Hector Sanchez-Torres v. State of Florida ( 2023 )

Supreme Court of Florida
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No. SC22-322
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HECTOR SANCHEZ-TORRES,
Appellant,
vs.
STATE OF FLORIDA,
Appellee.
March 16, 2023
PER CURIAM.
Hector Sanchez-Torres appeals the circuit court’s order
summarily denying his successive postconviction motion filed under
Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.851. For the reasons
explained below, we affirm. 1
1. We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const.
BACKGROUND
In 2008, Sanchez-Torres and his coperpetrator, Markeil
Thomas, robbed and killed Erick Colon as he was walking home. 2
The pair left Colon’s body on the sidewalk, where it was discovered
a few hours later with a single shot through the head. Colon’s cell
phone and wallet were gone.
Weeks later, Sanchez-Torres’s younger sister found an
unfamiliar cell phone and called the contact listed as “mom.” A
distraught woman answered and explained that the phone had
belonged to her murdered son. The sister hung up and described
the exchange to her mother, who then contacted the police.
Eventually, Sanchez-Torres confessed to the murder but offered
inconsistent statements as to who fired the fatal shot.
Sanchez-Torres was convicted of armed robbery and first-
degree murder, and was sentenced to death for the murder.
Importantly, in imposing sentence, the court did not rely on a
triggerman finding. In its sentencing order, the court clarified that
2. The facts of the crime are detailed in our decision affirming
Sanchez-Torres’s convictions and death sentence on direct appeal.
See Sanchez-Torres v. State, 130 So. 3d 661 (Fla. 2013).
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it “[wa]s not making a finding that Defendant, in fact, was the
person who shot Eric[k] Joel Colon” and that it had not “relied upon
the inference that Defendant may have been the triggerman as an
aggravating factor justifying the death penalty.” Sent’g Ord. at 13.
Instead, it gave great weight to two aggravators—“none of which
[we]re based on Defendant’s triggerman status,” id.—to justify the
sentence: that the murder had occurred during a robbery, and that
Sanchez-Torres had confessed to and been convicted of another
murder. On direct appeal, we affirmed the convictions and death
sentence. Sanchez-Torres v. State, 130 So. 3d 661, 676 (Fla. 2013).
We later affirmed denial of Sanchez-Torres’s initial postconviction
motion and denied habeas relief. Sanchez-Torres v. State, 322
So. 3d 15, 24 (Fla. 2020).
Sanchez-Torres then filed the successive motion at issue here.
In the motion, he sought vacatur of his death sentence based on
alleged newly discovered evidence that pertained exclusively to his
coperpetrator, Thomas. Thomas was a minor at the time of the
murder and therefore ineligible for the death penalty. He was
originally sentenced to life without parole but, following changes to
juvenile sentencing law, was resentenced to a term of years with
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periodic review. 3 At his resentencing hearing, Thomas’s antisocial
personality disorder diagnosis and violent juvenile record—as well
as the fact that he had once confessed to being the triggerman but
later recanted—came to light.
Sanchez-Torres argued that the information should be treated
as newly discovered evidence entitling him to relief. He made two
substantive claims premised on an assumption that Thomas was
the shooter: first, that under the doctrine of relative culpability,
Thomas’s term-of-years sentence rendered Sanchez-Torres’s death
sentence unconstitutional; and, second, that the “newly discovered
evidence” now mitigated his death sentence.
The trial court concluded that the motion was untimely
because the information was not, in fact, newly discovered evidence.
The court went on to rule on the merits that neither claim
warranted relief. This appeal followed.
3. Thomas’s resentencing was required under Miller v.
Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012), Montgomery v. Louisiana, 577 U.S.
190 (2016), and Florida’s updated juvenile sentencing statute,
section 921.1402, Florida Statutes (2016).
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ANALYSIS
We need not address the trial court’s timeliness analysis
because we agree with the trial court’s findings on the merits. We
consider each of Sanchez-Torres’s merit-based arguments in turn.
Under our long-settled precedent, we analyze newly discovered
evidence using the two-prong framework established in Jones v.
State, 591 So. 2d 911 (Fla. 1991), and Jones v. State, 709 So. 2d
512 (Fla. 1998).
A. Relative Culpability
The first argument turns on Sanchez-Torres’s assertion that
the evidence presented at Thomas’s resentencing hearing showed
that Thomas—not Sanchez-Torres—was the shooter. To support
that factual claim, Sanchez-Torres points to Thomas’s antisocial
personality disorder diagnosis, record of juvenile violence, and
recanted confession to shooting Colon.
Starting from the premise that Thomas was the shooter (and
therefore more culpable), Sanchez-Torres argues that his death
sentence, compared to Thomas’s term-of-life sentence, is
disproportionate under relative culpability principles. Sanchez-
Torres asserts that, because Thomas’s alleged triggerman status
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was unknown to the trial court at the time of sentencing, the Court
must consider it now. The State responds that Lawrence v. State,
308 So. 3d 544 (Fla. 2020), bars this claim because relative
culpability is a component of proportionality review. In Lawrence,
we held that the conformity clause in article I, section 17 of the
Florida Constitution prohibits us from performing comparative
proportionality review.
We do not need to resolve how far Lawrence extends because
we have long held that relative culpability analysis does not apply
when a coperpetrator is legally ineligible for the death penalty,
including because of his age. See Sanchez-Torres, 130 So. 3d at675 n.5 (“[Relative culpability] analysis is inapplicable here because
codefendant Thomas was seventeen at the time of the crime and
therefore ineligible for the death penalty.”); see also Bargo v. State,
331 So. 3d 653, 665 n.6 (Fla. 2021); Archer v. State, 293 So 3d 455,
457 (Fla. 2020); Farina v. State, 937 So. 2d 612, 619 (Fla. 2006).
The court committed no error in summarily denying this claim.
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B. Mitigation Evidence
Sanchez-Torres’s next argument closely relates to the first.
Sanchez-Torres contends that the “newly discovered evidence”
mitigates his death sentence. Again, he assumes that that evidence
proves Thomas was the shooter and, because it was unknown at
sentencing, now has mitigating effect. But Sanchez-Torres fails to
acknowledge that the sentencing court declined to premise the
death penalty on a triggerman finding. On the contrary, the court
clearly explained that it did not make a finding or rely on an
inference as to who shot Colon. Instead, the sentencing court
found that independent aggravators counseled in favor of the death
penalty, including that the murder had occurred during a robbery
and that Sanchez-Torres had been convicted of another murder.
The court was right to summarily deny this claim.
CONCLUSION
For the reasons stated above, we affirm the circuit court’s
order summarily denying Sanchez-Torres’s successive motion for
postconviction relief.
It is so ordered.
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MUÑIZ, C.J., and CANADY, POLSTON, COURIEL, GROSSHANS,
and FRANCIS, JJ., concur.
LABARGA, J., concurs in result.
NOT FINAL UNTIL TIME EXPIRES TO FILE REHEARING MOTION
AND, IF FILED, DETERMINED.
An Appeal from the Circuit Court in and for Clay County,
John H. Skinner, Judge
Case No. 102009CF000671000AMX
Robert S. Friedman, Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, and Karin
L. Moore, Assistant Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, Northern
Region, Tallahassee, Florida,
for Appellant
Ashley Moody, Attorney General, and Charmaine M. Millsaps,
Senior Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, Florida,
for Appellee
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