CARL ROBERT ALVAREZ, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR THE STATE OF FLORIDA, STATE ATTORNEY FOR THE EIGHTEENTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT OF FLORIDA, Defendants-Appellees. 11th Circuit. Case No. 11-10699. May 8, 2012. Appeal from the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida (No. 6:08-cv-01024-JA-DAB).
(Before MARCUS, COX and SILER,* Circuit Judges.)
(MARCUS, Circuit Judge.) Carl Robert Alvarez appeals from a district court order dismissing his § 1983 civil rights action against the Attorney General of Florida and the State Attorney for Florida’s Eighteenth Judicial Circuit. In 1991, Alvarez was convicted in Florida of first-degree murder, sexual battery, and aggravated child abuse. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. In state postconviction proceedings, Alvarez sought to obtain, pursuant to Florida’s postconviction DNA access procedures, some of the physical evidence collected by the State in order to conduct DNA testing. The state trial court denied the petition, and Florida’s Fifth District Court of Appeal affirmed, Alvarez v. State, 951 So. 2d 852 (Fla. 5th Dist. Ct. App. 2007) (Table).
In his federal complaint, Alvarez claims that the State prevented him from gaining access to physical evidence for purposes of DNA testing, in violation of his procedural due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, his Sixth Amendment right to confrontation and compulsory process, and his Fourteenth Amendment right of access to the courts. The district court dismissed all of the claims for failure to state a claim or for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction.
After thorough review, we affirm. The Supreme Court has recently made it abundantly clear that there is no freestanding constitutional right to access evidence for DNA testing, and that the federal courts may only upset a state’s postconviction DNA access procedures if they are fundamentally inadequate to vindicate substantive rights. Alvarez has made no showing that Florida’s postconviction DNA access procedures are unconstitutional on their face. Indeed, at oral argument, Alvarez’s counsel explicitly abandoned any facial challenge to the constitutionality of Florida’s access procedures. Alvarez also attacks the state courts’ application of these procedures to the facts of his case, but the district court correctly determined that it lacked jurisdiction to entertain the claim under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. His remaining claims attempt in various ways to assert a freestanding constitutional right to obtain evidence for DNA testing; they are squarely foreclosed by case precedent.
I.
Because this case was decided on a motion to dismiss, we take the facts from Alvarez’s complaint and the attached exhibits as true. Grossman v. Nationsbank, N.A., 225 F.3d 1228, 1231 (11th Cir. 2000) (per curiam) (“When considering a motion to dismiss, all facts set forth in the plaintiff’s complaint are to be accepted as true and the court limits its consideration to the pleadings and exhibits attached thereto.” (internal quotation marks omitted)).
These are the essential facts and procedural history. In 1991, Alvarez was convicted in the Eighteenth Judicial Circuit Court for Seminole County, Florida, of first degree murder, sexual battery, and aggravated child abuse of his stepson, Joshua Boynton, who was seven years old. On the evening of December 5, 1989, Alvarez made a 911 phone call reporting that his stepson was unconscious. Boynton was still unconscious when the paramedics arrived about four minutes later. Boynton never regained consciousness, however, and was determined to be brain dead the following day. His life support systems were removed on December 7, 1989. Boynton had sustained injuries to the left side of his face, left ear, both eyes, the left side of the head, and the inside parts of his thighs and buttocks.
Alvarez claims that no physical evidence linked him to the crime and that his conviction was based wholly upon his pre-trial statements denying responsibility for the crimes. In fact, the State’s medical evidence contradicted Alvarez’s pre-trial statements. Thus, for example, the State’s medical evidence established that the Boynton’s injuries were not consistent with the victim falling from a couch — the explanation initially offered by Alvarez to paramedics. The medical testimony further provided that the condition of Boynton’s anus was consistent with it having been penetrated by a blunt object or finger. The defense’s theory at trial was no longer that Boynton had fallen from a couch, but rather that Boynton’s injuries were inflicted by someone other than Alvarez and that it was possible that a third party may have injured Boynton while Alvarez was asleep that night or when Boynton was at a neighbor’s house or with his mother earlier in the day.
