Opinion ID: 72026
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: the claim concerning the florida

Text: SUPREME COURT’S PURPORTED FAILURE TO CONDUCT A HARMLESS ERROR ANALYSIS AFTER STRIKING ONE OF THE FIVE AGGRAVATING CIRCUMSTANCES 20 The Florida Supreme Court held that one of the five aggravating circumstances the trial court found SS that the homicide was committed for the purpose of avoiding or preventing a lawful arrest SS was not applicable, because the evidence failed to meet the legal standard for that circumstance. See 461 So. 2d at 72. The court cited for that holding its prior decisions in Riley v. State, 366 So. 2d 19 (Fla. 1978), and Menendez v. State, 368 So. 2d 1278 (Fla. 1979). Those decisions held that “the mere fact of a death is not enough to invoke this factor when the victim is not a law enforcement official,” Riley, 366 So. 2d at 22, “unless it is clearly shown that the dominant or only motive for the murder was the elimination of witnesses,” Menendez, 368 So. 2d at 1282. Davis, of course, has no quarrel with the holding that it was error to find the aggravating circumstance in this case, but he does complain about what the Florida Supreme Court did, or failed to do, about the error. Instead of vacating and remanding for further sentence proceedings in the trial court, the Florida Supreme Court affirmed the sentence with this explanation: “Striking one of the aggravating circumstances leaves five valid ones for each count, with nothing in mitigation. We therefore affirm both the convictions and the sentence of death.” 461 So. 2d at 72. Davis claims that action by the Florida Supreme Court entitles him to habeas relief from his sentence under a combination of Sochor v. Florida, 504 U.S. 527, 112 S. Ct. 2114 (1992); Stringer v. Black, 503 U.S. 222, 112 S. Ct. 1130 (1992); Parker v. Dugger, 21 498 U.S. 308, 111 S. Ct. 731 (1991), and Clemons v. Mississippi, 494 U.S. 738, 110 S. Ct. 1441 (1990). The district court did not address the merits of this claim, but instead held that the claim was procedurally barred. See 853 F. Supp. at 1582-83. Davis contests that holding, even though he does not deny that he failed to raise this specific issue in his rehearing petition to the Florida Supreme Court or in any of the state collateral pleadings he filed. Davis puts forward two reasons why his failure to raise this issue at any time in state court should not bar it from habeas review. First, Davis contends that the Florida Supreme Court addressed this issue on direct appeal, and for that reason would not have entertained it again thereafter. The fatal flaw in that reasoning is that it confuses the basis for the claim (the Florida Supreme Court’s treatment of the erroneous aggravating circumstance) with the claim itself (that the court’s treatment violated the Constitution). See 853 F. Supp. at 1582. Davis never suggested to the Florida Supreme Court or any other state court that it was error to affirm his death sentence after one of the aggravating circumstances was found to be unsupported by the evidence. Putting aside the fact that Davis failed to raise the claim in his rehearing petition to the Florida Supreme Court, the district court was correct that he could have raised the claim at least in his first state collateral proceeding. See id. at 1583. The second argument Davis makes against application of the procedural bar in this case is based on Clemons and Sochor. He 22 characterizes those two decisions as not imposing a requirement that “capital petitioners” present state courts with what he calls “another challenge to the state supreme court’s actions” underlying this type of claim. There are two problems with that contention. The first problem is that both decisions were rendered on direct appeal, and it is not readily apparent that the independent-andadequate state law ground doctrine that confines the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction in direct appeals from state supreme courts is coterminous with the procedural default doctrine that limits federal habeas corpus review. The second problem with Davis’ contention is that we are unconvinced either Clemons or Sochor stand for the proposition that even on direct review there is no necessity for raising in the state supreme court any errors in that court’s treatment of an erroneous aggravating circumstance. Neither of those two decisions held that. Neither of them focused on whether a defendant must argue in the state supreme court that its own action in response to an unsupported aggravating circumstance was error before that issue can be raised in federal court. We do not even know that the defendants in Clemons and Sochor failed to preserve the issue in the state supreme courts. In view of these circumstances, we will not infer from the direct appeal decisions in Clemons and Sochor a rule of law applicable to federal habeas review, especially not a rule contrary to what we understand procedural default law to be. 23