Jack R. Sliney v. State of Florida ( 2023 )

Supreme Court of Florida
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No. SC2022-0700
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JACK R. SLINEY,
Appellant,
vs.
STATE OF FLORIDA,
Appellee.
May 25, 2023
PER CURIAM.
Three decades ago, then-19-year-old Jack Sliney murdered
George Blumberg during a robbery of Mr. Blumberg’s pawn shop.
Sliney’s conviction and death sentence for the murder became final
in 1998.1 In January 2022, Sliney filed a second successive
postconviction motion under Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure
3.851.2 Sliney challenges the constitutionality of his death
1. Sliney v. State, 699 So. 2d 662, 672 (Fla. 1997), cert.
denied, 522 U.S. 1129 (1998).
2. We previously denied Sliney’s initial postconviction motion
and first successive postconviction motion. See Sliney v. State, 944
sentence, arguing that the Eighth Amendment should be
understood to categorically preclude the execution of offenders who
were under age 22 at the time of their crimes. The trial court
summarily denied Sliney’s motion, Sliney appealed the ruling to this
Court, and we now affirm. 3
I.
The decision in Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005), sets
the baseline here. In Roper, the United States Supreme Court held
that “[t]he Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments forbid imposition of
the death penalty on offenders who were under the age of 18 when
their crimes were committed.” Id. at 578. To get to that holding,
the Court first conducted “a review of objective indicia of consensus,
as expressed in particular by the enactments of legislatures that
have addressed the question.” Id. at 564. Then the Court applied
its “own independent judgment” to conclude that “the death penalty
So. 2d 270, 289 (Fla. 2006); Sliney v. State, 235 So. 3d 310, 310
(Fla. 2018).
3. We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const.
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is disproportionate punishment for offenders under 18.” Id. at 564,
575.
The Supreme Court identified three differences between
juveniles and adults that, in the Court’s view, “render suspect any
conclusion that a juvenile falls among the worst offenders”:
juveniles’ relative lack of maturity and underdeveloped sense of
responsibility; their increased vulnerability to outside influences
and peer pressure; and their incompletely formed character. Id. at
569-70. And given juveniles’ “diminished culpability,” the Court
reasoned that “the penological justifications for the death penalty
apply to them with lesser force than to adults.” Id. at 571. The
Court acknowledged that “[t]he qualities that distinguish juveniles
from adults do not disappear when an individual turns 18.” Id. at
574. But it concluded that “18 is the point where society draws the
line for many purposes between childhood and adulthood,” and that
is “the age at which the line for death eligibility ought to rest.” Id.
Sliney’s second successive postconviction motion alleges that
under the logic (if not the holding) of Roper, the Eighth Amendment
should be understood to categorically prohibit the execution of any
offender aged 18 through 21 at the time of his crime. Sliney
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emphasizes that his motion does not seek reweighing of age as a
mitigator in his case. Instead, Sliney claims to be a member of a
class for whom the death penalty is categorically off limits.
Sliney’s motion purports to raise two claims, each asserting a
reason why his death sentence violates the Eighth Amendment—
whether it would be more accurate to characterize the motion as
raising a single Eighth Amendment claim is something we need not
decide to resolve this appeal. The first claim invokes supposedly
new scientific evidence about brain development to support the
proposition that offenders aged 18 to 21, like juveniles, have
diminished culpability. The alleged “newly discovered evidence”
consists of the 2021 version of the Intellectual Disability Manual
issued by the American Association of Intellectual and
Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD). Sliney says that the manual
raised the age of onset for diagnosing individual disability from 18
to 22. According to Sliney, the manual shows “a firm and
conclusive recognition by the scientific community that there is no
functional difference between the brain of an older adolescent and a
juvenile offender.” Sliney’s second claim alleges that his death
sentence is disproportionate punishment prohibited by the Eighth
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Amendment. The basis for this claim is an alleged national
consensus against the death penalty for individuals aged 18
through 21.
The trial court held a Huff 4 hearing to consider these
arguments and to determine whether resolution of Sliney’s motion
would require an evidentiary hearing. The court then summarily
denied Sliney’s claims, concluding that the claims were untimely,
procedurally barred, and substantively precluded by this Court’s
precedent. See, e.g., Branch v. State, 236 So. 3d 981, 987 (Fla.
2018) (“[U]nless the United States Supreme Court determines that
the age of ineligibility for the death penalty should be extended, we
will continue to adhere to Roper.”). This appeal followed.
II.
Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.851(f)(5)(B) authorizes
the trial court to deny a successive postconviction motion without
an evidentiary hearing if “the motion, files, and records in the case
conclusively show that the movant is entitled to no relief.” Sliney
argues that an evidentiary hearing was required in his case and
4. Huff v. State, 622 So. 2d 982 (Fla. 1993).
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that the court below erred by summarily denying his motion. We
disagree.
To sustain the trial court’s ruling, we need only explain our
agreement with the court’s conclusion that Sliney’s claims are
untimely. The general rule is that a motion seeking relief under
rule 3.851 must be filed “within 1 year after the judgment and
sentence become final.” Fla. R. Crim. P. 3.851(d)(1). An exception
applies when “the facts on which the claim is predicated were
unknown to the movant or the movant’s attorney and could not
have been ascertained by the exercise of due diligence.” Fla. R.
Crim. P. 3.851(d)(2)(A). A motion traveling under this provision
must be filed within one year of the date such facts become
discoverable through due diligence. Jimenez v. State, 997 So. 2d
1056, 1064 (Fla. 2008).
Sliney filed his motion on January 14, 2022, decades after his
death sentence became final. He argues that the motion is timely
because he filed it within one year of the January 15, 2021, release
of the updated AAIDD manual. Sliney urges us to conclude that the
“new” evidence of the alleged scientific consensus reflected in the
manual transcends long-available studies indicating that brain
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development continues beyond age 18. To be clear, Sliney relies on
the publication of the 2021 AAIDD manual to justify the timeliness
of both his “newly discovered evidence” claim and his
“proportionality” claim, both of which are ultimately grounded in
the Eighth Amendment.
We cannot agree that, for purposes of rule 3.851(d)(2)(A), the
2021 AAIDD manual contains previously unknown “facts on which
[Sliney’s claims are] predicated.” Similar facts have long been
available to support the argument—successful or not—that young
adults are like older juveniles in terms of brain development and, by
extension, moral culpability. Sliney’s motion itself cites a February
5, 2018, American Bar Association resolution that, citing then-
current brain research, says: “These and other large-scale
advances in the understanding of the human brain[] have led to the
current medical recognition that brain systems and structures are
still developing into an individual’s mid-twenties.”
Sliney’s attempted reliance on the publication of the new
AAIDD manual ignores the important distinction between the facts
on which his claims are predicated and the evidence used to prove
those facts. See generally Flanagan v. Johnson, 154 F.3d 196, 199
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(5th Cir. 1998) (explaining the difference). The updated AAIDD
manual might provide additional support for Sliney’s claims, but
the scientific facts underlying those claims have been available
since well before 2021. If we were to accept Sliney’s timeliness
argument, every new study or publication related to brain
development in young adults could be invoked to restart the clock
for filing a successive rule 3.851 motion. That would be at odds
with the finality interests served by the rule.
Our analysis here does not break new ground. Other young
adult offenders have relied on arguments like Sliney’s as a gateway
to escaping the time bar in rule 3.851 and arguing for an extension
of Roper. In their cases, we similarly refused to treat materials like
the 2021 AAIDD manual as “newly discovered evidence” in this
context. See, e.g., Deviney v. State, 322 So. 3d 563, 573 (Fla.
2021); Branch, 236 So. 3d at 985-87. Sliney’s argument that the
manual is qualitatively different—because it supposedly cements a
scientific consensus—is unpersuasive. As a federal appeals court
has observed, “[n]othing in Roper leads us to believe that the
Justices drew the line at age eighteen based exclusively on their
perception of a scientific certainty that an individual’s brain and
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cognitive functions undergo a metamorphosis at precisely that age.”
United States v. Gonzalez, 981 F.3d 11, 20 (1st Cir. 2020).
III.
For the reasons we have explained, we affirm the trial court’s
denial of Sliney’s Eighth Amendment claims.
It is so ordered.
MUÑIZ, C.J., and CANADY, LABARGA, COURIEL, GROSSHANS,
and FRANCIS, JJ., concur.
SASSO, J., did not participate.
NOT FINAL UNTIL TIME EXPIRES TO FILE REHEARING MOTION
AND, IF FILED, DETERMINED.
An Appeal from the Circuit Court in and for Charlotte County
Donald Mason, Judge
Case No. 081992CF0004510001XX
Eric Pinkard, Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, Julissa Fontán,
Assistant Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, and Nicholas M.
Bedy, Assistant Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, Middle Region,
Temple Terrace, Florida,
for Appellant
Ashley Moody, Attorney General, Tallahassee, Florida, and Scott A.
Browne, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Tampa, Florida,
for Appellee
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