King v. Moore

Decision Date24 October 2002
Docket NumberNo. SC02-1457.,SC02-1457.
Citation831 So.2d 143
PartiesAmos Lee KING, Petitioner, v. Michael W. MOORE, etc., Respondent.
CourtFlorida Supreme Court

William Jennings, Capital Collateral Regional Counsel—Middle Region, and Kevin T. Beck, Assistant CCRC, Eric Pinkard, Assistant CCRC, and Mark Gruber, Assistant CCRC, Middle Region, Tampa, FL; and Mark E. Olive of Law Offices of Mark E. Olive, P.A., Tallahaseee, FL, for Petitioner. Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General, Carol M. Dittmar, Senior Assistant Attorney General, and Stephen D. Ake, Assistant Attorney General, Tampa, FL, for Respondent.

Charles T. Canady, General Counsel, and Wendy W. Berger, Assistant General Counsel, Tallahassee, FL, for Honorable Jeb Bush, Governor of the State of Florida; and Arthur I. Jacobs, General Counsel, Fernandino Beach, FL, and Raymond L. Marky, Assistant State Attorney, Second Judicial Circuit, Tallahassee, FL, for Florida Prosecuting Attorney Association, Amicus Curiae.

Nancy Daniels, Public Defender, Second Judicial Circuit, and President-elect, The Florida Public Defender Association, Inc., Tallahassee, FL; Bennett H. Brummer, Public Defender, and Christina A. Spaulding, Assistant Public Defender, Eleventh Judicial Circuit, Miami, FL; Carey Haughwout, Public Defender, and Gary Caldwell, Assistant Public Defender, Fifteenth Judicial Circuit, West Palm Beach, FL; and Robert Wesley, Public Defender, and George Allen Couture, Assistant Public Defender, Ninth Judicial Circuit, Orlando, FL, for The Florida Public Defender Association, Inc., Amicus Curiae.

Robert Augustus Harper, Jr. of Robert Augustus Harper Law Firm, P.A., Tallahasee, FL; and James T. Miller, Chair, Amicus Committee, FACDL, Jacksonville, FL, for Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Amicus Curiae.

PER CURIAM.

Amos Lee King, a prisoner under sentence of death and an active death warrant, petitions this Court for a writ of habeas corpus.1 He seeks relief pursuant to Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584, ___, 122 S.Ct. 2428, 2443, 153 L.Ed.2d 556 (2002), wherein the United States Supreme Court held unconstitutional the Arizona capital sentencing statute "to the extent that it allows a sentencing judge, sitting without a jury, to find an aggravating circumstance necessary for imposition of the death penalty."

Although King contends that he is entitled to relief under Ring, we decline to so hold. The United States Supreme Court in February 2002 stayed King's execution and placed the present case in abeyance while it decided Ring.2 That Court then, in June 2002, issued its decision in Ring, summarily denied King's petition for certiorari, and lifted the stay without mentioning Ring in the King order.3 The Court did not direct the Florida Supreme Court to reconsider King in light of Ring.

Significantly, the United States Supreme Court has repeatedly reviewed and upheld Florida's capital sentencing statute over the past quarter of a century4 and although King contends that there now are areas of "irreconcilable conflict" in that precedent, the Court in Ring did not address this issue. In a comparable situation, the United States Supreme Court held:

If a precedent of this Court has direct application in a case, yet appears to rest on reasons rejected in some other line of decisions, the [other courts] should follow the case which directly controls, leaving to this Court the prerogative of overruling its own decisions.

Rodriquez De Quijas v. Shearson/American Express, 490 U.S. 477, 484, 109 S.Ct. 1917, 104 L.Ed.2d 526 (1989).

Accordingly, we deny King's petition for habeas relief. This Court's stay of execution shall terminate at 5 p.m. on the thirtieth day following the filing of this opinion. No motion for rehearing will be allowed.

It is so ordered.

WELLS, J., and HARDING, Senior Justice, concur.

HARDING, Senior Justice, concurs with an opinion.

WELLS, J., concurs specially with an opinion.

ANSTEAD, C.J., and SHAW and LEWIS, JJ., concur in result only with opinions.

PARIENTE, J., concurs in result only with an opinion, in which ANSTEAD, C.J., concurs.

QUINCE, J., recused.

HARDING, Senior Justice, concurring.

I concur with the opinion for the reasons stated therein. As indicated in my concurring opinion in Bottoson v. Moore, 833 So.2d 693 (Fla.2002), the Court needs to say no more.

WELLS, J., concurring specially.

I concur with the opinion and decision to deny relief in this case and in Bottoson v. Moore, 833 So.2d 693 (Fla.2002). I write specially to state that my opinion remains the same as it was on July 8, 2002, when this Court entered the stays of execution in this case and in Bottoson. At the time those orders were entered, I dissented to the granting of the stays and stated:

I find no legal basis to stay the execution in this case. We have finally adjudicated this case. No United States constitutional law applicable to the Florida capital sentencing statute has been held by the Supreme Court of the United States to have changed. To the contrary, the Supreme Court has removed any obstacle for this execution to occur. We are bound by their application of federal constitutional law.

King v. Moore, 824 So.2d 127, 128 (Fla. 2002) (Wells, J., dissenting). The extensive cases which I set forth in my dissenting opinion continue to control this Court's decision in the instant cases because the cited United States Supreme Court decisions are directly ruling on Florida's capital sentencing statute.

I also write separately to state my disagreement with much of the analysis in Chief Justice Anstead's concurring in result only opinion in Bottoson5 and with the analysis in Justice Pariente's concurring in result only opinions in Bottoson and in this case. Bottoson, of course, deals with the very same issues concerning Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584, 122 S.Ct. 2428, 153 L.Ed.2d 556 (2002), which are the subject of this case.6 I also do not agree with Justice Shaw that Florida's aggravating factors are the functional equivalent of elements of a greater offense. Reaching that conclusion would overrule United States Supreme Court precedent. See Hildwin v. Florida, 490 U.S. 638, 640, 109 S.Ct. 2055, 104 L.Ed.2d 728 (1989)

("[T]he existence of an aggravating factor here is not an element of the offense but instead is `a sentencing factor that comes into play only after the defendant has been found guilty.'" (quoting McMillan v. Pennsylvania, 477 U.S. 79, 93, 106 S.Ct. 2411, 91 L.Ed.2d 67 (1986))).

I specifically disagree with much of what is written in the various concurring opinions regarding the operation of Florida's capital sentencing statute. I do not believe that these individual explanations, which are hypothetical as to how Florida's capital sentencing statute is applied, are necessary or even helpful. Such explanations are incomplete and are inherently written with the writer's philosophic spin on how Florida's capital sentencing statute is applied. The operation of Florida's statute is best explained by reviewing the twenty-six years of precedent from this Court and from the United States Supreme Court that has actually applied Florida's statute to a variety of distinct factual circumstances.

The twenty-six years of precedent directly analyzing and applying Florida's capital sentencing statute include United States Supreme Court decisions thoroughly and accurately analyzing the operation of Florida's statute. Some of those analyses, but not an exhaustive list, include Proffitt v. Florida, 428 U.S. 242, 251-60, 96 S.Ct. 2960, 49 L.Ed.2d 913 (1976); Spaziano v. Florida, 468 U.S. 447, 104 S.Ct. 3154, 82 L.Ed.2d 340 (1984); Hildwin v. Florida, 490 U.S. 638, 109 S.Ct. 2055, 104 L.Ed.2d 728 (1989); Harris v. Alabama, 513 U.S. 504, 518, 115 S.Ct. 1031, 130 L.Ed.2d 1004 (1995); Lambrix v. Singletary, 520 U.S. 518, 117 S.Ct. 1517, 137 L.Ed.2d 771 (1997); and Jones v. United States, 526 U.S. 227, 119 S.Ct. 1215, 143 L.Ed.2d 311 (1999). In particular, the Court's opinion in Lambrix contains a detailed analysis of Florida's capital sentencing statute and its jurisprudential history.

I believe that this Court's responsibility is to recognize the plain history of what has occurred in these cases. That history is:

1. In this Court's January 2002 opinions, issued after King and Bottoson were scheduled to be executed, this Court specifically denied King and Bottoson's Apprendi7 claims.

2. On January 23, 2002, the United States Supreme Court stayed King's execution and, on February 5, 2002, stayed Bottoson's execution with statements that the stays would terminate automatically if certiorari was not granted. 3. On June 24, 2002, the United States Supreme Court issued its decision in Ring v. Arizona.

4. On June 28, 2002, the United States Supreme Court denied certiorari in King and Bottoson's cases, which automatically terminated the stays and allowed the executions to go forward.8

To reach the conclusion that Ring somehow undermines Florida's capital sentencing scheme as it was applied to King or Bottoson, it is necessary to conclude that the United States Supreme Court made the decision to terminate the King and Bottoson stays of execution even though Ring rendered Florida's statute unconstitutional as it had been applied to King and Bottoson. I cannot conclude that the United States Supreme Court would have permitted King and Bottoson to be executed if that court determined that Ring invalidated the death sentences imposed in these cases. The United States Supreme Court, which had entered the stays in January 2002 after all appeals in this Court had been exhausted, knew the effect of its termination of its stays was to remove any federal court barrier to the executions, which could then be rescheduled and carried out. I conclude that it must logically follow that if the United States Supreme Court had concluded that Florida's capital sentencing statute was rendered unconstitutional as applied to King and Bottoson for the reasons stated in Ring, it...

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