Phillips v. State, 2D99-3734.

• Decision Date: 06 February 2002
• Docket Number: No. 2D99-3734.,2D99-3734.
• Citation: 807 So.2d 713
• Parties: Joshua PHILLIPS, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

807 So.2d 713

Joshua PHILLIPS, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. 2D99-3734.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, Second District.

February 6, 2002.

James Marion Moorman, Public Defender, and Deborah K. Brueckheimer, Assistant Public Defender, Bartow, for Appellant.

Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Katherine V. Blanco, Assistant Attorney General, Tampa, for Appellee.

CASANUEVA, Judge.

Tried as an adult for the murder of eight-year-old Madelyn Rae Clifton, Joshua Phillips, fourteen years old at the time of the homicide, appeals from both his conviction for first-degree murder and his sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. We find that no harmful error occurred at trial and affirm his conviction. As for his sentence, Mr. Phillips' primary contention is that his chronological age renders his punishment cruel and unusual. For the reasons set forth in this opinion, we hold that his punishment is constitutional and, accordingly, decline to set aside his sentence and impose, as he requested, a new sentence of life imprisonment with the possibility of parole. We conclude that only the legislature can create a sentence of life imprisonment with the possibility of parole for a juvenile convicted as an adult of first-degree murder.

There are strong arguments in favor of the penalty Mr. Phillips proposes as well as strong arguments in opposition. It is conceivable that Florida's state attorneys and trial judges alike would prefer a third sentencing alternative. However, public policy concerns about a juvenile's degree of culpability, potential for rehabilitation, and appropriate punishment are best resolved by the people's representatives— the legislature. This court's task is only to measure the penalty imposed against constitutional standards.

FACTS

Maddie Clifton, eight years of age, came home from school at 4:30 p.m. on November 3, 1998, practiced her piano, and then went outside to play. She first went to the yard of a sixteen-year-old neighbor and then returned to her own yard. The neighbor's grandmother could see Maddie in her driveway and she also saw Joshua Phillips "creeping up" on Maddie. She watched them for a few moments but went back into her home after deciding that what she saw was nothing more than two kids playing together. By 6:20 p.m. Maddie's mother called her children to dinner, and when Maddie did not appear, Mrs. Clifton asked some of the neighbors to look for her daughter, but no one could find her. By 6:33 p.m. Mrs. Clifton called 911.

That evening several of the neighborhood children, including Joshua, took part in a search. Witnesses to that event described Joshua as "acting normal" but looking as if he had just taken a shower. The next day a Jacksonville Sheriff's Office detective spoke with Joshua about Maddie, who stated that he had seen Maddie the day before but had not played with her. He was not supposed to play with her because of their age difference. Police searched the Phillips' storage shed and car after Joshua's father arrived home, but they found nothing. A couple of days later, another homicide detective went to the Phillips' home when only Joshua was present and interviewed Joshua as he sat on the bed in his room.

Maddie's body was not discovered until November 10, 1998, when Joshua's mother, upset and crying, flagged down uniformed officers who were doing investigations in the neighborhood. The officers and Mrs. Phillips went to Joshua's room and opened the door. There they saw two small feet with white socks sticking out from the bottom of Joshua's waterbed, along with liquid coming from underneath the bed and tape on the floor. A strong odor emanated from the room, which was immediately sealed as a crime scene. One of the detectives then picked up Joshua at school and took him to the police station.

When Joshua's room was searched the police found several types of air fresheners, rolls of tape, a baseball bat hidden behind a dresser, and a Leatherman knife tool. Maddie's body was under the waterbed with her shirt pulled up and her panties beneath her.

Joshua confessed to killing Maddie. He claimed that the two were playing with a baseball in his back yard when he hit the ball very hard and accidentally struck her near the left eye. She began to cry and holler, so Joshua, fearful that his father would be angry at him for playing with the younger girl, took her into his room. She was bleeding from the gash and crying loudly, and to keep his father from discovering her he struck Maddie once or twice in the head. She whimpered, and when she began to moan more loudly he took his knife and cut her throat. Then he concealed her body by prying off the side of his waterbed and pushing Maddie underneath. Joshua's father had come home by this time, and, realizing that Maddie's labored breathing was loud enough for his father to hear in another room, Joshua pulled the child out and stabbed her in her lungs so that she would stop breathing. He explained that her shorts and underwear came off when he dragged her into his room and that her shoes came off when he shoved her under the bed the second time. All of this happened because Joshua was afraid of getting in trouble.

The State's medical expert testified that Maddie had suffered three separate attacks. She was struck three times on her forehead and top of her head, receiving wounds that would have been fatal about thirty minutes after infliction. Her neck wounds perforated her windpipe, causing her to bleed to death or drown in her own blood. Nine stab wounds to her chest and abdomen were inflicted when she was already dead. However, Maddie's hand clutched a bracket from the waterbed frame, which indicated that she was still alive when Joshua shoved her underneath.

PENALTY ISSUES

Exceeded only by the death penalty, a sentence of life imprisonment without parole is the second most severe penalty authorized by Florida law. Presently, for first-degree murder, only these two penalties are authorized by statute. We must now determine whether, in these circumstances, life imprisonment without parole violates the constitutional guarantee prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment.

EIGHTH AMENDMENT

Part of the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution, the Eighth Amendment states that "excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishment inflicted."¹ The Eighth Amendment's guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment has been interpreted as providing two guarantees, the first and foremost of which is a bar against unnecessarily painful or barbarous methods of punishment. An unconstitutional penalty, in this regard, is one that is soundly rejected by the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society. Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86, 101, 78 S.Ct. 590, 2 L.Ed.2d 630 (1958). The amendment also forbids penalties that are grossly disproportionate to the crime being punished. For example, a valid punishment, albeit severe, may be unconstitutional when it is paired with a sufficiently minor crime. Harmelin v. Michigan, 501 U.S. 957, 996-98, 111 S.Ct. 2680, 115 L.Ed.2d 836 (1991) (Kennedy, J., concurring). However, proportionality challenges in noncapital² cases should rarely be successful. Rummel v. Estelle, 445 U.S. 263, 272, 100 S.Ct. 1133, 63 L.Ed.2d 382 (1980).

Here, Mr. Phillips contends that sentencing him to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for a first-degree murder he committed when he was fourteen years old is cruel and unusual punishment and bases his challenge upon the second protection afforded by the Eighth Amendment—the prohibition against disproportionate punishment. He does not contend, however, that his sentence would be disproportionate had it been imposed on an adult. To evaluate Mr. Phillips' contention, we must examine the contours of Eighth Amendment protections as set forth by the Supreme Court of the United States and the federal courts of appeal.

We begin with the Supreme Court's pronouncements in Harmelin v. Michigan, 501 U.S. at 957, 111 S.Ct. 2680. In responding to Harmelin's contention that Michigan was required by the Eighth Amendment to create a sentencing scheme whereby life imprisonment without the possibility of parole would be but the most severe of a number of discretionary penalties available to a sentencer, a majority of the Court rejected the claim as having no basis in the Eighth Amendment's text. "Severe, mandatory penalties may be cruel, but they are not unusual in the constitutional sense, having been employed in various forms throughout our Nation's history." Id. at 994-95, 111 S.Ct. 2680. Furthermore, the Court noted that "there can be no serious contention, then, that a sentence which is not otherwise cruel and unusual becomes so simply because it is mandatory." Id. at 995, 111 S.Ct. 2680. Accordingly, we conclude that a per se constitutional violation does not occur merely because Mr. Phillips' sentence is both mandatory and severe.

Next, we examine whether the narrow proportionality principle provided for by the Eighth Amendment applies to this noncapital crime. Justice Kennedy explained for the Court in Harmelin, 501 U.S. at 997,111 S.Ct. 2680, that the "Eighth Amendment proportionality principle also applies to noncapital cases." Justice Kennedy's opinion noted that in Solem v. Helm, 463 U.S. 277, 103 S.Ct. 3001, 77 L.Ed.2d 637 (1983), the Supreme Court held "that a sentence of life imprisonment without possibility of parole violated the Eighth Amendment because it was grossly disproportionate to the crime of recidivism based on seven underlying nonviolent felonies." Harmelin, 501 U.S. at 997-98,111 S.Ct. 2680. Although this case may be distinguished from Solem because it involves a crime of violence and does not involve a recidivist offender, the Solem analysis and its principles nonetheless apply.³

Applying Solem a...