Opinion ID: 1671948
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: summary denial of ineffective assistance claims

Text: Robinson next argues that trial court erroneously ruled that claims VI, [12] VII, [13] IX, [14] X, [15] XII, [16] XIII, [17] and XIV [18] were procedurally barred because he was improperly attempting to relitigate substantive matters under the guise of ineffective assistance. We find no merit in this claim. Claim VI has been recast as claim (7) here and will be addressed separately. Claim VII below has been repackaged as claim (6) before this Court and will be addressed separately. As a matter of law, we find that claims IX, X, XIII and XIV below are procedurally barred because they could have been raised on direct appeal. Roberts v. Dugger, 568 So.2d 1255, 1257-58 (Fla. 1990); Atkins v. Dugger, 541 So.2d 1165, 1166 n. 1 (Fla.1989); Adams v. State, 380 So.2d 423, 424 (Fla.1980). Claim XII below is essentially a challenge to the all-white grand jury that indicted Robinson and the racial composition of the venire and resentencing jury. [19] For several reasons, we reject this claim. First, this issue is procedurally barred since it could and should have been raised on direct appeal. See Spenkelink v. State, 350 So.2d 85 (Fla.1977). Second, even if this issue was properly before us, we would find it legally insufficient to merit relief because Robinson has failed to show that the venires from which jurors are drawn in St. Johns County systematically exclude distinctive groups in the community. We recently addressed the proper grounds under which such a claim must be brought in Gordon v. State, 704 So.2d 107 (Fla.1997): The United States Supreme Court has set clear guidelines to ensure that juries are drawn from a fair cross section of society. In Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 538, 95 S.Ct. 692, 701-02, 42 L.Ed.2d 690 (1975), the Court held that petit juries must be drawn from a source fairly representative of the community [although] we impose no requirement that petit juries actually chosen must mirror the community and reflect the various distinctive groups in the population. To that end, while defendants are not entitled to a particular jury composition, jury wheels, pools of names, panels, or venires from which juries are drawn must not systematically exclude distinctive groups in the community and thereby fail to be reasonably representative thereof. Id. at 538, 95 S.Ct. at 702 (emphasis added). Accordingly, the Court invalidated those sections of Louisiana's constitution and criminal procedure code which precluded women from serving on a jury unless they expressly so requested in writing. Several years later under slightly different facts, the Court invalidated a Missouri statute which provided an automatic exemption for any woman that asked not to serve on jury duty. Duren v. Missouri, 439 U.S. 357, 99 S.Ct. 664, 58 L.Ed.2d 579 (1979). To give effect to Taylor's fair cross-section requirement, the Court established a three-prong test for determining a prima facie violation thereof. Id. at 364, 99 S.Ct. at 668. The proponent must demonstrate: (1) that the group alleged to be excluded is a `distinctive' group in the community; (2) that the representation of this group in venires from which juries are selected is not fair and reasonable in relation to the number of such persons in the community; and (3) that this underrepresentation is due to systematic exclusion of the group in the jury-selection process. Id. (emphasis added). Since the Court in Taylor had already found that women are sufficiently numerous and distinct from men, 419 U.S. at 531, 95 S.Ct. at 698, Duren only needed to satisfy the last two prongs of the test. He did this by presenting statistical data which showed that women comprised over fifty percent of the relevant community but only approximately fifteen percent of the jury venires, Duren, 439 U.S. at 364-66, 99 S.Ct. at 668, and demonstrating that this large discrepancy occurred not just occasionally but in every weekly venire for a period of nearly a year. Id. at 366, 99 S.Ct. at 669. The Court concluded that this undisputed trend manifestly indicates that the cause of the underrepresentation was systematicthat is, inherent in the particular jury-selection process utilized. Id. Thus the Court instituted the procedures for establishing a prima facie violation of the Sixth Amendment's fair cross-section requirement. Id., 704 So.2d at 110-12. We concluded that because the process by which venires were drawn in Pinellas County was not challenged, and Gordon failed to substantiate a fair crosssection violation in accordance with Duren, his claim was legally insufficient to merit relief. Id. We make the same finding here because Robinson's claim similarly fails to establish a prima facie violation of the fair cross-section requirement. He made no showing at trial or in his postconviction motion that blacks are systematically excluded from venires in St. Johns County. Accordingly, the trial court did not err in summarily denying this claim. [20] In the final analysis, most of these issues could and should have been raised on direct appeal and are procedurally barred, Maharaj v. State, 684 So.2d 726, 728 (Fla.1996), even if couched in ineffective assistance language. Johnson v. Singletary, 695 So.2d 263, 265 (Fla.1996). We affirm the trial court's summary denial of these claims.