Opinion ID: 2543852
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Emotional or Mental Disturbance

Text: Ault argues that even though the trial court determined that he did not qualify for statutory mental health mitigation, the court should have evaluated whether the evidence qualified as nonstatutory mental health mitigation. We have previously explained that Florida's capital sentencing statute does in fact require that emotional disturbance be extreme. However, it clearly would be unconstitutional for the state to restrict the trial court's consideration solely to extreme emotional disturbances. Under the case law, any emotional disturbance relevant to the crime must be considered and weighed by the sentencer, no matter what the statutes say. Any other rule would render Florida's death penalty statute unconstitutional. Cheshire v. State, 568 So.2d 908, 912 (Fla. 1990) (citations omitted). However, in Davis v. State, 2 So.3d 952, 962-63 (Fla.2008), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 129 S.Ct. 2872, 174 L.Ed.2d 585 (2009), we rejected a challenge to a trial court's failure to consider nonstatutory mental health mitigation where the defendant's impaired capacity had not been proposed as a nonstatutory factor. We held that a defendant must raise a proposed nonstatutory mitigating circumstance before the trial court in order to challenge on appeal the trial court's decision about that nonstatutory mitigating factor. Id. at 962 (citing Lucas v. State, 568 So.2d 18, 23-24 (Fla.1990)). Here, Ault did not raise nonstatutory mental health mitigation before the trial court. Accordingly, we find that the court did not err in failing to address this mitigating circumstance.