Court Opinion

ID: 9958891
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-04-10 14:03:22.108299+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:17:55.202806
License: Public Domain

FIRST DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL
                STATE OF FLORIDA
                  _____________________________

                         No. 1D2022-1135
                  _____________________________

MARK STEVE DWIGHT SALMON,

    Appellant,

    v.

STATE OF FLORIDA,

    Appellee.
                  _____________________________

On appeal from the Circuit Court for Bay County.
Timothy Register, Judge.

                         April 10, 2024

B.L. THOMAS, J.

    Appellant appeals his jury convictions for attempted
manslaughter and robbery with a firearm. We affirm the
judgment, but we write to discuss Appellant’s claim that he was
denied his constitutional rights when he was tried by a jury of
fewer than twelve people for a felony punishable by life
imprisonment. We reject all other arguments without comment.

    On the night of February 22, 2020, a man named Mr. Sessions
and his female companion went to check on a piece of property he
owned in Bay County. This property included a mobile home, RV,
and Ford F-350.

    When they arrived at the property, Mr. Sessions noticed what
looked like flashlights inside the RV. He felt that “something
wasn’t right,” so he tried to return to his car. Before he could do so,
a tall, lanky man walked out from around the RV and pointed a
rifle at him.

     According to Mr. Sessions, two more men followed the tall
lanky man: one who was small and short, and one who was bigger.
The small man carried some sort of handgun, and the bigger man
carried an assault rifle. The men asked Mr. Sessions “where the
money at” repeatedly. When Mr. Sessions reached into his pocket
to retrieve his money, the tall man shot Mr. Sessions in the mouth.
After Mr. Sessions had been shot, his female companion got out of
the car and tried to run away. The men followed her and “beat her”;
one man, upon hitting the woman, apologized when he realized she
was Jamaican.

    The three men took approximately $3,000 to $3,500 from Mr.
Sessions. They then “jumped in the car and sped off.”

    Later, Mr. Sessions identified his assailants to the police
using a photo lineup. Appellant was identified as the shorter man
from the attack, who had been standing at the rear of the truck
with the handgun. Mr. Sessions noted that Appellant was
“Jamaican” in accent, and that he had both heard and seen
Appellant participating in the crime.

     After being identified, Appellant was brought in for
questioning. In response to police speculation about what had
happened, Appellant asserted that he had been at the scene
incidentally after being pulled along to a drug deal between Mr.
Sessions and one of the other men. He claimed to have just been in
the car, to not have been involved in the deal at all, and to have no
knowledge of exactly “what went down” beyond the fact that his
companions stole money, pills, cocaine, and marijuana from Mr.
Sessions. Although Appellant admitted to police that he held one
of the handguns at some point during the night, he maintained
that he stayed in the car for the duration of the robbery and did
not participate in the crime.

     Appellant argues that he was denied his Sixth Amendment
right to a trial by jury when he was tried by a jury of less than
twelve people for a felony punishable by life imprisonment.

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     Recently, Justice Gorsuch of the United States Supreme
Court opined in a dissent from the denial of certiorari in Khorrami
v. Arizona, 143 S. Ct. 23–27 (2022) (Gorsuch, J., dissenting), that
a criminal defendant is entitled to a twelve-person jury before he
may be constitutionally convicted under the Sixth Amendment.
Justice Gorsuch asserted that the Court’s decision in Williams v.
Florida, 399 U.S. 78 (1970), which upheld Florida’s authority to
rely on six-person juries fifty-two years earlier, was wrongly
decided. 143 S. Ct. at 27 (Gorsuch, J., dissenting).

     Justice Gorsuch noted that, “while scholars may debate the
precise moment when the common-law jury came to be fixed at 12
members, this much is certain: By the time of the Sixth
Amendment’s adoption, the 12-person criminal jury was ‘an
institution with a nearly four-hundred-year-old tradition in
England.’” Id. at 23.

     And yet, contrary to Justice Gorsuch’s view, this “four-
hundred-year-old tradition” was not incorporated in the
constitutional document itself. Instead, the Sixth Amendment’s
drafters removed language in the initial draft specifying that the
jury-trial right in the Sixth Amendment must include its
“accustomed requisites,”—language which likely would have
eliminated any grounds for deviating from a twelve-member jury.
See id. (citing Williams, 399 U.S. at 92). For this reason and the
reasons that follow, we conclude that Williams was correctly
decided.

 The Sixth Amendment Does Not Mandate Twelve-Person Juries

     As was discussed in my concurring opinion in Lainhart v.
State, if we were to disturb the holding in Williams, and if our
opinion were to apply retroactively, it could force the State to retry
thousands of cases pending on direct appeal. 351 So. 3d 1282,
1284–85 (Fla. 1st DCA 2022) (Thomas, J., concurring). There is
also no reason to assume that a unanimous twelve-person jury
produces a more just result:

    Given this purpose, the essential feature of a jury
    obviously lies in the interposition between the accused
    and his accuser of the commonsense judgment of a group
    of laymen, and in the community participation and

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    shared responsibility that results from that group’s
    determination of guilt or innocence. The performance of
    this role is not a function of the particular number of the
    body that makes up the jury. To be sure, the number
    should probably be large enough to promote group
    deliberation, free from outside attempts at intimidation,
    and to provide a fair possibility for obtaining a
    representatives cross-section of the community. But we
    find little reason to think that these goals are in any
    meaningful sense less likely to be achieved when the jury
    numbers six, than when it numbers 12—particularly if
    the requirement of unanimity is retained. And, certainly
    the reliability of the jury as a factfinder hardly seems
    likely to be a function of its size.

Williams, 399 U.S. at 100–01 (footnote omitted). And as explained
in Williams, a larger jury composed of twelve members might just
as easily advantage the State as the defense because it allows just
one juror out of twelve to prevent a conviction or an acquittal. Id.
at 101.

     Therefore, Appellant’s argument that he was entitled to trial
before a twelve-person jury is meritless under both federal and
state precedent.

    AFFIRMED.

ROWE, J., concurs; LEWIS, J., concurs in result without opinion.

                 _____________________________

    Not final until disposition of any timely and
    authorized motion under Fla. R. App. P. 9.330 or
    9.331.
               _____________________________

Jessica J. Yeary, Public Defender, Victor D. Holder, Assistant
Public Defender, Tallahassee, for Appellant.

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Ashley Moody, Attorney General, Daren L. Shippy, Assistant
Attorney General, Tallahassee, for Appellee.

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