McCuiston v. State
| Decision Date | 17 November 1988 |
| Docket Number | No. 70706,70706 |
| Citation | 534 So.2d 1144,13 Fla. L. Weekly 672 |
| Parties | 13 Fla. L. Weekly 672 Timmy Ray McCUISTON, Petitioner, v. STATE of Florida, Respondent. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
Michael E. Allen, Public Defender and Carl S. McGinnes, Asst. Public Defender, Second Judicial Circuit, Tallahassee, for petitioner.
Robert A. Butterworth, Atty. Gen. and Peggy A. Quince, Asst. Atty. Gen., Tampa, for respondent.
We review McCuiston v. State, 507 So.2d 1185 (Fla. 2d DCA 1987), because of conflict with Hall v. State, 511 So.2d 1038 (Fla. 1st DCA 1987), and Frierson v. State, 511 So.2d 1016 (Fla. 5th DCA 1987). Jurisdiction is predicated upon article V, section 3(b)(3), Florida Constitution.
McCuiston was convicted of robbery. The trial court imposed a sentence above the guidelines recommendation on the basis that McCuiston had been declared to be an habitual felony offender. The Second District Court of Appeal affirmed this ruling, holding "that sentencing as an habitual offender constituted a clear and convincing reason for departing from the guidelines." McCuiston v. State, 462 So.2d 830, 831 (Fla. 2d DCA 1984) (). Thereafter, this Court in Whitehead v. State, 498 So.2d 863 (Fla.1986), held that finding a defendant to be an habitual offender is not a legally sufficient reason for departing from the recommendation of the sentencing guidelines. McCuiston then filed a motion for postconviction relief under Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850, asserting the illegality of his sentence. The motion was denied. The Second District Court of Appeal pointed out that the sentence McCuiston received was valid when it was imposed and became final but could not have been properly imposed after the Whitehead decision. The court concluded that Whitehead did not have retroactive application and affirmed the denial of McCuiston's 3.850 motion.
The defendant in Hall found himself in an identical posture, except that by the time his appeal from the denial of the motion for postconviction relief was decided by the First District Court of Appeal, this Court had rendered its decision in Bass v. State, 12 F.L.W. 289 (Fla. June 11, 1987), withdrawn on reh'g, 530 So.2d 282 (Fla.1988). The sentences imposed upon Bass included the stacking of minimum mandatory three-year terms. After Bass' sentence became final, this Court in Palmer v. State, 438 So.2d 1 (Fla.1983), held that such stacking was illegal. The effect of the Bass decision was to hold that Bass could challenge his sentence by way of a motion for postconviction relief even though Palmer was decided after Bass' sentence became final.
In Hall, the First District Court of Appeal stated:
We have experienced some difficulty discerning the precise effect of the holding in Bass on the issue before us. The decision appears to be based exclusively on the legal principle that the court's construction of a statute gives it meaning from the inception of the statute (unless otherwise specified in the decision) to the complete exclusion of the legal doctrines of law of the case and the correlative concept of finality of decisions. Ordinarily, a decision which has become final based upon a certain construction of a statute may not thereafter be reopened and readjudicated because of a changed construction of that statute. Bass holds, however, that a different rule applies in respect to criminal sentences because of the explicit language in rule 3.850 which permits appellate review of a sentence that exceeds the limits provided by the sentencing guidelines law at any time.
511 So.2d at 1042 (footnotes omitted). The court concluded that the rationale of Bass dictated that because of the subsequent guidelines interpretation rendered by this Court in Whitehead, Hall was entitled to relief by way of a motion under rule 3.850.
On similar facts, the Fifth District Court of Appeal reached the same result in Frierson. The court read Whitehead to say that the habitual offender statute had been repealed by the guidelines legislation and reasoned that any sentence raised beyond the original statutory maximum by virtue of habitual offender status was illegal.
Subsequent to the rendition of all of the foregoing opinions, a further development took place which substantially affects the outcome of our decision. On September 1, 1988, this Court, on rehearing, withdrew its opinion in Bass and substituted a new opinion in lieu thereof. We maintained our position that Bass was entitled to relief but did so only on the basis that Palmer should be deemed to have retroactive application. That portion of our original opinion placing in doubt lower appellate court constructions of sentencing statutes until approved or overruled by the Supreme Court which puzzled the First District Court of Appeal in Hall is not contained in our new opinion. Therefore, the determination of whether Whitehead has retroactive application should be decided upon traditional principles pertaining to changes in decisional law.
In Witt v. State, 387 So.2d 922 (Fla.), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 1067, 101 S.Ct. 796, 66 L.Ed.2d 612 (1980), this Court held that to be cognizable under a motion for postconviction relief, a change in decisional law must be a fundamental and constitutional change. We observed that most major constitutional changes in the law are either (1) those which place beyond the authority of the state the power to regulate certain conduct or to impose certain penalties, or (2) those changes which meet the three-prong test for retroactivity set forth in Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S. 293, 297, 87 S.Ct. 1967, 1970, 18 L.Ed.2d 1199 (1967). 1 We then stated:
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. To allow them that impact would, we are convinced, destroy the stability of the law, render punishments uncertain and therefore ineffectual, and burden the judicial machinery of our state, fiscally and intellectually, beyond any tolerable limit.
387 So.2d at 929-30 (footnote omitted).
Applying the principles of Witt, we conclude that the decision in Whitehead was an evolutionary refinement of the law and not one which should have retroactive application....
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State v. Hall
...DECISION ENUNCIATING A DIFFERENT CONSTRUCTION OF THE SENTENCING STATUTES AND SENTENCING GUIDELINES RULE? Id. at 1044. In McCuiston v. State, 534 So.2d 1144 (Fla.1988), issued contemporaneously herewith, we disapproved the opinion of the First District Court of Appeal in Hall, predicated as ......