Love v. State
Resolving certified conflict between the Third and Second DCAs, the Florida Supreme Court held that section 776.032(4) (the 2017 Stand Your Ground burden-shifting amendment) is procedural rather than substantive, and therefore applies to all pretrial immunity hearings held on or after its effective date, including in cases pending when it took effect. The Court quashed Love (which had refused to apply the statute to a post-effective-date hearing) and disapproved Martin's holding that the statute required undoing immunity hearings already conducted before the effective date.
Key facts
- Love was charged with a crime and sought pretrial immunity under Florida's Stand Your Ground statute; a hearing was held after the July 1, 2017 effective date of section 776.032(4), which shifted the burden of proof in such hearings.
- The Third District Court of Appeal refused to apply the new burden-shifting amendment to Love's post-effective-date hearing, creating a conflict with the Second District's approach to the same issue in a similar case.
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Why it matters
Although arising in a criminal immunity context, the opinion is a leading clarification of Florida's substantive/procedural retroactivity doctrine that civil litigators rely on whenever a statutory amendment takes… — full analysis with a trial
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