Suppose a criminal defendant is on trial at a time when the law is clear that the state must prove X and Y, and if the defendant negates either he is entitled to acquittal. He submits what he believes is conclusive evidence negating X, so he does not expend the resources to negate Y. The jury convicts him anyway, and he appeals on the ground that the verdict is not supported by the evidence.
On appeal, it is decided that the defendant did indeed negate X, but the court changes its interpretation of the law so that Y alone is enough. Since the defendant did not put on any case against Y, reasonably believing he didn't need to, his conviction is affirmed.
Wouldn't the defense bar, academia, and the press scream bloody murder? Wouldn't they denounce that as fundamentally unfair? Of course they would, and they would be right.
Yesterday the Florida Supreme Court did pretty much what I just described, but in the other direction. It is no less unfair.
On appeal, it is decided that the defendant did indeed negate X, but the court changes its interpretation of the law so that Y alone is enough. Since the defendant did not put on any case against Y, reasonably believing he didn't need to, his conviction is affirmed.
Wouldn't the defense bar, academia, and the press scream bloody murder? Wouldn't they denounce that as fundamentally unfair? Of course they would, and they would be right.
Yesterday the Florida Supreme Court did pretty much what I just described, but in the other direction. It is no less unfair.
The trial judge in the Freddie Hall case described the crime:
Ten years before this crime, Hall committed assault with intent to commit rape. In the months following this crime, he murdered one peace officer in the performance of his duty and shot at another.
Many years later, Hall attacked his death sentence claiming he is intellectually disabled (formerly known as mentally retarded). At the time of the hearing, a defendant making this claim had to prove both IQ below 70 and major deficits in adaptive behavior. The U.S. Supreme Court decided that Florida had misapplied IQ tests and had erred in taking the tests alone as conclusive evidence on the intellectual capacity part of the test. It remanded to the Florida Supreme Court for a determination on whether Hall is actually intellectually disabled.
It is perfectly obvious what the Florida Supreme Court should do, isn't it? Send the case back to the trial court for a hearing under the new rules. What did it actually do? It went ahead and decided the case for Hall based on the record of a hearing conducted under the old rules.
Justice Canady notes in the dissent:
As Justice Robert Jackson observed long ago, the people as well as the defendant are entitled to due process of law. Hall thoroughly deserves the sentence he received, and he should not be let off with an inadequate sentence without giving the people the chance to defend the judgment under the changed rules.
On February 21, 1978, Freddie Lee Hall kidnapped Karol Lea Hurst from the parking lot of a grocery store as she was carrying her packages to her car. He drove her, in her own car, some 18 miles away into another county and into the woods a quarter of a mile off the paved road. There, in the front seat of her car, he forced her to remove her clothes and then he raped her. He listened to her cry, and he listened to her beg for her life and the life of her unborn child. He watched her write a check for him to cash in return for her life. Then he beat her--so hard that it tore the flesh of her neck and shoulders through the fabric of her denim jacket. And then he killed her by firing a bullet into the back of her head, either pulling the trigger himself or encouraging another to do it in his place. There is no evidence that has been presented to this Court that reasonably mitigates the aggravated nature of this act. The aggravating circumstances of this case clearly 'outweigh' the mitigating factors.
Ten years before this crime, Hall committed assault with intent to commit rape. In the months following this crime, he murdered one peace officer in the performance of his duty and shot at another.
Many years later, Hall attacked his death sentence claiming he is intellectually disabled (formerly known as mentally retarded). At the time of the hearing, a defendant making this claim had to prove both IQ below 70 and major deficits in adaptive behavior. The U.S. Supreme Court decided that Florida had misapplied IQ tests and had erred in taking the tests alone as conclusive evidence on the intellectual capacity part of the test. It remanded to the Florida Supreme Court for a determination on whether Hall is actually intellectually disabled.
It is perfectly obvious what the Florida Supreme Court should do, isn't it? Send the case back to the trial court for a hearing under the new rules. What did it actually do? It went ahead and decided the case for Hall based on the record of a hearing conducted under the old rules.
Justice Canady notes in the dissent:
The majority asserts that Hall has presented sufficient evidence to establish that he meets the statutory definition of intellectual disability. Majority op. at 13. The majority relies on the fact that the circuit court permitted Hall to proffer evidence related to all three statutory prongs of intellectual disability at the evidentiary hearing .... The proffered evidence was not subjected to adversarial testing, and its credibility was not evaluated by the trier of fact. The majority thus errs by relying on proffered evidence to support its conclusion that Hall has presented sufficient evidence to establish that he is intellectually disabled. It is a cardinal error for an appellate court to step outside its proper role and make findings of fact based on a proffer.Right.
As Justice Robert Jackson observed long ago, the people as well as the defendant are entitled to due process of law. Hall thoroughly deserves the sentence he received, and he should not be let off with an inadequate sentence without giving the people the chance to defend the judgment under the changed rules.
I am absolutely NOT defending the Florida Supreme Court here, but this smacks of a desire to simply end the case. The real blame belongs with SCOTUS, which never ever should have taken this case.
We'd better get used to the fact that the judiciary as a whole does not like the death penalty. Judges will do their utmost to thwart it--no matter how much pain it causes to victims' families and the violence it does to the rule of law.
The only way to save the death penalty is through outright ridicule of the judges that impose this nonsense. For example, the judges who, in the face of testing of the execution drugs, voted to stay because the identity of the maker wasn't know are either (a) too stupid to be federal judges or (b) people who will willfully twist the law to help out capital murderers. Either way, they are unfit for office, and elected officials need to point that out at every turn and need to ascribe the blame to the politicians who appointed them.
I would argue that in the face of federal court meddling in the death penalty that states should do their utmost to resist. That includes not facilitating service of process when there's a last minute stay motion, attorneys general harshly criticizing judges who grant them and giving victims' families a voice. They should also write withering op-ed pieces in local newspapers etc.
The polity has the obligation to resist a lawless judiciary.
Freddie Lee Hall, the defendant in this case, was out on parole for an attempted rape, during which he gouged out the victim's eyes to prevent her from identifying him. Hall and his co-defendant raped and murdered the female victim as described because they needed a car in order to commit one or more armed robberies. Shortly after Hurst's murder, they hid her car on the side of a convenience store and entered the store. The clerk became suspicious and called the sheriff's office. A responding deputy confronted the suspects in the parking lot and was killed with his won gun. The murder weapon used on Hurst was found under his body.
Hall was convicted of murder for the deputy, but the same Florida Supreme Court ordered his 1st degree conviction for the murdered deputy changed to 2nd degree murder, so he was no longer eligible for CP on that case.
Hall was tested at IQ's of 79, 75, 76 and 72, as well as 60 and 69. At the time, 70 was considered the cut-off for a claim of intellectual disability. The US Supreme Court - decision by Kennedy, dissent by Scalia - ruled that IQ scores could not be hard and fast for disqualifying such issues.
And now the Florida Supreme Court has unilaterally decided - again - to disregard a judge and jury (actually, multiple juries since Hall has been sentenced to death at least three different times by different juries) and just issue their own sentence.
JCC
The point is--what is the polity going to do about it?
Whining about judges is a losing battle. They need to be hooted off the bench and defied where possible.
Florida has a judicial retention process. Every six years, sitting judges face a vote on whether to retain them.
In the history of the state, no judge has ever been removed by the electorate.
Supreme Court justices in Florida are appointed by the governor, who must choose from a list provided by a Judicial Qualifications Commission. 3 members each of that commission are appointed by the Bar and the governor. Those members then elect 3 more.
Of the seven justies, 4 were appointed by Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles, 2 by Governor Charlie Crist and 1 by Govenor Jeb Bush.
This explains much of the problem in Florida.
JCC
Giving the state bar any role whatever in the selection of judges is a horrible idea. It is a guarantee that the state's judiciary will lean toward left-wing judicial activism. Any state with such a system should dump it as soon as possible.
I know my objection is res judicata and therefore legally moot, and
that there are also case-law 'guidelines' or more to assess the
functionality of a "disabled" murderer.
Nevertheless, neither my intellect nor concience allow me to accept that a person can rob and rape, torture and murder, both law enforcement and a raped pregnant women (operating an implement no less) -- with all that these entail -- without
being mentally capable of understanding enough of what he was doing to be
fully HELD LEGALLY RESPONSIBLE.
Tell us, the non-lawyers, what we can do, and please, those of you in the legal community, stop the immorality of protecting the rapists and murderers!
I know that many other Americans, probably a plurality and perhaps a majority,
believe as I do.