State v. Woodley

Decision Date03 April 1997
Docket NumberNo. 88116,88116
Citation695 So.2d 297
Parties22 Fla. L. Weekly S174 STATE of Florida, Petitioner, v. Diana WOODLEY, Respondent.
CourtFlorida Supreme Court

Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General and Consuelo Maingot, Assistant Attorney General, Fort Lauderdale, for Petitioner.

Bennett H. Brummer, Public Defender and Robert Kalter, Assistant Public Defender, Eleventh Judicial Circuit, Miami, for Respondent.

Beverly A. Pohl, Fort Lauderdale; and Bruce S. Rogow of Bruce S. Rogow, P.A., Fort Lauderdale, for The Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Amicus Curiae.

HARDING, Justice.

We have for review a decision passing on the following question certified to be of great public importance:

SHOULD STATE V. GRAY, 654 So.2d 552 (Fla.1995), HOLDING THAT ATTEMPTED FELONY MURDER IS NOT A CRIME, BE APPLIED RETROACTIVELY TO OVERTURN THE CONVICTION OF A PERSON CONVICTED OF THAT CRIME, AFTER THE CASE HAS BECOME FINAL ON APPEAL?

Woodley v. State, 673 So.2d 127, 129 (Fla. 3d DCA 1996). We have jurisdiction. Art. V, § 3(b)(4), Fla.Const.

In Gray we abolished the crime of attempted felony murder in this state. We expressly defined the scope of application in that decision: "This decision must be applied to all cases pending on direct review or not yet final." Gray, 654 So.2d at 554. Woodley argues that because Gray held that the offense of attempted felony murder was nonexistent in Florida, the decision must also be applied retroactively. In State v. Wilson, 680 So.2d 411 (Fla.1996), we dealt with the issue of whether attempted felony murder was a "nonexistent" offense in the traditional sense. There we wrote:

In the earlier cases, "nonexistent" had a slightly different connotation. There, the offenses in question were never valid statutory offenses in Florida; they were simply the product of erroneous instruction. Here, attempted felony murder was a valid offense, with enumerated elements and identifiable lesser offenses, for approximately eleven years. It only became "nonexistent" when we decided Gray. Because it was a valid offense before Gray, and because it had ascertainable lesser offenses, retrial on any lesser offense which was instructed on at trial is appropriate.

Wilson, 680 So.2d at 412-13. Consistent with this rationale, and with our statement in Gray itself that the decision "must be applied to all cases pending on direct review or not yet final," we hold that Gray does not apply retroactively to those...

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52 cases
  • Windom v. State
    • United States
    • Florida Supreme Court
    • May 6, 2004
    ...enhancement for attempted murder of a law enforcement officer to attempted first-degree murder was retroactive); State v. Woodley, 695 So.2d 297, 298 (Fla.1997) (determining that decision holding that attempted felony murder was a nonexistent crime was not retroactive). In contrast, because......
  • Owen v. State, SC06-2104.
    • United States
    • Florida Supreme Court
    • May 8, 2008
    ...fails to state on which ground the jury relied. While acknowledging that this Court held that Gray was not retroactive in State v. Woodley, 695 So.2d 297 (Fla.1997), Owen's motion argued that the Manley conviction should not have been introduced as an aggravating factor because the crime of......
  • Bunkley v. State
    • United States
    • Florida Supreme Court
    • November 21, 2002
    ...L.B. results in Bunkley serving a substantially longer sentence than a similarly situated prisoner. The majority cites State v. Woodley, 695 So.2d 297, 298 (Fla.1997) as support for declining to apply L.B. retroactively. See majority op. at 744. However, when we declined to find the decisio......
  • State v. Klayman
    • United States
    • Florida Supreme Court
    • November 14, 2002
    ...case, and there is not a single word in the Hayes decision about the constitution or any constitutional right. Cf. State v. Woodley, 695 So.2d 297 (Fla.1997) (refusing to retroactively apply State v. Gray, 654 So.2d 552 (Fla.1995), which held that attempted felony murder is logically imposs......
  • Request a trial to view additional results

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