Kerney v. State

217 So. 3d 138, 2017 WL 1076895, 2017 Fla. App. LEXIS 3780
CourtDistrict Court of Appeal of Florida
DecidedMarch 22, 2017
Docket15-0392 & 13-2443
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 217 So. 3d 138 (Kerney v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court of Appeal of Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Kerney v. State, 217 So. 3d 138, 2017 WL 1076895, 2017 Fla. App. LEXIS 3780 (Fla. Ct. App. 2017).

Opinion

WELLS, Judge.

In these eases, which we consolidate, we address Parrish Kerney’s appeal from an order denying his Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850 post-conviction motion and his Florida Rule of Appellate Procedure 9.141(d)(5) petition for habeas corpus *140 relief. For the following reasons, we affirm denial of his Rule 3.850 motion but grant his petition for habeas corpus relief and remand this matter to the court below for a new trial.

In July of 2002, Kerney was indicted for the first degree murder and strong arm robbery of Claudette Andrews. Ms. Andrews was found in her ransacked home covered with bruises, strangled to death, with a television set on her head. Kerney admitted that he had gone to return a plunger that he had borrowed from Ms. Andrews, who was his neighbor, and while there, he had been caught stealing money from her purse. According to Kerney, during an ensuing struggle, Ms. Andrews ended up on the floor where he “started squeezing” her neck until she had stopped breathing. While Kerney denied that he intended to kill Ms. Andrews, he did admit that after she was dead he masturbated, ejaculating on the floor, and then left with her money.

At the close of Kenney's trial, the jury was instructed on manslaughter by act as follows:

1. Claudette Andrews is dead;
2. Parrish Kerney intentionally caused the death of Claudette Andrews; or the death of Claudette Andrews was caused by the culpable negligence of Parrish Kerney.
However, the defendant cannot be guilty of manslaughter if the killing was either justifiable or excusable homicide as I have previously explained those terms.
In order to convict of manslaughter by intentional act, it is not necessary for the State to prove that the defendant had a premeditated intent to cause death.

Kerney was convicted of second degree murder, and, as pertinent here, argued on appeal that pursuant to Montgomery v. State, 39 So.3d 252 (Fla. 2010), it was reversible error to instruct the jury that “in order to convict [Kerney] of manslaughter by an intentional act, ... the state [had to] prove [that Kerney] had the intent to cause the death of the victim.” 1 Kerney further argued that this error was not cured, as a number of other district courts had held, by also giving an instruction on manslaughter by culpable negligence:

The trial judge in this case, unlike the judge in Montgomery, also instructed the jury they could convict defendant of manslaughter if they found he was culpably negligent. Several district courts of appeal have concluded if the trial judge gives the jury the opportunity to convict defendant of manslaughter by culpable negligence, the improper jury instruction of manslaughter by act is not fundamental error. See Nieves v. State, 22 So. 2d [sic] 691 (Fla. 2d DCA 2009) and Solandko[sic] v. State, [42] So. 2d [sic] [801], 2010 WL 480844 (Fla. 1st DCA 2010).
However, a review of the facts in this case establishes that the inclusion of the culpable negligence instruction did not alleviate the prejudice of the improper manslaughter by act instruction since, there was no construction of the evi- *141 denee which even remotely suggested that the crime in this case was caused by the culpable negligence of defendant.

This argument, as well as Kerney’s other arguments, were rejected by this court in a per curiam opinion without citation. On February 18, 2011, the mandate in that case issued. By that time, notices to invoke jurisdiction in the Florida Supreme Court had already been filed in both Salonko (April 29, 2010) and Cubelo v. State, 41 So.3d 263 (Fla. 3d DCA 2010) (September 7, 2010), seeking review of determinations from decisions determining that giving a culpable negligence instruction along with the erroneous manslaughter by act instruction in effect cured the manslaughter by act instruction error. See Cubelo, 41 So.3d at 267-68 (“We find, as the First District found in Salonko, that the instant case is factually distinguishable from Montgomery as the Montgomery jury did not receive an instruction on culpable negligence as did the jury in the instant case.... Thus, we conclude, as the First District concluded in Salonko, that because the jury was instructed on both manslaughter by act and manslaughter by culpable negligence, there was no fundamental error requiring a reversal of the defendant’s conviction for second degree murder.”).

While proceedings in the Florida Supreme Court in Salonko were stayed on June 9, 2010, pending disposition of Montgomery, by the time the mandate issued in Kerney’s appeal on February 18, 2011, a notice had been filed in the Florida Supreme Court (February 9, 2011) seeking discretionary review of the Second District Court of Appeal’s decision in Haygood v. State, 54 So.3d 1035 (Fla. 2d DCA 2011). There, as in Salonko and Cúbelo, the District Court of Appeal had held “that the erroneous [manslaughter by act] instruction was not fundamental error ... because the jury was also instructed on manslaughter by culpable negligence.” Haygood v. State, 109 So.3d 735, 738 (Fla. 2013). On May 5, 2011, a little over two months after the mandate issued in Ker-ney’s case, the Florida Supreme Court accepted jurisdiction in Haygood and simultaneously stayed further proceedings in this court’s decision in Cúbelo pending disposition of Haygood.

Despite the fact that the Miami-Dade County Public Defender’s office was seeking Supreme Court review in Cúbelo of the same issue raised and rejected in Ker-ney’s appeal, it filed no motion to recall the mandate and made no effort to secure a written opinion with citations to Salonko or otherwise so as to put Kerney in the Haygood “pipeline.” On February 14, 2013, Haygood was decided, holding that “that giving the manslaughter by culpable negligence instruction does not cure the fundamental error in giving the erroneous manslaughter by act instruction where the defendant is convicted of an offense not more than one step removed from manslaughter and the evidence supports a finding of manslaughter by act, but does not reasonably support a finding that the death occurred due to the culpable negligence of the defendant.” Haygood, 109 So.3d at 741. The decisions in Salonko and Cúbelo were quashed and remanded for reconsideration in light of Haygood. See Salonko v. State, 137 So.3d 1022 (Fla. 2014); Cubelo v. State, 137 So.3d 1019 (Fla. 2014).

A little over three months after the Supreme Court’s decision in Haygood, Kerney filed the instant post-conviction motion claiming that Haygood is retroactive in application and by virtue of the fact that he was in the Montgomery pipeline, he should have been in the Haygood pipeline as well. The court below denied the motion, determining that it was not timely as having been filed more than two years *142 after Kerney’s judgment and sentence had become final and because Haygood is not retroactive in its application. We agree with both determinations and'-thus affirm the order denying his Rule 3.850 motion. See Fla. R. Crim. P.

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Bluebook (online)
217 So. 3d 138, 2017 WL 1076895, 2017 Fla. App. LEXIS 3780, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/kerney-v-state-fladistctapp-2017.