Opinion ID: 1942962
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Constitutional Validity of Coday's Sentence

Text: I believe that Florida's capital sentencing scheme, as applied in this case, violates the right to jury trial under article I, section 22 of the Florida Constitution. It remains my view, first stated three years ago, that Ring requires that any fact, other than a separate conviction, that qualifies a capital defendant for a sentence of death must be found by a jury; and that our state constitutional guarantee of trial by jury requires that this finding be unanimous. See Butler v. State, 842 So.2d 817, 835-40 (Fla.2003) (Pariente, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). The jury's nine-to-three death recommendation in this case falls short of a unanimous finding of a death-qualifying aggravating circumstance, which would satisfy article I, section 22. Further, the single aggravating factor, that the killing was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel (HAC), does not rest on the fact of a prior conviction based on a unanimous jury verdict or guilty plea waiving the right to a jury trial. I recognize that this Court has consistently rejected Ring claims in both direct appeals and postconviction proceedings. In postconviction cases, we have held that Ring is not retroactive to Florida death sentences that were final on direct appeal when Ring was decided. See Johnson v. State, 904 So.2d 400 (Fla.2005). I concurred in that decision. In direct appeals as well as postconviction cases predating Johnson, the Court has pointed to unanimous jury recommendations or aggravating factors resting on convictions of other crimes in denying Ring claims. [28] I have agreed with these grounds for denying Ring claims as well. The principles in Ring are applicable, however, in the rare direct appeal in which there is neither a valid separate-conviction aggravator nor a jury verdict reflecting a unanimous finding of a death-qualifying aggravator. Butler was one such case; this is another. In rejecting the Ring claim in Butler, the majority simply cited to its decisions in Bottoson v. Moore, 833 So.2d 693 (Fla.2002), and King v. Moore, 831 So.2d 143 (Fla.2002). See 842 So.2d at 837. Bottoson and King are inapplicable to a case in this posture for several reasons: neither decision garnered a majority opinion, both cases involved death sentences that were final, the aggravators in both cases included previous conviction of a violent felony, and King's jury unanimously recommended death. Today the majority relies on its decision in Steele, a case that reached us in a pretrial posture and consequently did not involve a constitutional challenge to a sentence of death. A majority of this Court has yet to conclude that a death sentence unsupported by a separate-conviction aggravator exempt from Ring or a unanimous penalty-phase finding of an aggravatorimplicitly in a death recommendation or explicitly in a special verdictviolates neither the state nor federal constitutional right to trial by jury. And so I continue to dissent when these circumstances exist. In the absence of either an other-conviction aggravator or a unanimous jury finding that one or more aggravators exist, it remains my view that a sentence of death violates both the Sixth Amendment and article I, section 22 of the Florida Constitution. As I stated in Butler, Florida's exclusion of the death penalty from the requirement of jury unanimity cannot be reconciled with the United States Supreme Court's recognition in Ring that [t]he right to trial by jury guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment would be senselessly diminished if it encompassed the factfinding necessary to increase a defendant's sentence by two years, but not the factfinding necessary to put him to death, and its holding that the Sixth Amendment applies to both. [536 U.S. at 609, 122 S.Ct. 2428] (emphasis supplied). The right to trial by jury in Florida would be senselessly diminished if the jury is required to return a unanimous verdict on every fact necessary to render a defendant eligible for a penalty with the exception of the final and irrevocable sanction of death. . . . . . . . Simply put, the requirement of jury unanimity for proving every other element of a criminal offense in Florida, except for the critical element required in order to impose the death penalty, is not constitutionally justified in light of Ring. 842 So.2d at 838 (Pariente, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Therefore, I would vacate Coday's death sentence not only for the reasons in the majority opinion, but also because the jury did not unanimously find that a single aggravating factor was proved beyond a reasonable doubt.