Jackson v. State
| Decision Date | 25 January 2013 |
| Docket Number | No. SC10–1646.,SC10–1646. |
| Citation | 107 So.3d 328 |
| Parties | Michael Renard JACKSON, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Nancy Ann Daniels, Public Defender and David A. Davis, Assistant Public Defender, Second Judicial Circuit, Tallahassee, FL, for Appellant.
Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General and Meredith Charbula, Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, FL, for Appellee.
Michael Renard Jackson appeals from a judgment of conviction of first-degree murder and a sentence of death, as well as a conviction for sexual battery by use of actual physical force likely to cause serious personal injury. We have jurisdiction. Seeart. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. For the reasons set forth below, we reverse the convictions, vacate the sentence of death, and remand for a new trial. We conclude that reversible error occurred in the guilt phase of the trial, when the State introduced a lengthy videotape of Jackson's custodial interrogation in which the investigating officers repeatedly expressed their personal opinions about Jackson's guilt and the victim's character and family life.
This case involves the January 23, 2007, sexual battery and murder of Andrea Boyer (Boyer), the head veterinary technician at a veterinary clinic in Orange Park, Clay County, Florida. On January 23, 2007, Boyer was found dead near a kennel cage at her place of employment at approximately 6:45 a.m. She had been vaginally and anally raped, strangled manually and with a ligature, and her head bludgeoned with a fire extinguisher shortly after 5:30 a.m. Jackson, then a thirty-seven-year-old construction worker, was arrested approximately a month after the murder when the DNA found in Boyer's vagina and rectum matched his DNA profile in the State's DNA database (CODIS). Jackson lived and worked near the clinic and routinely passed the clinic when he walked to work down Wells Road in the mornings around the time the murder occurred. Jackson was indicted on March 9, 2007, for the first-degree murder of Boyer by strangulation and/or blunt-force trauma with a fire extinguisher, as well as sexual battery by use of actual physical force likely to cause serious personal injury. At the time of the indictment, Jackson was on felony probation for burglary of a dwelling and two counts of sexual battery on a fourteen-year-old girl, which occurred in 1986 when Jackson was sixteen years old.1 He served thirteen years of his thirty-year sentence.
Jackson entered a plea of not guilty and filed a number of motions challenging the constitutionality of Florida's capital sentencing scheme. He also filed a motion to exclude his videotaped statement taken during his custodial interrogation. Although parts of the tape were redacted, the videotaped interrogation was played to the jury during the State's case-in-chief. In this thirty-seven-minute videotaped interrogation, Jackson repeatedly denied knowing, raping, and killing Boyer despite the detectives' repeated expressions of their personal belief and knowledge that Jackson committed the murders. At trial, Jackson maintained his innocence, but testified he had consensual sex with Boyer, whom he said he knew as “Haley,” 2 in the past and on the morning of her death. Jackson was ultimately convicted for the murder and sexual battery of Boyer. After the jury voted nine to three to recommend a sentence of death, the trial court imposed a sentence of death for first-degree murder finding that four aggravating factors 3 outweighed twenty-four nonstatutory mitigators.4 The court also imposed a concurrent life sentence for sexual battery.
On the morning of the murder, Boyer left for work between 4:30 a.m. and 4:45 a.m.; her commute usually took between twenty and thirty-five minutes. A surveillance video taken at a local convenience store, which is located approximately three-quarters of a mile from the clinic, revealed that Boyer arrived around 5:10 a.m., made her purchases, and left at 5:12 a.m. The store manager, who had been manager for seven years, testified that she had never seen Jackson and Boyer together at the store and Jackson was not at the store that morning. On arrival at the clinic, Boyer deactivated the alarm of the main building at 5:24 a.m. Although she typically arrived early on Tuesdays to prepare the clinic for surgeries, she was unable to accomplish most of her tasks on this Tuesday morning because she was sexually battered and murdered.
A fellow employee found Boyer's lifeless body near a kennel cage around 6:45 a.m. She was found nude from the waist down, with her underwear and scrubs wrapped around one ankle, shoes still on, and her shirt lifted just above her breasts. She had semen in her vagina and rectum, and her body was bruised and battered. There were visible bruises on her arms and hands, right hip, inner thighs, and upper back along her bra straps. Dr. Eugene Scheuerman, a forensic pathologist and medical examiner, testified that her hyoid bone, 5 a very difficult bone to break in a person Boyer's age, was broken due to manual and ligature strangulation. Additionally, Boyer's scalp had several lacerations, her skull was pushed into her brain, the bones in the thickest portions of her skull were broken, and her brainstem and midbrain had multiple pinpoint areas of hemorrhage. A blue tag from the nearby fire extinguisher was tangled in her hair and the silver pin from the fire extinguisher was on the ground near her body. The fire extinguisher had blood spatter, flesh, and hair on it.
Dr. Scheuerman testified that the bruises along both of Boyer's arms were consistent with grabbing and that the bruises on her inner thighs were consistent with someone forcing her legs apart with their hands. He also testified that the incised wounds on her hands were consistent with defensive wounds caused by someone using a sharp-force object on her. He testified, however, that her bruises could not be aged and he could not specify the order in which they occurred. Regarding the injuries to her neck and head, Dr. Scheuerman testified that there were blunt-force wounds adjacent to her neck area, there were signs of manual and ligature strangulation, and that Boyer was likely in pain and frightened while strangled because the human instinct is to gasp for air and fight. Additionally, Dr. Scheuerman testified that bruising deep inside Boyer's neck demonstrated that a great amount of force was used. The bruises on her neck were consistent with the use of a ligature similar to a dog leash and petechiae,6 small red spots in and around her eyes, indicated her heart was still beating while she was strangled. Her head injuries were consistent with being hit by the fire extinguisher multiple times while lying face down and the blood in her lungs is associated with breathing in blood from her head injuries.
The area where Boyer was found was a very tight space. It appeared to have been cleaned because the hose, which was normally up, was down, the floor had several areas where water had collected, and cleaning bottles were out from under the sink. Boyer's scrubs and underwear were also wet. There was a kitchen steak knife with a bent tip and missing handle in the drain near her body. Additionally, approximately $100 was missing from the cash drawer in the main building, but there was no sign of forced entry or violence anywhere other than the kennel building, although Boyer's blood was also found on the fence behind the clinic.
Jason Hall, a general superintendent at the construction company where Jackson worked, testified that Jackson arrived at work at approximately 6:00 a.m. on the morning of the murder. His demeanor did not seem odd, and he did not have cuts, bruises, or blood on his clothes. Byron Anderson, a defense witness, testified that on the day of the murder, he saw a light-colored truck, possibly silver, leaving the clinic around 5:45 a.m. with no headlights on. Jackson did not own or have access to a truck. Although Shad Boyer, Boyer's husband, initially testified that he did not know anyone who owned a silver truck, upon further questioning he agreed that his mother owned a silver truck.
When Dr. Scheuerman arrived at the crime scene, he did not have a rape kit because he was unaware of a possible sexual battery. However, he requested a rape kit when he observed indicators of potential sexual battery, including Boyer's age, how her clothes were positioned on her body, and how her legs were spread to an angle of about thirty degrees. Additionally, he noted that semen, visible from the external examination, was found just inside the vaginal lips. The location of the semen was consistent with sexual intercourse having occurred within two hours before her death. Dr. Scheuerman, however, could not specifically state when the sexual encounter occurred or how long the semen had been there.
The semen was collected and sent to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) for DNA testing to determine whether there was a match in CODIS. Initially, detectives conducted a very broad investigation, collecting DNA samples from Shad Boyer, Michael Norris (the victim's ex-fiancé), and several homeless individuals from nearby homeless shelters, including Kenneth Sharp, who visited the clinic to see Boyer quite often. They also stopped passersby in the area and showed them photographs of Boyer. After a month-long investigation, however, the detectives discovered the DNA sample collected from Boyer's vagina and rectum was a full match with Jackson's DNA in CODIS. The DNA also matched a subsequent DNA sample, a cheek swab, collected from Jackson after his arrest. FDLE analyst Maria Lam testified that the chances of the DNA profile matching someone else is one in a quintillion Caucasians, one in 31 quadrillion African Americans, and...
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