FLORIDA MAN GETS LATEST U.S. SUPREME COURT REPRIMAND OF LOWER COURT OVERREACH

WASHINGTON (CN) - In what's becoming an increasingly common pattern, the Supreme Court on Monday issued a reversal rebuking lower court overreach. 

The apparent 7-2 decision favoring a Florida death row inmate joins a list of per curiam remands remedying errors caused by lower courts ruling on issues outside of the dispute in front of them. 

Last week, the high court said the Fourth Circuit overstepped by reviving a challenge to President Donald Trump's crackdown on dissent within the federal government. And last year, the court issued similar reversals in a Louisiana's man healthcare discrimination suit based on HIV status, a Maryland murder trial and a Mississippi child abuse case. 

Justice Clarence Thomas, a George H.W. Bush appointee, criticized his colleagues for only offering such relief in "certain" cases. 

"It would be one thing if this practice reflected the court's consistent commitment to correcting legal error in all cases," Thomas wrote in dissent. "But, in reality, this court routinely declines to provide relief to law-abiding Americans when it would actually matter, even after lower courts conspicuously flout this court's precedents in ruling against them." 

Thomas cited the HIV discrimination and the Mississippi child abuse cases as examples of appeals the court felt were worthy of intervention. But he claimed his colleagues turned down opportunities to intervene in other appeals involving affirmative action policies, university censorship and a widow's wrongful death lawsuit. 

"It is unfortunate that the court chose to intervene at the request of a convicted murderer to correct the 11th Circuit's inconsequential foot fault," Thomas wrote. "What makes it even worse is that the court does so even while it refuses to correct far more consequential errors for law-abiding citizens, such as the discriminated-against families in Boston, Staff Sergeant Beck's widow, and the students seeking to challenge university censorship." 

In Monday's ruling, the justices held that the 11th Circuit improperly considered new DNA evidence to uphold Gary Richard Whitton's murder conviction instead of addressing whether the false testimony affected the jury's verdict. 

"The Florida Supreme Court did not consider the posttrial DNA evidence in making its determination, and the court of appeals should not have done so in evaluating that determination either," the justices wrote. 

Whitton was sentenced to death for the 1990 murder of James Maulden. A jury convicted Whitton after hearing from several witnesses, including a jailhouse informant, Jake Ozio, who said Whitton confessed to stabbing Maulden. 

Ozio erroneously testified that he had no prior criminal history before the arrest that landed him in jail with Whitton. As a juvenile, Ozio was charged with assault with bodily injury against his father, terroristic threats against his mother, and at least one other burglary.

Whitton said there was a chance Ozio's testimony - which prosecutors knew was false - affected the jury's verdict. 

A lower court rejected Whitton's challenge, holding that the error was harmless because Florida juvenile criminal records are generally inadmissible to attack a witness's credibility.  

The 11th Circuit affirmed but on different reasoning. The appeals court said Whitton would have been convicted without Ozio's testimony, citing findings by the Florida Supreme Court. But instead of reviewing whether the state court's determinations were reasonable, the 11th Circuit considered new DNA evidence. 

The U.S. Supreme Court said the additional DNA evidence analysis was outside of the case before the 11th Circuit. 

"Because the posttrial DNA evidence was not presented to the jury (indeed, did not exist at the time of the trial), that evidence could not have influenced the jury's verdict," the court wrote. 

Thomas criticized his colleagues for intervening based on a technicality that didn't really affect the outcome of a case. 

"Fortunately, though, the court's decision will have no real-world effect," Thomas wrote. "The 11th Circuit can reissue a virtually identical opinion after deleting one sentence on page 42 and one part of one sentence on page 40, where the 11th Circuit discussed the 2002 DNA tests." 

Justice Samuel Alito, a George W. Bush appointee, joined the majority of Thomas' dissent. The two conservative justices split over Thomas' claim that the high court was increasingly granting summary relief only in certain cases. 

Source: Courthouse News Service