Title: Zakrzewski v. Jones
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: SC16-729
State: Florida
Issuer: Florida Supreme Court
Date: May 25, 2017

Supreme Court of Florida 
 
 
____________ 
 
No. SC16-729 
____________ 
 
EDWARD J. ZAKRZEWSKI, II,  
Petitioner, 
 
vs. 
 
JULIE L. JONES, etc.,  
Respondent. 
 
[May 25, 2017] 
 
PER CURIAM. 
 
This case is before the Court on Edward J. Zakrzewski, II’s petition for a 
writ of habeas corpus claiming a right to relief under the United States Supreme 
Court’s decision in Hurst v. Florida, 136 S. Ct. 616 (2016), and our decision on 
remand in Hurst v. State (Hurst), 202 So. 3d 40 (Fla. 2016), cert. denied, No. 16-
998 (U.S. May 22, 2017).  We have jurisdiction.  See art. V, § 3(b)(9), Fla. Const.  
For the following reasons, we affirm Zakrzewski’s three sentences of death. 
 
In 1994, Zakrzewski pled guilty to three charges of first-degree murder for 
the deaths of his wife and two young children.  Zakrzewski v. State, 717 So. 2d 
488, 490 (Fla. 1998), cert. denied, 525 U.S. 1126 (1999).  After the penalty phase, 
 
 
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the jury recommended sentences of death for the murders of Zakrzewski’s wife 
and son, both by a vote of seven to five.  Id. at 491.  For the murder of 
Zakrzewski’s daughter, the jury recommended a sentence of life imprisonment 
without parole.  Id.  The trial court, concluding that the aggravating factors 
outweighed the mitigating circumstances for all three murders, followed the jury’s 
recommendation on the first two and overrode the jury’s recommendation on the 
third and sentenced Zakrzewski to death for all three murders.  Id.  On direct 
appeal, this Court “affirm[ed] the three death sentences.”  Id. at 495. 
In 2003, Zakrzewski appealed the trial court’s denial of postconviction relief 
on his claim that Florida’s death penalty is unconstitutional under the United States 
Supreme Court’s decisions in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000), and 
Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584 (2002).  Zakrzewski v. State, 866 So. 2d 688, 692, 
696 (Fla. 2003).  This Court affirmed the trial court’s denial of postconviction 
relief.  Id. at 697.  Zakrzewski now claims that his death sentences are 
unconstitutional under Hurst v. Florida and Hurst and that he is entitled to relief 
under chapter 2016-13, Laws of Florida. 
In Asay v. State, 210 So. 3d 1 (Fla. 2016), petition for cert. filed, No. 16-
9033 (U.S. Apr. 29, 2017), we held that Hurst does not apply retroactively to 
sentences of death that were final before the United States Supreme Court decided 
Ring.  In Marshall v. State, 2017 WL 1739246 (Fla. May 4, 2017), we denied 
 
 
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Marshall’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus based on Asay, concluding that the 
judicial override in Marshall’s case did not warrant an exception to the 
retroactivity analysis in Asay.  Id.  Zakrzewski’s sentences became final in 1999 
when the United States Supreme Court denied his petition for certiorari review.  
Thus, Zakrzewski is not entitled to Hurst relief, and we deny his petition for writ of 
habeas corpus. 
It is so ordered. 
LABARGA, C.J., and QUINCE, POLSTON, and LAWSON, JJ., concur. 
PARIENTE, J., concurs in result with an opinion. 
LEWIS and CANADY, JJ., concur in result. 
 
NOT FINAL UNTIL TIME EXPIRES TO FILE REHEARING MOTION, AND 
IF FILED, DETERMINED. 
 
PARIENTE, J., concurring in result. 
 
Despite the savage, horrific way in which Zakrzewski, a veteran of the 
United States Air Force, murdered his wife and two children, the jury votes in this 
case, where “the trial judge found two statutory mitigating [circumstances], as well 
as a number of nonstatutory mitigating [circumstances],” were 7-5, 7-5, and 6-6.  
Zakrzewski v. State, 717 So. 2d 488, 494 (Fla. 1988).  Following the jury’s two 
recommendations for death and overriding the jury’s third recommendation for 
life, the trial court sentenced Zakrzewski to death for all three murders.  The 
sentences of death became final in 1999.  Majority op. at 3. 
 
 
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I concur in the majority’s result because I am bound by this Court’s 
precedent in Asay v. State, 210 So. 3d 1 (Fla. 2016), petition for cert. filed, No. 16-
9033 (U.S. Apr. 29, 2017), and Marshall v. State, 2017 WL 1739246 (Fla. May 4, 
2017), which held that Hurst v. State (Hurst), 202 So. 3d 40 (Fla. 2016), cert. 
denied, No. 16-998 (U.S. May 22, 2017), does not apply retroactively to sentences 
of death that became final before the United States Supreme Court decided Ring v. 
Arizona, 536 U.S. 584 (2002), and there is no exception to this rule for sentences 
that resulted from judicial overrides.  
However, as I expressed in Asay and Chief Justice Labarga expressed in 
Marshall, the judicial override for the death sentence where the jury voted for life 
“constitutes an injustice that should be remedied.”  Marshall, 2017 WL 1739246, at 
*1 (Labarga, C.J., dissenting); accord Asay, 210 So. 3d at 35 n.32 (Pariente, J., 
concurring in part and dissenting in part).  Of course, in this case, as Petitioner 
points out, Zakrzewski’s counsel raised arguments substantially similar to those 
that were eventually recognized in both Ring and Hurst, including that Florida’s 
capital sentencing scheme was unconstitutional under the Sixth Amendment and 
article I, section 16, of the Florida Constitution for requiring only a bare majority 
of the jury’s vote to impose death.  
As Justice Anstead stated, dissenting to this Court’s 1998 opinion affirming 
the judicial override in this case, joined by Chief Justice Kogan and Justice Shaw: 
 
 
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The majority has not honored Tedder and our consistent case law in 
holding that, despite the unusual and unique circumstances involved 
herein, and the extensive amount of statutory and non-statutory 
mitigation established, no reasonable juror could vote for mercy, as 
the jury did here, and spare appellant’s life for the killing of the child 
Anna, while voting for death in the killing of Edward. 
The mistake of the majority is illustrated by the recent case of 
Esty v. State, 642 So. 2d 1074, 1076 (Fla. 1994), where the trial court 
overrode the jury’s life recommendation and found the HAC and CCP 
aggravators, the statutory mitigator of no significant prior criminal 
history, and no nonstatutory mitigation.  In reversing the improper 
override, we explained the Tedder standard and its application: 
For a trial judge to override a jury recommendation 
of life, ‘the facts suggesting a sentence of death should be 
so clear and convincing that virtually no reasonable 
person could differ.’  Tedder v. State, 322 So. 2d 908, 
910 (Fla. 1975).  An override is improper if there is a 
reasonable basis in the record to support the jury’s 
recommendation.  Ferry v. State, 507 So. 2d 1373, 1376 
(Fla. 1987).  The record in this case reveals a number of 
factors that support the jury’s recommendation, including 
Esty’s age of eighteen at the time of the murder, his lack 
of a criminal history, his potential for rehabilitation, and 
the possibility that he acted in an emotional rage.  Thus, 
we conclude that jury override was improper because the 
jurors could have relied on these factors established in 
the record to recommend a life sentence in this case. 
Id., 642 So. 2d at 1080 (emphasis supplied).  Similarly, in Strausser v. 
State, 682 So. 2d 539, 542 (Fla. 1996), we found that the trial court’s 
override failed the Tedder standard because “there was vast mitigation 
to support the jury’s recommendation.”   Likewise, we have just 
recently again reaffirmed this enduring standard in reversing the trial 
court’s override of the jury’s recommendation of a life sentence in 
Pomeranz v. State, 703 So. 2d 465, 471 (Fla. 1997), the latest of a 
series of recent cases wherein we have consistently reaffirmed Tedder.   
See Marta-Rodriguez v. State, 699 So. 2d 1010, 1012-1013 (Fla. 
1997); Jenkins v. State, 692 So. 2d 893, 895 (Fla. 1997); Boyett v. 
State, 688 So. 2d 308, 310 (Fla. 1996). 
 
 
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The majority has not considered the facts in a light most 
favorable to the recommendation of the jury, as we are required to do, 
or acknowledged the unchallenged reasonable basis in the record 
supporting the jury’s vote as to Anna’s death.  Further, the majority 
has ignored not only the evidence and inferences therefrom that would 
support the jury’s recommendation, but has also ignored the fact that 
even the jury vote recommending death was by a slim seven to five 
margin, one vote away from a life recommendation for the appellant.  
Hence, the majority, in direct violation of the law and our decision in 
Tedder has substituted its subjective analysis of the facts for the views 
of the sworn and death-qualified jurors, who not only could have had 
reasonable but differing views as to whether death was appropriate, 
but did have those views and openly expressed them.  The majority 
has apparently concluded that because its members would not have 
extended mercy, the views of the twelve citizens sitting on this jury 
extending mercy will be ignored. 
There can be no legitimate dispute that the jury had an 
abundance of evidence upon which it could have based its life 
recommendation for Anna’s death.  Indeed, the extensive mitigation 
found by the trial court in this case is vastly greater than that found in 
the cases discussed above and, both in its nature and degree, is unique.  
Even the trial judge, who obviously disagreed with the jury’s 
recommendation, acknowledged the existence of the unusual extent of 
the mitigation and found two statutory mitigators, no significant prior 
criminal history and under the influence of an extreme mental or 
emotional disturbance, and gave varying degrees of weight to some 
fourteen (14) nonstatutory mitigators, ranging from substantial to 
slight weight.  On such a record there is simply no way that we can 
properly conclude that there is no “reasonable basis in the record to 
support the jury’s recommendation.” 
. . . . 
As we approach the 21st century of our civilization, do we 
really want to take a law (the trial judge’s sentencing discretion) that 
was intended to act as a rational check on a jury possibly voting for 
death based upon an emotional appeal, and twist that law so as to use 
it as a sword for the judiciary to emotionally trump a jury acting with 
reasoned mercy? 
 
 
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Zakrzewski, 717 So. 2d at 496-97 (Anstead, J., concurring in part and dissenting in 
part) (last emphasis added) (footnote omitted). 
The bottom line is that, in light of Hurst, we should at least reconsider our 
case law on judicial overrides.  Only three defendants stand sentenced to death as a 
result of a judicial override.  Zakrzewski’s sentence was the most recent of the 
judicial override sentences that this Court affirmed, and we have not affirmed a 
judicial override on direct appeal since Zakrzewski’s case.  Further, the cases upon 
which this Court relied to uphold jury overrides—Spaziano v. Florida, 468 U.S. 
447 (1984), and Hildwin v. Florida, 490 U.S. 638 (1989)—have now been 
overruled by the United States Supreme Court in Hurst v. Florida.  See, e.g., 
Marshall v. Crosby, 911 So. 2d 1129, 1135 (Fla. 2005). 
As this Court has explained, when a jury recommends a sentence of life, “a 
majority of a twelve-person jury concluded that . . . the record before them . . . 
compelled a life recommendation.”  Keen v. State, 775 So. 2d 263, 284 n.19 (Fla. 
2000).  Since Zakrzewski’s case, the Court has emphasized the “fundamental 
distinction . . . between a defendant who receives an advisory sentence of death 
from a jury as opposed to one who receives an advisory sentence of life.”  Weaver 
v. State, 894 So. 2d 178, 200 (Fla. 2004); see Coleman v. State, 64 So. 3d 1210, 
1225-27 (Fla. 2011).  After Hurst v. Florida and Hurst, which emphasized the 
critical importance of the jury’s findings and ultimate sentence recommendation in 
 
 
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capital sentencing, this distinction is even clearer.  Thus, I would grant Hurst relief 
to Zakrzewski for his third sentence of death that resulted from a judicial override. 
Although granting relief to Zakrzewski based on the judicial override in his 
case would not disturb Zakrzewski’s other two “bare majority” death sentences, 
recognizing that judicial overrides warrant relief under Hurst would afford relief to 
the two other pre-Ring defendants whose sentences were the product of the clearly 
unconstitutional judicial override.  See Marshall, 2017 WL 1739246, at *1-3 
(Labarga, J., dissenting). 
Original Proceeding – Habeas Corpus 
 
Martin J. McClain of McClain & McDermott, P.A., Wilton Manors, Florida, 
 
 
for Petitioner 
 
Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, and Carolyn M. Snurkowski, Assistant 
Deputy Attorney General, Tallahassee, Florida, 
 
 
for Respondent