Alvarez v. Attorney Gen. for Fla.

• Decision Date: 08 May 2012
• Docket Number: No. 11–10699.,11–10699.
• Citation: 23 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. C 1024,679 F.3d 1257
• Parties: Carl Robert ALVAREZ, Plaintiff–Appellant, v. ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR the State of FLORIDA, State Attorney for the Eighteenth Judicial Circuit of Florida, Defendants–Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

679 F.3d 1257

23 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. C 1024

Carl Robert ALVAREZ, Plaintiff–Appellant,

v.ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR the State of FLORIDA, State Attorney for the Eighteenth Judicial Circuit of Florida, Defendants–Appellees.

No. 11–10699.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

May 8, 2012.

Marcia J. Silvers, Marcia J. Silvers, PA, Miami, FL, for Plaintiff–Appellant.

Christine Ann Guard, Susan Adams Maher, Pam Bondi, Office of the Attorney General, Tallahassee, FL, for Defendants–Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

Before MARCUS, COX and SILER,^* Circuit Judges.

MARCUS, Circuit Judge:

Carl Robert Alvarez appeals from a district court order dismissing his § 1983 civil rights action against the Attorney General of Florida and the State Attorney for Florida's Eighteenth Judicial Circuit. In 1991, Alvarez was convicted in Florida of first-degree murder, sexual battery, and aggravated child abuse. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. In state postconviction proceedings, Alvarez sought to obtain, pursuant to Florida's postconviction DNA access procedures, some of the physical evidence collected by the State in order to conduct DNA testing. The state trial court denied the petition, and Florida's Fifth District Court of Appeal affirmed, Alvarez v. State, 951 So.2d 852 (Fla. 5th Dist.Ct.App.2007) (Table).

In his federal complaint, Alvarez claims that the State prevented him from gaining access to physical evidence for purposes of DNA testing, in violation of his procedural due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, his Sixth Amendment right to confrontation and compulsory process, and his Fourteenth Amendment right of access to the courts. The district court dismissed all of the claims for failure to state a claim or for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction.

After thorough review, we affirm. The Supreme Court has recently made it abundantly clear that there is no freestanding constitutional right to access evidence for DNA testing, and that the federal courts may only upset a state's postconviction DNA access procedures if they are fundamentally inadequate to vindicate substantiverights. Alvarez has made no showing that Florida's postconviction DNA access procedures are unconstitutional on their face. Indeed, at oral argument, Alvarez's counsel explicitly abandoned any facial challenge to the constitutionality of Florida's access procedures. Alvarez also attacks the state courts' application of these procedures to the facts of his case, but the district court correctly determined that it lacked jurisdiction to entertain the claim under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. His remaining claims attempt in various ways to assert a freestanding constitutional right to obtain evidence for DNA testing; they are squarely foreclosed by case precedent.

I.

Because this case was decided on a motion to dismiss, we take the facts from Alvarez's complaint and the attached exhibits as true. Grossman v. Nationsbank, N.A., 225 F.3d 1228, 1231 (11th Cir.2000) (per curiam) (“When considering a motion to dismiss, all facts set forth in the plaintiff's complaint are to be accepted as true and the court limits its consideration to the pleadings and exhibits attached thereto.” (internal quotation marks omitted)).

These are the essential facts and procedural history. In 1991, Alvarez was convicted in the Eighteenth Judicial Circuit Court for Seminole County, Florida, of first degree murder, sexual battery, and aggravated child abuse of his stepson, Joshua Boynton, who was seven years old. On the evening of December 5, 1989, Alvarez made a 911 phone call reporting that his stepson was unconscious. Boynton was still unconscious when the paramedics arrived about four minutes later. Boynton never regained consciousness, however, and was determined to be brain dead the following day. His life support systems were removed on December 7, 1989. Boynton had sustained injuries to the left side of his face, left ear, both eyes, the left side of the head, and the inside parts of his thighs and buttocks.

Alvarez claims that no physical evidence linked him to the crime and that his conviction was based wholly upon his pre-trial statements denying responsibility for the crimes. In fact, the State's medical evidence contradicted Alvarez's pre-trial statements. Thus, for example, the State's medical evidence established that the Boynton's injuries were not consistent with the victim falling from a couch—the explanation initially offered by Alvarez to paramedics. The medical testimony further provided that the condition of Boynton's anus was consistent with it having been penetrated by a blunt object or finger. The defense's theory at trial was no longer that Boynton had fallen from a couch, but rather that Boynton's injuries were inflicted by someone other than Alvarez and that it was possible that a third party may have injured Boynton while Alvarez was asleep that night or when Boynton was at a neighbor's house or with his mother earlier in the day.

During the investigation of Alvarez, the State collected the following pieces of physical evidence: Joshua Boynton's pajama top on which a small amount of blood was found; Joshua Boynton's pajama bottom and jeans; Joshua Boynton's sweatshirt; a pair of men's sweatpants; a men's white Hard Rock Cafe sweatshirt and Joshua Boynton's belt; a vomit-soaked towel; a pair of men's pajamas; one towel; a pair of blue jeans; and one pair of sweatpants. Alvarez claims that none of this physical evidence was submitted for DNA testing at the time of his criminal trial in 1990, observing that “[s]ophisticated DNA tests were not then generally available.”

Alvarez also says that in 1990 the blood found on Boynton's pajama top was insufficient to allow for DNA testing, but “DNA testing can now be performed on even a single cell and even on degraded evidence.” Alvarez proposes to perform DNA testing on each of the aforementioned pieces of evidence at his own expense, and thus seeks access for that reason. He also posits that the physical evidence has been preserved and is in the possession of either the Seminole County Sheriff's Office or Clerk of Court.

Following his conviction, Alvarez collaterally filed in state court a “Petition for Post–Sentencing DNA Testing,” pursuant to Fla. R.Crim. P. 3.853 and Fla. Stat. § 925.11. Fla. R.Crim. P. 3.853 specifically governs the procedures in Florida for obtaining postconviction DNA testing. It requires the trial court to answer three questions when ruling on the access motion:

(A) Whether it has been shown that physical evidence that may contain DNA still exists.

(B) Whether the results of DNA testing of that physical evidence likely would be admissible at trial and whether there exists reliable proof to establish that the evidence containing the tested DNA is authentic and would be admissible at a future hearing.

(C) Whether there is a reasonable probability that the movant would have been acquitted or would have received a lesser sentence if the DNA evidence had been admitted at trial.

Fla. R.Crim. P. 3.853(c)(5). Fla. Stat. § 925.11 also addresses postsentencing DNA testing and similarly requires the trial court to answer the same three questions. Fla. Stat. § 925.11(2)(f).

After several rounds of amendation, Alvarez filed a “Third Amended Petition for Post–Conviction DNA Testing” in state court, maintaining his innocence and seeking access to the physical evidence for DNA testing. He claimed this would exonerate him because the resulting tests would establish the identity of the real perpetrator of these crimes. Alvarez theorized that the victim's injuries were sustained as a result of violent conduct, so there would be a reasonable possibility that bodily fluids would have been left behind on the physical evidence, including the blood found on the victim's pajama top.

The state court conducted a hearing on the petition in June 2006 pursuant to Florida's now-decade-old DNA access procedures. Ultimately, the court denied the third amended petition in a brief order. It found that Alvarez had “failed to meet the first and third prongs” of the rule's three-part test. As for the first prong, the court found that because the injury to the victim was allegedly “caused by some blunt object, but not a penis,” there was a strong likelihood that no DNA evidence relating to the victim's injuries existed on the items in evidence. And as for the third prong, the court found that Alvarez's theory of innocence was simply “I didn't do it,” and that Alvarez failed to adequately explain how DNA testing would exonerate him, resulting in an acquittal or lesser sentence. The state trial court's order was summarily affirmed per curiam by Florida's Fifth District Court of Appeal. Alvarez, 951 So.2d at 852.

Alvarez then filed the instant civil rights action in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The State moved to dismiss, and after the United States Supreme Court decided District Attorney's Office for the Third Judicial District v. Osborne, 557 U.S. 52, 129 S.Ct. 2308, 174 L.Ed.2d 38 (2009), the district court granted the motion and dismissed all of Alvarez's claims.

This timely appeal followed.

II.

We review de novo the grant of a motion to dismiss under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim. Thompson v. RelationServe Media, Inc., 610 F.3d 628, 633 (11th Cir.2010). Like the district court, we are required to accept the factual allegations in the complaint as true and construe them in the light most favorable to the plaintiff. Speaker v. U.S. Dep't of Health & Human Servs. Ctrs. for Disease Control & Prevention, 623 F.3d 1371, 1379 (11th Cir.2010). The district court also based its dismissal in part on the absence of subject-matter jurisdiction pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(1); we review...