Opinion ID: 1931059
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Issue 1. Reconsideration of Wright's First Brady Claim.

Text: Wright alleges that in his first postconviction proceeding the trial court erred in denying his Brady claim because the trial court made factual findings not in the record. He further argues that this Court erroneously affirmed that denial of postconviction relief on appeal. Wright seeks a reconsideration under Brady of three written statements made to police during the investigation of the murder. The statements were made by Wanda Brown, Kimberly Holt, and Charlene Luce. In his first postconviction hearing, Wright argued that defense counsel should have been given copies of the written statements. The trial court in that proceeding denied Wright's Brady claim, finding that defense counsel knew of the Brown and Luce statements and had actually interviewed Holt during counsel's own investigation. We affirmed that finding on appeal. See Wright v. State, 581 So.2d 882 (Fla.1991). Now, in his second postconviction motion, Wright argues that the first postconviction trial court, and this Court thereafter, misconstrued the facts in the record so that the Brady claim was erroneously denied. However, Wright has failed to meet his burden to show the grounds for relief he alleges here were not known and could not have been known at the time of the earlier proceeding. See Foster v. State, 614 So.2d 455 (Fla.1992). His argument that the first postconviction trial court misinterpreted the facts in the record was raised and addressed in his appeal following that proceeding, and in a motion for rehearing as well. Absent a showing that Wright did not know, or could not have known, of the alleged misconstrued facts during the first postconviction proceeding, the trial court in this proceeding properly denied relief. We will not entertain a second appeal of claims that were raised, or should have been raised, in a prior postconviction proceeding. See Downs v. State, 740 So.2d 506, 518 n. 10 (Fla.1999) (stating that claim raised in earlier postconviction motion is barred in subsequent postconviction motion even if based on different facts); Atkins v. State, 663 So.2d 624, 626 (Fla.1995) (explaining that issues that were or could have been presented in a postconviction motion cannot be relitigated in a subsequent postconviction motion). Wright also argues that the trial court erred in the first postconviction proceeding by accepting the fact that two potential suspects, Henry Jackson (Jackson) and Clayton Strickland (Strickland) were eliminated from police investigation after they were given polygraph examinations which they purportedly passed. In this second postconviction motion, Wright contends that the evidence the trial court relied upon in making its factual finding in the first postconviction proceeding, i.e., that Jackson and Strickland passed polygraph examinations, did not actually exist, a fact which Wright only realized when the State did not produce the polygraph examination results upon his public records requests made after the first postconviction motion. In order to avoid a procedural bar on this claim, Wright must allege new or different grounds for relief that were not known and could not have been known at the time of his earlier postconviction motion. See Christopher v. State, 489 So.2d 22, 24 (Fla.1986). Polygraph examination results for Jackson and Strickland were available for discovery at the time of trial and at the time of Wright's first postconviction proceeding. Wright admits that he sought production of the polygraph results for the first time in 1997. At that time, Wright deposed Officer Derry Wayne Dedmon, who would have conducted the polygraph examinations in question. Officer Dedmon stated that in 1989 or 1990 he destroyed all of his polygraph records through 1984 by directive of the sheriff. The murder, police investigation, and trial in this case all occurred in 1983. Any polygraph examinations administered to suspects during the investigation of this case would have occurred in 1983 prior to Wright's trial, and the results would still have been available in 1988 when Wright brought his first postconviction motion. Thus, Wright has failed to demonstrate why he did not raise the absence of polygraph examination results from the record in his first postconviction proceeding and has failed to demonstrate that the absence of these documents was not known and could not have been known to him at the time of the earlier proceeding. See Foster. Wright's claim that this Court should now reconsider certain factual issues that had been previously raised and resolved in the the first postconviction proceeding is not well taken. His arguments here are successive since they have been previously litigated on their merits, and he has failed to show why these additional facts could not have been known at the time of the first postconviction proceedings. See Downs; Atkins; Foster.