Oats v. State

• Decision Date: 17 December 2015
• Docket Number: No. SC12–749.,SC12–749.
• Citation: 181 So.3d 457
• Parties: Sonny Boy OATS, Jr., Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

181 So.3d 457

Sonny Boy OATS, Jr., Appellant,

v.STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. SC12–749.

Supreme Court of Florida.

Dec. 17, 2015.

Neal Andre Dupree, Martin J. McClain, Special Assistant, Michael Chance Meyer, Staff Attorney, Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, Southern Region, Fort Lauderdale, FL, for Appellant.

Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, Tallahassee, FL, and James Donald Riecks, Assistant Attorney General, Daytona Beach, FL, for Appellee.

PER CURIAM.

Sonny Boy Oats, Jr., appeals an order of the circuit court that denied his motion filed pursuant to Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.203,¹ in which he claimed that he is intellectually disabled² and thus cannot be sentenced to death. In light of developments in the law since Hall v. Florida, ––– U.S. ––––, 134 S.Ct. 1986, 188 L.Ed.2d 1007 (2014), and because the circuit court erred in its legal analysis regarding the onset of Oats's intellectual disability prior to the age of 18 and failed to consider all of the evidence presented, we reverse and remand for a full reevaluation of whether Oats is intellectually disabled.

Oats's intelligence quotient (IQ) has never been in genuine dispute. Based on numerous psychological tests, Oats's IQ is between 54 and 67, well within the range for an individual who has an intellectual disability. Up until the current litigation, expert after expert consistently recognized that Oats has an intellectual disability as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)—a fact the State previously conceded in 1990 when litigating whether trial counsel was ineffective in failing to present mental mitigation, including Oats's intellectual disability. Recent records from prison also show that the Florida Department of Corrections is concerned that Oats may be intellectually disabled.

Despite this evidence, the circuit court denied finding Oats to be intellectually disabled, on the basis that Oats was unable to establish that his intellectual disability manifested before the age of 18—one of the three required prongs in Florida's statutory test for determining an intellectual disability. See § 921.137, Fla. Stat. (2015). In support, the circuit court relied on the lack of a full childhood IQ test, even though an initial screening test performed by Oats's elementary school showed that Oats's IQ was 70—a score that likewise would be within the range of IQ scores for a person who has an intellectual disability—and even though Oats presented significant evidence of childhood difficulties and injuries consistent with an individual with an intellectual disability.

Our decision to reverse is based on three reasons. First, in light of the United States Supreme Court's decision in Hall, the circuit court's order should have addressed all three prongs of the intellectual disability test, rather than denying the claim solely because Oats allegedly did not present sufficient evidence to establish that his intellectual disability manifested before the age of 18. As the United States Supreme Court has stated, "[i]t is not sound to view a single factor as dispositive of a conjunctive and interrelated assessment." Hall, 134 S.Ct. at 2001. The United States Supreme Court's most recent decision regarding intellectual disability reaffirms Hall and provides further authority that all three prongs generally must be considered in tandem. See Brumfield v. Cain, –––U.S. ––––, 135 S.Ct. 2269, 2278–82, 192 L.Ed.2d 356 (2015).

Second, the circuit court erroneously held that Oats failed to meet his burden to establish his intellectual disability without even considering or weighing all of the testimony that Oats presented, including the evidence submitted in prior postconviction proceedings from 1990 that both parties agreed was relevant and should be considered. This error is of particular concern given that Oats presented so much evidence of an intellectual disability during the 1990 proceedings that the State actually acknowledged that there was "[n]o doubt" he was "in the mildly mentally retarded area."³

Third, the circuit court erroneously conflated the term "manifested" with "diagnosed" and held that Oats failed to satisfy one of the necessary prongs of the statutory test for intellectual disability because Oats was not diagnosed as a child, even though the applicable Florida statute requires only that the intellectual disability "manifested during the period from conception to age 18." § 921.137(1), Fla. Stat. (emphasis added). Further, the circuit court relied exclusively on testimony from a State expert witness that was based on a misreading of this Court's precedent in Cherry v. State, 959 So.2d 702 (Fla.2007) —a decision that was subsequently disapproved by the Supreme Court in Hall.

We accordingly reverse the denial of Oats's rule 3.203 motion and remand to the circuit court to reconsider whether Oats is intellectually disabled. A remand of this proceeding is particularly necessary in light of the dispositive opinion in Hall, in which the United States Supreme Court disapproved our opinion in Cherry and provided additional guidance pertaining to the necessary showing under Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304, 122 S.Ct. 2242, 153 L.Ed.2d 335 (2002), for establishing ineligibility for the death penalty as a result of an intellectual disability.

Based on further direction from the United States Supreme Court in Hall, reaffirmed in Brumfield, courts must be guided by established medical practice and psychiatric and professional studies that elaborate on the purpose and meaning of each of the three prongs for determining an intellectual disability. See Hall, 134 S.Ct. at 1993. In other words, in determining the definition of an intellectual disability, the informed assessments of medical experts cannot be disregarded. Id. at 2000. The experts review all three prongs together because determining intellectual disability is a "conjunctive and interrelated assessment." Id. at 2001.

FACTS

Sonny Boy Oats, Jr., was tried and convicted of the December 1979 robbery of a convenience store and the first-degree murder of the store clerk. This Court affirmed Oats's conviction on direct appeal but held that the trial court erroneously found three aggravating factors and remanded to the trial court for entry of a new sentencing order. Oats v. State, 446 So.2d 90, 95–96 (Fla.1984). On remand, the trial court reweighed the valid aggravators and reimposed the death penalty, a sentence that this Court then affirmed. Oats v. State, 472 So.2d 1143 (Fla.1985). This Court later affirmed the denial of Oats's initial motion for postconviction relief and denied his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Oats v. Dugger, 638 So.2d 20 (Fla.1994).

During the 1990 postconviction proceedings, Oats asserted that his trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance by failing to present statutory and nonstatutory mitigation evidence at the penalty phase based on an inadequate investigation of the available mitigation, including evidence pertaining to Oats's intellectual disability. In addition, Oats alleged that he was resentenced when he was incompetent. Numerous experts presented testimony regarding Oats's intellectual disability.

Dr. Robert Phillips testified that Oats "is a man of significantly substandard intellectual capacity as a result of a degree of mental retardation that is well documented in evaluations that have been performed by examiners of the State of Florida and are certainly consistent with the findings of my examination and a subsequent review of records." He further discussed Oats's "longstanding history of maladaptive behavior to societal expectations which is not inconsistent with individuals that we find to be mentally retarded." Dr. Phillips concluded that Oats "lacks the intellectual capacity to truly formulate with any degree of specificity well-conceived and executed plans. He rather tends to act far more on impulse driven both by his emotion, sometimes overridden by the illicit substances which he may have on board but, by in large [sic], it's a moment-to-moment kind of decision-making process."

Dr. Joyce Carbonell testified that Oats "scores in the range that's referred to in general as mental deficiency. He is in the mildly mentally retarded range of functioning. His scores place him in the lowest one percent of the population in terms of his abilities, his intelligence compared to the rest of the population." She then opined that Oats's full-scale IQ score was 61, his performance score was 62, and his verbal score was 64. Further, Dr. Carbonell detailed how, based on reports from Oats's family and his school record, his social and medical history was likewise consistent with possessing an intellectual disability. Oats failed to timely reach numerous developmental milestones, including learning how to walk and talk on time; poor performance in school, with decreasing performance as he aged; and poor performance on an IQ screening test that was given during elementary school. Moreover, he had "serious deficits in adaptive functioning," was able to communicate at only a very low level, and could read at only a third-grade level. In addition, Oats was never able to maintain steady employment and always stayed with family that could take care of him.

Dr. Frank Carrera, who had testified during the penalty phase, previously evaluated Oats in 1980 to determine Oats's sanity and competency for the original trial. While Dr. Carrera believed that Oats was competent, trial counsel never requested Dr. Carrera to evaluate whether Oats had an intellectual disability or whether any statutory mitigation applied. Dr. Carrera thereafter reviewed Dr. Carbonell's testing results and did not see any errors as to her findings that Oats had an intellectual disability. Moreover, he opined that Oats's IQ testing, which reflected an IQ of 61, was consistent with what he observed.

The State then called Dr. Charles Mutter, who had been retained by the State in the...