Chambers v. Florida, 309 U.S. 227 (1940), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case that dealt with the extent to which police pressure resulting in a criminal defendant's confession violates the Due Process Clause.
The district courts of appeal (DCAs) are the intermediate appellate courts of the Florida state court system. There are currently six DCAs:
Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44 (1996), was a United States Supreme Court case which held that Article One of the U.S. Constitution did not give the United States Congress the power to abrogate the sovereign immunity of the states that is further protected under the Eleventh Amendment. Such abrogation is permitted where it is necessary to enforce the rights of citizens guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment as per Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer. The case also held that the doctrine of Ex parte Young, which allows state officials to be sued in their official capacity for prospective injunctive relief, was inapplicable under these circumstances, because any remedy was limited to the one that Congress had provided.
Florida v. Riley, 488 U.S. 445 (1989), was a United States Supreme Court decision which held that police officials do not need a warrant to observe an individual's property from public airspace.
Coker v. Georgia, 433 U.S. 584 (1977), held that the death penalty for rape of an adult woman was grossly disproportionate and excessive punishment, and therefore unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. A few states continued to have child rape statutes that authorized the death penalty. In Kennedy v. Louisiana (2008), the court expanded Coker, ruling that the death penalty is unconstitutional in all cases that do not involve homicide or crimes against the State.
Hill v. McDonough, 547 U.S. 573 (2006), was a United States Supreme Court case challenging the use of lethal injection as a form of execution in the state of Florida. The Court ruled unanimously that a challenge to the method of execution as violating the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution properly raised a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which provides a cause of action for civil rights violations, rather than under the habeas corpus provisions. Accordingly, that the prisoner had previously sought habeas relief could not bar the present challenge.
Enmund v. Florida, 458 U.S. 782 (1982), is a United States Supreme Court case. It was a 5–4 decision in which the United States Supreme Court applied its capital proportionality principle, to set aside the death penalty for the driver of a getaway car, in a robbery-murder of an elderly Floridian couple. The court ruled that the imposition of the death penalty under the felony murder rule when the defendant did not intentionally kill the victim consituted cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment of the United States constitution.
Papachristou v. Jacksonville, 405 U.S. 156 (1972), was a United States Supreme Court case resulting in a Jacksonville vagrancy ordinance being declared unconstitutionally vague. The case was argued on December 8, 1971, and decided on February 24, 1972. The respondent was the city of Jacksonville, Florida.
Maurice Mitchell Paul was an American lawyer and a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida.
Chandler v. Florida, 449 U.S. 560 (1981), was a legal case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that a state could allow the broadcast and still photography coverage of criminal trials. While refraining from formally overruling Estes v. Texas, which in 1965 held that media coverage was "infringing the fundamental right to a fair trial guaranteed by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment," it effectively did so.
The Supreme Court of the United States handed down nineteen per curiam opinions during its 2009 term, which began on October 5, 2009, and concluded October 3, 2010.
Hoffman v. Jones, 280 So.2d 431, was a case decided by the Supreme Court of Florida that was the first adoption of the comparative negligence rule in negligence law through judicial decision as opposed to adoption through statute. In the wrongful death case of Hoffman v. Jones, attorney Sammy Cacciatore Jr. was instrumental in causing the Florida Supreme Court to adopt for the first time the comparative negligence rule in negligence law. William Harrison Jones Jr. was killed by a Pav-A-Way Corporation truck driven by Philip Francis Hoffman Jr. It was the first case in the nation in which a state supreme court abandoned the almost-150-year-old doctrine of contributory negligence, which precluded an injured victim from recovery if the victim had contributed to the incident to any degree. The Florida Supreme Court adopted the concept of "pure" comparative negligence, which allows a victim to be compensated for the percentage of harm caused by the at-fault person. The decision of the court in Hoffman v. Jones has been cited in law school textbooks, and now the concept of comparative negligence is the prevailing doctrine.
Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection, 560 U.S. 702 (2010), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the Florida Supreme Court did not effect an unconstitutional taking of littoral property owners' rights to future accretions and to contact the water by upholding Florida's beach renourishment program.
Spaziano v. Florida was two United States Supreme Court cases dealing with the imposition of the death penalty. In the first case, 454 U.S. 1037 (1981), the Supreme Court, with two dissents, refused Spaziano's petition for certiorari. However, the Florida Supreme Court would reverse Spaziano's death sentence based on the judge's receipt of a confidential report which was not received by either party. On remand, the judge reimposed the death penalty and the Florida Supreme Court upheld the sentence. In the second case, 468 U.S. 447 (1984), the Court heard Spaziano's appeal of his death sentence.
Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48 (2010), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States holding that juvenile offenders cannot be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for non-homicide offenses.
Berghuis v. Thompkins, 560 U.S. 370 (2010), is a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court considered the position of a suspect who understands their right to remain silent under Miranda v. Arizona and is aware that they have the right to remain silent, but does not explicitly invoke or waive the right.
Franklin v. State, 257 So. 2d 21, was a case in which the Florida Supreme Court struck down Florida's sodomy law as being "unconstitutional for vagueness and uncertainty in its language, violating constitutional due process to the defendants." The court retained the state's prohibition on sodomy by ruling that anal and oral sex could still be prosecuted under the lesser charge of "unnatural and lascivious" conduct, thus reducing the crime from a felony to a misdemeanor.
Florida v. Harris, 568 U.S. 237 (2013), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court addressed the reliability of a dog sniff by a detection dog trained to identify narcotics, under the specific context of whether law enforcement's assertions that the dog is trained or certified is sufficient to establish probable cause for a search of a vehicle under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Harris was the first Supreme Court case to challenge the dog's reliability, backed by data that asserts that on average, up to 80% of a dog's alerts are wrong. Twenty-four U.S. States, the federal government, and two U.S. territories filed briefs in support of Florida as amici curiae.
Pitts and Lee v. Florida (1963) was a criminal case in which two African-American defendants were charged with murder. The case is remembered for its Civil Rights implications, and because it involved two death-row inmates who were later exonerated. The prosecutors deliberately tampered with evidence, and the men were sentenced to death by an all-white jury, Freddie Lee Pitts and Wilbert Lee were imprisoned for twelve years before being pardoned by then-Florida Governor Reubin Askew on September 20, 1975.
Menominee Tribe of Wis. v. United States, 577 U.S. ___ (2016), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States clarified when litigants are entitled to equitable tolling of a statute of limitations. In a unanimous opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito, the Court held that the plaintiff in this case was not entitled to equitable tolling of the statute of limitations because they did not demonstrate that "extraordinary circumstances" prevented the timely filing of the lawsuit.
