Pedroza v. State

291 So.3d 541

Linda PEDROZA, Petitioner,

v.STATE of Florida, Respondent.

No. SC18-964

Supreme Court of Florida.

March 12, 2020

Carey Haughwout, Public Defender, and Benjamin Eisenberg, Assistant Public Defender, Fifteenth Judicial Circuit, West Palm Beach, Florida, for Petitioner

Ashley Moody, Attorney General, Tallahassee, Florida, Celia Terenzio, Bureau Chief, and Matthew Steven Ocksrider, Assistant Attorney General, West Palm Beach, Florida, for Respondent

Bryan S. Gowdy and Daniel Mahfood of Creed & Gowdy, P.A., Jacksonville, Florida, for Amici Curiae Taylor Hill, Anthony Wagner, Terrence Graham, and Ellis Curry

Carey Haughwout, President, Maria E. Lauredo, Chief Assistant Public Defender, and Jonathan Greenberg, Assistant Public Defender, Florida Public Defender Association, Inc., West Palm Beach, Florida, for Amicus Curiae Florida Public Defender Association, Inc.

LAWSON, J.

This case is before the Court for review of the decision of the Fourth District Court of Appeal in Pedroza v. State , 244 So. 3d 1128 (Fla. 4th DCA 2018), which certified conflict with the decisions of the Second and Fifth District Courts of Appeal in Cuevas v. State , 241 So. 3d 947 (Fla. 2d DCA 2018) ; Blount v. State , 238 So. 3d 913 (Fla. 2d DCA 2018) ; Mosier v. State , 235 So. 3d 957 (Fla. 2d DCA 2017) ; Alfaro v. State , 233 So. 3d 515 (Fla. 2d DCA 2017) ; Burrows v. State , 219 So. 3d 910 (Fla. 5th DCA 2017) ; Katwaroo v. State , 237 So. 3d 446 (Fla. 5th DCA 2018) ; and Tarrand v. State , 199 So. 3d 507 (Fla. 5th DCA 2016). We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(4), Fla. Const.

The issue presented by this case is whether Pedroza's forty-year sentence for second-degree murder is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution as interpreted and applied in Miller v. Alabama , 567 U.S. 460, 132 S.Ct. 2455, 183 L.Ed.2d 407 (2012).¹ We hold that Pedroza has not established a Miller violation and, accordingly, is not entitled to relief. In so holding, we conclude that, to the extent this Court has previously instructed that resentencing is required for all juvenile offenders serving sentences longer than twenty years without the opportunity for early release based on judicial review, it did so in error.

BACKGROUND

At the age of seventeen, Linda Pedroza, along with her twenty-three-year-old boyfriend, planned and carried out the murder of her mother by strangulation. Pedroza was charged with first-degree murder but pled guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for a forty-year sentence. Years later, Pedroza challenged that sentence as cruel and unusual punishment under Miller .

Miller was the progeny of Graham v. Florida , 560 U.S. 48, 74, 130 S.Ct. 2011, 176 L.Ed.2d 825 (2010), in which the Supreme Court had held that a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole is cruel and unusual punishment and therefore a violation of the Eighth Amendment when imposed on a juvenile for a nonhomicide offense. The Graham Court explained that, although states are "not required to guarantee eventual freedom" to juvenile nonhomicide offenders, they may not sentence these offenders to life imprisonment without affording them "some meaningful opportunity to obtain release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation." 560 U.S. at 75, 130 S.Ct. 2011. The Graham holding was extended in Miller to invalidate sentencing schemes that mandated life without parole for juveniles convicted of homicide offenses. 567 U.S. at 465, 132 S.Ct. 2455.

Unlike the Graham decision with respect to juvenile nonhomicide offenders, the Miller decision did not "foreclose a sentencer's ability" to sentence a juvenile homicide offender to life without parole. Id. at 479-80, 132 S.Ct. 2455. However, it instructed that before doing so the sentencer must "take into account how children are different, and how those differences counsel against irrevocably sentencing them to a lifetime in prison." Id. at 480, 132 S.Ct. 2455. Although the sentencing scheme at issue in Miller was one that mandated life without parole for the first-degree murder at issue, the Supreme Court later explained that Miller did more than invalidate such mandatory schemes: it "rendered life without parole an unconstitutional penalty for ‘a class of offenders because of their status’—that is, juvenile offenders whose crimes reflect the transient immaturity of youth," as distinguished from "the rare juvenile offender whose crime reflects irreparable corruption." Montgomery v. Louisiana , ––– U.S. ––––, 136 S. Ct. 718, 734, 193 L.Ed.2d 599 (2016) (quoting Penry v. Lynaugh , 492 U.S. 302, 330, 109 S.Ct. 2934, 106 L.Ed.2d 256 (1989), and then Miller , 567 U.S. at 479-80, 132 S.Ct. 2455 ). The Supreme Court instructed that, for juvenile homicide offenders not found irreparably corrupt, sentencing must leave them with "hope for some years of life outside prison walls." Id. at 737.

After the Supreme Court decided Miller and this Court determined that the related holding of Graham is not limited to sentences denominated "life" but also extends to term-of-years sentences that ensure imprisonment throughout a juvenile offender's natural life, Henry v. State , 175 So. 3d 675, 679-80 (Fla. 2015), Pedroza filed a motion to correct an illegal sentence. Pedroza argued that her sentence violates the Eighth Amendment under Miller because it is a lengthy term of years imposed without individualized consideration of her youth. The State defended Pedroza's sentence on the ground that it is not a life sentence or a de facto life sentence, pointing out that Pedroza will be fifty-five years old on the date she is scheduled to be released from prison. The trial court agreed with the State and denied Pedroza's motion. Pedroza appealed to the Fourth District, which affirmed under its own precedent in Hart v. State , 246 So. 3d 417 (Fla. 4th DCA 2018) (en banc), and concluded that there was no "clear, binding Florida Supreme Court decision that requires resentencing." Pedroza , 244 So. 3d at 1129.

In addition to upholding Pedroza's sentence, the Fourth District certified conflict with several decisions of other district courts. Id. Most of these decisions required resentencing from term-of-years sentences equal to or lesser than Pedroza's sentence and were driven by language in our decisions in Kelsey v. State , 206 So. 3d 5, 10-11 (Fla. 2016), and Johnson v. State , 215 So. 3d at 1237, 1243 (Fla. 2017), which some lower courts have interpreted as mandating resentencing for all juvenile offenders serving sentences longer than twenty years without the opportunity for early release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation.

Cuevas , 241 So. 3d at 948-49 (reversing concurrent sentences of twenty-six years for nonhomicide offenses); Blount , 238 So. 3d at 913-14 (reversing concurrent forty-year sentences for nonhomicide offenses); Katwaroo , 237 So. 3d at 447 (reversing a thirty-year sentence for a homicide offense); Alfaro , 233 So. 3d at 516 (reversing concurrent thirty-year sentences for nonhomicide offenses); Mosier , 235 So. 3d at 957-58 (reversing concurrent thirty-year sentences where the juvenile offender would have been "released at age forty-six at the latest"); Burrows , 219 So. 3d at 911 (reversing concurrent twenty-five-year sentences for nonhomicide offenses). In addition, one of the certified conflict decisions, Tarrand , 199 So. 3d at 509, cited Henry and required resentencing from a fifty-one-year sentence, even while concluding that the sentence "was not prohibited under the Eighth Amendment."

We granted review of the instant case to resolve the certified conflict, which centers on whether there is a per se rule in Florida requiring resentencing of all juvenile offenders serving sentences longer than twenty years without a provision for early release based on a demonstration of maturity and rehabilitation, and ultimately to resolve the issue of whether a forty-year sentence, as a categorical matter, violates the Eighth Amendment under Miller when imposed on a juvenile homicide offender without individualized consideration of the offender's "youth and its attendant characteristics," 567 U.S. at 465, 132 S.Ct. 2455.

ANALYSIS

A. Pedroza's Sentence

Our review in this case is based on construction of the federal constitution and interpretation of case law. Therefore, it is de novo. See Henry , 175 So. 3d at 676 ; Pantoja v. State , 59 So. 3d 1092, 1095 (Fla. 2011) (quoting McCray v. State , 919 So. 2d 647, 649 (Fla. 1st DCA 2006) ).

Under Miller , a juvenile homicide offender cannot be sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole unless the sentencing court has considered the offender's "youth and its attendant characteristics," 567 U.S. at 465, 132 S.Ct. 2455, and properly found the offender to be irreparably corrupt, Montgomery , 136 S. Ct. at 734. See also Landrum v. State , 192 So. 3d 459, 459 (Fla. 2016) (holding that even a discretionary sentence of life without parole violates Miller if the sentencing court did not take the juvenile offender's youth into account). Although the trial court in this case did not give individualized consideration to Pedroza's youth and its attendant characteristics when deciding to sentence her in accordance with the parties' agreement, her sentence is not unconstitutional under Miller because it is not a sentence of life imprisonment.

Additionally, although we recognized in Henry that there is no Eighth Amendment distinction between a term-of-years sentence and a sentence denominated "life" when the term-of-years sentence is the functional equivalent of life without the possibility of parole, Henry , 175 So. 3d at 679-80, that holding does not afford Pedroza relief in this proceeding. The sentence at issue in Henry was ninety years long, and Henry had demonstrated that his sentence did not offer an opportunity for release before the end of his natural life. Id. at 676. Unlike Henry, Pedroza has not shown that her...