Roger G. Babcock v. Florida

My name is Roger G. Babcock, and, in 1997 a Florida jury found me guilty of the crime of sexual battery, a capital felony not punishable by death. At sentencing, the judge informed me that the law required the court to impose a sentence of life imprisonment. The problem is that two years prior to the date of offense, the legislature repealed the only mandatory sentencing requirement from the relevant sentencing statute. At the same time, Florida’s general probation statute vested my trial judge with authority to reduce this sentence to probation for offenses not punishable by death (provided that suspension of sentence was not specifically prohibited by statute.) Believing there to be no discretionary sentencing alternatives available at sentencing, the court sentenced me to a term of imprisonment that it was not required to impose. I then motioned to vacate the life sentence on the grounds that the state had deprived me of due process of law when it required the court to impose a greater punishment than the least it was authorized to choose from and deprived me of the actual assistance of counsel for my defense at sentencing. The Twelfth Judicial Circuit acknowledged that recent legislation had repealed the mandatory sentencing language from the statute, but nonetheless denied relief on the theory that prior state precedent, which required life sentences to be imposed on individuals previously sentenced to death (if capital punishment as a penalty is declared unconstitutional), applied to preclude the court from considering any discretionary sentencing alternatives that were available to me at that time.