Raymond R. Stone v. Louie L. Wainwright, Director, Etc., Eugene P. Huffman v. James F. Tompkins

GOLDBERG, Circuit Judge:

This is an appeal by the State of Florida from the granting of federal habeas relief to two men who had been convicted of violating Florida’s “felony sodomy statute,” Fla.Stat.Ann. § 800.01. Subsequent to the trials at which petitioners were convicted, the Supreme Court of Florida held Section 800.01 to be “void on its face as unconstitutional for vagueness and uncertainty in its language.”1 The Florida Supreme Court went on in that case, however, to say that its decision was “not retroactive, but prospective only,”2 and the State now insists that that determination is…