Denial of justice and the PCA.

President Bookman is right on track when he decries the efforts to truncate the availability of DNA testing to the incarcerated ("Justice Should Never Be Denied," April). Setting artificial deadlines to appeal convictions or to preserve DNA evidence strikes at the root of substantive due process. Those set free due to DNA evidence are living proof that the system failed them. We lawyers, as officers of the court, have the fundamental obligation to keep these lines of inquiry open to substantiate and justify the existence of our independent judiciary.

A bigger, deeper, and more disturbing issue regarding the denial of justice is the imposition of the district courts of appeal as the final arbiter in a case (civil or criminal) when the DCA issues a per curiam affirmance. The DCA judges use their PCA power to close the gate to the Supreme Court and to deny any further action in a case. The Supreme Court likes this method of keeping their workload down. In fact, they encourage it, and they have stated that they want cases to rise to the DCA level and no further unless there is a conflict to give them subject matter jurisdiction. As recently as March 30 in Jackson v. State and the joined cast of Braxton v. State, the Supreme Court has re-affirmed their position that they like their very limited scope of subject matter jurisdiction; they will not entertain any case, no matter how important the issue may be if the DCA issued a PCA; nothing any party may do will spur them to rise to the judicial occasion and take the case, citing their limited jurisdiction (putting the rabbit into the hat and pulling it out again). They even used the case as a vehicle to instruct the clerk to dismiss any notices of appeal and petitions for discretionary jurisdiction asserting jurisdiction on similar grounds (predicated on a PCA).

The PCA is a vicious instrument used at the sole discretion of the DCA to shut the door to any case the DCA judges think should not be further reviewed. Unfortunately, our Supreme Court does not have the subject matter jurisdiction to reach down and take a case regardless of its legal merit, and the Supreme Court does not want this power bestowed upon it, either. If this isn't justice denied, I don't know what is. What we have is the DCA imposing itself as the court of last resort, in actuality usurping the Supreme Court in its inherent right to review a case, and it's all so very constitutional.

Our Supreme Court is not supreme.

No one in the judiciary wants it to be. I haven't seen The Florida Bar take up the flag on this issue. We sorely need a constitutional amendment bestowing subject matter jurisdiction on the Supreme Court to hear any case it wants to hear, allow a party to petition for discretionary review, and allow a prisoner to petition for a writ upon the merits of the case. Until our Supreme Court is truly a supreme court in jurisdiction and not in name only, Florida's jurisprudence is a bad joke.

PAUL S. CHERRY, Sarasota