Owen v. State

364 So.3d 1017

Duane Eugene OWEN, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. SC2023-0732

Supreme Court of Florida.

June 5, 2023

Eric Pinkard, Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, Lisa M. Fusaro, Assistant Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, and Morgan P. Laurienzo, Assistant Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, Middle Region, Temple Terrace, Florida, for Appellant

Ashley Moody, Attorney General, Tallahassee, Florida, Celia Terenzio, Chief Assistant Attorney General, West Palm Beach, Florida, and Leslie Campbell, Assistant Attorney General, West Palm Beach, Florida, for Appellee

PER CURIAM.

Duane Eugene Owen has been sentenced to death for two murders he committed in 1984. On May 9, 2023, Governor Ron DeSantis signed a death warrant for the murder of Georgianna Worden, scheduling Owen's execution for June 15, 2023. Owen sought relief in the circuit court and now appeals three of its orders: (1) an order summarily denying his fourth postconviction motion filed under Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.851 ; (2) an order denying his motion for competency determination; and (3) an order denying his motion for MRI and PET scan. We affirm all three. We also deny his motion for stay of execution and request for oral argument filed in this Court. ¹

I

Georgianna Worden's children discovered her body as they prepared for school on the morning of May 29, 1984. Owen v. State (Owen I ), 596 So. 2d 985, 986 (Fla. 1992). Owen had forcibly entered Ms. Worden's Boca Raton home during the night, beat her repeatedly on the head with a hammer as she slept, and then sexually assaulted her. Id. Owen was arrested the next day on unrelated charges. He confessed to the murder and several other crimes, including the murder of Karen Slattery, whom he had killed in a similar fashion a few months earlier. Id. at 986-87.

Owen was indicted for first-degree murder, sexual battery, and burglary in the Worden and Slattery cases. Id. at 987. He was tried for the Worden murder in 1986. ² Id. The jury convicted him on all charges and recommended death by a vote of ten to two. Id. The trial judge followed the jury's recommendation and imposed a death sentence, finding that the aggravating factors ³ outweighed the mitigating circumstances. ⁴ Id. at 987 & nn.1-2. On direct appeal, this Court affirmed Owen's convictions and death sentence, id. at 986, ⁵ which became final when the United States Supreme Court denied certiorari review in 1992, Owen v. Florida , 506 U.S. 921, 113 S.Ct. 338, 121 L.Ed.2d 255 (1992).

Since then, Owen has unsuccessfully challenged his convictions and death sentence in state and federal court. Owen's first motion for postconviction relief was denied after he elected not to proceed with an evidentiary hearing. ⁶ We affirmed. ⁷ Owen v. State (Owen II ), 773 So. 2d 510, 511 (Fla. 2000). We later affirmed the denial of Owen's second motion for postconviction relief. ⁸ Owen v. Crosby (Owen III ), 854 So. 2d 182 (Fla. 2003). We also denied Owen's petition for a writ of habeas corpus, filed on September 28, 2001. ⁹ Id. Additionally, Owen sought and was denied federal relief. Owen v. Sec'y, Dep't of Corr. , 568 F.3d 894 (11th Cir. 2009). ¹⁰ We then affirmed the denial of Owen's third postconviction motion seeking relief from his death sentence under the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Hurst v. Florida , 577 U.S. 92, 136 S.Ct. 616, 193 L.Ed.2d 504 (2016), and this Court's decision on remand in Hurst v. State , 202 So. 3d 40 (Fla. 2016), receded from in part by State v. Poole , 297 So. 3d 487 (Fla. 2020). Owen v. State (Owen IV ), 247 So. 3d 394, 395 (Fla. 2018).

Owen filed his fourth motion for postconviction relief under Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.851 after the Governor signed his death warrant. ¹¹ The circuit court, after holding a Huff¹² hearing, summarily denied relief on all four claims: (1) that he was denied due process in his first postconviction proceeding because the court failed to stay Owen's evidentiary hearing or conduct a proper inquiry before allowing Owen to waive his constitutional rights; (2) that Owen obtained newly discovered evidence about his brain damage, declining mental condition, and competency; (3) that Owen's severe mental illness should bar execution under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments; and (4) that the Eighth Amendment prohibits Owen's execution after thirty-seven years on death row. The circuit court also denied his motion for determination of competency, his motion for MRI and PET scan, and his motion for stay of execution.

Owen now appeals the denial of his postconviction motion and raises four issues. Additionally, he appeals the denial of his motion for competency determination and his motion for MRI and PET scan. Owen also moves this Court for a stay of execution and requests oral argument.

II

A

"Summary denial of a successive postconviction motion is appropriate ‘[i]f the motion, files, and records in the case conclusively show that the movant is entitled to no relief.’ " Bogle v. State , 322 So. 3d 44, 46 (Fla. 2021) (alteration in original) (quoting Fla. R. Crim. P. 3.851(f)(5)(B) ). We review "the circuit court's decision to summarily deny a successive rule 3.851 motion de novo, accepting the movant's factual allegations as true to the extent they are not refuted by the record, and affirming the ruling if the record conclusively shows that the movant is entitled to no relief." Walton v. State , 3 So. 3d 1000, 1005 (Fla. 2009). That is the case here.

In his first issue on appeal, Owen claims that he was denied due process in his initial postconviction proceeding because, he alleges, he did not properly waive an evidentiary hearing and multiple ineffective assistance of counsel claims. Owen argues that the trial court should have stayed the evidentiary hearing until the Slattery retrial concluded or conducted a Faretta -type ¹³ inquiry before allowing him to waive the hearing and ineffective assistance claims. ¹⁴ He seeks a new evidentiary hearing and a determination of the ineffective assistance of counsel claims on the merits. The circuit court below summarily denied this claim, finding it both procedurally barred and untimely. We agree.

Postconviction claims in capital cases must generally be filed within one year after the judgment and sentence become final. Fla. R. Crim. P. 3.851(d)(1). Owen's judgment of conviction and sentence of death became final when the U.S. Supreme Court denied his petition for writ of certiorari in 1992. Owen v. Florida , 506 U.S. 921, 113 S.Ct. 338, 121 L.Ed.2d 255 (1992) ; see Fla. R. Crim. P. 3.851(d)(1)(B) (providing that a judgment is final "on the disposition of the petition for writ of certiorari by the United States Supreme Court, if filed"). And Owen's waiver of the evidentiary hearing for the ineffective assistance claims occurred in 1997—over 25 years ago. Though there are exceptions to the time bar, see Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.851(d)(2)(A)-(C), Owen has not shown that any of them apply, meaning he has failed to "establish the timeliness of [this] successive postconviction claim," Mungin v. State , 320 So. 3d 624, 626 (Fla. 2020). The circuit court thus properly summarily denied this claim as untimely. See Fla. R. Crim. P. 3.851(e)(2) ("A claim raised in a successive motion shall be dismissed ... if the trial court finds the claim fails to meet the time limitation exceptions set forth in subdivision (d)(2)(A), (d)(2)(B), or (d)(2)(C).").

This claim is also procedurally barred. "Claims raised and rejected in prior postconviction proceedings are procedurally barred from being relitigated in a successive motion." Hendrix v. State , 136 So. 3d 1122, 1125 (Fla. 2014). This Court has twice before rejected Owen's challenge to the validity of his waiver, and once before rejected his challenge to the trial court's handling of the evidentiary hearing.

We first rejected Owen's arguments when we affirmed the trial court's denial of Owen's initial motion for postconviction relief. See Owen II , 773 So. 2d at 514-15. Owen argued, among other things, that "he did not receive the due process to which he was entitled when the circuit court judge prevented him from litigating his Rule 3.850 motion because he invoked his attorney-client privilege relating to his pending capital retrial." Initial Brief of Appellant at 16, Owen II . Even considering Owen's attorney-client privilege, Owen contended, "the court forced counsel to proceed" rather "than stay[ing] the proceedings until the Slattery case was resolved." Id. at 27. We, however, found "no abuse of discretion in the manner in which the court conducted the hearing." Owen II , 773 So. 2d at 515.

Owen also argued that the trial court "failed to conduct a Faretta -type evaluation to determine whether [he] understood the consequences of what the court characterized as a waiver of his postconviction proceedings." Initial Brief of Appellant at 39, Owen II. As a result, Owen asserted that the "record does not affirmatively demonstrate that [he] knowingly, intelligently and voluntarily waived his postconviction proceedings." Id. We, though, said that "the principles underlying Faretta are applicable only when a defendant in a criminal case seeks to waive professional legal representation and proceed unrepresented." Owen II , 773 So. 2d at 515. And after reviewing the record, we concluded "that collateral counsel and Owen jointly made the strategic decision to end the evidentiary hearing." Id. Thus, because Owen's ineffective assistance of counsel claims were "fact-based issue[s]," and Owen "opted to forego" the evidentiary hearing, we determined that Owen waived them. Id.

In his second postconviction motion, Owen again challenged the validity of his waiver, and we again denied relief. This time, using "a different argument to relitigate the same issue," Medina v. State , 573 So. 2d 293, 295 (Fla. 1990), Owen argued that his waiver stemmed from the ineffective assistance of...