Opinion ID: 4110207
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Fundamental Fairness: James v. State

Text: Mosley, whose crimes occurred in April 2004, raised his entitlement to the application of Ring at his first opportunity at the trial level, arguing the unconstitutionality of Florida’s death penalty in light of Ring and that he was entitled to a unanimous jury verdict.11 Mosley’s Ring claims were consistently rejected by the trial court judge. He then raised a Ring claim on direct appeal, which this Court summarily rejected by stating that his remaining claims, including a Ring claim, “are clearly without merit based on this Court’s precedent . . . and do not require further elaboration.” Mosley, 46 So. 3d at 518; accord id. at 518 n.7. Mosley also filed a petition for certiorari to the United States Supreme Court, which was denied. Mosley v. Florida, 526 U.S. 887 (2010). Since the time this Court denied Mosley’s Sixth Amendment claim under Ring, a major development occurred in 2016, when the United States Supreme Court finally held in Hurst v. 11. In fact, Mosley’s Ring-related filings were extensive. See, e.g., State v. Mosley, No. 16-2004-CF-6675-AXXX-MA, 2005 WL 6353490 (Fla. Cir. Ct. 4th Cir. Nov. 29, 2005) (denying Defendant’s Motion to Declare Florida’s Death Penalty Unconstitutional); id., 2005 WL 8132035 (Fla. Cir. Ct. 4th Cir. Aug. 25, 2005) (denying Defendant’s Motion in Limine and to Strike Portions of “Florida Standard Jury Instructions in Criminal Cases” Re: Caldwell v. Mississippi); id., 2005 WL 8132030 (Fla. Cir. Ct. 4th Cir. Aug. 25, 2005) (denying Defendant’s Motion to Prohibit Misleading References to the Advisory Role of the Jury at Sentencing). - 42 - Florida that the “analysis the Ring Court applied to Arizona’s sentencing scheme applies equally to Florida’s.” 136 S. Ct. at 621-22. This Court has previously held that fundamental fairness alone may require the retroactive application of certain decisions involving the death penalty after the United States Supreme Court decides a case that changes our jurisprudence. For example, in James, this Court reviewed whether the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Espinosa v. Florida, 505 U.S. 1079 (1992), should apply retroactively. James, 615 So. 2d at 669. Although pre-Espinosa this Court had rejected claims that our jury instruction on the extremely heinous, atrocious or cruel (HAC) aggravator was unconstitutionally vague, the United States Supreme Court disagreed and held in Espinosa that our instruction was, indeed, unconstitutionally vague. 505 U.S. 1079. This Court then held that defendants who had raised a claim at trial or on direct appeal that the jury instruction pertaining to the HAC aggravating factor was unconstitutionally vague were entitled to retroactive application of Espinosa. James, 615 So. 2d at 669. While this Court did not employ a standard retroactivity analysis in James, the basis for granting relief was that of fundamental fairness. Id. This Court reasoned that, because James had raised the exact claim that was validated by the United States Supreme Court in Espinosa, “it would not be fair to deprive him of the Espinosa ruling.” Id. - 43 - The situation presented by the United States Supreme Court’s holding in Hurst v. Florida is not only analogous to the situation presented in James, but also concerns a decision of greater fundamental importance than was at issue in James. Id.12 For fourteen years after Ring, until the United States Supreme Court decided Hurst v. Florida, Florida’s capital defendants attempted to seek relief based on Ring, both in this Court and the United States Supreme Court. In this instance, as in James, where Mosley repeatedly raised Ring claims that were rejected, the interests of finality must yield to fundamental fairness. See Witt, 387 So. 2d at 925. Under Hurst v. Florida and Hurst, the fundamental right to trial by jury under both the United States and Florida Constitutions is implicated, and Florida’s death 12. This result is further supported by this Court’s precedent, similar to James, holding that other new rules, which had far less impact on the sanctity of a jury’s verdict than the rule from Hurst v. Florida, should apply retroactively. See, e.g, Thompson v. Dugger, 515 So. 2d 173, 175 (Fla. 1987) (holding retroactive Hitchcock v. Dugger, 481 U.S. 393, 398-99 (1987), which held that instruction to advisory jury to not consider nonstatutory mitigation, and trial judge’s refusal to consider nonstatutory mitigation was improper); Harvard v. State, 486 So. 2d 537, 539 (Fla. 1986) (holding retroactive the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 608 (1978), which held that the exclusion of nonstatutory mitigating evidence was unconstitutional); State v. White, 470 So. 2d 1377, 1379 (Fla. 1985) (holding retroactive Enmund v. Florida, 458 U.S. 782, 797 (1982), which held that the “imposition of the death penalty on one . . . who aids and abets a felony in the course of which a murder is committed by others but who does not himself kill, attempt to kill, or intend that a killing take place or that lethal force will be employed,” is improper); Tafero v. State, 459 So. 2d 1034, 1035 (Fla. 1984) (determining, under Witt, that Enmund is “such a change in the law as to be cognizable in post-conviction proceedings”). - 44 - penalty sentencing procedure has been held unconstitutional, thereby making “the machinery of post-conviction relief . . . necessary to avoid individual instances of