Opinion ID: 1920305
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Fundamental Fairness Inquiry

Text: The district court below did not conduct a retroactivity analysis on the basis of Witt, but instead applied this Court's decision in Moreland v. State, 582 So.2d 618 (Fla.1991), determining that the principle of fundamental fairness which mandated retroactive application in that case also controlled the instant matter. See Barnum, 849 So.2d at 374. The First District's reliance upon Moreland was misplaced because the facts presented in Moreland are clearly distinguishable from those we consider here. Moreland addressed the issue of the retroactivity of this Court's decision in Spencer v. State, 545 So.2d 1352 (Fla.1989). Spencer held that a 1980 administrative order of the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit dividing Palm Beach County into eastern and western jury districts was unconstitutional because it excluded blacks from the eastern district's jury pool. See Moreland, 582 So.2d at 619. As a result, this Court reversed a defendant's first-degree murder conviction and death sentence. See id. While Spencer was pending in this Court, Moreland was tried for first-degree murder. He challenged the constitutionality of the administrative order, but his challenge was rejected. See id. Moreland was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. See id. On direct appeal, Moreland again challenged the constitutionality of the administrative order, but the district court simply affirmed his conviction and sentence without opinion. See id. After Spencer was released by this Court, Moreland filed a postconviction motion, arguing that Spencer should be applied retroactively, and that his conviction and sentence should be vacated. See id. The trial court conducted a Witt analysis and held that Spencer was retroactive. The district court, however, disagreed, and held that Spencer was not retroactive under Witt. See id. On review, we agreed that Spencer should not be applied retroactively on the basis of Witt, but nonetheless held that Spencer should be applied retroactively to Moreland. Our justification for retroactive application there was fundamental fairness. We held that had Moreland been sentenced to death rather than life, his direct appeal would have been heard by the Supreme Court rather than the Fourth District Court of Appeal, and he would have obtained the same result as Spencer and other defendants whose convictions and sentences were vacated due to the unconstitutional administrative order. See id. at 620. There, we wrote: It would be fundamentally unfair to deny Moreland the relief provided by Spencer merely because his sentence directed his appeal to a court other than this one. Id. Importantly, we noted that Moreland had claimed in the trial court and on direct appeal that the administrative order was unconstitutional, and that [h]ad he not done so he would not be entitled to relief. Id. at 620 n. 3; see also Owen v. Crosby, 854 So.2d 182, 190-91 (Fla.2003) (holding that Owen had not challenged jury selection at trial and was therefore not entitled to relief under Moreland ). Applying Moreland to the instant action, the district court determined: [I]f this court had certified conflict with Grinage in Barnum's direct appeal, the supreme court could have considered Barnum's case, decided it in the manner it did Thompson, and remanded for a new trial. Barnum, 849 So.2d at 374. In Grinage, the Fifth District had held that before [a defendant] can be convicted of attempting to murder a police officer engaged in the lawful performance of his duty, the State must allege and prove that he knew his victim was a police officer. Grinage, 641 So.2d at 1364. We accepted jurisdiction in Thompson on the basis of conflict between Grinage and Thompson v. State, 667 So.2d 470 (Fla. 3d DCA 1996), where the Third District held that section 784.07(3) was only a sentencing enhancement and did not require the defendant to have knowledge that the victim was a law enforcement officer. See Thompson, 695 So.2d at 691-92. The First District's reliance upon Moreland and its conclusion that fundamental fairness necessitates retroactive application of Thompson is in error. The instant action differs from Moreland in several respects. First, we clearly held in Moreland that had the defendant not asserted at trial that the administrative order was unconstitutional, he would not have been entitled to relief based upon the retroactive application of Spencer. See Moreland, 582 So.2d at 620 n. 3. Here, it is uncontested and the record reflects that Barnum did not argue that the jury should be instructed on a knowledge element, nor did he object to the court's jury instructions, despite the dispute regarding whether Barnum knew the victim was a law enforcement officer. [11] Second, in Moreland, we noted that had the defendant there received the death sentence, as opposed to a sentence of life imprisonment, his direct appeal would have been in this Court, rather than the district court. Therefore, he was entitled to the benefit of what unquestionably would have occurred had his direct appeal been to this Court. See id. at 620. In the instant action, the First District assumed that had that court certified conflict with Grinage in 1995, this Court would have accepted jurisdiction and decided Barnum's case as it eventually did Thompson's in 1997. See Barnum, 849 So.2d at 374. However, even if the First District had certified the conflict, there would have been no guarantee that this Court would have accepted jurisdiction. Unlike the mandatory review in death penalty cases, a district court's certification of conflict does not present this Court with mandatory jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(4), Fla. Const. Therefore, it is not beyond dispute, as it was in Moreland, that we would have reviewed Barnum's case. Further, in Moreland, we had the benefit of not only our decision in Spencer, but also the benefit of at least two other decisions in which we had reached the same result. See Moreland, 582 So.2d at 620. Thus, it could safely be inferred from those three decisions that Moreland's outcome would have been the same had we had the opportunity to consider the issue. The same cannot be said in Barnum's case. Although this Court held in Thompson that knowledge is an element of section 784.07(3), we have not addressed the issue in any other decision. There is no sufficient guarantee, as there was in Moreland, that had we accepted jurisdiction in 1995, we would have decided the issue the same way as we eventually did in Thompson and would have likewise granted Barnum relief. In Witt, this Court wrote: The doctrine of finality should be abridged only when a more compelling objective appears, such as ensuring fairness and uniformity in individual adjudications. Witt, 387 So.2d at 925. That concept, in part, led to the outcome in Moreland. See Moreland, 582 So.2d at 619-20. However, Moreland presented a unique circumstance directly resulting from the dual-track system for appeals of first-degree murder convictions, which places appeals from death sentences before this Court and appeals from sentences of life imprisonment before the district courts. Barnum's is the more common situation in which district courts reach conflicting interpretations, and in reviewing only one of the decisions, this Court resolves the conflict in favor of the defendant. The principle established in Moreland does not apply in this scenario.