Phillips v. State

286 So.3d 905

Joshua PHILLIPS, Appellant,

v.STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. 1D17-5383

District Court of Appeal of Florida, First District.

December 17, 2019

Howard L. "Rex" Dimmig, II, Public Defender, and Carol J. Y. Wilson, Assistant Public Defender, Bartow, for Appellant.

Ashley Moody, Attorney General, and Benjamin L. Hoffman, Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, for Appellee.

Ray, C.J.

Joshua Phillips appeals his sentence of life in prison for a first-degree murder he committed when he was a juvenile. We affirm on all issues and write only to address his arguments that his sentence and the statutory scheme he was sentenced under violate the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution and article I, section 17 of the Florida Constitution.

I.

Phillips was fourteen years old when he brutally killed an eight-year-old girl who lived next door to him. In 1999, a jury convicted him of first-degree murder, and the trial court sentenced him to life without the possibility of parole. In affirming the conviction and sentence, the Second District Court of Appeal^* outlined the relevant facts of Phillips' case:

Maddie Clifton, eight years of age, came home from school at 4:30 p.m. on November 3, 1998, practiced her piano, and then went outside to play. She first went to the yard of a sixteen-year-old neighbor and then returned to her own yard. The neighbor's grandmother could see Maddie in her driveway and she also saw Joshua Phillips "creeping up" on Maddie. She watched them for a few moments but went back into her home after deciding that what she saw was nothing more than two kids playing together. By 6:20 p.m. Maddie's mother called her children to dinner, and when Maddie did not appear, Mrs. Clifton asked some of the neighbors to look for her daughter, but no one could find her. By 6:33 p.m. Mrs. Clifton called 911.

That evening several of the neighborhood children, including Joshua, took part in a search. Witnesses to that event described Joshua as "acting normal" but looking as if he had just taken a shower. The next day a Jacksonville Sheriff's Office detective spoke with Joshua about Maddie, who stated that he had seen Maddie the day before but had not played with her. He was not supposed to play with her because of their age difference. Police searched the Phillips' storage shed and car after Joshua's father arrived home, but they found nothing. A couple of days later, another homicide detective went to the Phillips' home when only Joshua was present and interviewed Joshua as he sat on the bed in his room.

Maddie's body was not discovered until November 10, 1998, when Joshua's mother, upset and crying, flagged down uniformed officers who were doing investigations in the neighborhood. The officers and Mrs. Phillips went to Joshua's room and opened the door. There they saw two small feet with white socks sticking out from the bottom of Joshua's waterbed, along with liquid coming from underneath the bed and tape on the floor. A strong odor emanated from the room, which was immediately sealed as a crime scene. One of the detectives then picked up Joshua at school and took him to the police station.

When Joshua's room was searched the police found several types of air fresheners, rolls of tape, a baseball bat hidden behind a dresser, and a Leatherman knife tool. Maddie's body was under the waterbed with her shirt pulled up and her panties beneath her.

Joshua confessed to killing Maddie. He claimed that the two were playing with a baseball in his back yard when he hit the ball very hard and accidentally struck her near the left eye. She began to cry and holler, so Joshua, fearful that his father would be angry at him for playing with the younger girl, took her into his room. She was bleeding from the gash and crying loudly, and to keep his father from discovering her he struck Maddie once or twice in the head. She whimpered, and when she began to moan more loudly he took his knife and cut her throat. Then he concealed her body by prying off the side of his waterbed and pushing Maddie underneath. Joshua's father had come home by this time, and, realizing that Maddie's labored breathing was loud enough for his father to hear in another room, Joshua pulled the child out and stabbed her in her lungs so that she would stop breathing. He explained that her shorts and underwear came off when he dragged her into his room and that her shoes came off when he shoved her under the bed the second time. All of this happened because Joshua was afraid of getting in trouble.

The State's medical expert testified that Maddie had suffered three separate attacks. She was struck three times on her forehead and top of her head, receiving wounds that would have been fatal about thirty minutes after infliction. Her neck wounds perforated her windpipe, causing her to bleed to death or drown in her own blood. Nine stab wounds to her chest and abdomen were inflicted when she was already dead. However, Maddie's hand clutched a bracket from the waterbed frame, which indicated that she was still alive when Joshua shoved her underneath.

Phillips v. State , 807 So. 2d 713, 714-15 (Fla. 2d DCA 2002), rev. denied , 823 So. 2d 125 (Fla. 2002), cert. denied , 537 U.S. 1161, 123 S.Ct. 966, 154 L.Ed.2d 896 (2003).

Following the United States Supreme Court's decisions in Graham v. Florida , 560 U.S. 48, 130 S.Ct. 2011, 176 L.Ed.2d 825 (2010), and Miller v. Alabama , 567 U.S. 460, 132 S.Ct. 2455, 183 L.Ed.2d 407 (2012), the postconviction court granted Phillips an individualized resentencing hearing under Florida's newly-enacted statutory scheme for juvenile sentencing. After a hearing conducted the week of August 7, 2017, the court again sentenced Phillips to life in prison, but this time subject to a sentence review after twenty-five years. This appeal followed.

II.

The prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments in the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution "guarantees individuals the right not to be subjected to excessive sanctions." Miller , 567 U.S. at 469, 132 S.Ct. 2455 (quoting Roper v. Simmons , 543 U.S. 551, 560, 125 S.Ct. 1183, 161 L.Ed.2d 1 (2005) ). This right "flows from the basic precept of justice that punishment for crime should be graduated and proportioned to both the offender and the offense." Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). The Florida Constitution similarly prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Art. I, § 17, Fla. Const. When construing the parallel provision of our state constitution, Florida courts are bound by precedent of the United States Supreme Court interpreting the Eighth Amendment. See id. ; see also Valle v. State , 70 So. 3d 530, 538 (Fla. 2011).

In recent years, the United States Supreme Court has decided a series of cases defining the limits imposed by the Eighth Amendment on juvenile sentencing. These cases recognize that juveniles "are constitutionally different from adults for purposes of sentencing" because they have "diminished culpability and greater prospects for reform." Miller , 567 U.S. at 471, 132 S.Ct. 2455. As such, juveniles are "less deserving of the most severe punishments." Id. (quoting Graham , 560 U.S. at 68, 130 S.Ct. 2011 ).

Beginning with Roper v. Simmons , the Court determined that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the imposition of the death penalty on a juvenile offender. 543 U.S. at 578, 125 S.Ct. 1183. Then, in Graham v. Florida the Court announced that the Eighth Amendment also forbids a sentence of life without parole for a juvenile who did not commit homicide. 560 U.S. at 74, 130 S.Ct. 2011. While the Court found it necessary to draw a "clear line" prohibiting the imposition of a life-without-parole sentence on a juvenile nonhomicide offender, it cautioned that the Eighth Amendment "does not require the State to release that offender during his natural lifetime." Id. at 74-75, 130 S.Ct. 2011. What the State must do, according to the Court, is provide the offender with "some meaningful opportunity to obtain release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation." Id. at 75, 130 S.Ct. 2011.

In Miller v. Alabama , the Court extended its analysis in Roper and Graham to hold that the Eighth Amendment prohibits a sentencing scheme that mandates life without parole for juvenile offenders, including those convicted of homicide. 567 U.S. at 489, 132 S.Ct. 2455. The Court reasoned that these sentencing schemes "violate [the] principle of proportionality, and so the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment" because they mandate lifetime incarceration for all juveniles convicted of homicide "regardless of their age and age-related characteristics and the nature of their crimes." Id.

To be clear, Miller did not foreclose the possibility of a juvenile receiving a life-without-parole sentence for homicide as Graham did for nonhomicide offenses. It did, however, render life without parole "an unconstitutional penalty for a class of defendants because of their status—that is, juvenile offenders whose crimes reflect the transient immaturity of youth." Montgomery v. Louisiana , ––– U.S. ––––, 136 S. Ct. 718, 734, 193 L.Ed.2d 599 (2016) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). Accordingly, the substantive rule of constitutional law announced in Miller requires "a sentencer to consider a juvenile offender's youth and attendant characteristics before determining that life without parole is a proportionate sentence." Id. (citing Miller , 567 U.S. at 483, 132 S.Ct. 2455 ).

In response to Graham and Miller , the Florida Legislature enacted chapter 2014-220, Laws of Florida, and the Florida Supreme Court promulgated a rule of procedure providing for a new, comprehensive sentencing scheme for juvenile offenders. The new sentencing range for a juvenile who committed first-degree murder is forty years in prison to life. § 775.082(1)(b)1., Fla. Stat. (2014). In determining the appropriate sentence, the sentencing court must hold an evidentiary hearing and allow the State a...