Opinion ID: 1802709
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: The Presence of Jimenez's Fingerprint Inside the Front Door of Victim's Unit

Text: Next, Jimenez asserts that (1) the State committed a Brady violation when it failed to disclose information with regard to the true explanation for the presence of Jimenez's fingerprint inside the front door of Minas's unit or, alternatively, (2) trial counsel was ineffective due to the failure to discover this information. Jimenez was allegedly inside Minas's unit on multiple occasions around the time of Hurricane Andrew to assist in preparations and cleanup, which occurred before the date of the murder. This subclaim is also procedurally barred. The presence of Jimenez inside Minas's unit on other occasions is necessarily based on his own personal knowledge of his actions. Thus, the facts on which this subclaim is predicated were known to Jimenez well in advance of the filing of the amended rule 3.850 motion. The subclaim is not based on newly discovered evidence. Even without this procedural bar, the subclaim is without merit because it is conclusively refuted by the record. First, Jimenez's fingerprint was found on the inside of the front door. The fingerprint was located where the perpetrator would have pushed on the inside of Minas's door when the neighbors attempted to enter her unit. Second, fingerprint evidence degrades over time (the length of time for such evidence to become undetectable depends on the surface, time, temperature, and humidity). Here, the murder of Minas occurred approximately five weeks after Hurricane Andrew. Thus, it is reasonable to conclude that sufficient time had passed during the warm summer months of 1992 for any previous fingerprints left by Jimenez to degrade to the point of being undetectable. Third, this was the only fingerprint (from someone other than Minas) found in Minas's unit. When he assisted her on prior occasions, Jimenez would have touched something and left other multiple fingerprints in the unit. If these fingerprints had not yet degraded by the day of the murder, there would have been multiple fingerprints from Jimenez discovered through the investigation in Minas's unit. Thus, the fact that only one fingerprint was discovered on the front door and this fingerprint matched Jimenez further supports the conclusion that any fingerprints he allegedly left after he had previously assisted Minas had degraded and only the fresh fingerprint that he left on the day of the murder was detectable. Accordingly, there was neither a Brady violationthe information was neither exculpatory nor impeachingnor a Strickland violation trial counsel was not deficient for the failure to discover this information that was neither exculpatory nor impeaching.