Court Opinion

ID: 9902664
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-11-27 15:21:27.398404+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:21:56.282440
License: Public Domain

FIFTH DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL
                STATE OF FLORIDA
                  _____________________________

                       Case No. 5D23-2211
                   LT Case No. 2007-CF-004464
                  _____________________________

VINCENT CROWELL,

    Petitioner,

    v.

STATE OF FLORIDA,

    Respondent.
                  _____________________________

Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus.
A Case of Original Jurisdiction.

Vincent Crowell, Lawtey, pro se.

No Appearance for Respondent.

                       September 22, 2023

PER CURIAM.

     Petitioner Vincent Crowell has filed a “Motion for Manifest
Injustice” which this Court treats as a petition for writ of habeas
corpus. In this successive pleading, Crowell has once again failed
to establish that he is illegally detained or that any manifest
injustice has occurred. Finding his petition to be unauthorized and
successive, we dismiss the petition. See Johnson v. Singletary, 647
So. 2d 106, 109 (Fla. 1994).
    PETITION DISMISSED.

HARRIS and SOUD, JJ., concur.
MACIVER, J., concurs specially, with opinion.

                 _____________________________

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

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MACIVER, J., concurring.              Case No. 5D23-2211
                                      LT Case No. 2007-CF-4464

      I concur in the dismissal of Crowell’s petition as an
unauthorized successive petition seeking the same relief. I write
separately to clarify that I do not agree with the district cases that
have held that State v. Lewars, 259 So. 3d 793 (Fla. 2018), does not
apply retroactively.

      Relying, perhaps too axiomatically, on Witt v. State, 387 So.
2d 922 (Fla. 1980), district court opinions have described the
Lewars holding as an “evolutionary refinement” of the law. See
Sims v. State, 286 So. 3d 292, 294 (Fla. 4th DCA. 2019); Wilson v.
State, 279 So. 3d 756, 757 (Fla. 2nd DCA. 2019). To the contrary,
Lewars did little more than compel a plain reading of a statutory
provision that had not itself been changed.

      Contrasting the major constitutional changes that would be
cognizable in post-conviction capital cases, the Supreme Court in
Witt elaborated on what it meant by “evolutionary refinements.”

      In contrast to these jurisprudential upheavals are
      evolutionary refinements in the criminal law,
      affording new or different standards for the
      admissibility of evidence, for procedural fairness, for
      proportionality review of capital cases, and for other
      like matters. Emergent rights in these categories, or
      the retraction of former rights of this genre, do not
      compel an abridgement of the finality of judgments.

Witt, 387 So. 2d at 929.

        A dictate from the Supreme Court to read a statute as
plainly written is not the same as a court’s expansion or retraction
of rights under an amorphous, overarching standard and is not
similar in kind to the other examples alluded to by the Witt court,
i.e., standards of admissibility, standards of procedural fairness,
or for proportionality review of capital cases. In short, the law has
not “evolved,” rather, decisional law that was incompatible with
the plain text of the statute was recognized as such and dispensed
with.

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