Opinion ID: 1920315
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Caps as the Benchmark

Text: The second principle I derive from Olive is that even where registry counsel can show unusual or extraordinary circumstances justifying additional fees, the statutory caps should remain the benchmark against which further amounts are calculated. Olive recognized that the Legislature generally intended for the statutory fee schedule to act as a ceiling, not a floor. The schedule is expressly identified as the exclusive means of compensating a court-appointed attorney who represents a capital defendant in collateral proceedings. § 27.711(3), Fla. Stat. (2005). The word maximum appears in the schedule eleven times, and the statute directs that, if desired, counsel should seek further compensation from the Federal Government. Id. Additionally, the statute provides that compensation for attorneys who withdraw or are removed from a case may not exceed the amounts specified in this section. § 27.711(8), Fla. Stat. (2005). Therefore, the statute itself dictates that, in the vast majority of cases, the fees must conform to the statutory caps. In a small percentage of cases, Olive did authorize additional fees. Yet because Olive was based not on constitutional principles but on the legislative intent behind the statute, the caps and the Legislature's right to determine them remain relevant to the calculation of additional fees. As I noted earlier, we have never held that defendants enjoy a Sixth Amendment right to counsel in the postconviction context. That right is purely statutory. The Legislature has granted it. Therefore, the Legislature has full authority to determine its parameters. In other words, because in postconviction cases the Legislature could decide not to grant any right to counsel at all, it can also grant a qualified righta right to counsel only at specified rates. As we have explained, it is within the legislature's province to appropriate funds for public purposes and resolve questions of compensation. White, 537 So.2d at 1379. Our decision in Olive recognized as much. We merely inferred that the Legislature had implied an authorization to exceed the caps in unusual or extraordinary circumstances. Even in those cases, however, the statutory fee schedule remains the mostif not the onlyreliable guide to what the Legislature regarded as an appropriate level of compensation. In fairness to registry attorneys who accept usual and ordinary cases, and therefore must receive the statutory fees, any further compensation should be proportional to the statutory caps and, as Olive suggested, should be awarded only to the extent necessary to prevent confiscat[ion] of the attorney's time, energy and talent. 811 So.2d at 654. This amount will typically be far less than the market rate for the actual time spent on the case. As we noted in Sheppard & White, 827 So.2d at 931, it is not unconstitutional to compensate an attorney at rates that do not cover overhead or are not commensurate with the attorney's experience or reputation in the community. Therefore, even in exceptional circumstances the statutory caps should remain the benchmark against which the ultimate award is calculated. This case illustrates how using the caps as a benchmark would differ from simply multiplying the attorney's actual hours worked by a competitive rate. The statute would have capped compensation here at $100 per hour, up to a maximum of $2,500 plus costs. § 27.711(4)(g), Fla. Stat. (2005). Yet the attorney sought, and was awarded, $27,940.74. He arrived at this amount by billing virtually all of his work at $100 per hour. If we were to accept this method of calculation, then the fee schedule for registry counsel would effectively become $100 per hour, with no maximum. That is neither what the statute says nor what Olive authorized. Rather, Olive implied that the attorney must perform the foreseeable work for the statutory rate, and may be given extra compensation only to the extent necessary to prevent the confiscation of his unforeseeable efforts. Accordingly, in this case, the trial court should work upward from the statutory benchmark of $2,500not downward from the billed amount of $27,940.74until it reaches a level of compensation that can no longer be considered confiscatory. Without retaining the caps as the benchmark in these cases, we run the risk that courts will, contrary to the statutory directive in section 27.711, continually increase compensation for registry counsel to keep pace with the cost of living. We then run the added risk that the Legislature, seeing its caps regularly disregarded, will simply strip capital defendants of any right to counsel in postconviction cases. Although I believe that the statutory caps often do not adequately compensate registry attorneys for the valuable work they perform, I also believe that the proper mechanism for increasing their compensation is through statutory amendment, not through a series of judicial accretions.