Cannon v. State

206 So. 3d 831, 2016 Fla. App. LEXIS 18578
District Court of Appeal of Florida·Decided December 16, 2016·No. CASE NO. 1D16-93·Published·Cited by 3 cases

Opinion

WINSOR, J.

In this appeal, we must determine what happens when a defendant alleges she discovered facts undermining her judge’s impartiality only after the judge denied her postconviction motion. Although the rules of criminal procedure provide no direct answer, Florida Supreme Court precedent allows a defendant in this circumstance to file a successive rule 3.850 motion. We therefore reverse the order on appeal, and we remand so that the tidal court can treat the motion to set aside as a rule 3.850 motion.

I.

Michael Ufferman represented Appellant Dana Cannon in her postconviction proceeding, with Judge Frank Sheffield presiding. Ufferman simultaneously represented condemned inmate Paul Howell in his postconviction proceedings, with the same Frank Sheffield a central feature. Sheffield had years earlier been Howell’s defense lawyer, and Howell (through Uf-ferman) claimed Sheffield mishandled the defense. As a result, Ufferman sought relief from Judge Sheffield in Cannon’s case at the same time he argued in other cases that Judge Sheffield’s faulty lawyering led to Paul Howell’s death sentence.1

Cannon feared that Judge Sheffield might harbor animosity towards Ufferman, so she sought a different judge. But Judge Sheffield kept the case, and this court denied Cannon’s subsequent prohibition petition. Cannon v. State, 113 So.3d 1 (Fla. 1st DCA 2013) (unpublished table decision). Cannon’s postconviction proceeding went ahead, there was a final evidentiary hearing, and Judge Sheffield denied Cannon’s claims in their entirety. This court affirmed. Cannon v. State, 166 So.3d 768 (Fla. 1st DCA 2015) (unpublished table decision). At the time, it would have seemed that was the end of that.

But after all of this, new facts gave rise to new claims, which in turn gave rise to this appeal. Months after this court affirmed the order denying postconviction relief, Judge Sheffield made an on-record comment that Cannon claims shows she was right all along about his animosity towards her attorney. In an otherwise unremarkable hearing in an unrelated criminal case, a lawyer told Judge Sheffield she needed to confer with her client’s appellate counsel, whom she identified as Michael Ufferman. Judge Sheffield immediately responded on the record: “Well, don’t argue to me about Mr. Ufferman. That’s not going to help you out. That’s only going to hurt your case.”

Armed with this new development, Cannon promptly filed a motion to set aside Judge Sheffield’s earlier order denying postconviction relief. Cannon asserted that Ufferman “has had no interaction with Judge Sheffield outside of any courtroom [833] proceeding” and that the judge’s comment showed he held personal animus towards him. Accordingly, Cannon argued, she should have a new hearing with a new judge.

In a detailed, written order, Judge Sheffield denied the motion to set aside. The order described the earlier disqualification motion, saying “Mr. Ufferman was arguing that [Judge Sheffield] was incompetent and ineffective in his representation of Mr. Howell and had in effect perpetrated a fraud on the Court.” It further described the original disqualification motion as alleging animus based on Ufferman’s “unsupported allegations on behalf of Mr. Howell.” The order then defended not only the judge’s earlier decision to deny disqualification but also Sheffield’s conduct as a lawyer representing Howell: “It should be noted that all of the allegations raised in Howell were tried throughout the appellate Court systems, including the United States Supreme Court, and were found without merit.” As a result, the order continued, “Howell was ultimately executed.”

The order made no effort to justify the comment. It did not suggest that the judge made the comment in jest, nor did it present any other benign explanation. In fact, it did not even acknowledge that the judge actually uttered those words, repeatedly referring to the videotaped and transcribed statements as “allegedly made by the Court” or “alleged comments.”2 Instead, the order said the motion was untimely and that Cannon’s “strained interpretation” of the words “form no reasonable basis for the assertion that the Court was tainted by this alleged animus” in denying postconviction relief. Moreover, the order said there was “no proof offered of any nexus asserted between” the “alleged comments” and the postconviction ruling. Finally, the order said the “Court categorically denies that any conflict exists or existed between the Court and counsel that in any way tainted ruling on [Cannon’s] Motion.”

II.

The procedural posture we face is unusual. Cannon’s motion to set aside cited no rule under which it was filed, and the rules of criminal procedure provide no obvious answer to whether a motion to set aside was the right procedural choice. But the Florida Supreme Court’s decision in Steinhorst v. State, which neither party cited, guides and binds us. 636 So.2d 498 (Fla. 1994).

The material sequence in Steinhorst was the same as here: a defendant lost a rule 3.850 proceeding, lost on appeal, and only later discovered facts related to the judge’s potential disqualification. Id. at 500. Walter Steinhorst had been convicted of multiple 1977 murders. Id. at 501. (McDonald, J., dissenting). After those murders—sometime in 1977 or 1978—lawyer Fred Turner represented the estate of one of the murder victims. See id. Not long after, lawyer Fred Turner became Judge Fred Turner and, “recognizing] the potential for serious conflict,” recused himself from the trial of Steinhorst’s codefendant. See id. at 500. Nevertheless, the judge heard Steinhorst’s rule 3.850 matter without disclosing the potential conflict, “even though the reasons for recusal applied equally” to Steinhorst’s case and his code-fendant’s. Id. Unaware of the conflict, the Florida Supreme Court affirmed. See id. (referring to conflict as “a fact previously not disclosed to us”).

After the facts came to light, Stein-horst filed a Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.540 motion to set aside the rule 3.850 order. Id. at 500. The trial court denied the motion, but the. Florida Supreme Court reversed. Id. at 500-01. It [834] held that, although rule 1.540 was not applicable, the trial court “should have treated [the 1.540 motion] as a 3.850 motion, which would not be barred as untimely or successive if ‘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.’” Id. at 500 (quoting Fla. R. Crim. P. 3.850(b)(1)); see also id. (citing Art. V, § 2(a), Fla. Const, (“no cause shall be dismissed because an improper remedy has been sought”)). The court remanded for the trial court to determine if Stein-horst had waived the conflict by not promptly raising it and, if he had not, to vacate Judge Turner’s 3.850 judgment and conduct a new 3.850 proceeding.3 Id. at 500-01.

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Cannon v. State, 206 So. 3d 831, 2016 Fla. App. LEXIS 18578 (Fla. Ct. App. 2016).

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