Court Opinion

ID: 9379754
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-03-16 15:03:14.995489+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:16:30.478600
License: Public Domain

Supreme Court of Florida
                                ____________

                            No. SC22-322
                             ____________

                   HECTOR SANCHEZ-TORRES,
                          Appellant,

                                    vs.

                       STATE OF FLORIDA,
                            Appellee.

                           March 16, 2023

PER CURIAM.

     Hector Sanchez-Torres appeals the circuit court’s order

summarily denying his successive postconviction motion filed under

Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.851. For the reasons

explained below, we affirm. 1

     1. We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const.
                           BACKGROUND

     In 2008, Sanchez-Torres and his coperpetrator, Markeil

Thomas, robbed and killed Erick Colon as he was walking home. 2

The pair left Colon’s body on the sidewalk, where it was discovered

a few hours later with a single shot through the head. Colon’s cell

phone and wallet were gone.

     Weeks later, Sanchez-Torres’s younger sister found an

unfamiliar cell phone and called the contact listed as “mom.” A

distraught woman answered and explained that the phone had

belonged to her murdered son. The sister hung up and described

the exchange to her mother, who then contacted the police.

Eventually, Sanchez-Torres confessed to the murder but offered

inconsistent statements as to who fired the fatal shot.

     Sanchez-Torres was convicted of armed robbery and first-

degree murder, and was sentenced to death for the murder.

Importantly, in imposing sentence, the court did not rely on a

triggerman finding. In its sentencing order, the court clarified that

     2. The facts of the crime are detailed in our decision affirming
Sanchez-Torres’s convictions and death sentence on direct appeal.
See Sanchez-Torres v. State, 130 So. 3d 661 (Fla. 2013).

                                 -2-
it “[wa]s not making a finding that Defendant, in fact, was the

person who shot Eric[k] Joel Colon” and that it had not “relied upon

the inference that Defendant may have been the triggerman as an

aggravating factor justifying the death penalty.” Sent’g Ord. at 13.

Instead, it gave great weight to two aggravators—“none of which

[we]re based on Defendant’s triggerman status,” id.—to justify the

sentence: that the murder had occurred during a robbery, and that

Sanchez-Torres had confessed to and been convicted of another

murder. On direct appeal, we affirmed the convictions and death

sentence. Sanchez-Torres v. State, 130 So. 3d 661, 676 (Fla. 2013).

We later affirmed denial of Sanchez-Torres’s initial postconviction

motion and denied habeas relief. Sanchez-Torres v. State, 322

So. 3d 15, 24 (Fla. 2020).

     Sanchez-Torres then filed the successive motion at issue here.

In the motion, he sought vacatur of his death sentence based on

alleged newly discovered evidence that pertained exclusively to his

coperpetrator, Thomas. Thomas was a minor at the time of the

murder and therefore ineligible for the death penalty. He was

originally sentenced to life without parole but, following changes to

juvenile sentencing law, was resentenced to a term of years with

                                 -3-
periodic review. 3 At his resentencing hearing, Thomas’s antisocial

personality disorder diagnosis and violent juvenile record—as well

as the fact that he had once confessed to being the triggerman but

later recanted—came to light.

     Sanchez-Torres argued that the information should be treated

as newly discovered evidence entitling him to relief. He made two

substantive claims premised on an assumption that Thomas was

the shooter: first, that under the doctrine of relative culpability,

Thomas’s term-of-years sentence rendered Sanchez-Torres’s death

sentence unconstitutional; and, second, that the “newly discovered

evidence” now mitigated his death sentence.

     The trial court concluded that the motion was untimely

because the information was not, in fact, newly discovered evidence.

The court went on to rule on the merits that neither claim

warranted relief. This appeal followed.

      3. Thomas’s resentencing was required under Miller v.
Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012), Montgomery v. Louisiana, 577 U.S.
190 (2016), and Florida’s updated juvenile sentencing statute,
section 921.1402, Florida Statutes (2016).

                                  -4-
                             ANALYSIS

     We need not address the trial court’s timeliness analysis

because we agree with the trial court’s findings on the merits. We

consider each of Sanchez-Torres’s merit-based arguments in turn.

Under our long-settled precedent, we analyze newly discovered

evidence using the two-prong framework established in Jones v.

State, 591 So. 2d 911 (Fla. 1991), and Jones v. State, 709 So. 2d

512 (Fla. 1998).

                     A.   Relative Culpability

     The first argument turns on Sanchez-Torres’s assertion that

the evidence presented at Thomas’s resentencing hearing showed

that Thomas—not Sanchez-Torres—was the shooter. To support

that factual claim, Sanchez-Torres points to Thomas’s antisocial

personality disorder diagnosis, record of juvenile violence, and

recanted confession to shooting Colon.

     Starting from the premise that Thomas was the shooter (and

therefore more culpable), Sanchez-Torres argues that his death

sentence, compared to Thomas’s term-of-life sentence, is

disproportionate under relative culpability principles. Sanchez-

Torres asserts that, because Thomas’s alleged triggerman status

                                -5-
was unknown to the trial court at the time of sentencing, the Court

must consider it now. The State responds that Lawrence v. State,

308 So. 3d 544 (Fla. 2020), bars this claim because relative

culpability is a component of proportionality review. In Lawrence,

we held that the conformity clause in article I, section 17 of the

Florida Constitution prohibits us from performing comparative

proportionality review.

     We do not need to resolve how far Lawrence extends because

we have long held that relative culpability analysis does not apply

when a coperpetrator is legally ineligible for the death penalty,

including because of his age. See Sanchez-Torres, 130 So. 3d at

675 n.5 (“[Relative culpability] analysis is inapplicable here because

codefendant Thomas was seventeen at the time of the crime and

therefore ineligible for the death penalty.”); see also Bargo v. State,

331 So. 3d 653, 665 n.6 (Fla. 2021); Archer v. State, 293 So 3d 455,

457 (Fla. 2020); Farina v. State, 937 So. 2d 612, 619 (Fla. 2006).

The court committed no error in summarily denying this claim.

                                  -6-
                         B.   Mitigation Evidence

     Sanchez-Torres’s next argument closely relates to the first.

Sanchez-Torres contends that the “newly discovered evidence”

mitigates his death sentence. Again, he assumes that that evidence

proves Thomas was the shooter and, because it was unknown at

sentencing, now has mitigating effect. But Sanchez-Torres fails to

acknowledge that the sentencing court declined to premise the

death penalty on a triggerman finding. On the contrary, the court

clearly explained that it did not make a finding or rely on an

inference as to who shot Colon. Instead, the sentencing court

found that independent aggravators counseled in favor of the death

penalty, including that the murder had occurred during a robbery

and that Sanchez-Torres had been convicted of another murder.

The court was right to summarily deny this claim.

                              CONCLUSION

     For the reasons stated above, we affirm the circuit court’s

order summarily denying Sanchez-Torres’s successive motion for

postconviction relief.

     It is so ordered.

                                   -7-
MUÑIZ, C.J., and CANADY, POLSTON, COURIEL, GROSSHANS,
and FRANCIS, JJ., concur.
LABARGA, J., concurs in result.

NOT FINAL UNTIL TIME EXPIRES TO FILE REHEARING MOTION
AND, IF FILED, DETERMINED.

An Appeal from the Circuit Court in and for Clay County,
    John H. Skinner, Judge
    Case No. 102009CF000671000AMX

Robert S. Friedman, Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, and Karin
L. Moore, Assistant Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, Northern
Region, Tallahassee, Florida,

     for Appellant

Ashley Moody, Attorney General, and Charmaine M. Millsaps,
Senior Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, Florida,

     for Appellee

                               -8-