Kelsey v. State

• Citation: 206 So.3d 5
• Decision Date: 08 December 2016
• Docket Number: No. SC15–2079,SC15–2079
• Parties: Thomas KELSEY, Petitioner, v. STATE of Florida, Respondent.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

206 So.3d 5

Thomas KELSEY, Petitioner,

v.STATE of Florida, Respondent.

No. SC15–2079

Supreme Court of Florida.

[December 8, 2016]

Nancy Ann Daniels, Public Defender, and Glen Phillip Gifford, Assistant Public Defender, Second Judicial Circuit, Tallahassee, Florida, for Petitioner

Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, Trisha Meggs Pate, Bureau Chief, and Virginia Chester Harris, Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, Florida, for Respondent

Julianne M. Holt, President, Tampa, Florida; and Jonathan Harris Greenberg, Assistant Public Defender, Miami, Florida, for Amicus Curiae Florida Public Defender Association, Inc.

Paolo Giuseppe Annino of FSU College of Law Public Interest Law Center, Tallahassee, Florida; and Marsha L. Levick of the Juvenile Law Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for Amici Curiae FSU College of Law Public Interest Law Center, Juvenile Law Center, ACLU of Florida, CFFSY, The Center on Children and Families at UF, Children and Youth Law Clinic at UM, FACDL, FCF, FJRRP At FIU, FLS, National Association of Counsel for Children, NAFPD, NJDC, SJDC, and SPLC

PERRY, J.

This case is before the Court for review of the decision of the First District Court of Appeal in Kelsey v. State, 183 So.3d 439 (Fla. 1st DCA 2015). In its decision, the district court expressed concern and certified a question of great public importance,¹ which we rephrase as follows:

Is a defendant whose original sentence violated Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48 [130 S.Ct. 2011, 176 L.Ed.2d 825] (2010), and who was subsequently resentenced prior to July 1, 2014, entitled to be resentenced pursuant to the provisions of chapter 2014–220, Laws of Florida?

We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(4), Fla. Const. We answer the rephrased question in the affirmative.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

Thomas Kelsey was born on December 10, 1986. The underlying offenses in this case occurred on November 6, 2002, when fifteen-year-old Kelsey burglarized an apartment and raped the pregnant victim at knifepoint in the presence of her two small children. Kelsey was identified in 2008 based on a DNA match. In 2009, Kelsey was charged with two counts of armed sexual battery, armed burglary, and armed robbery, and he pleaded guilty. On March 26, 2010, a trial court sentenced Kelsey to two life sentences and two concurrent twenty-five-year terms for four nonhomicide offenses. After the United States Supreme Court decided Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48, 130 S.Ct. 2011, 176 L.Ed.2d 825 (2010), Kelsey sought to withdraw his plea, which was denied. At the resentencing held in January 2014, the trial court imposed concurrent sentences of forty-five years.²

On appeal, the First District Court of Appeal originally issued an opinion in Kelsey v. State, 183 So.3d 439, 440 (Fla. 1st DCA 2015), comprised of one paragraph, holding:

Even if Mr. Kelsey were entitled to resentencing under Henry [v. State, 175 So.3d 675 (Fla. 2015) ], which applied the new sentence review statute to a Graham-eligible defendant, he is not entitled to the benefit of the new sentence review statute because his previous convictions for another separate armed robbery and conspiracy to commit armed robbery disentitle him to relief. See§ 921.1402(2)(a), Fla. Stat. (2014) ("[A] juvenile offender is not entitled to review if he or she has previously been convicted of one of the following offenses, or conspiracy to commit one of the following offenses ... armed robbery.").

On Kelsey's motion for rehearing, the First District issued a revised opinion, reconsidering its legal analysis, and "concluding that [Kelsey] is not entitled to resentencing again." Id. Under its revised analysis, the First District opined that it was precluded from providing Kelsey the same relief afforded to Henry because Kelsey's forty-five-year prison term did not constitute a de facto life sentence in violation of Graham. Id. at 441 (citing Abrakata v. State, 168 So.3d 251, 252 (Fla. 1st DCA 2015) ; Lambert v. State, 170 So.3d 74, 76 (Fla. 1st DCA 2015) ). Specifically, the First District stated, "Because the concurrent resentences at issue in this case do not violate Graham, we are constrained to deny relief." Id.

After recognizing our guidance in Thomas v. State, 135 So.3d 590 (Fla. 1st DCA 2014), quashed, 177 So.3d 1275 (Fla. 2015) (table decision), the First District distinguished Kelsey, opining that the decision in Thomas was based on Miller v. Alabama, ––– U.S. ––––, 132 S.Ct. 2455, 183 L.Ed.2d 407 (2012),³ and its progeny, and not Graham. The First District recognized that, "the supreme court appears to require that any juvenile initially sentenced ... in violation of Miller be sentenced under the new framework regardless of what resentence may have been imposed in the interim." Kelsey, 183 So.3d at 441. However, the district court reasoned:

Unlike Miller cases for which no valid remedy on resentencing was available until the recent legislation, a wide range of valid term of years sentences are available for [juveniles] whose original sentences were unconstitutional under Graham. If those resentences themselves violate Graham by providing no meaningful opportunity for release (as in Henry and Gridine [v. State, 175 So.3d 672 (Fla. 2015) ] ), the supreme court requires resort[ing] to the 2014 legislative remedies. But the supreme court has not yet held that all resentencings and re-resentencings under Graham must also comply with the recent legislation. Our precedents have not held that a forty-five year sentence for a nonhomicide is a de facto life term to which Graham applies; nor has our supreme court. We are thereby constrained to affirm in this case, but recognizing the need for clarity on this category of Graham cases certify the following question ....

Id. at 442.

DISCUSSION

Standard of Review

Because the certified question of great public importance before this Court presents a purely legal question, the appropriate standard of review is de novo. See Gridine, 175 So.3d at 674 (citing Haygood v. State, 109 So.3d 735, 739 (Fla. 2013) ).

Graham

The United States Supreme Court's decision in Graham held that Florida's practice of sentencing juvenile offenders to life in prison for nonhomicide crimes violated the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. For a period of nearly four years, the Florida Legislature left the trial courts and district courts of appeal to determine how to legally sentence juvenile nonhomicide offenders. In 2014, the Legislature passed chapter 2014–220, Laws of Florida, which provided judicial review for juvenile offenders who were tried as adults and received more than twenty years of incarceration, with exceptions. Following that, this Court, in a unanimous decision, decided that juveniles who receive sentences that do not provide a meaningful opportunity for release are entitled to be resentenced pursuant to chapter 2014–220, Laws of Florida. As we discuss further below, we conclude that our decision in Henry v. State, 175 So.3d 675 (Fla. 2015), requires that all juvenile offenders whose sentences meet the standard defined by the Legislature in chapter 2014–220, a sentence longer than twenty years, are entitled to judicial review. We therefore hold that all juveniles who have sentences that violate Graham are entitled to resentencing pursuant to chapter 2014–220, Laws of Florida, codified in sections 775.082, 921.1401 and 921.1402, Florida Statutes (2014).

To answer the First District's certified question, we first revisit the Supreme Court's decision in Graham. Terrance Jamar Graham received a withheld adjudication and was sentenced to probation for crimes he committed at the age of sixteen. He subsequently received a life sentence after violating that probation before he turned eighteen years of age. Graham, 560 U.S. at 53–57, 130 S.Ct. 2011.

The Supreme Court began its analysis with its Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. Id. at 58, 130 S.Ct. 2011. The Court noted that the core of the Eighth Amendment "is the ‘precept of justice that punishment for crime should be graduated and proportioned to [the] offense.’ " Id. at 59, 130 S.Ct. 2011 (quoting Weems v. United States, 217 U.S. 349, 367, 30 S.Ct. 544, 54 L.Ed. 793 (1910) ). The Court then noted that Graham presented a new categorical challenge to term-of-years sentences. Id. at 61, 130 S.Ct. 2011 ("The present case involves an issue the Court has not considered previously: a categorical challenge to a term-of-years sentence."). Accordingly, the Court reasoned, the correct approach to the analysis would be the one used in cases such as Kennedy v. Louisiana, 554 U.S. 407, 128 S.Ct. 2641, 171 L.Ed.2d 525 (2008), Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551, 125 S.Ct. 1183, 161 L.Ed.2d 1 (2005), and Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304, 122 S.Ct. 2242, 153 L.Ed.2d 335 (2002). Graham, 560 U.S. at 61–62, 130 S.Ct. 2011.

Opining that "Roper established that because juveniles have lessened culpability they are less deserving of the most severe punishments," Graham, 560 U.S. at 68, 130 S.Ct. 2011 (citing Roper, 543 U.S. at 569, 125 S.Ct. 1183 ), the Court pronounced a categorical rule. Id. at 75, 78, 79, 130 S.Ct. 2011 ("Categorical rules tend to be imperfect, but one is necessary here." "A categorical rule avoids the risk that ... a court or jury will erroneously conclude that a particular juvenile is sufficiently culpable to deserve life without parole for a nonhomicide." "[A] categorical rule gives all juvenile nonhomicide offenders a chance to demonstrate maturity and reform."). The new categorical rule provided that:

The Constitution prohibits the imposition of a life without parole sentence on a juvenile offender who did not commit homicide. A State need not guarantee the offender eventual release, but if it imposes a sentence of life it must provide him or her with some realistic opportunity to obtain release before the end of that term.

Id. at 82.

In this Court's discussions of Graham, we have underscored the Supreme Court's emphasis on the status of the juvenile...