Opinion ID: 1988657
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Florida Mills Jury Override

Text: The Mills case from Florida is significant for two reasons. First, the facts of the crime and the circumstances of the defendant are similar to the Garden case. Second, the trial judge's jury override death sentence in Mills was not only affirmed on direct appeal in 1985, during the Florida Supreme Court's statistical zenith in affirming jury overrides, but the jury override death sentence in Mills was also reaffirmed in 2001, during the still extant nadir in the Florida Supreme Court's override affirmance rate. In 1979, Mills, then 22 years old, was convicted of felony murder, aggravated battery, and burglary. The facts set forth by the Florida Supreme Court in its 1985 opinion on direct appeal are as follows: The evidence at the trial showed that Gregory Mills and his accomplice Vincent Ashley broke into the home of James and Margaret Wright in Sanford between two and three o'clock in the morning, intending to find something to steal. When James Wright woke up and left his bedroom to investigate, Mills shot him with a shotgun. Margaret Wright awakened in time to see one of the intruders run across her front yard to a bicycle lying under a tree. Mr. Wright died from loss of blood caused by multiple shotgun pellet wounds. [44] After finding Mills guilty of first degree murder, burglary, and aggravated battery, and with the knowledge that the prosecution granted immunity to Mills' co-defendant, Ashley, who testified against Mills, the jury recommended a sentence of life imprisonment. The Florida Supreme Court affirmed the trial judge's jury override and specifically held that the jury override death sentence in Mills' case met the requirements of Tedder v. State . [45] We hold that the trial judge's findings in support of the sentence of death even without the finding of especially heinous, atrocious and cruel, meet the Tedder standard. We find that the facts suggesting a sentence of death are so clear and convincing that virtually no reasonable person could differ. There are three valid statutory aggravating circumstances, and the trial judge has found there are no valid mitigating circumstances. The purported mitigating circumstances claimed by Mills, but not found by the trial judge, are not sufficient to outweigh the aggravating circumstances nor do they establish a reasonable basis for the jury's recommendation. We conclude that the imposition of a sentence of death after a jury recommendation of life was proper in this case. [46] In 2001, the Florida Supreme Court had the Mills jury override death sentence before it once again. According to Mills' collateral attack on his jury override death sentence, Keen's [47] application of Tedder by the Florida Supreme Court constituted a new standard by which jury override cases are reviewed in Florida. In responding to Mills' argument, the Florida Supreme Court acknowledged: In Keen, on the defendant's direct appeal following his third trial, we applied the Tedder analysis. In applying Tedder, we emphasized the fact that a trial court's analysis in an override situation should focus on the record evidence supporting the jury's recommendation and should not be the same weighing process that is used when the jury recommends death. [48] The Florida Supreme Court then made three emphatic points in its 2001 Mills opinion. First, Keen is not a major constitutional change or jurisprudential upheaval of the law as it was espoused in Tedder. [49] Second, Keen offers no new or different standard for considering jury overrides on appeal. [50] Third, we disagree with Mills' contention that Keen offers a new standard of law and we reject the contention that Keen was anything more than an application of our long-standing Tedder analysis. [51] The final three statements in the 2001 Mills opinion, however, are most significant in our review of Garden's appeal. First, Tedder is the seminal case in Florida on jury overrides and remains so after Keen. [52] Second, Tedder was properly applied to the Mills case. [53] Third, Keen provides no basis for a reconsideration of the trial judge's decision to sentence Mills to death by overriding the jury's recommendation for life. [54]