Terry Smith, Appellant v. State of Florida, Appellee

Summary

The Court affirmed Smith’s three first-degree murder convictions and sentences, including two death sentences and one life sentence. It held that Smith failed to preserve his self-defense challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence, but independently reviewed the record and found competent, substantial evidence supporting both felony-murder and premeditated-murder theories. The Court also upheld the trial court’s aggravator weighting, found the death sentences proportionate, and rejected Smith’s constitutional challenge to Florida’s capital-sentencing procedures.