Blackwood v. State

• Decision Date: 21 December 2000
• Docket Number: No. SC90859.,SC90859.
• Citation: 777 So.2d 399
• Parties: Lynford R. BLACKWOOD, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

777 So.2d 399

Lynford R. BLACKWOOD, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. SC90859.

Supreme Court of Florida.

December 21, 2000.

Richard L. Jorandby, Public Defender, and Gary Caldwell, Assistant Public Defender, Fifteenth Judicial Circuit, West Palm Beach, FL, for Appellant.

Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General, and Marrett W. Hanna, Assistant Attorney

General, West Palm Beach, FL, for Appellee.

PER CURIAM.

We have on appeal the judgment and sentence of the trial court imposing the death penalty upon appellant Lynford R. Blackwood. We have jurisdiction. Art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. For the reasons expressed below, we affirm Blackwood's conviction for first-degree murder and his sentence of death.

MATERIAL FACTS

Appellant was arrested in St. Petersburg, Florida, for the 1995 murder of Caroline Thomas Tynes. At trial it was established that appellant and the victim had dated on and off for approximately ten years but the relationship had ended sometime in October 1994; the victim had started dating someone else and, in fact, was six weeks pregnant at the time of her death. Upon his arrest, appellant confessed to choking the victim, but maintained that he did not intend to kill her. According to appellant, he had driven in his brother's truck to the victim's house on the morning of January 6, 1995, to return a set of sheets. After the two talked for a while, appellant and the victim engaged in consensual sexual intercourse. Afterwards, while lying in bed, they started to argue. Appellant claimed the victim told him that she did not want to see him anymore. He also claimed that the victim had told him that she had aborted six of his children. Appellant admitted to the police that he then strangled the victim using one or both of his hands.

Afterward, he left the victim's house and drove away in her car, leaving his brother's truck behind. He later abandoned the victim's car and hitchhiked to St. Petersburg, where he eventually was arrested. Prior to his arrest, appellant admitted to his cousin-in-law, Donovan Robinson, that he had choked the victim after arguing with her. Robinson testified that appellant appeared surprised when he learned the victim was dead. Appellant claims that he did not intend to kill the victim and that she was still breathing when he left. In addition, he maintained that he loved the victim and that he would have done anything he could to stay with her. According to one of the officers who took appellant's statement, appellant was upset and crying during his statements to the police.

The victim had been discovered on the evening of January 6, lying naked in the bedroom of her home in Fort Lauderdale. The cause of death was asphyxia. During the crime-scene investigation, one of the officers noticed that the house was meticulously kept but observed that objects on the table beside the bed had been tipped over or knocked to the floor. In the officer's opinion, the displaced items indicated signs of a struggle. The police also noted a box of condoms next to the bed and a condom wrapper on the floor in the hallway outside of the bedroom. There were no signs of forced sex. A lock of the victim's hair was found on the mattress and a folded washcloth and bar of soap had been lodged in the back of the victim's mouth blocking her pharynx. White foamy substance in her mouth and nose was later determined to be a combination of lung fluid and soap lather. According to the medical examiner, the fact that the foamy substance was also discovered in the victim's nose indicates the victim was alive when the soap and washcloth were placed in her mouth because she would have been forced to breath through her nose due to occlusion of her pharynx. The medical examiner also testified that indentations and foamy substance on one of the pillows next to the victim suggests that the pillow was placed over the victim's face to stop her from breathing. The defense attempted to rebut this conclusion on cross-examination, wherein the medical examiner admitted that she was unaware that EMS personnel had inadvertently touched the foamy substance with his hand as he was checking the victim for vital signs and that he wiped his hand on one of the pillows on the bed. Based on this line of questioning, the defense created the possibility that the indentation and foam on the pillow was caused by the EMS personnel, and was not, as the medical examiner had initially surmised, caused by appellant placing the pillow over the victim's mouth. The defense's theory with regard to the pillow is also supported by appellant's confession to the police wherein he admitted to strangling and possibly placing the soap in the victim's mouth but denied moving or placing a pillow on her face.

The victim also had markings on her neck and bruises on the neck muscle indicating both ligature and manual strangulation. The medical examiner testified that the markings on the victim's neck were consistent with a double-stranded speaker wire found on the floor of the victim's bedroom. Small scratches on the victim's neck indicated the victim had tried to remove whatever was binding her neck. The medical examiner also noted petechia hemorrhaging in the whites of the victim's eyes, which she explained is caused by pressure around the victim's neck being released and reapplied. The number of hemorrhages detected suggests that the victim was alive and struggling while being strangled and that it took a while for death to occur. In other words, according to the medical examiner, petechia hemorrhaging does not occur in persons who die suddenly from asphyxia. Rather, it would have taken minutes, as opposed to seconds, for death to occur. Although the medical examiner could not determine the order in which the acts occurred, she opined that death could have resulted from any one of the above methods (i.e., manual or ligature strangulation, soap and washcloth in victim's mouth, and suffocation by the pillow).

The defense rested without presenting any additional evidence. The jury found the defendant guilty of first-degree premeditated murder.

During the penalty phase of the trial, the State presented two witnesses: the medical examiner and the victim's mother, Bernice Scott. The medical examiner repeated much of the same testimony presented during the guilt phase of the trial, but added that based on the manner of death, the victim would have probably been aware of her impending death. Ms. Scott testified about the effect her daughter's death had on the community and on her daughter's family, including herself.

The defense presented numerous witnesses during the penalty phase, including appellant's friends and family members. Collectively, they testified that appellant was a slow learner,¹ that he was not a violent person and had never been violent or abusive toward the victim, that appellant was depressed and upset about breaking up with Caroline, that he worked for fifteen years as a cabinet maker, that he had a good relationship with his son, and that he did not smoke, drink, or consume drugs. A detention officer from the Broward County Jail testified that appellant behaves well in prison and as a result has been placed on trustee status, which means he is given limited responsibilities. The officer also indicated that Blackwood had been placed on suicide watch while in prison after attempting to commit suicide. Following the close of evidence and summations by the lawyers, the jury recommended death by a vote of nine to three.

At the Spencer² hearing, the defense presented Dr. Trudi Block Garfield, the clinical psychologist who had interviewed appellant three times over the course of two years. Dr. Garfield testified that appellant was extremely depressed at the time of her evaluation. She also testified that appellant has a verbal IQ score of 70 which places him in a borderline-retarded range of intelligence. However, Dr. Garfield could not say with certainty that appellant is retarded because she did not run all of the appropriate tests and because she attributed his score to the depression. Additionally, Dr. Garfield noted that one of the standardized tests suggested that appellant is neurologically impaired, but she could not find any physical indications to suggest he was in fact impaired.

As for mitigators, Dr. Garfield concluded that appellant was emotionally disturbed at the time of the offense, but denied that appellant's mental state was "extreme." Additionally, Dr. Garfield testified that appellant had no prior criminal activity, that he had a difficult upbringing in that he was abandoned by his mother and raised by his grandmother and other relatives, often with insufficient food, that he expressed regret for his actions, that he had good work habits, that he drank a lot of alcohol the night before the murder (based on appellant's admission to her), and that he is a good candidate for rehabilitation because of the small likelihood that he would repeat such a crime. This last conclusion was based on Dr. Garfield's finding that appellant had never been in trouble before and that the murder in this case appears to have arisen from an emotional personal altercation between two people with a long-term relationship.

In rebuttal, the State presented testimony from an official from the Broward County Sheriff's Office that appellant had been disciplined for having contraband in his cell (a pen, two extra pairs of shoes, and an extra pillow), for writing on the cell walls, and for getting into a fight with another inmate. The witness also stated that appellant had refused to come to court on a couple of occasions, that he did not get along with the other inmates, and that he had threatened another inmate on one occasion. Finally, the official testified that Blackwood had never achieved trustee status as that term is defined by the Broward County Sheriff's Office.

Following arguments and memoranda by the parties, the...