Title: Sullivan v. Askew
Citation: 348 So. 2d 312
Docket Number: 51276
State: Florida
Issuer: Florida Supreme Court
Date: June 30, 1977

348 So. 2d 312 (1977)
Robert A. SULLIVAN, Gary E. Alvord and Learie L. Alford, Appellants,
v.
Reubin O'd. ASKEW, Etc., et al., Appellees.
No. 51276.

Supreme Court of Florida.
June 30, 1977.
Rehearing Denied July 26, 1977.
*313 Andrew A. Graham of the Law Offices of Charles M. Holcomb, Cocoa, and Tobias Simon and Elizabeth Du Fresne, Miami, for appellants.
Robert L. Shevin, Atty. Gen., James D. Whisenand, Deputy Atty. Gen., Raymond L. Marky, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Eleanor A. Mitchell, Asst. Gen. Counsel, Tallahassee, for appellees.
KARL, Justice.
We have for review by direct appeal an order of the Circuit Court, in and for Leon County, granting appellees' motion to dismiss and deny appellants' petition for temporary injunctive relief, in which the court construes provisions of the Constitution of Florida, thereby vesting jurisdiction in this Court pursuant to Article V, Section 3(b)(1), Florida Constitution.
Sullivan, Alford and Alvord, all convicted of capital felonies and sentenced to death (which convictions and sentences have been affirmed on appeal), filed a complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief and alleged that the Governor, along with three concurring members of the Cabinet, has the authority under Article IV, Section 8, Florida Constitution, to commute the death sentences by granting clemency; that a hearing is required; that minimal due process, including a fair and impartial tribunal, the right to be heard in person and by counsel, and written standards or guidelines setting forth factors to be considered in granting clemency, is required; and that the scheduled hearings deny due process. The trial court granted appellees' motion to dismiss the complaint on the basis that it lacked jurisdiction over appellees pursuant to Article II, Section 3, and Article IV, Section 8, Florida Constitution, and lacked jurisdiction of the cause, pursuant to the same constitutional provisions, and that the complaint failed to state a cause of action.
*314 The Parole and Probation Commission conducted investigations into each of appellants' cases and made a negative recommendation relative to commutation.
Preliminarily, we consider the decision of the trial judge expressly finding that the court lacks jurisdiction over the parties and the subject matter. Article V, Section 5, of the Florida Constitution vests the circuit courts with plenary power and the jurisdiction to construe all sections of the Constitution. Cf. Curtis et al. v. Albritton, 101 Fla. 853, 132 So. 677 (1931). It is a judicial responsibility to interpret and construe provisions of the Constitution when there are ambiguities or conflicts. The court may determine constitutional intent to assist in the decision of whether a given responsibility lies exclusively with one branch, whether that branch has been granted restricted or unrestricted power to perform such duties and whether the constitutional provision fixing the responsibility is self-executing. Moreover, the Court may determine whether any constitutional grant of power is being exercised according to the specific grant and in a manner that does not violate any other provision of the Constitution. The trial judge was in error when he held that the court was without jurisdiction, but because, as explained below, the clemency power is exclusively in the executive branch, he was correct in determining that the complaint fails to state a cause of action.
The clemency power, which is the power to suspend collection of fines and forfeitures, to grant reprieves, to grant full or conditional pardons, restore civil rights, commute punishments, and to remit fines and forfeitures for offenses, reposes exclusively in the Chief Executive.
Historically, the pardoning power was a part of the royal prerogative in England. Defining a pardon, Chief Justice Marshall, in United States v. Wilson, 7 Pet. 150, 8 L. Ed. 640, stated:
This power flows from the Constitution and not from any legislative enactment, Advisory Opinion of the Governor, In Re: Administrative Procedure Act: Executive Clemency, 334 So. 2d 561 (Fla. 1976). The United States Supreme Court, in Schick v. Reed, 419 U.S. 256, 95 S. Ct. 379, 42 L. Ed. 2d 430 (1974), concluded:
We quote with approval the following excerpt from American Jurisprudence:
Article IV, Section 8, Florida Constitution, provides:
By this self-executing constitutional provision, the people of this state chose to vest sole, unrestricted, unlimited discretion exclusively in the executive in exercising this act of grace. This Court, in In Re Advisory Opinion of the Governor Civil Rights, 306 So. 2d 520 (Fla. 1975), explained:
Article II, Section 3, Florida Constitution, divides government into three separate and distinct branches of government and provides that "[n]o person belonging to one branch shall exercise any powers appertaining to either of the other branches unless expressly provided herein."
*316 Holding that an attempt on the part of the Legislature to exercise any part of the pardoning power would be in conflict with the Constitution, this Court, in Singleton v. State, 38 Fla. 297, 21 So. 21 (1896), opined:
Cf. In Re Advisory Opinion of Governor Civil Rights, supra.
Responding in the negative to the question of whether the requirements of Chapter 120, Florida Statutes, the Administrative Procedure Act, apply to the constitutional power of the Governor to extend executive clemency, this Court explicated:
This prohibition against legislative encroachment upon the executive's clemency power is equally applicable to the judiciary. Article II, Section 3, Florida Constitution. Declaring a legislative enactment, Chapter 16810, Acts 1935, unconstitutional and void as being in conflict with and in derogation of the constitutionally established execution power of clemency, in Ex parte White, 131 Fla. 83, 178 So. 876 (1938), this Court, in analyzing the separation of powers and exclusivity of this executive function, quoted the following excerpt from Cooley on Constitutional Limitations, Vol. 1 (8th Ed.), pp. 213-221.
In the exercise of the exclusive power to grant or withhold clemency, the executive has adopted procedures that accord with the specific constitutional grant in Article IV, Section 8, Florida Constitution, and do not impose constitutionally objectionable conditions.
For the foregoing reasons, this Court will not intrude on the proper execution of the executive power, and the complaint that prays for such relief is without merit.
Accordingly, the order of the trial court, insofar as it holds that it is without jurisdiction, is reversed. We affirm that portion of the order finding that the complaint fails to state a cause of action and ordering that the complaint be dismissed.
It is so ordered.
OVERTON, C.J., and ADKINS, BOYD, SUNDBERG and HATCHETT, JJ., concur.
ENGLAND, J., concurs in result only with an opinion.
*317 ENGLAND, Justice, concurring specially.
I concur in the majority's preliminary conclusion that the trial court had jurisdiction to entertain petitioners' lawsuit, and its ultimate conclusion that petitioners should not prevail. I do not agree with the majority's conclusion that the complaint fails to state a cognizable cause of action, however. Petitioners have convinced me that the clemency process recently used by the Governor and cabinet to determine if these petitioners should live or die is reviewable for minimal due process standards; they fail only in persuading me that the process actually applied has run afoul of any constitutional minima so as to entitle them to the relief they have requested.
To make my position as clear as I can at the outset, I do not hold the view that the Governor and three concurring cabinet members must exercise their discretion to grant or deny clemency in any specified or particular fashion, formal or informal. I do believe, however, that a basis for our judicial review is provided in this case because (i) the seven heads of Florida's executive branch of government have, of their volition, created a formal administrative agency for death sentence review, (ii) the procedures they have established for this agency purport to provide minimum due process beyond what the Constitution itself prescribes, and (iii) having willingly clothed this aspect of their clemency power in non-constitutional garbs[1] the Governor and cabinet cannot now declare themselves invisible to the judiciary so as to prohibit this Court from testing their procedures for fundamental fairness.
To understand my perceptions of this case it is necessary to identify a critical facet of petitioners' complaint which the majority opinion does not describe  the clemency process established by the Governor and cabinet for death sentence review. A copy of the procedure to which these officials willingly pledged themselves appears as an appendix to this opinion, with the critical provisions appearing as Rule 7. The majority's omission of any description of this process leaves the erroneous impression that petitioners are simply dissatisfied with their failure to receive clemency in a particular way. I do not understand that to be their complaint. I view their dissatisfaction as emanating from a special process which must, to be understood, be compared with the traditional processes for clemency.
Where a single executive has been assigned clemency powers, the usual process (which has generally avoided judicial scrutiny) is perhaps best exemplified by President Ford's pardon of former president Richard Nixon or President Carter's pardon of convicted Watergate burglar G. Gordon Liddy. Acting under the authority of Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution,[2] the President in each case simply sat down, penned a pardon, and publicly announced that he had done so. No hearings were held, no one was required to be consulted or to concur, and no reasons were required to be given.[3] The discretion to initiate and to grant these pardons was conferred by the Constitution, and it was exercised when, for whom and however the executive chose. By judicial precedent this "process" has remained unreviewable because any review at all would necessarily be a review of the discretionary power to initiate or to grant clemency.[4]
*318 Where the clemency power has been assigned to more than one member of the executive branch, as in Florida, the process of initiating or evaluating clemency applications can vary. For example, a recent exercise of clemency powers by the Governor and members of the Florida cabinet involved both joint and individual initiatives. In considering prospective pardons for convicted murderers Freddie Lee Pitts and Wilbert Lee, each pardon authority separately investigated the clemency candidates as a prelude to their joint meeting to receive public testimony. Each then individually exercised his discretion to sign or refuse to sign a pardon which the Governor first signed and left on file with the Secretary of State.[5] In this format, any attempt to review the "process" of pardon would necessarily have immersed the judiciary in the rationale of the decisionmakers, for the process itself had no substance or form beyond their individual investigations and decisions.
In contrast to these "processes", the newly devised death sentence review process operates very much like all other administrative processes in the executive branch of Florida's government. The rules adopted for this purpose establish an "Office of Executive Clemency" headed by a "coordinator" and staffed by assistants. A "proper record" of all proceedings is maintained. Precise steps for review are prescribed, channeled by precise time frames, and the process once triggered requires (i) a hearing examiner to take written or oral testimony, (ii) an informal evidentiary proceeding, (iii) a required report to be filed by the hearing examiner within 60 days, (iv) a required hearing before the Governor and cabinet, (v) notice to applicants' attorneys and to counsel for the state, (vi) authority for both counsel to file "exceptions, briefs or memoranda" concerning the examiner's report, (vii) a prohibition against direct communications to the Governor or any cabinet member during the pendency of the proceedings, and (viii) a public explanation for granting or not granting clemency.[6]
From this set of procedures, then, and not from the "traditional" process of clemency, petitioners assert their claim for fundamental fairness. The most ingenious of their arguments[7] proceeds in this fashion:
(1) we have always had the constitutional power to review clemency processes for procedural fairness, although we have traditionally declined to exercise that authority;
(2) at least since Furman v. Georgia[8] the ability of any state to execute its convicted criminals has become a unique constitutional problem;
(3) the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution imposes a continuing obligation on state supreme courts to guard against the exercise of arbitrary discretion in state executions, by assuring that due process minima are met at all critical pre-execution stages;[9] and
(4) the unique clemency process recently established in Florida in fact conflicts with *319 the minimum standard required by Gardner v. Florida, 430 U.S. 349, 97 S. Ct. 1197, 51 L. Ed. 2d 393 (1977) and Songer v. Florida, 430 U.S. 952, 97 S. Ct. 1594, 51 L. Ed. 2d 801 (1977).
This syllogism cannot be ignored, for it is beyond dispute that the rules established for death sentence review permit Gardner-prohibited material to enter into the decisional process. Section 7B of the rules expressly describes the parole commission's report as "similar to a pre-sentence investigation report ... a portion [of] which shall remain confidential." Gardner, of course, appears to preclude the use of that data in the mathematics of a life-death equation.
The issue inherent in petitioners' challenge to Florida's new death sentence review procedure asks this ultimate question: may the state, through its executive branch of government, take a human life after conducting an adversary proceeding in which the potential victim has been denied access to some of the data on the basis of which the decision was made, notwithstanding that the data need not have been considered, that the proceeding need not have been adversary, and that the proceeding need not have been established in the first instance? I would answer this critical question by saying that the Gardner decision does not clearly require a negative answer.
In Proffitt v. Florida, 428 U.S. 242, 96 S. Ct. 2960, 49 L. Ed. 2d 913 (1976), our death penalty statute was upheld on the authority of Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 96 S. Ct. 2909, 49 L. Ed. 2d 859 (1976). In Gregg the United States Supreme Court very clearly indicated that its constitutional concern regarding the imposition of death is the judicial process alone, and not the discretionary stages which precede (prosecutorial discretion) or succeed (clemency) the judicial processes of trial and appellate review.
The Court's focus on the "imposition" of a death sentence in a judicial proceeding was reiterated in Gardner.[11] Nothing yet said by the United States Supreme Court suggests that the discretionary decision whether or not to allow a judicially-approved death sentence is subject to the same due process strictures as are required for any judicial process employed to impose such a sentence. For that reason, and for the further reason that I would not engraft these due process requirements on the clemency powers conferred in Florida's Constitution, I conclude that the use of confidential materials in clemency proceedings is permissible.
In sum, whatever may constitute constitutionally impermissible clemency processes, the defects asserted by these petitioners are not of that magnitude and their complaint should, as the majority concludes, be dismissed.
[1]  This case does not involve the exercise of a constitutional prerogative in the manner prescribed in the Constitution, as was the situation which concerned the Court in Weinberger v. Board of Public Instruction, 93 Fla. 470, 112 So. 253 (1927), quoted in the majority's opinion.
[2]  "The President ... shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offences against the United States... ."
[3]  Both presidents did, of course, explain why they had acted.
[4]  Not all constitutional powers of the President are similarly immune from procedural requirements imposed by statute, or from judicial review. As to the former, see the Federal Register Act of 1935, 1 C.F.R. § 19.2(a)(1974). As to the latter, see United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683, 94 S. Ct. 3090, 41 L. Ed. 2d 1039 (1974). For a more complete treatment of the subject, see Levinson, Presidential Self-Regulation Through Rulemaking: Comparative Comments on Structuring the Chief Executive's Constitutional Powers, 9 Vand. J. Transnat'l L. 695 (1976).
[5]  Executive Order No. 75-49 (Sep't. 11, 1975), filed with the Department of State on September 19, 1975.
[6]  While this set of procedures is not asserted to bring death sentence review under the state's administrative procedure act, see Advisory Opinion to the Governor, 334 So. 2d 561 (Fla. 1976), the parallel between the two processes is striking. Compare ch. 120, Fla. Stat. (1975). And see my dissenting advisory view, stated at 334 So. 2d 563.
[7]  I do not find the other aspects of asserted unfairness (denial of an impartial tribunal, lack of pre-articulated decisional standards, and a denial of allocution) to be constitutionally required in clemency matters. See Schick v. Reed, 419 U.S. 256, 95 S. Ct. 379, 42 L. Ed. 2d 430 (1974).
[8]  408 U.S. 238, 92 S. Ct. 2726, 33 L. Ed. 2d 346 (1972). "Five members of the Court have now expressly recognized that death is a different kind of punishment than any other which may be imposed in this country." Gardner v. Florida, 430 U.S. 349, 357, 97 S. Ct. 1197, 1204, 51 L. Ed. 2d 393, 401 (1977).
[9]  "It is of vital importance to the defendant and to the community that any decision to impose the death sentence be, and appear to be, based on reason rather than caprice or emotion." Gardner v. Florida, 430 U.S. 349, 358, 97 S. Ct. 1197, 1205, 51 L. Ed. 2d 393, 402 (1977).
[10]  428 U.S.  at 199, 96 S. Ct.  at 2937.
[11]  See n. 9 above.