Grosvenor v. State

• Decision Date: 25 March 2004
• Docket Number: No. SC02-1307.,SC02-1307.
• Citation: 874 So.2d 1176
• Parties: Traci Ann GROSVENOR, Petitioner, v. STATE of Florida, Respondent.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

874 So.2d 1176

Traci Ann GROSVENOR, Petitioner, v. STATE of Florida, Respondent.

No. SC02-1307.

Supreme Court of Florida.

March 25, 2004.

Rehearing Denied May 26, 2004.

Robert S. Griscti, Gainesville, FL, for Petitioner.

Charles J. Crist, Jr., Attorney General, and Kellie A. Nielan and Pamela J. Koller, Assistant Attorneys General, Daytona Beach, FL, for Respondent.

CANTERO, J.

We review Grosvenor v. State, 816 So.2d 822 (Fla. 5th DCA 2002), which certified conflict with Cousino v. State, 770 So.2d 1258 (Fla. 4th DCA 2000), and Mason v. State, 742 So.2d 370 (Fla. 1st DCA 1999). We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(4), Fla. Const. This case involves a defendant seeking to vacate a guilty plea because of ineffective assistance of counsel in failing to advise of a possible defense. We must decide whether, in asserting prejudice, defendants must allege that the defense would have succeeded at trial. For the reasons stated below, we hold they do not.

I.

Petitioner Traci Ann Grosvenor and a male companion went on a week-long alcohol and cocaine binge, driving from Sarasota to Tampa and ending in Bushnell in Sumter County. Because of tire problems, they stopped at an auto store closed for the night. A police officer saw them stealing a tire from a car parked in the lot and called the store's owner, who drove to the store with his son. The officer questioned the two travelers and locked Grosvenor's friend in the patrol car. Grosvenor left her car with a handgun and shot the officer. An exchange of gunfire occurred, in which the store owner's son was killed and the store owner wounded. Grosvenor also was hit. A laboratory report revealed traces of marijuana and cocaine in Grosvenor's system when she arrived at the hospital.

Grosvenor was indicted for capital firstdegree murder, attempted first-degree murder of a law-enforcement officer, attempted first-degree murder with a firearm, robbery with a firearm, and resisting arrest with violence. She was represented by two attorneys from the Fifth Judicial Circuit's Public Defender's Office. She told her attorneys that she had used drugs and alcohol on the day of the incident. A tape recording and transcript of a statement she gave to the police confirmed her statement. Her attorneys never discussed with her the possibility of a voluntary intoxication defense.

Grosvenor pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. Later, Grosvenor called a local newspaper and told a reporter that she did not kill anyone and if she had a "split hair chance" at a trial she wanted to take it. The trial judge, after reading the article, sua sponte vacated the guilty plea and attached a copy of the newspaper article to his order. Later, an investigator for the Public Defender's Office interviewed Grosvenor, as did a psychologist. She detailed her drug and alcohol abuse to both. Again, her attorneys did not advise her about a voluntary intoxication defense. Grosvenor later accepted her attorneys' advice to avoid a trial and the concomitant possibility of the death penalty. She entered a plea of nolo contendere and was sentenced to two life terms, two fifty-year terms, and one five-year term, all running concurrently.

After she was sentenced, Grosvenor filed a motion for postconviction relief seeking to vacate the judgments and sentences. The motion alleged that "had [she] been informed of her viable defense of voluntary intoxication ... she would not have entered the plea agreement and instead would have proceeded to trial." The trial court granted an evidentiary hearing on the issue of ineffective assistance of counsel.

Under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984), a defendant alleging ineffective assistance of counsel must prove both deficient performance of counsel and prejudice to the defendant. In this case, the court agreed to assume for purposes of the initial hearing that trial counsel's performance was deficient and consider only whether Grosvenor suffered prejudice. Grosvenor presented witnesses who testified about her frequent intoxication and her demeanor when intoxicated. Eyewitnesses, however, testified in their depositions that she did not appear intoxicated at the time of the crime. Grosvenor herself told police officers after the incident that she had not been too intoxicated to drive a vehicle, but only had been "a little high, tipsey [sic]."

The deposition of Grosvenor's lead trial attorney was also admitted into evidence at the hearing. He stated that he considered the voluntary intoxication defense and "decided it was not a valid defense." Moreover, he stated that Sumter County juries do not even consider drug and alcohol abuse as mitigation—they treat it as another aggravating factor.

The court found that Grosvenor's voluntary intoxication defense was not "viable" and therefore concluded that she had not demonstrated prejudice.

Grosvenor appealed. The Fifth District affirmed, holding that defendants challenging their guilty pleas based on ineffective assistance of counsel must show that they had a "viable" defense. Grosvenor, 816 So.2d at 822. The court recognized that its decision conflicted with decisions of other district courts and certified conflict with those decisions.

II.

In Hill v. Lockhart, 474 U.S. 52, 106 S.Ct. 366, 88 L.Ed.2d 203 (1985), the United States Supreme Court established a two-pronged test for determining claims of ineffective assistance of counsel relating to guilty pleas. The first prong is the same as the deficient performance prong of Strickland. See Hill, 474 U.S. at 58-59, 106 S.Ct. 366. Regarding the second prong, the Supreme Court in Hill held that a defendant must demonstrate "a reasonable probability that, but for counsel's errors, the defendant would not have pleaded guilty and would have insisted on going to trial." Id. at 59. The Court followed that statement, however, with an explanation that has caused much confusion:

In many guilty plea cases, the "prejudice" inquiry will closely resemble the inquiry engaged in by courts reviewing ineffective-assistance challenges to convictions obtained through a trial. For example, where the alleged error of counsel is a failure to investigate or discover potentially exculpatory evidence, the determination whether the error "prejudiced" the defendant by causing him to plead guilty rather than going to trial will depend on the likelihood that discovery of the evidence would have led counsel to change his recommendation as to the plea. This assessment, in turn, will depend in large part on a prediction whether the evidence likely would have changed the outcome of a trial. Similarly, where the alleged error of counsel is a failure to advise the defendant of a potential affirmative defense to the crime charged, the resolution of the "prejudice" inquiry will depend largely on whether the affirmative defense likely would have succeeded at trial. See, e.g., Evans v. Meyer, 742 F.2d 371, 375 (C.A.7 1984) ("It is inconceivable to us ... that [the defendant] would have gone to trial on a defense of intoxication, or that if he had done so he either would have been acquitted or, if convicted, would nevertheless have been given a shorter sentence than he actually received"). As we explained in Strickland v. Washington, supra, these predictions of the outcome at a possible trial, where necessary, should be made objectively, without regard for the "idiosyncracies of the particular decisionmaker." Id., at 695, 104 S.Ct. 2052.

474 U.S. at 59-60, 106 S.Ct. 366.

Given this language, courts in both Florida and other jurisdictions have interpreted Hill `s explanation of the prejudice prong differently. In Florida, three of the five district courts of appeal have held that a defendant asserting ineffective assistance of counsel relating to a guilty plea is not required to allege a viable defense. Instead, the viability of the defense is relevant to the credibility of the assertion that the defendant would have insisted on going to trial if informed of that defense. See, e.g., Cordes v. State, 842 So.2d 874 (Fla. 2d DCA 2003); Hobbs v. State, 790 So.2d 1164, 1166 (Fla. 4th DCA 2001); Mason v. State, 742 So.2d 370 (Fla. 1st DCA 1999). Several other jurisdictions, including the overwhelming majority of federal circuit courts, also have adopted this approach.<sup>1</sup> Two districts, however, have interpreted Hill as requiring a defendant to allege that, had the plea not been entered, the defendant would have prevailed at trial. See, e.g., Maples v. State, 804 So.2d 599 (Fla. 5th DCA 2002); Diaz v. State, 534 So.2d 817 (Fla. 3d DCA 1988). A few other jurisdictions also have held that Hill requires that defendants allege that their affirmative defenses would likely have succeeded at trial.<sup>2</sup> These courts rely on the paragraph from Hill quoted above, which explains that in many cases, "the resolution of the `prejudice' inquiry will depend largely on whether the affirmative defense likely would have succeeded at trial." 474 U.S. at 59,106 S.Ct. 366 (emphasis added).

In our judgment, however, these courts overlook two things. First, they ignore the conditional language in the Court's statement, which notes that such a resolution will occur in many, not all, cases and also notes that the prejudice inquiry will depend largely, but not totally, on the merits of the defense. That in many cases the prejudice inquiry will "largely" resemble a merits analysis, however, does not make them coextensive. Rather, it simply means that the merits of the defense is closely related to the credibility of the defendant's claim that he would not have pleaded guilty if advised of the defense. Second, these cases ignore the immediately preceding paragraph in Hill, in which the Court first states that the prejudice inquiry "focuses on whether counsel's constitutionally ineffective performance affected the outcome of the plea process" and then holds unequivocally that "in order to satisfy the `preju...