Ballard v. State, SC03-1012.
| Citation | 923 So.2d 475 |
| Decision Date | 23 February 2006 |
| Docket Number | No. SC03-1012.,SC03-1012. |
| Parties | John Robert BALLARD, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
James Marion Moorman, Public Defender and Paul C. Helm, Assistant Public Defender, Tenth Judicial Circuit, Bartow, FL, for Appellant.
Charles J. Crist, Jr., Attorney General, Tallahassee, FL and Scott A. Browne, Assistant Attorney General, Tampa, FL, for Appellee.
John Robert Ballard challenges his two convictions for murder in the first-degree, his one conviction of robbery, and his sentences of death. We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. Because we find the evidence presented at trial legally insufficient to support the convictions, we reverse, and direct that a judgment of acquittal be entered.
On appeal, Ballard raises four issues: (1) The State did not prove the charges against him; (2) the trial court erred in finding that no discovery violation occurred when the State failed to disclose the fingerprint comparison chart prepared by the State's fingerprint expert for use as a demonstrative exhibit at trial; (3) the trial court violated the Eighth Amendment by finding that the defense failed to prove the mitigating circumstances of brain damage and Ballard's impaired capacity to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law; and (4) the Florida Death Penalty Statute is unconstitutional because it violates the Sixth Amendment right to have aggravating circumstances found by the jury. It is only necessary that we discuss the first issue because we find that the evidence presented is insufficient to support Ballard's convictions.
The charges against Ballard resulted from the beating deaths and robbery of Jennifer Jones and Willie Ray Patin, Jr., who were found dead in their duplex apartment in Collier County. Ballard, a neighbor and long-time friend of both Jones and Patin, was tried and found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and one count of robbery after a jury trial. The jury recommended death by a vote of nine to three. The trial court sentenced Ballard to death for each of the murders and to fifteen years in prison for the robbery.
Ballard's claim as to the sufficiency of the evidence requires us to review the evidence presented at trial. The evidence presented at trial indicated that Jones and Patin lived in an apartment on 55th Terrace in Collier County. Ariana Harralambus, a friend of Jones, testified that on Saturday, March 6, 1999, she went to Jones and Patin's apartment to see Jones around 10 p.m. Harralambus testified that Jones, Patin, Ballard, Robert Daily, Mike Howell, and a man named Louis were present. Daily testified that he was not sure whether Ballard was in the apartment on Saturday night, but Daily thought Ballard was in the apartment on Friday night, March 5. Jones and Patin were planning to move to Texas that following Monday, March 8, because Patin had a job lined up with his father.
The week prior to Jones' and Patin's deaths, Francisco Garcia, who was affiliated with a street gang, shot through Jones and Patin's windows with two other men. It was well known that Jones sold marijuana, and the transactions usually occurred in her bedroom. Harralambus testified that she observed that Jones had over a thousand dollars in the apartment on Saturday night. Jones usually kept the money in several locations, including her purse, under her waterbed mattress, and in a shoe box in her closet. Harralambus testified that when she left around midnight on Saturday night, only Daily, Jones, and Patin remained in the apartment. Harralambus was not sure what time Ballard left the apartment on Saturday night.
Harralambus and Daily made plans with Jones to go out on Jones' boat on Sunday morning around 11 a.m. Harralambus and Daily both tried to contact Jones on Sunday morning without success. Harralambus went to Jones and Patin's apartment, but Jones' car was not there. Harralambus then went to a shopping center and tried to contact Jones again. Harralambus returned to the apartment and left a folded note above the door asking Jones to page her. Jones never contacted Harralambus. Daily also went to the apartment but Jones' car, a red Mazda hatchback, was gone. Daily was unable to contact Jones on Sunday.
Around 9 a.m. on Monday, March 8, Corporal Todd Sanner of the Collier County Sheriff's Office responded to a call about an abandoned vehicle and found Jones' car in the woods at the back of a vacant lot on Painted Leaf Lane. The car had not been reported as stolen, and it did not appear that anyone had tampered with the ignition. Officers who processed the car later found blood and fingerprints. None of the prints were identified as being Ballard's. The blood was later identified as belonging to Patin. Corporal Sanner drove by Jones and Patin's apartment but did not notice anything out of the ordinary. Ballard had lived on Painted Leaf Lane with his father-in-law for a few months in 1994. However, Ballard's father-in-law moved in 1996. This vacant lot was approximately a mile from Ballard's current residence.
On Monday, March 8, Harralambus tried to contact Jones again before going to work. Daily also tried to contact Jones on Monday without success. Daily testified that he went to Jones and Patin's apartment and tried to enter on Monday afternoon but the door was locked. Daily was normally in regular contact with Patin and was concerned because he was unable to contact Patin all weekend. Daily looked up Jones' father's phone number and contacted him on Monday afternoon.
Daily met Jones' father in front of Jones and Patin's apartment. They went around the back of the apartment and popped out the sliding glass door to gain entry. Upon entering, they noticed boxes and called out for Jones. They found Jones' body in the master bedroom and Patin's body in the spare bedroom. Daily tried to locate the house phone to call the police but could not find it, so he left the apartment to use a neighbor's cell phone to call the police. Daily testified that he did not touch anything, except maybe a wall, while he was inside the apartment. Jones' father testified that he did not touch Patin but that he did grab Jones' arm. He left the apartment through the front door but could not remember if it was unlocked.
Collier County Sheriff's Deputies and emergency medical personnel responded to the call around 4:46 p.m. Upon arrival at the apartment, police found Jones' body on the floor of the master bedroom and Patin's body on the floor of the spare bedroom. Lieutenant Mike Wittenberg was the patrol supervisor on duty when the Collier County Sheriff's office responded. Lieutenant Wittenberg testified that he came in through the front door and, after noticing the bodies, was careful not to disturb anything in the apartment. Lieutenant Wittenberg restricted access to the apartment and only permitted an EMS supervisor to enter and verify that Jones and Patin were deceased. The EMS supervisor used an EKG strip to check for signs of life; there were none. Lieutenant Wittenberg testified that other than placing the EKG strips on Jones and Patin, the EMS supervisor did not touch the victims' bodies.
Corporal Raymond Erickson of the Collier County Sheriff's Office Crime Scene Investigation Bureau testified that when he arrived at the crime scene, there was no one present in the apartment except the bodies of the victims. Corporal Erickson testified that the apartment was a two bedroom duplex and that it appeared as if the residents had been packing to move with boxes. From the hallway, Corporal Erickson could see Jones in the master bedroom and Patin in the other bedroom, both on their backs. Corporal Erickson pulled fingerprints that had already been dusted in several areas of the apartment. He lifted four fingerprints from the waterbed frame near Jones' upper torso, from her shoulder area to her waist area.
Lieutenant Michael Gawlinski, another member of the Collier County Sheriff's Office Crime Scene Investigation Bureau who is also an expert in blood spatter analysis, assisted Corporal Erickson at the scene. Lieutenant Gawlinski indicated that the blood spatter on Jones' body and the limited amount of blood spatter in the master bedroom, except in the vicinity of Jones' body, indicated that Jones was not standing very long after being attacked. The extensive blood spatter in the bathroom, hallway, and spare bedroom indicated that Patin was initially attacked in the bathroom, then crawled down the hall and around the spare bedroom until he collapsed near the closet. Lieutenant Gawlinski also took photographs of the crime scene. A barbell and curl bar, both with a bloody fingerprint each, were found in the spare bedroom. Swabbings of suspected blood were taken from the barbell. Scrapings of suspected blood were taken from the curl bar and a lamp in the spare bedroom. None of the fingerprints on the barbell and curl bar were identified as Ballard's. Some hair was found on a pair of plaid shorts by the curl bar. The dresser drawers in the spare bedroom had been opened, and a black purse was found in the hallway, knocked or dumped over. The investigators were unable to determine how the apartment had been entered and what weapon was used to commit the murders.
Corporal Erickson also assisted in bagging evidence collected by the medical examiner, Dr. Manfred Borges. Dr. Borges viewed the bodies at the scene and performed the autopsies. He found multiple hairs in Jones' right hand under a torn piece of a plastic bag that was stuck underneath Jones' hand, but could not say how the hairs got in Jones' hand. He conducted a rape kit examination; it was negative. Dr. Borges found multiple hairs in Patin's left hand, but could not say how the hairs got there. Dr. Borges also collected samples of Jones' and Patin's head hair, nail scrapings, and clippings, and also blood...
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