Florida Supreme Court denies Hunter/Victorino jurisdictional petition
Yesterday afternoon, the Court denied Hunter’s and Victorino’s petition challenging the Fifth DCA's jurisdiction to issue a decision on the applicability of the 2023 capital sentencing statute.
In an Order issued yesterday afternoon, the Florida Supreme Court denied Jerone Hunter’s and Troy Victorino’s petition seeking relief from the Fifth District Court of Appeal’s decision related to the applicability of Florida’s 2023 capital sentencing statute to their case.
Background
Hunter and Victorino, codefendants, were granted a new penalty phase after Hurst.1 In April, when Florida’s 2023 capital sentencing scheme went into place, resentencing was underway in the resentencing. The trial judge ruled that Florida’s prior, unanimity statute applied to the case, and the State filed an emergency petition at the Fifth District Court of Appeal seeking review of the ruling. The State also successfully sought an emergency stay of the proceedings below.
In May, the Fifth DCA ruled that the trial court’s ruling was inappropriate and Florida’s 2023 statute applied in Hunter and Victorino’s case. (More here.) Following the DCA’s ruling, the trial court issued a mistrial. (More here.)
On September 22, the Fifth DCA issued a written opinion explaining its decision. (More here.) Trial courts across the State have cited the Fifth DCA’s decision as precedent in applying the 2023 statute to cases that were pending when the statute went into place.
Hunter and Victorino then filed a petition at the Florida Supreme Court seeking review of the Fifth DCA’s decision, arguing that the Fifth DCA lacked jurisdiction to decide the issue. More here.)
Friday’s Order
On Friday, the Court issued a lengthy Order denying the petition.
The Court’s decision turns on its conclusion that the relief sought in the petition is inappropriate. As to the writ of prohibition, the Court explains that prohibition is inapplicable:
Prohibition is inappropriate here because it cannot be used to take corrective actions. . . . The Fifth District’s exercise of jurisdiction is already complete, and prohibition cannot be used to compel the undoing of something already done. And just as prohibition cannot be used to revoke an order already entered, it cannot be used to revoke a writ already issued. Thus, prohibition does not provide an avenue for relief.
As to the Court’s all writs power, it says that the trial court declaring a mistrial mooted the issue:
Petitioners’ attempt to invoke this Court’s all writs jurisdiction is likewise unavailing. Our all writs jurisdiction “is restricted to preserving jurisdiction that has already been invoked or protecting jurisdiction that will likely be invoked in the future.” Roberts v. Brown, 43 So. 3d 673, 677 (Fla. 2010). Because of the declaration of a mistrial, the question of whether the statutory amendments should have applied to the 2023 resentencing proceedings is in fact now moot. In any event, Petitioners have not shown how issuance of the writ is necessary to preserve or protect our jurisdiction.
In other words, the Court seems to say that the issue presented was specific to the facts of the 2023 resentencing proceeding and how the Fifth DCA addressed that issue and the trial court’s declaration of a mistrial mooted the issue.
The Court did, however, add a footnote that seems to go towards the merits of the issue presented in the petition:
Although Petitioners have not presented a proper jurisdictional basis for us to decide their claim regarding the jurisdiction of the district court, we note that our prior decisions have addressed our Court’s jurisdiction in cases in which a death sentence has been vacated and further penalty proceedings have been ordered. See, e.g., State v. Durousseau, SC2020-0297, 2020 WL 7693135, at *1 (Fla. Dec. 28, 2020) (exercising all writs jurisdiction over what was filed as a petition for writ of certiorari in the First District but transferred to this Court where defendant’s capital resentencing proceeding was pending); State v. Jackson, 306 So. 3d 936, 940 (Fla. 2020) (concluding that this Court had all writs jurisdiction in case where defendant’s capital resentencing proceedings were pending); Farina v. State, 191 So. 3d 454-55 (Fla. 2016) (“This Court has jurisdiction because Farina’s death sentence was vacated and remanded for further proceedings, but his murder conviction remains . . . .”); State v. Fourth Dist. Ct. of Appeal, 697 So. 2d 70, 71 (Fla. 1997) (“[I]n addition to our appellate jurisdiction over sentences of death, we have exclusive jurisdiction to review all types of collateral proceedings in death penalty cases. This includes cases in which this Court has vacated a death sentence and remanded for further penalty proceedings.”).
While the footnote does not expressly state one way or another whether the Fifth DCA had jurisdiction to issue its decision in this case, it seems to suggest that the Court agrees with Hunter and Victorino that the proper Court to address the issue would’ve been the Florida Supreme Court. How the footnote affects the precedential value of the Fifth DCA’s decision is unclear.
The full Order can be downloaded from the Court’s docket here.