Opinion ID: 4534204
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Sentencing Order Deficiencies

Text: Smiley argues that the trial court’s sentencing order was deficient in several ways. First, Smiley faults the trial court for not conducting an analysis under Enmund v. Florida, 458 U.S. 782 (1982), and Tison v. Arizona, 481 U.S. 137 (1987). Relatedly, Smiley claims that the trial court improperly relied on a finding that Smiley was the shooter. As we explained in Jackson v. State, 575 So. 2d 181 (Fla. 1991), the Supreme Court’s decisions in Enmund and Tison addressed the constitutionality, in multi-participant felony murder cases, of imposing a death sentence on someone other than the person who actually killed the victim. We summarized those cases as standing for the proposition that “the death penalty may be proportional punishment if the evidence shows both that the defendant was a major participant in the crime, and that the defendant’s state of mind amounted to reckless indifference to human life.” Id. at 191. The Enmund/Tison rule has no bearing on this case. As we have explained, the guilt phase jury found that Smiley killed Drake, and that finding is supported by competent, substantial evidence in the 5. Smiley cites the verdict form approved by this Court in 2018 in In re Standard Criminal Jury Instructions in Capital Cases, 244 So. 3d 172 (Fla. 2018). - 35 - record. Therefore, there was no error in the trial court’s failure to perform an Enmund/Tison analysis or in the trial court’s finding that Smiley was the shooter in the Drake murder. Smiley next contends that the trial court overcounted the number of aggravating factors proven in Smiley’s case. Smiley argues that, after performing the requisite merger analysis, the various aggravating factors should have been treated as two: the prior capital or violent felony aggravator, and the felony murder aggravator (murder “in the commission of” an enumerated felony). In its sentencing order, the trial court instead grouped the aggravating factors in the following way: one combined aggravator for the two prior convictions involving the Riley murder; one combined aggravator for the prior convictions involving the robbery and assault of Mark Wilkerson and for the fact that the Drake murder was committed during the robbery of Wilkerson; one combined aggravator for the contemporaneous conviction for burglary with an assault or battery while armed and for the fact that the Drake murder was committed during a burglary; and one aggravator for the fact that the murder was committed for pecuniary gain. We find that any error in the trial court’s merger analysis was harmless. As the trial court found, this was a highly aggravated murder, given both the contemporaneous crimes committed against Mark Wilkerson and, most importantly, Smiley’s previous conviction for the Riley murder. All of the facts - 36 - underlying the aggravating factors proven in this case—regardless of how those factors are grouped for merger purposes—were properly subject to consideration by the trial court. All of those facts would have added weight to whatever subset of aggravating factors remained at the conclusion of any different merger analysis. And balanced against this aggravation, the trial court found very little mitigation. Indeed, the trial court explicitly acknowledged that its balancing of aggravation and mitigation was qualitative not quantitative, and it found that “the nature and quality of the mitigation pales in comparison to the proven aggravating factors.” Under these circumstances, we conclude that there is no reasonable possibility that, absent any error in the trial court’s merger analysis, the court would have imposed a lesser sentence. See, e.g., Lukehart v. State, 776 So. 2d 906, 925 (Fla. 2000) (applying harmless error analysis to claim of improper doubling of aggravating factors). Finally, Smiley claims that the trial court failed to properly consider each proposed nonstatutory mitigating circumstance and that this requires resentencing. Smiley does not identify any particular nonstatutory mitigating circumstance that the trial court failed to consider. Instead, the claimed error goes to the form of the trial court’s sentencing order. Smiley claims that the sentencing order is inadequate under the standards this Court established in Campbell v. State, 571 So. 2d 415 (Fla. 1990), receded from in part by Trease v. State, 768 So. 2d 1050, 1055 - 37 - (Fla. 2000). We review alleged deficiencies in a sentencing order for harmless error. See Mullens v. State, 197 So. 3d 16, 30 (Fla. 2016). The trial court’s sentencing order introduces its analysis of Smiley’s proposed mitigating circumstances saying: “The Court examined the evidence pertaining to the Defendant’s life prior to the age of seventeen (when he left home), after he left his home, the reported brain aneurysm(s), and the Defendant’s conduct after the brain injury.” The Court then evaluated each of Smiley’s proposed statutory mitigating circumstances in turn. However, when it got to the catch-all nonstatutory mitigating circumstances, the trial court addressed all of them in a single paragraph. The court wrote that it “examined the evidence presented through the testimony” of Smiley’s mitigation witnesses, evaluated that testimony to consider “the matters related to the Defendant’s character, background, life, and the circumstances of the offense,” and “concluded that this circumstance should be accorded moderate weight.” Earlier in its order, the trial court had summarized the testimony offered by each of Smiley’s witnesses. This Court has long reaffirmed Campbell’s requirement that the trial court’s sentencing order must expressly evaluate each mitigating circumstance proposed by the defendant to determine whether it is supported by the evidence and, in the - 38 - case of nonstatutory factors, whether it is truly of a mitigating nature. 6 A trial court may comply with this requirement by bundling proposed mitigating circumstances into categories of related conduct or issues and addressing them accordingly. In fact, we have encouraged trial courts to do so. See Mullens, 197 So. 3d at 30. And we allow trial courts to exercise their discretion to avoid repeatedly addressing proposed mitigating circumstances that are redundant. See Foster v. State, 778 So. 2d 906, 920 (Fla. 2000). Finally, in Rogers v. State, 285 So. 3d 872, 890 (Fla. 2019), we clarified that a trial court’s written sentencing order need not “expressly articulate why the evidence presented warranted the allocation of a certain weight to a mitigating circumstance.” Our precedents have aimed to avoid imposing on trial courts overly formalistic requirements, while at the same time ensuring that sentencing orders comply with the dictates of section 921.141(4), Florida Statutes (2019),7 and contain enough specificity to enable meaningful appellate review. 6. Campbell also requires the trial court’s order to: “(2) assign a weight to each aggravating factor and mitigating factor properly established; (3) weigh the established aggravating circumstances against the established mitigating circumstances; and (4) provide a detailed explanation of the result of the weighing process.” Rogers v. State, 285 So. 3d 872, 889 (Fla. 2019) (quoting Orme v. State, 25 So. 3d 536, 547-48 (Fla. 2009)). 7. Section 921.141(4) requires the following: In each case in which the court imposes a sentence of death, the court shall, considering the records of the trial and the sentencing - 39 - In this case, the trial court’s sentencing order does not address Smiley’s proposed nonstatutory mitigating circumstances with the specificity that Campbell and its progeny require. As we have suggested, the problem is not that the order fails to address the nonstatutory mitigators in exactly the format or order that Smiley proposed in his sentencing memorandum. Instead, the problem is that Smiley’s proposed nonstatutory mitigators are not so substantively similar that they could be dealt with in a single, catch-all fashion. To give just a few examples: Smiley argued that his stepfather subjected him to overly harsh (though not abusive) corporal punishment; that Smiley himself has been a good father to his own son; that he persevered in his education and worked hard at his jobs; and that he has conducted himself well since his incarceration. None of this is to say that the trial court had to treat any of these circumstances as mitigating in Smiley’s case or to assign them any particular weight. But Smiley’s proposed mitigators are too substantively dissimilar from each other to be addressed as an undifferentiated whole. proceedings, enter a written order addressing the aggravating factors set forth in subsection (6) found to exist, the mitigating circumstances in subsection (7) reasonably established by the evidence, whether there are sufficient aggravating factors to warrant the death penalty, and whether the aggravating factors outweigh the mitigating circumstances reasonably established by the evidence. - 40 - Nonetheless, because there is no reasonable possibility that Smiley would have received a lesser sentence absent the trial court’s error, we conclude that the error was harmless. Smiley’s previous conviction for the Riley capital felony and for the contemporaneous violent felonies committed against Mark Wilkerson made this a highly aggravated case. Moreover, the sentencing order leaves no doubt that the trial court was aware of and considered the nonstatutory mitigating circumstances that Smiley proposed. Significantly, the sentencing order shows that the trial court—like the penalty phase jury—was unpersuaded that Smiley’s aneurysms and resulting brain injury constituted significant mitigation. The trial court found that Smiley had established the statutory mitigators for extreme mental or emotional disturbance and for substantially impaired ability to conform to the law, but the court still assigned each of these mitigators only “little weight.” This was the heart of Smiley’s case for mitigation, and the trial court was largely unmoved by it. On this record, there is no reasonable possibility that disaggregating Smiley’s proposed nonstatutory mitigation—which the trial court assigned “moderate weight” in the aggregate—could have changed the trial court’s weighing calculus and resulted in a life sentence.