Court Opinion

ID: 9964979
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-05-01 15:03:02.401661+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:25:51.073041
License: Public Domain

FIRST DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL
                STATE OF FLORIDA
                 _____________________________

                        No. 1D2023-0434
                 _____________________________

JACOB L. HUDSON,

    Appellant,

    v.

STATE OF FLORIDA,

    Appellee.
                 _____________________________

On appeal from the Circuit Court for Bay County.
Shonna Young Gay, Judge.

                          May 1, 2024

PER CURIAM.

    AFFIRMED.

ROBERTS and ROWE, JJ., concur; B.L. THOMAS, J., concurs with
opinion.

                 _____________________________

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

B.L. Thomas, J., concurring.
    I concur in the Court’s decision affirming Hudson’s judgment
and sentence for four counts of capital sexual battery on a child
under the age of twelve, and eleven counts of lewd and lascivious
molestation and lewd battery on the same victim.

     I write to reiterate my view that Hudson and other offenders
like him should be subject to the death penalty.

     Offenders like Hudson who commit capital sexual battery
murder their young victims’ innocence. And contrary to the
reasoning of the United States Supreme Court in Kennedy v.
Louisiana, 554 U.S. 407 (2008), and the Florida Supreme Court in
Buford v. State, 403 So. 2d 943 (Fla. 1981), no decent society should
allow such offenders to avoid the just punishment of death for
these utterly depraved and horrific capital crimes. Based on recent
legislation discussed further below, such offenders may now be
sentenced to death in Florida, should these two decisions be
overruled.

     Sexual crimes of this nature committed against children merit
the death penalty in a moral and civilized society.

     This was not Hudson’s first minor victim of sexual crimes. At
sentencing, the State noted he had been sentenced to prison for
that offense. In this case, Hudson began victimizing his step-
daughter when she was ten years old. He was the only father the
victim had ever known. She called Hudson “Dad.” The victim
testified that before Hudson began sexually assaulting her, she
loved Hudson. Her mother described the victim as a “daddy’s girl,”
referring to Hudson, before the crimes occurred.

     Hudson forced the victim to perform oral sex on him, forced
her to allow him to perform oral sex on her, and committed the
other sexual crimes, all while the victim’s mother was away from
home. The victim was sleeping during one of the assaults, awoke
to find her clothes removed, and Hudson committing sexual
battery on her. Hudson told the victim he wanted to have sexual
intercourse with her, by repeating an obscene slang term. The
victim testified she “was only” ten years old and did not know what
that meant.

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     Hudson repeatedly told his victim not to tell anyone or he
would go to jail. He gave the victim cosmetics after he committed
the sexual crimes against her.

     When the victim was eleven years old, she showed her mother
some cosmetics Hudson had given her. The victim’s mother asked
her where she obtained the make-up, and the victim said Hudson
gave it to her. Her mother then asked the victim how often Hudson
gave her cosmetics, to which the victim stated “every Friday.” The
victim showed her mother the extensive and unused cosmetics
Hudson had given her. After thinking about this unusual
arrangement, the victim’s mother testified she then thought the
excessive gifts seemed like a “bribe.”

    The mother asked her daughter if Hudson had touched her
inappropriately.

     At first the victim said “no.” But then she started crying and
told her mother that “Dad,” Hudson, had touched her. The victim
then recounted all the sexual crimes Hudson had committed. She
told her mother she was afraid to tell because she thought Hudson
would hurt her or her mother if she reported his extensive crimes
against her. The victim’s mother did not go to sleep that night and
pretended to be asleep when Hudson returned, because the
victim’s mother was afraid Hudson would go into the victim’s room
and commit more sexual assaults.

     The victim’s mother then informed Hudson’s mother and
asked her to confront Hudson together, because she was afraid to
do so alone. The two of them confronted Hudson.

     The victim’s mother was screaming, crying, “on the floor,” and
could not breathe when she confronted Hudson. But Hudson just
kept talking about getting dinner. He then calmly told the victim’s
mother that “If I’m going to spend the rest of my life in prison, I’m
going to go outside and smoke a cigarette.” Hudson told the
victim’s mother he was sorry for hurting the victim, and would
accept any punishment that might be administered. At first, he
told the victim’s mother that he would call the police and report
the crimes, but he then made her call law enforcement.

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    The victim participated in two interviews with a Child
Protection Team. The State provided notice to Hudson’s counsel
that the State would introduce both hearsay statements in
evidence against Hudson.

    The victim testified at trial when she was fifteen years old.

     When asked at trial how she felt about the crimes, the victim
testified that recounting the events “disgust[ed] her”. She tried to
“forget” what had occurred.

     At sentencing, the victim provided a statement, in which she
stated in part:

     “I am here today for the ten-year-old me who had no voice. The
eleven-year-old me who never thought she would be okay and my
world would never be the same. The twelve-year old me who no
longer wanted to live. The fourteen-year-old me who thought I
would never heal from this pain. Now at fifteen, I stare at this man
who brought me all this pain and shame. From this day forward I
will not carry this burden. I will not live with this shame, so I give
this burden to [Hudson.] You will now carry this pain. You will
know the shame you created because I now know it was never mine
to have.”

  Legislation Now Provides for Imposition of Death Penalty for
              Certain Child-Sexual Battery Crimes.

     At the time Hudson committed these horrific offenses, and
told the victim’s mother he was ready “to accept” punishment for
his crimes, state law did not provide for the death penalty for such
crimes. But it does now. See §§ 794.011 (2)(a), & 921.1425, Fla.
Stat; Ch. 2023-25, Laws of Fla.

     In 2023, the legislature authorized this punishment and
stated its intent:

    Such crimes destroy the innocence of a young child and
    violate all standards of decency held by civilized society.
    The Legislature further finds that Buford v. State of

                                  4
    Florida, 403 So. 2d 943 (Fla. 1981), was wrongly decided,
    and that Kennedy v. Louisiana, 554 U.S. 407, (2008), was
    wrongly decided and an egregious infringement of the
    states’ power to punish the most heinous of crimes.

§ 921.1425, Fla. Stat.; Ch. 2023-25, Laws of Fla.

    In Lainhart v. State, I stated in my concurring opinion that
crimes such as Hudson committed merit the possibility of the
imposition of capital punishment:

         As I have noted previously, see Bicking v. State, 348
    So. 3d 35, 36 (Fla. 1st DCA 2022), historically the states
    were permitted to execute such offenders as Appellant,
    but the United States Supreme Court held in Kennedy v.
    Louisiana, in a 5-4 decision in 2008, that the death
    penalty was no longer a valid punishment for such
    horrific crimes as occurred here. 554 U.S. 407, 128 S.Ct.
    2641, 171 L.Ed.2d 525 (2008). The Court in Kennedy,
    which relied in part on its plurality decision in Coker v.
    Georgia, 433 U.S. 584, 97 S.Ct. 2861, 53 L.Ed.2d 982
    (1977), held that no matter how brutal and dehumanizing
    a rapist victimizes a person, even a child, the states are
    not authorized to impose capital punishment for such
    heinous crimes. I reiterate my view that both of these
    decisions are wrong as they are not based on the text or
    the historical underpinnings of the Eighth Amendment.
    This case is just another sad example of why those
    decisions are also wrong based on any moral theory of
    punishment and justice, especially where a perpetrator
    destroys the innocence of a young child and violates all
    standards of decency held by any civilized society.
    Bicking, 348 So. 3d at 43.

351 So. 3d 1282, 1283 (Fla. 1st DCA 2022).

     In the dissenting opinion in Kennedy v. Louisiana, Justice
Alito noted:

         The rape of any victim inflicts great injury, and
    “[s]ome victims are so grievously injured physically or

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psychologically that life is beyond repair.” Coker, 433 U.S.
at 603, 97 S.Ct. 2861 (opinion of Powell, J.). “The
immaturity and vulnerability of a child, both physically
and psychologically, adds a devastating dimension to
rape that is not present when an adult is raped.” Meister,
Murdering Innocence: The Constitutionality of Capital
Child Rape Statutes, 45 Ariz. L.Rev. 197, 208–209 (2003).
See also State v. Wilson, 96–1392, p. 6 (La. 12/13/96), 685
So.2d 1063, 1067; Broughton, “On Horror's Head Horrors
Accumulate”: A Reflective Comment on Capital Child
Rape Legislation, 39 Duquesne L.Rev. 1, 38 (2000). Long-
term studies show that sexual abuse is “grossly intrusive
in the lives of children and is harmful to their normal
psychological, emotional, and sexual development in
ways which no just or humane society can tolerate.” C.
Bagley & K. King, Child Sexual Abuse: The Search for
Healing 2 (1990).

     It has been estimated that as many as 40% of 7– to
13–year–old sexual assault victims are considered
“seriously disturbed.” A. Lurigio, M. Jones, & B. Smith,
Child Sexual Abuse: Its Causes, Consequences, and
Implications for Probation Practice, 59 Fed. Probation 69,
70 (Sept. 1995). Psychological problems include sudden
school failure, unprovoked crying, dissociation,
depression, insomnia, sleep disturbances, nightmares,
feelings of guilt and inferiority, and self-destructive
behavior, including an increased incidence of suicide.
Meister, supra, at 209; Broughton, supra, at 38; Glazer,
Child Rapists Beware! The Death Penalty and
Louisiana’s Amended Aggravated Rape Statute, 25 Am.
J.Crim. L. 79, 88 (1997).

     The deep problems that afflict child-rape victims
often become society’s problems as well. Commentators
have noted correlations between childhood sexual abuse
and later problems such as substance abuse, dangerous
sexual behaviors or dysfunction, inability to relate to
others on an interpersonal level, and psychiatric illness.
Broughton, supra, at 38; Glazer, supra, at 89; Handbook
on Sexual Abuse of Children 7 (L. Walker ed.1988).

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    Victims of child rape are nearly 5 times more likely than
    nonvictims to be arrested for sex crimes and nearly 30
    times more likely to be arrested for prostitution. Ibid.

         The harm that is caused to the victims and to society
    at large by the worst child rapists is grave. It is the
    judgment of the Louisiana lawmakers and those in an
    increasing number of other States that these harms
    justify the death penalty. The Court provides no cogent
    explanation why this legislative judgment should be
    overridden. Conclusory references to “decency,”
    “moderation,” “restraint,” “full progress,” and “moral
    judgment” are not enough.

554 U.S. at 468–69.

     Hudson murdered the innocence of the victim. In the future,
should the decisions in Kennedy and Buford be overruled,
perpetrators who commit such crimes may and should be subject
to the imposition of the death penalty as provided in law.

                 _____________________________

Jessica J. Yeary, Public Defender, and Ross Haine, Assistant
Public Defender, Tallahassee.

Ashley Moody, Attorney General, and Robert Charles “Charlie”
Lee, Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, for Appellee.

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