Whether the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of Equal Protection and the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of capricious capital sentencing impose limits upon a state court's power to declare unconventional rules of retroactivity

Questions Presented In Hurst v. Florida this Court struck down Florida’s longstanding capitalsentencing procedures because they authorized a judge, rather than a jury, to make factual findings that were the necessary precondition for a death sentence. On remand, the Florida Supreme Court held, as a state constitutional consequence, that a death verdict could not be rendered without unanimous jury findings of at least one aggravating circumstance and that the sum of aggravation is sufficient to outweigh any mitigating circumstances and to warrant death. The Florida Supreme Court then held that it would apply both the federal and state jury-trial rights retroactively to inmates whose death sentences had not become final as of June 24, 2002 (the date of Ring v. Arizona, precursor to Hurst) but that it would deny relief to inmates whose death sentences were final on that date. Petitioner is in the latter cohort. The questions he presents are: 1. whether the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of Equal Protection and the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of capricious capital sentencing impose limits upon a state court’s power to declare unconventional rules of retroactivity, and whether those limits were transgressed here. 2. whether it violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments for a Florida capital sentencing jury to be told their decision is merely advisory. i