Whether a state court must give retroactive effect on collateral review to the rule announced in Hall v. Florida

QUESTIONS PRESENTED In Hall v. Florida, 572 U.S. 701 (2014), this Court found the Florida Supreme Court’s application of its Intellectual Disability statute unconstitutional under Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002). In Walls v. State, 213 So. 3d 340 (2016) (per curiam), the Florida Supreme Court agreed that its prior statutory interpretation had unconstitutionally restricted Atkins claims to a smaller subgroup of individuals than recognized by the medical community and determined Ha//to be retroactive to those individuals, like Mr. Phillips, who had timely raised Atkins claims. As a result, capital defendants who were denied under the unconstitutional preHa// framework were entitled to receive a new, “holistic” review of their Atkins claims, including Mr. Phillips. However, on appeal from the denial of his Atkins/Hall claim, a newly constituted five-Justice Florida Supreme Court sua sponte reversed its decision in Walls, held Phillips was not entitled to have his intellectual disability claim analyzed under the Hall framework, and determined that HaJ/ announced a new non-watershed rule for Eighth Amendment purposes and thus was not retroactive. The questions presented are: Whether a state court must give retroactive effect on collateral review to the rule announced in Ha// because the Supremacy Clause, as held in Montgomery v. Louisiana, 136 S.Ct. 718 (2016), mandates that a State court cannot deny a prisoner’s claim that his sentence is violative of the federal constitution by interpreting a case such as Ha// as a mere procedural modification of the substantive holding of Atkins but rather the State court must give effect to Atkins substantive holding? Does the Florida Supreme Court’s decision in Phillips, denying some capital defendants the retroactive effect of Hal], while having given retroactive effect of Hall i to other similarly situated capital defendants, create an unacceptably disparate and unequal death penalty system in violation of the Eighth Amendment? Does the Florida Supreme Court’s decision in Phillips violate the ex post facto clause of the United States Constitution? il