Winkler v. Moore

• Citation: 831 So.2d 63
• Decision Date: 25 April 2002
• Docket Number: No. SC00-614., No. SC94507, No. SC93294
• Parties: Mark D. WINKLER, Petitioner, v. Michael W. MOORE, etc., et al., Respondents, Christopher Hall, Petitioner, v. Michael W. Moore, etc., et al., Respondents, James Cross, Petitioner, v. Michael W. Moore, etc., et al., Respondents.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Florida

831 So.2d 63

Mark D. WINKLER, Petitioner, v. Michael W. MOORE, etc., et al., Respondents, Christopher Hall, Petitioner, v. Michael W. Moore, etc., et al., Respondents, James Cross, Petitioner, v. Michael W. Moore, etc., et al., Respondents.

Nos. SC93294, SC94507, SC00-614.

Supreme Court of Florida.

April 25, 2002.

Rehearing Denied September 25, 2002.

Baya Harrison, III, Monticello, FL, for Petitioners Winkler and Cross; Christopher Hall, pro se, Daytona Beach, FL, and John C. Schaible, Florida Institutional Legal Services, Inc., Gainesville, FL, for Petitioner Hall, Petitioners.

Susan A. Maher, Deputy General Counsel, and Judy Bone, Assistant General Counsel, Sheron L. Wells, Assistant General Counsel, and Kim M. Fluharty, Assistant General Counsel, Department of Corrections, Tallahassee, FL; and William L. Camper, General Counsel, and Bradley R. Bischoff, Assistant General Counsel, Florida Parole Commission, Tallahassee, FL, for Respondents.

PER CURIAM.

Mark D. Winkler and Christopher Hall petition this Court for writs of habeas corpus. James Cross petitions this Court for a writ of mandamus.¹ This Court has consolidated their cases and hereby denies Winkler's and Hall's petitions in full, and denies Cross's petition in part and grants it in part as further set forth below.

BACKGROUND

In Gomez v. Singletary, 733 So.2d 499 (Fla.1998), this Court addressed gain time in the context of prisoners who were never awarded certain types of overcrowding credits² but should have been awarded such credits. This Court held that the subsequent revisions in the prison overcrowding statutes which effectively made the petitioners ineligible to receive any credits constituted an ex post facto violation. In that case, the Florida Department of Corrections (hereinafter the Department) provided proposed relief charts for six "Offender Groups" which were groups of inmates categorized by offense type, program eligibility, and offense date.³ Only three groups (Groups 3, 4 and 5) were actually represented by a petitioner in Gomez, and therefore this Court declined to address the other groups (1, 2, and 6). Now that petitioners representing the remaining groups are before this Court, we hereby set forth the overcrowding gain time awards for the three remaining groups as well. Further, as a means of finalizing and setting forth the proper Gomez awards for all groups, the appendices to this opinion (A and B) contain charts for determining the proper overcrowding awards for all six groups.

PETITIONER WINKLER: OFFENDER GROUP

Petitioner Winkler was convicted of three counts of DUI manslaughter and one count of leaving the scene of an accident involving death. The offenses were committed on April 9, 1985. At the time of his offenses, Winkler was eligible for emergency gain time. The Department never awarded any emergency gain time to any inmates prior to Gomez. Instead, and as set forth in Gomez, it utilized a series of new overcrowding gain time statutes. Each new statute essentially superseded the previous one. Winkler was awarded credits under all the programs enacted after emergency gain time. Thus, he received 720 days of administrative gain time and 1,860 days of provisional credits and when the Department stopped awarding provisional credits in 1991, the Florida Parole Commission began awarding him control release credits. In 1993, the Legislature canceled all administrative gain time and provisional credits but Winkler retained his control release eligibility. Eventually, however, due to the reduction in prison overcrowding, all of Winkler's control release credits were canceled. In 1997, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Lynce v. Mathis, 519 U.S. 433, 117 S.Ct. 891, 137 L.Ed.2d 63 (1997), that the State had violated the Ex Post Facto Clause when it retroactively canceled overcrowding gain time because such credits, like regular gain time, were subject to ex post facto analysis. The decision essentially overruled this Court's previous decisions holding that overcrowding gain time was not subject to ex post facto analysis. See, e.g., Blankenship v. Dugger, 521 So.2d 1097 (Fla.1988); Dugger v. Rodrick, 584 So.2d 2 (Fla.1991); Griffin v. Singletary, 638 So.2d 500 (Fla.1994).

In December of 1998, this Court concluded in Thomas v. Singletary, 729 So.2d 369 (Fla.1998), that while the cancellation of control release credits did not violate the Ex Post Facto Clause, inmates were entitled to receive credits under the other overcrowding statutes in effect at the time of their offenses (emergency gain time, administrative gain time or provisional credits). See Gomez v. Singletary, 733 So.2d 499 (Fla.1998).

Nevertheless, the Department determined that Winkler would not have received any credits because he was a Group 1 Offender. The Department contended that Group 1 Offenders were not entitled to the restoration of any credits because, at the time of these inmates' offenses, the emergency gain time statute was the only overcrowding statute in effect, and it authorized the award of credits only when the inmate population exceeded 98% of "lawful capacity." Under the definition of "lawful capacity" in effect at the time of these prisoners' offenses, that threshold was not met.⁴ Winkler contested this determination, asserting that the retroactive cancellation of Winkler's already awarded early release credits violated Ex Post Facto and Due Process Clauses of both the United States Constitution and the Florida Constitution.

We conclude that even if some members of Offender Group 1 actually received overcrowding credits, they had no real entitlement to such credits under the Ex Post Facto Clause based on the underlying reasoning of this Court's decisions in Gomez and Meola v. Department of Corrections, 732 So.2d 1029 (Fla.1998). This Court, relying on and interpreting the United States Supreme Court's decision in Lynce, explained in Gomez that one must look to the statute in effect on the date of the inmate's offense to see what ex post facto entitlement each inmate might have. Inmates who were awarded credits under the provisional credits statute but whose offenses occurred prior to the effective date of any of the prison overcrowding statutes (i.e., prior to June 15, 1983) actually had no ex post facto entitlement to the credits they received. Petitioner Jones in Meola was an example of such an offender, and this Court ruled that the Department did not have to restore his credits.⁵ Similarly, this Court also found that inmates who offended when the emergency gain time statute had a triggering threshold of 99% of "lawful capacity" (June 2, 1986-February 4, 1987), were not entitled to restoration of their administrative gain time or provisional credits under Lynce because the prison population did not reach that threshold when credits were being awarded. See Meola, 732 So.2d at 1033-34.

Similarly, Group 1 Offenders were not and are not entitled to credits because the prison population did not exceed the relevant prison overcrowding percentile threshold. That threshold is determined based on the emergency gain time statute as it existed from its effective date in 1983. See § 944.598, Fla. Stat. (1983). While the definition of "lawful capacity" was 133% of design capacity for the Offender Groups (3-5) discussed in Gomez, see Gomez, 733 So.2d at 507-508, for Group 1 Offenders, the definition was different. "Lawful capacity" was defined as "the total capacity of all institutions and facilities in the prison system as determined either by the Legislature or by the courts." See § 944.598(7)(b), Fla. Stat. (1983) (emphasis added). The Legislature did not determine what was meant by the term until 1992. Any earlier effective date could only have been determined by a court. The court made such a determination in the settlement agreement executed in the landmark prison overcrowding case of Costello v. Wainwright, 489 F.Supp. 1100 (M.D.Fla.1980). Under that agreement, the Department was given until July 1, 1985, to attempt to reduce prison overcrowding before the Legislature's definition of "lawful capacity" as 133% of design capacity would go into effect. The definition of lawful capacity was not set until July 1, 1985. Therefore, no definitive and unlawful overcrowding could occur prior to that date.⁶ Prior to July 1, 1985, the 1983 emergency gain time statute became effective and provided for the award of credits when prison overcrowding exceeded 98% of "lawful capacity." No such credits, however, could be awarded because there was no judicial or legislative definition of "lawful capacity"; prison overcrowding could not be determined based on an undefined level. In other words, while there might have been some overcrowding, there could be no unlawful overcrowding until at least July 1, 1985. Before this date, the Department was not restricted under ex post facto principles in determining how many inmates it could house regardless of how the Department chose to define "lawful capacity."⁷

Winkler also claims his ex post facto rights have been violated because his credits were "retrospectively" canceled. In so arguing he attempts to redefine the term "retrospective." He asserts that, since he received overcrowding credits but they were later taken away, the taking was an unlawful "retrospective" application of the law which violated ex post facto principles. The problem with this argument is that for ex post facto purposes the term "retrospective" has not been defined in the manner he suggests.

In Lynce, the United States Supreme Court explained that two critical elements must be present for a criminal or penal law to violate ex post facto principles: (1) it must be retrospective, that is, "it must apply to events occurring before its enactment; " and (2) it must "disadvantage the offender affected by it." Lynce, 519 U.S. at 441,117 S.Ct. 891 (quoting Weaver v. Graham, 450 U.S. 24, 29, 101 S.Ct. 960, 67 L.Ed.2d 17 (1981)) (emphasis...