Opinion ID: 1791862
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Ring and Our Response

Text: We begin by summarizing Ring and our response to it. In June 2002, the United States Supreme Court held in Ring that a jury, not a judge, must find beyond a reasonable doubt every fact necessary to expose a defendant to a sentence of death. 536 U.S. at 589, 122 S.Ct. 2428. Ring was not a sudden or unforeseeable development in constitutional law; rather, it was an evolutionary refinement in capital jurisprudence. Monlyn v. State, 894 So.2d 832, 841 (Fla.2004) (Pariente, C.J., specially concurring). The Supreme Court merely applied the reasoning of another case, Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 120 S.Ct. 2348, 147 L.Ed.2d 435 (2000), to death penalty cases. In Apprendi, the Court had announced that [o]ther than the fact of a prior conviction, any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury, and proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Id. at 490, 120 S.Ct. 2348. Although Apprendi had excluded death penalty cases from its holding, id. at 497, 120 S.Ct. 2348, the Court concluded two years later in Ring that [c]apital defendants, no less than noncapital defendants... are entitled to a jury determination of any fact on which the legislature conditions an increase in their maximum punishment. 536 U.S. at 589, 122 S.Ct. 2428. Ring not only invalidated the judicial finding of aggravating factors in Arizona, id. at 609, 122 S.Ct. 2428, but also cast doubt upon the constitutionality of the death penalty laws of many other states, including Florida, where judges are partially or entirely responsible for deciding whether to sentence defendants to death. See id. at 608, 122 S.Ct. 2428 (stating that Florida has a hybrid system of capital sentencing, involving both judge and jury). Those states must now determine whether Ring requires minor or even major adjustments to their capital sentencing schemes. We first analyzed Ring's effect on Florida law in two plurality opinions, Bottoson v. Moore, 833 So.2d 693 (Fla.), cert. denied, 537 U.S. 1070, 123 S.Ct. 662, 154 L.Ed.2d 564 (2002), and King v. Moore, 831 So.2d 143 (Fla.), cert. denied, 537 U.S. 1067, 123 S.Ct. 657, 154 L.Ed.2d 556 (2002). Both opinions noted that the United States Supreme Court repeatedly has upheld Florida's capital sentencing scheme. Bottoson, 833 So.2d at 695; King, 831 So.2d at 143. They also cited that Court's admonition that [i]f a precedent of this Court has direct application in a case, yet appears to rest on reasons rejected in some other line of decisions, the [other court] should follow the case which directly controls, leaving to this Court the prerogative of overruling its own decisions. Rodriguez de Quijas v. Shearson/American Express, Inc., 490 U.S. 477, 484, 109 S.Ct. 1917, 104 L.Ed.2d 526 (1989), quoted in Bottoson, 833 So.2d at 695, and King, 831 So.2d at 143. Neither Bottoson nor King, however, garnered a majority. In fact, Chief Justice Pariente later recognized that we have not yet as a Court determined whether Ring has any applicability to Florida's death penalty scheme or if so, whether any aspect of that holding would be retroactive to cases already final. See Allen v. State, 854 So.2d 1255, 1263 (Fla.2003) (Pariente, J., specially concurring). As a result of this lack of consensus, virtually every postconviction appeal filed in this Court since Ring invokes that case. We repeatedly have denied such requests for clear lack of merit, while reserving judgment on whether Ring even affects Florida law or applies retroactively to postconviction cases. Usually the Ring claims have failed because the sentence was supported by an aggravating factor found by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt, such as a prior violent felony conviction or a contemporaneous enumerated felony conviction. See, e.g., Kimbrough v. State, 886 So.2d 965 (Fla.2004); Pietri v. State, 885 So.2d 245 (Fla.2004); Sochor v. State, 883 So.2d 766 (Fla.2004). We could easily dispose of Johnson's Ring claim in the same way because his death sentence was supported by an aggravating factor found by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt  namely, his prior convictions of two violent felonies. Johnson, 442 So.2d at 197. We choose to use this opportunity, however, to answer one of the underlying questions on which we have previously reserved judgment: whether Ring applies retroactively in Florida to defendants, such as Johnson, whose convictions already were final at the time of that decision. Only in concurring opinions has this issue been discussed at length. See, e.g., Windom v. State, 886 So.2d 915, 935 (Fla.2004) (Cantero, J., specially concurring) (concluding that Ring should not apply retroactively in Florida); Bottoson v. Moore, 833 So.2d 693, 717 (Fla.2002) (Shaw, J., concurring in result only) (concluding that Ring should apply retroactively in Florida). Yet in our recent decision in Monlyn, a majority consensus began to emerge. Two concurring opinions, joined by a total of five justices, expressed the view that Ring is not retroactive in Florida. Chief Justice Pariente, joined by Justice Quince, concluded that Ring does not apply retroactively to cases on postconviction review under the test of Witt.  Monlyn, 894 So.2d at 841. Justice Cantero, joined by Justices Wells and Bell, agreed that under the Witt test Ring does not apply retroactively, but urged that, in determining the retroactivity of cases emanating from the United States Supreme Court, this Court abandon Witt in favor of the more recent test announced in Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 109 S.Ct. 1060, 103 L.Ed.2d 334 (1989). Id. at 840. Using the analysis articulated in Witt, we now hold that Ring does not apply retroactively in Florida.