Death Penalty, Psychiatric Evidence, and Post-Conviction Relief

Facts of the Case

In May 1994, Floyd Damren entered the grounds of R.G.C. Mineral Sands, stole equipment, and then informed a friend of his desire to take more material from that facility. Several weeks later, Mr. Damren returned and burglarized the facility’s electrical shop with an accomplice. The on-grounds duty electrician confronted Mr. Damren’s accomplice. Mr. Damren then snuck up behind the electrician and hit him with a steel pipe. The electrician pleaded for mercy, and Mr. Damren paced the floor for a while before deciding to bludgeon the electrician to death. While Mr. Damren was dragging the electrician’s body across the floor, the shift supervisor entered the building. Mr. Damren saw the shift supervisor, who ran from the building. The shift supervisor, Mr. Knight, recognized Mr. Damren and identified him to police. Mr. Damren was subsequently arrested and charged with first-degree murder, armed burglary, and aggravated assault.

At trial, the jury convicted Mr. Damren on all charges, voted unanimously for the death penalty, and it was imposed by the judge. In 1997, the Supreme Court of Florida affirmed Mr. Damren’s conviction and sentence on direct appeal. In 2003, Mr. Damren’s initial motion for post-conviction relief and habeas petition were then denied by the Supreme Court of Florida (Damren v. State, 838 So. 2d 512 (Fla. 2023)). In 2018, the court again affirmed the denial of Mr. Damren’s successive motion for post-conviction relief (Damren v. State, 236 So. 3d 230 (Fla. 2018)).

In June 2022, Mr. Damren filed a second successive motion for post-conviction relief. Mr. Damren claimed that newly discovered evidence based on a neuropsychological report in 2021 of his ASD and PTSD diagnoses rendered his death sentence “unreliable.” Mr. Damren argued that these diagnoses qualified as newly discovered evidence because ASD was not diagnosed or recognized in adults at the time of the original 1995 trial and his PTSD was undiagnosed because it was “masked” by his previously undiagnosed ASD.

Ruling and Reasoning

The Supreme Court of Florida affirmed the post-conviction court’s summary denial of Mr. Damren’s second successive motion for post-conviction relief. The court held that Mr. Damren’s claims were both facially insufficient and untimely.

The court affirmed the circuit court’s finding that Mr. Damren’s second motion for post-conviction relief was untimely. Per Fla. R. Crim. P. 3.851(d)(1)(2022), a motion for post-conviction relief must be filed within one year of the date that the defendant’s conviction and sentence became final. The court reasoned that Mr. Damren’s conviction and sentence became final after the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari review of the direct appeal from January 12, 1998 (Damren v. Florida, 522 U.S. 1054 (1998)). The exception to the one-year limit is for motions alleging “the 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” (Fla. R. Crim. P. 3.851(d)(2)(A)(2022)). Thus, to be considered timely, the motion would have needed to be “filed within one year of the date upon which the claim became discoverable through due diligence” (Damren, p 3, citing James v. State, 323 So. 3d 158, 160 (Fla. 2021)). Mr. Damren asserted that a diagnosis of ASD was not diagnosable in adults at the time of his trial in 1994. The ASD masked and thus prevented the diagnosis of PTSD. The court stated that Mr. Damren exhibited symptoms of ASD prior to 2019, and he provided no reason why, through due diligence, he could not have been diagnosed prior to the neuropsychological evaluation in 2021. The court noted that Mr. Damren’s claim that counsel had no indication that he exhibited symptoms of ASD “strains credibility.” The court cited the neuropsychological report that documented longstanding symptoms commonly associated with ASD and held that “counsel’s ignorance does not result in a triggering date that manifests only when counsel decides to enlighten himself” (Damren, p 3).

Referencing Jones v. State, 709 So.2d 512 (Fla. 1998), the court used the two-pronged Jones test to determine if the conviction could be set aside based on newly discovered evidence. Jones requires the evidence “must have been unknown by the trial court, by the party, or by counsel at the time of trial, and it must appear that the defendant or his counsel could not have known [of it] by the use of due diligence,” (Jones, p 521) and that newly discovered evidence must be of such nature that it would probably produce an acquittal on retrial. Mr. Damren was not seeking to overturn his conviction, but rather to reduce his sentence, which did not apply to the first prong of the Jones test. The court found Mr. Damren’s claim that the newly discovered evidence of reasonable possibility did not meet the legal requirement for the probable result of a different sentence.

The Jones test also “requires that the newly discovered evidence would probably yield a less severe sentence” (Walton v. State, 246 So. 3d 246 (Fla. 2018), p 249). Mr. Damren had alleged that evidence of ASD and PTSD, combined with his use of alcohol on the night of the murder would have “made a life sentence a reasonable and merciful sentence” (Damren, p 2). The court found that Mr. Damren’s assertion that the jury would have found a life sentence “reasonable” rather than probable was facially insufficient.