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002), where the Supreme Court 
first held that the U.S. Constitution forbids the execution of persons 
with intellectual disability.  After Atkins but before Hall, we had 
held that “failure to present an IQ score of 70 or below precluded a 
finding of intellectual disability.”  Haliburton, 46 Fla. L. Weekly 
S178 (citing Cherry v. State, 959 So. 2d 702, 712-13 (Fla. 2007)). 
We recently explained the holding in Hall as follows: 
In Hall, the Supreme Court held that Florida’s “rigid rule” 
interpreting section 921.137(1) as establishing a strict IQ 
test score cutoff of 70 or less in order to present 
additional evidence of intellectual disability “creates an 
unacceptable risk that persons with intellectual disability 
will be executed, and thus is unconstitutional.”  572 U.S. 
at 704, 134 S.Ct. 1986.  The Court further held that 
when assessing the intellectual functioning prong of the 
intellectual disability standard, courts must take into 
 
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account the standard error of measurement (SEM) of IQ 
tests.  Id. at 723.  And “when a defendant’s IQ test score 
falls within the test’s acknowledged and inherent margin 
of error [±5], the defendant must be able to present 
additional evidence of intellectual disability, including 
testimony regarding adaptive deficits.”  Id. 
 
Haliburton, 46 Fla. L. Weekly S178.  We noted in Haliburton that, 
even after Hall, “[i]f the defendant fails to prove any one of the three 
components of the statutory test for intellectual disability, the 
defendant will not be found to be intellectually disabled.”  Id.   
 
When it first took up Nixon’s successive intellectual disability 
claim, the trial court summarily denied Nixon’s motion.  Nixon 
appealed the denial, and while that appeal was pending, this Court 
held that Hall is retroactive to cases where there has already been a 
finding that the defendant is not intellectually disabled.  See Walls 
v. State, 213 So. 3d 340 (Fla. 2016).  In Nixon’s appeal, we 
concluded that summary denial of Nixon’s successive motion was 
inconsistent with our cases interpreting Hall and we remanded the 
case to the trial court “to conduct proceedings to determine whether 
a new evidentiary hearing is necessary.”  Nixon v. State, No. SC15-
2309, 2017 WL 462148, at *2 (Fla. Feb. 3, 2017). 
 
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The trial court held an evidentiary hearing on remand and 
received evidence on all three prongs of the intellectual disability 
test.  Ultimately the court concluded that Nixon had presented clear 
and convincing evidence of adaptive deficits but that he had failed 
to establish the other two prongs—significantly subaverage 
intellectual functioning and manifestation by age 18. 
 
In its order denying Nixon’s intellectual disability claim, the 
trial court explained that the parties had presented a range of IQ 
test scores for Nixon at the hearing: 88, 80, 73, 72, 68, and 67.  Of 
these, the court found that the test score of 80 was the most 
credible—a score that, accounting for the standard error of 
measurement, placed Nixon’s IQ somewhere in a range from 75 to 
85.  Nixon received that score on a WAIS III test2 administered in 
2006 by the state’s expert, Dr. Gregory Prichard, a forensic 
psychologist.  Specifically, the court found that “Dr. Prichard’s full-
scale score of 80 and SEM range of 75-85 is more credible than the 
 
 
2.  WAIS is an acronym for Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale.  
Dr. Gregory Prichard testified that the WAIS-III test was the state of 
the art when he administered it to Nixon in 2006 and that the 
WAIS-IV test has now replaced it as the current state of the art.  Dr. 
Barry Crown, one of Nixon’s experts, administered the WAIS-IV to 
Nixon in 2017 and scored Nixon’s IQ at 67. 
 
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scores falling within the Hall range [i.e., the scores that, accounting 
for the standard error of measurement, placed Nixon’s IQ at or 
below 70].” 
 
The trial court determined that Nixon’s criticisms of Dr. 
Prichard’s test administration were unpersuasive.  The court 
elaborated: 
First, there is no persuasive evidence that either the 
administration or scoring by Dr. Prichard was invalid.  
Second, as Dr. Prichard testified, the purpose of cognitive 
testing is to determine capacity.  While many factors 
other than [intellectual disability] can reduce capacity on 
a given day—inattention, lack of effort, lack of rapport 
with the examiner, lack of sleep—no similar factors can 
increase capacity. 
 
As part of its rationale for finding that Nixon had not established 
intellectual disability, the trial court reasoned that “Hall does not 
suggest that an IQ range of 75 to 85 … should be adjusted by 
applying deficits in adaptive behavior to then further reduce the 
estimate of intellectual functioning lower than the standard error of 
measurement.” 
B. 
 
In this appeal, Nixon argues that the trial court misapplied 
Hall and that the evidence shows that Nixon is intellectually 
 
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disabled.  The State counters Nixon’s arguments on the merits.  But 
it also argues at the threshold that Nixon is unentitled to relief 
because Hall is inapplicable in his case, given this Court’s recent 
decision in Phillips v. State, 299 So. 3d 1013 (Fla. 2020).  In Phillips, 
we held that “this Court in Walls clearly erred in concluding that 
Hall applies retroactively,” and we receded from Walls.  Id. at 1023-
24. 
 
We agree with the State that Nixon is not entitled to 
reconsideration of whether he is intellectually disabled.  It is true 
that—when Walls was still good law—this Court instructed the trial 
court to determine whether an evidentiary hearing was necessary to 
evaluate Nixon’s successive intellectual disability claim in light of 
Hall.  But under Phillips, the controlling law in our Court now is 
that Hall does not apply retroactively.  It would be inconsistent with 
that controlling law for us to entertain Nixon’s successive, Hall-
based challenge to the trial court’s order here. 
 
We have not overlooked the law of the case doctrine.  That 
doctrine reflects “the long-established ‘principle that the questions 
of law decided on appeal to a court of ultimate resort must govern 
the case in the same court and the trial court, through all 
 
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subsequent stages of the proceedings.’ ”  State v. Okafor, 306 So. 3d 
930, 934 (Fla. 2020) (quoting Delta Prop. Mgmt. v. Profile Invs., Inc., 
87 So. 3d 765, 770 (Fla. 2012)).  But the law of the case doctrine is 
prudential, and it has exceptions.  One “generally accepted occasion 
for disturbing settled decisions in a case [is] when there has been 
an intervening change in the law underlying the decision.”  Kathrein 
v. City of Evanston, Ill., 752 F.3d 680, 685 (7th Cir. 2014); see also 
Wagner v. Baron, 64 So. 2d 267, 268 (Fla. 1953) (law of the case 
doctrine “must give way where there has been a change in the 
fundamental controlling legal principles” (quoting Imbrici v. Madison 
Ave. Realty Corp., 99 N.Y.S.2d 762, 765 (Sup. Ct. 1950)).  This 
exception to the law of the case doctrine applies here. 
 
Accordingly, we affirm the denial of Nixon’s successive 
intellectual disability claim. 
II. 
 
Nixon also appeals the trial court’s denial of Nixon’s most 
recent successive motion under Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 
3.851.  In that motion, Nixon sought relief “predicated upon Hurst 
 
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v. Florida, 136 S. Ct. 616 (2006) and Hurst v. State, 202 So. 3d 40 
(Fla. 2016).”3 
 
We have repeatedly held that Hurst relief is unavailable to 
defendants, like Nixon, whose death sentences were final before the 
Supreme Court’s decision in Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584 (2002).  
See, e.g., Wright v. State, 312 So. 3d 59, 60 (Fla. 2021).  
Accordingly, we affirm this aspect of the trial court’s order as well. 
III. 
 
We affirm the trial court’s order denying Nixon’s successive 
intellectual disability claim and his Hurst-based claim. 
 
It is so ordered. 
CANADY, C.J., and POLSTON, LAWSON, MUÑIZ, COURIEL, and 
GROSSHANS, JJ., concur. 
LABARGA, J., dissents with an opinion. 
 
NOT FINAL UNTIL TIME EXPIRES TO FILE REHEARING MOTION 
AND, IF FILED, DETERMINED. 
 
LABARGA, J., dissenting. 
 
In Phillips v. State, 299 So. 3d 1013 (Fla. 2020), I dissented to 
the majority’s holding that Hall v. Florida, 572 U.S. 701 (2014), is 
 
3.  We partially receded from Hurst v. State, 202 So. 3d 40 
(Fla. 2016) in State v. Poole, 297 So. 3d 487 (Fla. 2020). 
 
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not to be applied retroactively, and its resultant decision to recede 
from Walls v. State, 213 So. 3d 340 (Fla. 2016).  See Phillips, 299 
So. 3d at 1024-26 (Labarga, J., dissenting). 
In addition to my fundamental disagreement with the holding 
in Phillips, I noted the following: 
[B]ecause this Court held Hall to be retroactive more than 
three years ago in Walls, some individuals have been 
granted relief pursuant to Walls and received 
consideration of their intellectual disability claims under 
the standard required by Hall.  However, going forward, 
similarly situated individuals will not be entitled to such 
consideration.  This disparate treatment is patently 
unfair. 
 
Id. at 1026. 
I adhere to my dissent in Phillips, and thus, I dissent to the 
majority’s conclusion that Nixon is not entitled to consideration of 
his successive claim of intellectual disability. 
An Appeal from the Circuit Court in and for Leon County, 
Jonathan Eric Sjostrom, Judge 
Case No. 371984CF002324AXXXXX 
 
Eric M. Freedman of Law Offices of Eric M. Freedman, New York, 
New York; Maria DeLiberato and Marie-Louise Samuels Parmer of 
Parmer DeLiberato, P.A., Tampa, Florida; and Moe Keshavarzi, 
David Poell, and Laura Alexander of Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & 
Hampton LLP, Los Angeles, California, 
 
 
for Appellant 
 
 
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Ashley Moody, Attorney General, and Michael T. Kennett, Assistant 
Attorney General, Tallahassee, Florida, 
 
 
for Appellee