Taylor v. State

• Decision Date: 07 April 2011
• Docket Number: Nos. SC09–1382,SC10–143.,s. SC09–1382
• Citation: 62 So.3d 1101
• Parties: Steven Richard TAYLOR, Appellant,v.STATE of Florida, Appellee.Steven Richard Taylor, Petitioner,v.Walter A. McNeil, etc., Respondent.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

62 So.3d 1101

Steven Richard TAYLOR, Appellant,

v.STATE of Florida, Appellee.Steven Richard Taylor, Petitioner,

v.Walter A. McNeil, etc., Respondent.

Nos. SC09–1382

SC10–143.

Supreme Court of Florida.

Feb. 10, 2011.Rehearing Denied April 7, 2011.

Michael P. Reiter, Venice, FL, for Appellant/Petitioner.Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, and Stephen R. White, Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, FL, for Appellee/Respondent.PER CURIAM.

Steven Richard Taylor appeals the denial of his amended motion for postconviction relief filed pursuant to Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850. Through his postconviction motion, Taylor challenges his capital murder conviction and sentence of death. Taylor has also filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus, through which he alleges ineffective assistance of appellate counsel due to counsel's failure to raise several issues on direct appeal. We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(1), (9), Fla. Const. For the reasons discussed below, we affirm the trial court's denial of his rule 3.850 motion and deny relief on his petition for writ of habeas corpus.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

Taylor is an inmate under sentence of death. Through our prior opinion addressing Taylor's direct appeal, we have detailed the facts and procedural background surrounding the offense. See Taylor v. State, 630 So.2d 1038, 1039–41 (Fla.1993).

The case currently under review is Taylor's first postconviction proceeding before this Court. On November 1, 1995, Taylor filed a “shell” motion to vacate his judgment of conviction and sentence. Amendments to the initial motion were filed on June 23, 2003, and May 13, 2004. The final amended motion for postconviction relief was filed on May 23, 2005. In his final amended motion, Taylor raised twenty-one claims.¹ The postconviction court held a Huff² hearing on December 13, 2005, and on June 21, 2006. The postconviction court issued an order granting an evidentiary hearing on a limited number of those claims, which was held on August 6 and August 7, 2007.

During the evidentiary hearing, the defense presented the testimony of (1) the current State Attorney for the Fourth Judicial Circuit who served as lead prosecutor at the initial trial; (2) an assistant state attorney who served as counsel at the initial trial and was serving as lead counsel in postconviction litigation; (3) Taylor's counsel during the initial trial; (4) the second chair counsel for Taylor at the initial trial; (5) Taylor's first postconviction attorney; (6) a police officer who testified at the initial trial; (7) an office employee of the Duval County Clerk of Courts who processed evidence at the time of the initial trial; (8) Shirley Zeigler (a former Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) DNA analyst); (9) Dr. Randell Libby (DNA expert); and (10) Timothy Cowart (Taylor's former cellmate, who testified against Taylor at the initial trial). The State presented Dr. James Pollock (the DNA expert who testified for the State at the initial trial) and also the assistant state attorney who was initially presented by Taylor.

To challenge the DNA evidence presented against Taylor at trial, the defense presented Dr. Libby to address alleged problems associated with Dr. Pollock's State testing procedures. Dr. Libby testified that the FBI DNA testing protocol utilizes five to eight probes, but Dr. Pollock's State testing only utilized four. Further, Dr. Libby opined that three of the four probes utilized by Dr. Pollock were inconclusive. One reason Dr. Libby used as a predicate for concluding that the probes were inconclusive was due to differences in the calculated lengths reports created by Dr. Pollock and Shirley Zeigler. The defense also presented Shirley Zeigler, who worked as a Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) analyst at the time the DNA evidence was processed. Zeigler's initials were found on the calculated fragment report that was used by Dr. Pollock at Taylor's initial trial. Zeigler testified that she would have found two of the probes utilized by Dr. Pollock to be inconclusive, but did not disagree with Dr. Pollock's ultimate findings.

Of additional note, during the evidentiary hearing, a police officer noted that, at trial, he testified that one of the exhibits collected from the scene represented a white blouse. On cross-examination, however, the officer indicated that he did not remember the specific color of the blouse he collected on the day he completed his report. Further, Timothy Cowart was also presented as a witness at the evidentiary hearing to recant some of his testimony that he had previously presented during the initial trial.

On October 5, 2007, the State filed a Motion to Strike and Objection to Defendant's Written Closing Argument and Memorandum of Law. Taylor filed his Response to the State's Motion with an accompanying Motion to Amend the Pleadings to Conform with the Evidence. On June 22, 2009, the postconviction court denied Taylor's rule 3.850 motion. On June 26, 2009, the postconviction court filed an order granting the State's motion to strike and denying Taylor's motion to amend. This appeal followed.

ANALYSIS

Motion to Amend

Taylor first asserts that the trial court erred in granting the State's motion to strike and denying his motion to amend. In his final amended motion for postconviction relief, Taylor raised a number of challenges with regard to the DNA evidence presented against him at trial. After the postconviction evidentiary hearing, Taylor filed a closing memorandum in the trial court, which also asserted a number of challenges to the DNA evidence presented at trial. The State subsequently filed a motion to strike portions of Taylor's closing memorandum that were allegedly not covered in his postconviction motion. The trial court did not rule on the State's motion to strike until after it entered its order denying postconviction relief. In a two page Order on Pending Motions, the trial court simply held: “Based upon the pleadings and consistent with the Court's Order Denying Defendant's Motion for Post Conviction relief ... [t]he State's Motion to Strike and Objection to Defendant's Written Closing Argument and Memorandum of Law is GRANTED .... [and] [t]he Defendant's Motion to Amend the Pleadings to Conform with the Evidence is DENIED.”

In his first claim on appeal, Taylor asserts that his closing memorandum did not raise any new claims, but even if it did, the trial court abused its discretion by failing to adhere to Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850 and Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.190(b). First, we must determine whether Taylor's amended motion for postconviction relief is governed by Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850 or 3.851. The question of which rules of procedure are applicable is a question of law that is reviewed de novo. See GTC, Inc. v. Edgar, 967 So.2d 781, 785 (Fla.2007) (“Generally speaking, statutory interpretation is a question of law subject to de novo review.”) (citing BellSouth Telecomm., Inc. v. Meeks, 863 So.2d 287, 289 (Fla.2003)).

Rule 3.851(a) provides:

This rule shall apply to all motions and petitions for any type of postconviction or collateral relief brought by a prisoner in state custody who has been sentenced to death and whose conviction and death sentence have been affirmed on direct appeal. It shall apply to all postconviction motions filed on or after October 1, 2001, by prisoners who are under sentence of death. Motions pending on that date are governed by the version of this rule in effect immediately prior to that date.

(Emphasis supplied.) Taylor's initial motion to vacate judgment and sentence, which was a “shell motion,” was filed on November 1, 1995. That motion was still pending on October 1, 2001, and is thus governed by “the version of this rule in effect immediately prior to that date,” which, here, is rule 3.850. Fla. R.Crim. P. 3.851(a).

Further, the applicability of rule 3.850 is consistent with this Court's decision in Gore v. State, 964 So.2d 1257 (Fla.2007). In that case, Gore's initial postconviction motion was filed pursuant to rule 3.850 on September 28, 1999, but his amended postconviction motion was filed on January 7, 2002, after amendment of the rules. See Gore, 964 So.2d at 1261 n. 1. This Court held that rule 3.850, not rule 3.851, applied. See id. at 1261. Here the initial motion for postconviction relief was filed prior to the enactment of rule 3.851, and an amended motion was filed after that date. Taylor's amended motion for postconviction relief is therefore governed by rule 3.850, not rule 3.851 as held in Gore.

Rule 3.850, however, is silent with regard to amendments to postconviction motions. Taylor asserts that Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.190 is applicable here because in Allen v. Butterworth, 756 So.2d 52 (Fla.2000), this Court acknowledged that postconviction cases are quasi-civil in nature. Taylor's argument, however, completely disregards this Court's decision in Huff v. State, 762 So.2d 476 (Fla.2000). In Huff, this Court explicitly stated that “[t]he standard of review for a trial court's determination regarding a motion to amend a rule 3.850 motion is whether there was an abuse of discretion.” 762 So.2d at 481 (citing McConn v. State, 708 So.2d 308, 310 (Fla. 2d DCA 1998)). Accordingly, because Taylor's motion for postconviction relief is governed by rule 3.850, this Court only reviews the denial of Taylor's motion to amend for an abuse of discretion. See Walton v. State, 3 So.3d 1000, 1012 (Fla.2009) (citing Huff v. State, 762 So.2d 476, 481 (Fla.2000)).

Here, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying Taylor's motion to amend. The arguments asserted by Taylor in his closing memorandum to the trial court were merely refinements and expansions upon arguments that had already been raised in his amended motion for postconviction relief. The trial court meticulously analyzed each of Taylor's challenges...