Bargo v. State, SC14–125

• Decision Date: 29 June 2017
• Docket Number: No. SC14–125,SC14–125
• Citation: 221 So.3d 562
• Parties: Michael Shane BARGO, Jr., Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

221 So.3d 562

Michael Shane BARGO, Jr., Appellant,

v.STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. SC14–125

Supreme Court of Florida.

[June 29, 2017]

Valarie Linnen, Atlantic Beach, Florida, for Appellant

Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, Tallahassee, Florida; and Vivian Singleton, Assistant Attorney General, Daytona Beach, Florida, for Appellee

PER CURIAM.

Michael Shane Bargo, Jr., appeals his first-degree murder conviction and sentence of death for the killing of Seath Jackson. We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. For the reasons expressed below, we affirm Bargo's conviction but vacate the death sentence and remand for a new penalty phase based on the United States Supreme Court's opinion in Hurst v. Florida (Hurst v. Florida ), ––– U.S. ––––, 136 S.Ct. 616, 193 L.Ed.2d 504 (2016), and this Court's opinion on remand in Hurst v. State (Hurst ), 202 So.3d 40 (Fla. 2016), cert. denied , No. 16-998, ––– U.S. ––––, 137 S.Ct. 2161, 198 L.Ed.2d 246, 2017 WL 635999 (U.S. May 22, 2017).

BACKGROUND

The evidence presented at trial established that on the night of April 17, 2011, Bargo and codefendants Amber Wright, Kyle Hooper, Charlie Ely, and Justin Soto murdered the victim.¹ Bargo planned the murder and directed his codefendants throughout the commission of the murder. At the time of the crime, Bargo was eighteen years old and the victim was fifteen years old.

Wright and the victim began dating in December 2010, but broke up bitterly in March 2011. Wright became romantically involved with Bargo around the time of her breakup with the victim. According to William Samalot, the victim's friend, Bargo wrongly believed that the victim had abused Wright. Nevertheless, Wright and the victim continued to send text messages to one another after their breakup.

Two or three weeks before the murder, Bargo and the victim threatened one another at Wright's home. Only one week before the murder, Bargo went to the victim's home and argued with him. During that argument, the victim's mother heard Bargo tell her son, "I have a bullet with your name on it."

Hooper, Wright's half-brother, was initially friends with the victim. However, their friendship deteriorated after Wright and the victim broke up. Their friendship further deteriorated when Hooper discovered the victim in bed with a girl in whom Hooper was romantically interested. Hooper admitted that, one week before the murder, he sent a text message to the girl stating that he was going to kill the victim.

In the weeks preceding the murder, Ely allowed some of her friends to move into her two-bedroom home in Summerfield, Florida. Bargo, one such friend, owned and kept a .22 caliber Heritage revolver inside Ely's home. Bargo was known to fire his revolver on Ely's property. Approximately two weeks before the murder, Bargo and Hooper contacted Samalot and the victim to challenge them to a fight at Ely's home. However, when Samalot and the victim approached Ely's home, they heard a gunshot and left the area. Hooper testified that Bargo shot his revolver at Samalot and the victim "to scare them a little bit off." Approximately one week before the murder, two of the home's occupants moved out after Bargo threatened one of them with his revolver during an argument. At the time of the murder, Bargo, Hooper, Soto, and Ely were living at Ely's home, where Wright would sometimes stay overnight.

Hooper testified that on April 17, 2011, the day of the murder, he and Bargo "had a conversation about killing [the victim]." Bargo "wanted to make a plan to do it," and he went to Hooper "because [Hooper] had issues with [the victim] also." That afternoon, Bargo asked Wright to go get the victim and bring him to Ely's home. She agreed. The plan was that Wright would walk with the victim and lure him to Ely's home. Then Bargo, Hooper, and Soto would attack when the victim came inside Ely's home. First, Soto would hit the victim with a wooden object; next, Bargo and Hooper would jump the victim from behind; and finally, Bargo would shoot the victim.

Later that evening, Samalot and the victim visited some neighborhood friends. Samalot noticed that the victim was exchanging text messages with Wright. In those text messages, Wright implemented Bargo's plan. Wright told the victim she wanted to "work things out" with him, asked him to meet her and Ely, and told him not to tell anyone about their meeting. The victim, apparently suspicious this could be a trap, warned Wright in his reply text: "Amber if you have me jump[ed] I will never give you the time of day so if I g[e]t jump [ed] say good[bye] al[right]." She responded that "I could never do that to y [o]u" and "I just want me and y[o]u back." Later, the victim received a phone call from Wright, and Samalot advised the victim not to talk with her. At approximately 9 p.m., Samalot and the victim left a friend's home. They parted ways at approximately 9:15 p.m. Samalot went home, but the victim walked in the direction of Ely's home.

A short time later, Wright and Ely met the victim and the three walked to Ely's home. After the victim entered the home, he sat down in a chair in the living room. Because Soto did not initiate the attack as planned, Hooper grabbed a wooden object and ran into the living room where he delivered a blow to the victim's head. Meanwhile, Wright and Ely ran into Ely's room. Then Bargo, following close behind Hooper with his revolver in hand, began firing at the victim and shot him. The victim fled towards the kitchen and ran out the front door of the home. Soto followed and tackled the victim in the front yard, where Bargo shot the victim again. Bargo and Soto also beat the victim. At Bargo's direction, Hooper joined them and the three of them carried the victim back into the home and put him in the bathtub.²

Bargo's plan was to keep the victim alive after the initial assault so that Bargo could kill him and the victim would know his killer before he died. To that end, Bargo stayed in the bathroom with the victim and hit him, cursed at him, and fired more bullets into him. Bargo ultimately killed the victim by shooting him in the face. Thereafter, Bargo and Soto carried the victim's body in a sleeping bag to Ely's fire pit and placed it into a large fire.³ Bargo and Wright later went to bed, and Hooper tended the fire until about 2:30 a.m.

On the morning of April 18, 2011, James Havens—Wright's and Hooper's "stepdad"—arrived at Ely's home and helped dispose of the victim's remains.⁴ Hooper had previously helped Wright and Ely clean up the blood in the home with bleach. The remains from the fire pit had been stored in three paint buckets with lids, which Bargo and Soto put in the back of Havens' truck along with cinder blocks and cable. Havens drove Bargo and Soto—at Bargo's direction—to a remote water-filled rock quarry in Ocala, Florida, where they dumped the cinder block laden buckets.

Later that afternoon, after returning from the quarry, Havens and Bargo drove to pick up Hooper from work. Along the way, Havens received a phone call from Wright's and Hooper's mother. She informed him that the police were in the neighborhood investigating the victim's disappearance. After Havens and Bargo picked up Hooper from work, Bargo informed Hooper about the police investigation. Bargo borrowed some money from Hooper so that he could leave town.

That same day, Havens drove Bargo to Ocala so that Bargo could see Kristen Williams, an out-of-town girlfriend. Bargo told Kristen that he and some friends had been in a fight with a kid, Bargo shot him, and they "t [ook] him apart and burn[ed] him and then took him to the rock quarry" near her home. Next, Havens drove Bargo to Starke, Florida, where Kristen's father lived. During his stay at the Williamses, Bargo told James Williams, Jr., Kristen's brother, that he had shot a boy eight times with a .22 caliber pistol and killed him. Bargo also told him that they busted his kneecaps in the bathtub, placed him in a sleeping bag, burned him, put his remains in paint buckets, and took the paint buckets to a rock quarry. Bargo told Crystal Anderson, James Williams, Sr.'s girlfriend, that he killed a guy who raped his little sister. Bargo described beating him, chasing him outside, shooting him outside, placing him in a bathtub, beating him some more, and shooting him twice in the face, which killed him. Bargo also told her that the body was put in a sleeping bag and then burned. However, because the body did not burn completely, Bargo used pliers to pull the remaining teeth out of the skull one by one. Bargo told James Williams, Sr., that he shot and killed someone who raped his sister. Bargo also told Joshua Padgett, a neighbor of the Williamses, that he shot a guy, dragged him into a home, shot him again, burned him, and carried him into the woods. Law enforcement arrived at the Williamses' home on April 19, 2011, and took Bargo into custody. Before being taken into custody, Bargo destroyed his cell phone.

Shortly after his arrest, while in a holding cell, Bargo told a fellow inmate that he killed a kid who raped his girlfriend. Bargo described shooting him in a chair, placing him in a bathtub, shooting him in the bathtub when he awoke to make sure he was completely dead, and accidentally burning his own face while trying to burn the body. In addition, David Smith, a retired corrections officer, overheard Bargo tell another inmate that "[t]here were only two witnesses that saw me shoot him."

During the course of their investigation, law enforcement obtained and executed search warrants for Bargo's room in his grandmother's home, Ely's home, and the Ocala quarry. In Bargo's room in his grandmother's home, law enforcement found a Heritage gun box and a spent .22 caliber cartridge. In Ely's home, law enforcement found a loaded .22 caliber Heritage revolver and two boxes of live ammunition hidden inside a floor vent. Law enforcement found .22 caliber casings and live ammunition in several rooms of the home. In...