BOWLES v. FLORIDA (2019)

The application for stay of execution of sentence of death presented to Justice THOMAS and by him referred to the Court is denied. The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied.

This case implicates important questions related to this Court's decision in Hall v. Florida, 572 U.S. 701, 134 S.Ct. 1986, 188 L.Ed.2d 1007 (2014). Hall invalidated a Florida law categorically prohibiting intellectually disabled death-row prisoners with IQs above 70 from raising successful claims under Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304, 122 S.Ct. 2242, 153 L.Ed.2d 335 (2002). Later, the Florida Supreme Court held that Hall was retroactive. Walls v. State, 213 So.3d 340, 346 (2016). With one hand, the Florida Supreme Court recognized that such intellectually disabled prisoners sentenced before Hall have a right to challenge their executions on collateral review. With the other hand, however, the Florida Supreme Court has turned away prisoners seeking to vindicate this retroactive constitutional rule for the first time, by requiring them to have brought their Hall claims in 2004—a full decade before Hall itself was decided. See, e.g., 276 So.3d 791, 794 (2019) (case below); Harvey v. State, 260 So.3d 906, 907 (2018); Blanco v. State, 249 So.3d 536, 537 (2018); Rodriguez v. State, 250 So.3d 616 (2016). This Kafkaesque procedural rule is at odds with another Florida rule requiring counsel raising an intellectual-disability claim to have a “good faith” basis to believe that a death-sentenced client is intellectually disabled (presumably under the limited definition of intellectual disability that Florida had then imposed). Fla. Rule Crim. Proc. 3.203(d)(4)(A) (Supp. 2004). The time-bar rule also creates grave tension with this Court's guidance in Montgomery v. Louisiana, 577 U. S. ––––, 136 S.Ct. 718, 193 L.Ed.2d 599 (2016).

This petition, however, does not squarely present the concerns addressed in Montgomery. Instead, the questions presented challenge Florida's procedural rule requiring certain post-Hall claims to have been brought in 2004 solely under the Eighth Amendment. Because I do not believe that the questions as presented merit this Court's review at this time, I do not disagree with the denial of certiorari. In an appropriate case, however, I would be prepared to revisit a challenge to Florida's procedural rule.