2. Background and Procedural History
Thompson’s convictions arose from the 1976 murder of Sally Ivester, who died following prolonged beatings, sexual violence, and other torture associated with demands for money. Thompson pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, kidnapping, and involuntary sexual battery.
- Initial plea and renewed sentencing: In Thompson v. State, 351 So. 2d 701 (Fla. 1977), the court reversed and allowed Thompson to withdraw his initial guilty plea. He pleaded guilty again in 1978. Thompson v. State, 389 So. 2d 197 (Fla. 1980), affirmed the resulting convictions and sentences.
- Constitutionally defective mitigation instructions: In Thompson v. Dugger, 515 So. 2d 173 (Fla. 1987), the court ordered resentencing because the penalty-phase jury had been instructed to consider only statutory mitigating circumstances.
- The operative death sentence: Thompson was again sentenced to death in 1989. Thompson v. State, 619 So. 2d 261 (Fla. 1993), affirmed that sentence. Although the court struck the cold, calculated, and premeditated aggravator, it found the error harmless. The remaining aggravators concerned sexual battery, financial gain, and the especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel nature of the crime.
- Finality: The sentence became final in 1993 when the United States Supreme Court denied certiorari in Thompson v. Florida, 510 U.S. 966 (1993). That date became decisive to the later retroactivity analysis.
Further litigation included Thompson v. State, 759 So. 2d 650 (Fla. 2000), rejecting postconviction and habeas relief; Thompson v. Sec'y for the Dep't of Corrs., 517 F.3d 1279 (11th Cir. 2008), affirming denial of federal habeas relief; and Thompson v. State, 94 So. 3d 499 (Fla. 2012), rejecting another successive postconviction motion. These decisions supply procedural history rather than the principal rules governing the present dispute.
The opinion also identifies Thompson v. State, 261 So. 3d 1255 (Fla. 2019), which rejected Thompson’s challenge under Hurst v. Florida, 577 U.S. 92 (2016). The present decision does not revisit that distinct sentencing claim.
After the Governor signed a death warrant on September 11, 2026, Thompson filed the successive motion now under review. His execution was scheduled for October 13, 2026. Separately, a September 17 executive order temporarily stayed the execution while a psychiatric commission examined his understanding of the death penalty and why it would be imposed. That statutory process under section 922.07 was separate from the claims adjudicated in this opinion.
4. Analysis: Precedents and Legal Reasoning
A. Clemency: Access Does Not Have to Be Sentence-Specific
Thompson argued that his only clemency proceeding occurred in 1982, before the sentence then in effect was vacated. He maintained that minimal due process required a new proceeding concerning the 1989 sentence the State proposed to execute.
The governing constitutional framework
The court began with article IV, section 8(a), of the Florida Constitution and the executive clemency rules. Drawing on Gore v. State, 91 So. 3d 769 (Fla. 2012), it emphasized the Governor’s broad discretion over clemency. Zakrzewski v. State, 415 So. 3d 203 (Fla. 2025), supplied the proposition that no specific procedures are mandated in clemency proceedings.
That discretion nevertheless operates within a narrow federal due-process framework. In Ohio Adult Parole Auth. v. Woodard, 523 U.S. 272 (1998), Justice O’Connor’s concurrence recognized minimal procedural safeguards and suggested judicial intervention might be appropriate if officials decided clemency by flipping a coin or arbitrarily denied a prisoner all access to the process. Barwick v. Governor of Fla., 66 F.4th 896 (11th Cir. 2023), identifies that concurrence as providing the controlling holding in Ohio Adult Parole Auth. v. Woodard.
Thompson relied on the arbitrary-denial-of-access example. The majority rejected his attempt to equate the absence of a new, sentence-specific proceeding with the absence of any access.
The controlling analogy: Bundy
Bundy v. State, 497 So. 2d 1209 (Fla. 1986), was central. Bundy sought time to prepare and present a clemency application before execution for Kimberly Leach’s murder. Although he had received a clemency hearing concerning separate Tallahassee murder convictions, he had not received one specifically concerning the Leach case.
The court nevertheless refused to require a second proceeding. It relied both on the Governor’s statement that clemency was inappropriate and on the possibility that the earlier proceeding had already established that Bundy was not a suitable candidate for clemency. Separation of powers counseled against judicial second-guessing of that executive determination.
The accompanying citation to Bundy v. State, 471 So. 2d 9 (Fla. 1985), supplies factual context about the Leach prosecution; it is not the source of the clemency rule.
The analogy was especially strong because Bundy’s earlier clemency hearing concerned different murders and death sentences in a separate case. If that hearing could suffice, Thompson could not establish a constitutional entitlement to renewed clemency consideration merely because he had been resentenced in the same prosecution.
The record and the limits of the holding
The record did not establish that Thompson received a new or updated proceeding after 1989. It did, however, contain a September 11, 2026 letter stating that the Governor reviewed clemency investigation materials and denied clemency. The death warrant likewise recited that clemency had been considered.
The court held that Thompson’s lack of awareness of that consideration did not prove it never occurred. More importantly, it held that his claim would fail even assuming no proceeding occurred after 1982.
The resulting principle is limited: resentencing alone does not create a constitutional right to another clemency proceeding tied to the replacement sentence. The court did not eliminate the minimal safeguards recognized in Ohio Adult Parole Auth. v. Woodard or hold that executive clemency is wholly immune from constitutional review.
B. Lethal Injection: An Unchallenged Independent Ground Controls the Appeal
The court reviewed the summary denial of the Rule 3.851 motion de novo, following Kocaker v. State, 311 So. 3d 814 (Fla. 2020). That standard allows independent appellate examination of the legal basis for denying relief without an evidentiary hearing.
The two-part constitutional test
Baze v. Rees, 553 U.S. 35 (2008), and Glossip v. Gross, 576 U.S. 863 (2015), establish the two requirements governing this method-of-execution claim. As articulated in Asay v. State, 224 So. 3d 695 (Fla. 2017), a claimant must:
- Establish a substantial and imminent risk that the challenged method is sure or very likely to cause serious illness and needless suffering; and
- Identify a known and available alternative method presenting a significantly less severe risk of pain.
Tanzi v. State, 407 So. 3d 385 (Fla. 2025), applying Glossip v. Gross, further requires the alternative to be feasible, readily implemented, and actually capable of significantly reducing a substantial risk of severe pain.
Thompson’s allegations
Thompson alleged serious medical problems, including heart failure, kidney and liver disease, pulmonary conditions, edema, malnutrition, broken ribs, a stage-four pressure ulcer, and recent abdominal surgery. He also alleged that he could not walk and needed complete assistance with transfers.
He asserted that moving and restraining him on the execution gurney would cause excruciating pain, that obtaining venous access would require exceptionally painful measures, and that the three-drug protocol would produce severe air hunger. He proposed execution by firing squad as an alternative.
The circuit court rejected the first-prong arguments as untimely, procedurally barred, and meritless. Independently, it determined that Thompson had not shown that a firing squad would significantly reduce his risk of severe pain.
Why the Supreme Court did not decide the medical merits
Thompson’s initial appellate brief challenged the first-prong rulings but not the independent alternative-method determination. He addressed that second determination only in his reply brief.
Johnson v. State, 135 So. 3d 1002 (Fla. 2014), citing Hoskins v. State, 75 So. 3d 250 (Fla. 2011), establishes that an issue cannot first be raised in a reply brief. The court therefore treated the second-prong challenge as barred.
Because both constitutional requirements had to be satisfied, the unchallenged second-prong ruling was sufficient to sustain denial of relief. The court expressly declined to address the remaining arguments.
This distinction is essential: the opinion does not establish that Thompson’s medical allegations were unfounded, that lethal injection would be painless for him, or that firing squads can never qualify as constitutional alternatives. Its operative reasoning concerns appellate presentation and an independently dispositive ground.
C. Intellectual Disability: Nonretroactivity and the Limits of Manifest Injustice
The substantive prohibition and the original hearing
Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002), holds that the Eighth Amendment prohibits executing intellectually disabled persons. Florida’s section 921.137 similarly requires proof of significantly subaverage intellectual functioning, concurrent adaptive-behavior deficits, and manifestation before age eighteen.
In Thompson v. State, 3 So. 3d 1237 (Fla. 2009), the court remanded Thompson’s intellectual-disability claim for an evidentiary hearing. After that hearing, the circuit court found that he failed to establish all three elements.
The circuit court’s order, cited as State v. Thompson, concluded that his IQ exceeded 70, evidence strongly suggested an actual IQ in the 80s, he lacked the necessary adaptive-functioning deficits, and he had not proved childhood onset. Thompson v. State, 41 So. 3d 219 (Fla. 2010), affirmed those findings as supported by competent, substantial evidence.
The reported full-scale IQ scores were 85, 82, 71, and 88. At that time, Cherry v. State, 959 So. 2d 702 (Fla. 2007), required an IQ score of 70 or below.
Hall and the subsequently withdrawn hearing entitlement
Hall v. Florida, 572 U.S. 701 (2014), invalidated Florida’s rigid IQ cutoff because it created an unacceptable risk that intellectually disabled persons would be executed. The opinion describes the required assessment as conjunctive and interrelated, rather than controlled by a strict numerical barrier.
In Thompson v. State, 208 So. 3d 49 (Fla. 2016), the court concluded that Thompson’s earlier hearing did not provide that assessment, even though he had presented evidence on all three elements. It ordered a new hearing under Hall v. Florida.
Two propositions supported that order. First, Walls v. State, 213 So. 3d 340 (Fla. 2016), held that Hall v. Florida applied retroactively. Second, the court characterized withholding its benefit from Thompson as a manifest injustice warranting an exception to the law-of-the-case doctrine.
While the parties litigated the ordered hearing, Phillips v. State, 299 So. 3d 1013 (Fla. 2020), receded from Walls v. State and held that Hall v. Florida did not apply retroactively. The circuit court consequently denied Thompson’s claim without conducting the new hearing.
Thompson v. State, 341 So. 3d 303 (Fla. 2022), affirmed. It treated Phillips v. State as an intervening change in controlling law permitting departure from the earlier mandate. Because Thompson’s sentence became final in 1993, he could not obtain relief under the later rule.
Why the present habeas petition failed
Thompson argued that the manifest-injustice rationale from 2016 independently entitled him to the hearing, notwithstanding Phillips v. State. The majority rejected that separation. The supposed injustice had been the denial of “the benefit of Hall,” a rationale premised on that decision’s applicability. Once the retroactivity premise disappeared, the earlier fairness language did not create a freestanding entitlement to its procedures.
The court also relied on Conahan v. State, No. SC2026-1234, 2026 WL 2603686 (Fla. Sep. 3, 2026). That decision acknowledged a manifest-injustice exception to procedural bars but rejected its use when a capital defendant merely disagreed with prior rulings and identified no recent, exceptional development. Otherwise, the exception could produce never-ending litigation in virtually every capital case.
Thompson likewise identified no recent, exceptional development bearing on whether he met the intellectual-disability criteria. His assertion of dementia in the reply brief concerned his present sanity to be executed, which the court expressly distinguished from developmental intellectual disability and did not decide.
The holding therefore concerns finality and the availability of successive review. It is not a new factual determination that Thompson would fail an assessment conducted under Hall v. Florida, and it does not weaken the substantive prohibition established in Atkins v. Virginia.
D. Earlier Mitigation Precedents and Their Continuing Significance
Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586 (1978), and Hitchcock v. Dugger, 481 U.S. 393 (1987), explain the constitutional defect that produced Thompson’s 1989 resentencing: the jury had been improperly confined to statutory mitigation.
These precedents matter to the present case because they explain why the sentence considered during the 1982 clemency proceeding was later vacated. They do not, however, establish that resentencing automatically requires renewed executive clemency. The majority treated judicial correction of the sentencing process and executive consideration of mercy as distinct functions.
5. Separate Opinions
Justice Tanenbaum’s Concurrence
Justice Tanenbaum concurred but offered additional grounds not adopted as the majority’s controlling rationale.
First, he questioned whether Thompson had identified a state-created right capable of triggering due-process protection. Conn. Bd. of Pardons v. Dumschat, 452 U.S. 458 (1981), states that the existence and exercise of commutation power do not themselves create an entitlement. He read Justice O’Connor’s opinion in Ohio Adult Parole Auth. v. Woodard as not displacing that principle.
Meachum v. Fano, 427 U.S. 215 (1976), quoting Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539 (1974), supplied the state-created-right framework. Greenholtz v. Inmates of Neb. Penal & Corr. Complex, 442 U.S. 1 (1979), supported the distinction between an enforceable entitlement and a mere hope of favorable executive action.
Second, he emphasized section 940.03 and Abdool v. Bondi, 141 So. 3d 529 (Fla. 2014), which describe the defendant as initiating capital clemency through an application. In his view, Thompson’s motion did not indicate that he had made such an application. Although section 922.052 addresses completion of clemency proceedings before execution, Abdool v. Bondi also recognizes that completion remains within executive control and has no mandated timeframe.
Carroll v. State, 114 So. 3d 883 (Fla. 2013), quoting Sullivan v. Askew, 348 So. 2d 312 (Fla. 1977), reinforced his understanding of clemency as an act of grace committed to exclusive executive discretion.
Finally, Justice Tanenbaum considered both postconviction claims outside Rule 3.851 because they concerned how the sentence would be carried out, not grounds for vacating it. He relied on Conahan v. State, 51 Fla. L. Weekly S269 (Fla. Sep. 3, 2026), for that remedial distinction. He also agreed that the clemency claim was untimely and procedurally barred.
These observations are significant potential arguments in future litigation, but they must not be confused with majority holdings. The majority decided clemency on the existing-access rationale and the execution-method appeal on the failure to timely challenge an independent ground.
Justice Labarga’s Partial Dissent
Justice Labarga agreed with affirming denial of the postconviction claims but dissented from denial of habeas relief. He adhered to his dissent in Phillips v. State and his dissent in Thompson v. State, 341 So. 3d 303 (Fla. 2022).
His disagreement centers on nonretroactivity: whether prisoners whose sentences were already final should receive the protections of Hall v. Florida. The dissent thus preserves the fundamental dispute underlying Thompson’s renewed intellectual-disability claim, without disputing the present resolution of clemency or lethal injection.
Justices Francis and Barrios concurred in the result without separate explanations.