Michael A. Tanzi v. State of Florida; Michael A. Tanzi v. Secretary, Department of Corrections & Michael A. Tanzi v. Secretary, Department of Corrections

CourtSupreme Court of Florida
DecidedApril 1, 2025
DocketSC2025-0371 & SC2025-0372, & SC2025-0424
StatusPublished

This text of Michael A. Tanzi v. State of Florida; Michael A. Tanzi v. Secretary, Department of Corrections & Michael A. Tanzi v. Secretary, Department of Corrections (Michael A. Tanzi v. State of Florida; Michael A. Tanzi v. Secretary, Department of Corrections & Michael A. Tanzi v. Secretary, Department of Corrections) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

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Michael A. Tanzi v. State of Florida; Michael A. Tanzi v. Secretary, Department of Corrections & Michael A. Tanzi v. Secretary, Department of Corrections, (Fla. 2025).

Opinion

Supreme Court of Florida ____________

No. SC2025-0371 ____________

MICHAEL A. TANZI, Appellant,

vs.

STATE OF FLORIDA, Appellee.

____________

No. SC2025-0372 ____________

MICHAEL A. TANZI, Petitioner,

SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, Respondent.

No. SC2025-0424 ____________

vs. SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, et al., Respondents.

April 1, 2025

PER CURIAM.

Michael A. Tanzi has been sentenced to death for the murder

of Janet Acosta. On March 10, 2025, Governor Ron DeSantis

signed a death warrant scheduling Tanzi’s execution for April 8,

2025. Tanzi unsuccessfully sought relief in the circuit court and

now appeals. We have jurisdiction. See art. V, §§ 3(b)(1), (7), (9),

Fla. Const. We affirm. We also deny Tanzi’s habeas petition,

motions for stay of execution, and request for oral argument. We

dismiss Tanzi’s emergency petition to invoke this Court’s all writs

jurisdiction.

I

On April 25, 2000, during her lunch break, Acosta sat in her

van parked in Miami, reading a book. Tanzi v. State (Tanzi I), 964

So. 2d 106, 110 (Fla. 2007). Tanzi approached Acosta’s van and

attacked her. Id. Threatening Acosta with a razor blade, he

abducted her. Id. After driving to Homestead with Acosta in the

van, Tanzi bound, gagged, and sexually battered her. Id. Tanzi

-2- continued to drive until he reached Cudjoe Key, where he fatally

strangled Acosta and disposed of her body. Id. at 111.

Two days later, police located Tanzi in Key West with Acosta’s

van, after her friends and coworkers had reported her missing. Id.

Tanzi confessed to the crimes and guided police to the spot where

he had discarded Acosta’s body. Id. We offered a more detailed

account of these facts on direct appeal. Id. at 110-11.

Shortly before trial, Tanzi pled guilty to first-degree murder,

carjacking, kidnapping, and armed robbery. Id. at 111. After a

penalty-phase trial, the jury unanimously recommended a sentence

of death, which the circuit court imposed. Id. On direct appeal,

this Court affirmed Tanzi’s sentence. Id. at 121. The sentence

became final when the United States Supreme Court denied

certiorari review. Tanzi v. Florida, 552 U.S. 1195 (2008).

Tanzi has since unsuccessfully sought relief in both state and

federal courts. Tanzi’s first motion for postconviction relief under

Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.851 was denied by the circuit

court, and this Court affirmed. See Tanzi v. State (Tanzi II), 94 So.

3d 482, 497 (Fla. 2012). Tanzi’s petition for state habeas relief was

also denied. See id. As a petitioner in Abdool v. Bondi, 141 So. 3d

-3- 529 (Fla. 2014), Tanzi sought to invoke this Court’s mandamus and

all writs jurisdiction to declare portions of the Timely Justice Act of

2013 unconstitutional and enjoin their enforcement. Among other

claims, he challenged the constitutionality of section 922.052(2)(b),

Florida Statutes (2013), which required the Governor, after issuing

a warrant, to “direct the warden to execute the sentence within 180

days.” Abdool, 141 So. 3d at 543. This Court denied relief. Id. at

555. Tanzi then petitioned for federal habeas relief, which the

district court denied, and the United States Court of Appeals for the

Eleventh Circuit affirmed the denial. See Tanzi v. Sec’y, Fla. Dep’t

of Corr. (Tanzi III), 772 F.3d 644, 650, 662 (11th Cir. 2014), cert.

denied, 577 U.S. 865 (2015).

In 2017, Tanzi sought postconviction relief under Hurst v.

Florida, 577 U.S. 92 (2016), and Hurst v. State, 202 So. 3d 40 (Fla.

2016), receded from in part by State v. Poole, 297 So. 3d 487 (Fla.

2020). See Tanzi v. State (Tanzi IV), 251 So. 3d 805 (Fla. 2018).

This Court denied relief, finding the Hurst error in Tanzi’s case

harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Id. at 806. The United States

Supreme Court denied certiorari review. Tanzi v. Florida, 586 U.S.

1004 (2018).

-4- Tanzi filed his third motion for postconviction relief after the

Governor signed his death warrant. In the motion, he asserted

three claims: (1) the compressed timeframe for Tanzi’s post-warrant

postconviction procedures and the denial of access to additional

public records deprives him of a full and fair postconviction

proceeding in violation of his federal and state due process rights;

(2) Florida’s lethal injection protocols, as applied to Tanzi, a

morbidly obese man suffering from various unresolved medical

conditions, raise a substantial risk of severe pain constituting cruel

and unusual punishment in violation of his federal and state

constitutional rights; and (3) the Governor’s authority to determine

the timing of death warrants and the length of warrant litigation is

unconstitutional. After holding a Huff1 hearing, the circuit court

summarily denied relief on all claims. The circuit court also denied

his motions for additional public records and a stay of execution.

1. In Huff v. State, 622 So. 2d 982, 983 (Fla. 1993), we held that a trial court must hold a hearing on an initial postconviction motion to determine whether an evidentiary hearing is required. This requirement also applies to successive postconviction motions under Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.851(f)(5)(B). See Taylor v. State, 260 So. 3d 151, 157 (Fla. 2018); see also Owen v. State, 364 So. 3d 1017, 1022 n.12 (Fla. 2023).

-5- Tanzi now appeals the denial of his postconviction motion,

raising four arguments. He also seeks habeas relief and requests

oral argument.

II

We have said:

Summary denial of a successive postconviction motion is appropriate if the motion, files, and records in the case conclusively show that the movant is entitled to no relief. We review the circuit court’s decision to summarily deny a successive rule 3.851 motion de novo, accepting the movant’s factual allegations as true to the extent they are not refuted by the record, and affirming the ruling if the record conclusively shows that the movant is entitled to no relief.

Owen, 364 So. 3d at 1022-23 (cleaned up). Tanzi is entitled to no

relief.

A

In his first argument on appeal, Tanzi claims that the

truncated warrant period and the denial of his public records

requests deprived him of his due process rights. The circuit court

summarily denied this claim, finding no relief warranted as a

matter of law. We agree.

The warrant litigation schedule does not violate Tanzi’s due

process rights. “Due process requires that a defendant be given

-6- notice and an opportunity to be heard on a matter before it is

decided.” Asay v. State, 210 So. 3d 1, 27 (Fla. 2016) (citing Huff,

622 So. 2d at 983). This Court has previously rejected the

argument that a 30-day “compressed warrant litigation schedule”

denies a capital defendant “his rights to due process.” See Barwick

v. State, 361 So. 3d 785, 789 (Fla. 2023). Tanzi has not shown how

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