Bannister v. State
| Decision Date | 08 January 2014 |
| Docket Number | No. 4D10–5205.,4D10–5205. |
| Citation | 132 So.3d 267 |
| Parties | D'Andre BANNISTER, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee. |
| Court | Florida District Court of Appeals |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Gregg Lerman, West Palm Beach, for appellant.
Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and James J. Carney, Assistant Attorney General, West Palm Beach, for appellee.
D'Andre Bannister timely appeals his convictions for second degree murder, aggravated child abuse, and kidnapping a person under thirteen years of age. This case involves the substantial, and eventually fatal, injuries Bannister's four-year-old stepson sustained while under Bannister's exclusive supervision. At trial, Bannister contended that the victim's injuries were the result of an unfortunate fall from a tall mango tree. To combat this theory, the State presented the testimony of medical and forensic experts, all of whom opined that, given the extent of the victim's injuries,they were inconsistent with falling from a tree, and more likely the result of repeated exposure to blunt force trauma.
We write primarily to address Bannister's argument that the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress the statement he made to detectives. We hold that Bannister was not in “custody” at the time he gave a statement, so the State was not obligated to read him his Miranda warnings. We also reject Bannister's contentions that the court erred by failing to (1) instruct the jury that it could receive a read-back of certain trial testimony and (2) grant a judgment of acquittal because the State failed to negate every reasonable hypothesis of innocence.
At trial, the victim's mother, Pameka McNeal, testified that at the time of the incident, she was married to Bannister and lived with him in a home along with their two biological children and McNeal's four-year-old son from a previous relationship, the victim. McNeal assumed the role of the “bread-winner,” working full-time to support the family, while Bannister stayed at home to care for the children.
On the morning of August 7, 2002, when McNeal left home to go to work, nothing appeared to be amiss and all three children were acting normally. When McNeal returned home at lunchtime, all three children greeted her before moving to the kitchen table where they customarily ate their meals. At the time, all of the kitchen chairs were intact.
After leaving work in the late afternoon, McNeal arrived home to find Bannister “cleaning or washing dishes” while the couple's two biological children played in the living room; their youngest son was using his toy broom to sweep the house. McNeal also observed the victim sleeping in his bedroom. Given the child's age, she did not find that to be unusual.
After perusing the house, McNeal braided her daughter's hair for a while before again checking on the victim. This time, upon turning on the lights, McNeal noticed the victim had a big “knot” on his head, a “cut on his eye,” and blood coming from his mouth. Recognizing the apparent severity of the injuries, McNeal tried to wake the victim, but received no response.
McNeal grabbed the home phone and tried to call an ambulance. Bannister stopped her by snatching the phone and unplugging it from the wall. Panicked, McNeal tried to call the hospital from her cell phone. Bannister again blocked her efforts, this time forcibly taking her cell phone and removing its battery. As McNeal wailed over her son's condition, Bannister turned his radio louder, attempting to drown out McNeal's cries. He insisted the victim would eventually wake up and that authorities should not get involved, since DCF had interfered with their lives two years before.
Without the ability to seek help, McNeal confronted Bannister about what had happened to her son. To this, Bannister pointed to a cabbage palm tree in the front yard and explained that the victim fell from the tree, came inside to ask for a glass of water, and indicated that he wanted to lie down. McNeal was skeptical of this story, since the cabbage palm tree was only about five-to-six feet tall and her son was the type to cry loudly had he seriously injured himself. At that point, Bannister did not mention the forty-to-fifty foot mango tree with numerous branches located in the backyard.
Desperate, McNeal carried the victim from his bed to the shower, where she hoped the running water would awaken him. When the attempt failed, McNeal removed the victim from the shower, dressed him, and tried to flee with him in her arms. Bannister blocked her path, trapping her with her son in the bedroom.
With the victim beginning to turn blue, Bannister, in a last ditch effort, waved fingernail polish and rubbing alcohol under the victim's nose, but to no avail. Conceding defeat, Bannister finally decided to change his clothes and drive the family to the hospital.
Upon arriving, Bannister dropped McNeal and the victim at the hospital entrance before driving away with the other children, purportedly to take them to his brother's house. Recognizing that the victim was in a dire stage of distress and gasping for air, nurses immediately placed him in the intensive care unit. When asked what happened, McNeal explained to the doctors how Bannister told her the victim had fallen from a tree.
An ER pediatric nurse testified that when she and a team of nurses secured the victim, he was lifeless and unusually limp. The nurse noticed “numerous ... fairly fresh” bruises along his front side, chest, legs and hips, along with “numerous marks all over his back.” Given the number and extent of the injuries, the nurse believed that they “were inconsistent with a fall” from a tree, particularly since some of the “red and deep purple marks” appeared to resemble “impressions that were consistent with a large handprint.”
After hooking the victim up to a heart monitor, EKG, and ventilator, the nurses noted abrasions all over the victim's abdomen and legs, the majority of which appeared fresh. In addition, a catheter revealed that blood was pooling in the victim's bladder, indicating that he was suffering from an internal injury.
Dr. Roman Pena, a “pediatric intensivist,” testified that when he saw the victim, he immediately noticed “multiple bruises” along the victim's body “consistent with getting hit with a fist” or “a hard object.” Upon seeing inaction in the victim's pupils after shining a light in his eyes, it became clear that the victim was suffering from intense swelling of the brain and/or a lack of brain stem activity, potentially exacerbated by “acidosis” caused by a later-discovered pancreas injury.
Based on his evaluation, Dr. Pena opined that the victim's injuries were not “consistent with a fall from a tree,” and were instead more likely the result of violent child abuse. While Dr. Pena conceded that falling from a forty-foot mango tree and hitting numerous branches “could have caused trauma anywhere,” he did not see how a four-year-old could have climbed such a large tree. Furthermore, had the child fallen from the mango tree, Dr. Pena opined that he would have sustained far more abrasions and broken bones than were present, such that he would not have been able to stand, let alone walk inside to ask for a glass of water.
Similarly, Dr. Reinerd Motte, an associate medical examiner, concluded that the victim's injuries were representative of “a homicide and not an accident,” such as “falling from [a] tree.” In so finding, Dr. Motte described how the bruises and abrasions on the victim's body were at different stages of healing, showing that the injuries occurred over a period of time. Dr. Motte opined that had the victim fallen from a tree and hit several branches, he would have had far more injuries to his hands, feet, arms, or legs. In Dr. Motte's view, the fact that there were “multiple forces of blunt trauma hitting [the victim's] body in multiple areas from multiple directions” showed that “the patterns on his body [we]re inconsistent with falling from a tree.” Upon observing the large mango tree, Dr. Motte posited that there was “[n]o way [he] c[ould] take [the victim's] injury patterns and explain those with a fall from any tree,” let alone that tree. Rather, Dr. Motte believed the injuries to be far more consistent with being struck by something resembling the dimensions of the children's small toy broom.
Dr. Phillip Colaizzo agreed with Dr. Motte that the victim's numerous injuries were “suggestive of multiple points of impact with blunt force trauma” that were likely “the result of being beaten.” Furthermore, Dr. Colaizzo found the injuries to be inconsistent with a fall from a tree, since the victim's injuries, by and large, did not extend to his hands, arms or legs.
Recognizing the extensive nature of the victim's injuries, ER officials called law enforcement to initiate an investigation. A detective arrived at the hospital and met with McNeal, who appeared “very distraught.” McNeal signed a consent form to permit the sheriff's office to search her home. At the time, crime scene investigators took photographs of the victim, noting the “[s]evere bruising through the child's entire torso, arms, legs, face, [and] head.”
Acting upon the consent form, Detective William Buffey visited McNeal's home that night and investigated the nearby trees for clues of the fall. Following a search of the area, however, the detective found the cabbage palm tree devoid of “any evidentiary value,” since there were no broken limbs, tree branches, shoe impressions, or any other indication that the ground under the tree had been disturbed. The detective conceded that he neither took measurements of the mango tree nor collected any forensic evidence from it, since his investigation at that time was focused on the little cabbage palm, based on what Bannister had told McNeal.
Several days later, when McNeal was moving out of her house, she called the police...
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