Bigham v. State, No. SC05-245 (Fla. 11/6/2008)
| Decision Date | 06 November 2008 |
| Docket Number | No. SC05-245.,SC05-245. |
| Parties | EDDIE JUNIOR BIGHAM, Appellant, v. STATE OF FLORIDA, Appellee. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
Carey Haughwout, Public Defender, and Jeffrey L. Anderson, Assistant Public Defender, West Palm Beach, Florida, for Appellant.
Bill McCollum, Attorney General, Tallahassee, Florida, and Lisa-Marie Lerner, Assistant Attorney General, West Palm Beach, Florida, for Appellee.
CORRECTED OPINION
This case is before the Court on appeal from a conviction of first-degree murder and a sentence of death. We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. For the reasons expressed below, we reverse the first-degree murder conviction and vacate the death sentence because we conclude the evidence is insufficient to prove premeditation. However, we find that the record supports a conviction of second-degree murder, and we remand to the trial court to enter a judgment of conviction on second-degree murder and to conduct a sentencing proceeding on that conviction.
The record reflects that Eddie Junior Bigham was indicted for first-degree murder, kidnapping, and sexual battery on July 28, 2003. Bigham's motion to suppress his statement given to police was denied by the trial court on April 15, 2004. The trial began with jury selection on November 1, 2004. At the end of the State's case-in-chief, Bigham moved for judgment of acquittal on all counts, and the trial court granted a judgment of acquittal on the charges alleging kidnapping, sexual battery, and felony murder; but the trial court denied the motion as to first-degree premeditated murder and allowed that charge to be submitted to the jury. The jury returned a guilty verdict for first-degree premeditated murder, and subsequently returned an advisory recommendation for death as an appropriate penalty. On January 11, 2005, the trial court sentenced Bigham to death.
Evidence presented at trial indicated that very late on the night of May 23, 2003, Lourdes Cavazos-Blandin, a/k/a Lulu, left the apartment she shared with her husband Jose Guillermo, a/k/a Oscar, after asking her mother, Olivia Cavazos, for money for a taxi. Prior to leaving, she had eaten dinner and split a twelve-pack of beer with her husband. She also had intercourse with her husband before falling asleep. After leaving, she did not return home or call the next morning, May 24, 2003.
On the morning of May 24, 2003, Dennis Lewis discovered Lulu's body on the way to work while walking past a wooded lot. He called the police, who responded to the scene and cordoned it off to avoid contamination. Officer Hurtado testified that he noticed that the vegetation was disturbed along a path from the street to the body. Lulu's body was mostly nude, and her clothes were folded and placed over her face, chest, and genitals.
On July 1, 2003, Bigham voluntarily went with Sergeant Bill Hall and Investigator Jeffrey Hammrick to the Ft. Pierce Police Department for questioning. The interview was videotaped. At the beginning of the tape, Hall appears to be in the middle of informing Bigham of his Miranda1 rights and asks him to sign a written waiver, which Bigham refuses. Bigham, however, did agree to continue the interview. Bigham stated that he had met Lulu at a store in Ft. Pierce in the early hours of May 24 and that he had sex with her at the home of his friend, "Lightning." Initially he stated that he had intercourse with Lulu without a condom on the floor of the bathroom of the home, and that he gave her ten dollars and she left. Shortly thereafter he left and went home without seeing her again. He denied having anal intercourse with her. However, later in the interview he stated that he saw her again and had sex with her in a wooded lot nearby. He described her as high on alcohol or drugs. He stated that he used a black condom given to him by his friend. He said the friend gave him two condoms. Bigham also stated that it was possible that he "slipped" and entered Lulu's anus during the sex in the woods. He stated that when they finished having sex in the woods he asked if she was alright and she said yes. He further stated that Lulu was standing, conscious, speaking, and getting dressed when he left her. Bigham denied choking Lulu despite persistent suggestions from his interrogators that he may have accidentally choked her during sex.
Tommy Garrason, a crime scene investigator, photographed the scene and collected the physical evidence. He described a disturbed area in the lot with branches broken and pushed apart. He also observed drag marks in the pine needles that covered the lot. He discovered a flip-flop type shoe on the street next to the lot and another in the middle of the street. He also found a black condom wrapper in the street near the lot. Garrason photographed and examined Lulu's body before moving her. Near the shorts lying on her chest, he noticed a strand of hair. In total, he collected five strands of hair from under the clothing laid on her body. When he rolled the body over, he found a black condom still lodged in her anus. He was not able to retrieve fingerprints from any of the objects located or from the body itself.
Expert witness Earl Ritzline testified that he performed the DNA analysis on the samples collected. He identified two of the hairs found on Lulu's body as Bigham's. Additionally, he testified that the semen found in Lulu's vagina belonged to Bigham and that the seminal fluid found on and in the condom and the fluid wiped on the T-shirt found on Lulu's body belonged to both Bigham and Oscar, although Oscar's contribution to the stains was smaller and only on the outside of the condom. Further, he testified that the panties were stained with Lulu's urine and had traces of Oscar's semen. There was fecal matter, mixed with semen, on the T-shirt. There were small blood stains on the shirt and shorts that matched both Lulu and Bigham, and clippings from her nails had traces of DNA from both Bigham and Oscar. Ritzline testified that his findings were consistent with Lulu having had sex with Oscar first, then having got dressed, then having had sex with Bigham without dressing again and at some point having urinated while still standing upright and dressed, staining her shorts. Ritzline opined that the sex with Bigham would have naturally pushed Oscar's semen out of the vaginal cavity, thereby explaining the lack of any trace of his semen in her vagina.
Medical Examiner Charles Diggs testified that he determined Lulu's cause of death to be strangulation and that she died between the hours of 1 and 2 a.m. on May 24, 2003. He stated that death by strangulation takes minutes, but that a victim could be rendered unconscious in as little as fifteen seconds. He noted a very minor superficial wound on her face near her left eye. He collected a sexual assault kit from the body and testified that there was evidence of sexual activity, but not of physical trauma associated with the sex. Diggs also testified that he found no injuries on the body or any other physical signs of a struggle. He noted that the urine found on her shorts could have been caused by terror or fright.
The trial court ruled that this evidence was insufficient to submit to the jury on the charges of kidnapping, sexual battery, and felony murder; but the court allowed the premeditated murder charge to go to the jury. The jury convicted Bigham of premeditated murder and, after a penalty phase proceeding, recommended a sentence of death, which the trial court subsequently imposed.
In this appeal, Bigham raises seventeen guilt-phase claims and fourteen penalty-phase claims. Upon reviewing the record, we find that while the evidence is sufficient to support a finding that Bigham was responsible for the victim's death, the evidence is insufficient to demonstrate the necessary element of premeditation to sustain a conviction of premeditated first-degree murder. We find the evidence sufficient to support a conviction of second-degree murder and remand for resentencing for that crime. Our resolution of this issue renders Bigham's penalty-phase claims moot.
In his first two issues, Bigham first asserts that the proof was insufficient to prove he was responsible for Lulu's death, and next asserts that he could not be found guilty of first-degree murder because the proof of premeditation was insufficient.
At trial, Bigham's theory of innocence was that someone else killed Lulu, perhaps her husband, Oscar, because of his disapproval of her drug use and promiscuity. Bigham maintained in his statement that she was alive when he left her. However, the State offered proof that Oscar stayed home the night of Lulu's death and did not leave until she had already been killed. More importantly, the State's evidence, including that of the medical examiner, indicated that Lulu was not likely to have moved after Bigham had intercourse with her in the woods, because she did not remove the condom from her anus, his hairs were on her body, and a mixture of his semen and her fecal matter was on the shirt that lay on top of her when she was found. From this evidence, the jury could infer that Lulu died during or immediately after her sexual activity with Bigham in the woods. Bigham's conflicting accounts of his encounters with Lulu also provided the jury with a basis for concluding that, coupled with the DNA evidence, Bigham was not being truthful in asserting that she was up, alive and getting dressed when he left her. The presence of the condom used by Bigham still in her body is hardly consistent with his account. Further, where the physical evidence is considered together with the numerous conflicts and contradictions in Bigham's account of his encounter with the victim, we conclude that a reasonable jury could find...
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