Booker v. State, SC93422.

• Decision Date: 05 October 2000
• Docket Number: No. SC93422.,SC93422.
• Citation: 773 So.2d 1079
• Parties: Stephen Todd BOOKER, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

773 So.2d 1079

Stephen Todd BOOKER, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. SC93422.

Supreme Court of Florida.

October 5, 2000.

Rehearing Denied December 22, 2000.

Nancy A. Daniels, Public Defender, and David A. Davis, Assistant Public Defender, Second Judicial Circuit, Tallahassee, Florida, for Appellant.

Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General, and Barbara J. Yates, Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, Florida, for Appellee.

PER CURIAM.

We have on appeal the order of the trial court, entered after a new penalty phase hearing before a new jury, imposing the death penalty upon Stephen Todd Booker. We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. As explained below, we affirm Booker's sentence.

I. FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

On December 2, 1977, the State of Florida charged Booker with first-degree murder, sexual battery, and burglary, all stemming from the November 9, 1977, death of ninety-four-year-old Lorine Demoss Harmon. The facts established during the guilt phase of Booker's trial are set forth in Booker v. State, 397 So.2d 910, 912 (Fla.), cert. denied, 454 U.S. 957, 102 S.Ct. 493, 70 L.Ed.2d 261 (1981):

The victim, an elderly woman, was found dead in her apartment in Gainesville, Florida. The cause of death was loss of blood due to several knife wounds in the chest area. Two knives, apparently used in the homicide, were embedded in the body of the victim. A pathologist located semen and blood in the vaginal area of the victim and concluded that sexual intercourse had occurred prior to death. The apartment was found to be in a state of disarray; drawers were pulled out and their contents strewn about the apartment. Fingerprints of the defendant were positively identified as being consistent with latent fingerprints lifted from the scene of the homicide. The defendant had a pair of boots which had a print pattern similar to those seen by an officer at the scene of the homicide.

Test results indicated that body hairs found on the clothing of the defendant at the time of his arrest were consistent with hairs taken from the body of the victim.

After being given the appropriate warnings, the defendant made a statement, speaking as an alternative personality named "Aniel." The "Aniel" character made a statement that "Steve had done it."

On June 21, 1978, the jury returned a verdict finding Booker guilty of first-degree murder, sexual battery, and burglary, and the trial court adjudicated Booker guilty of those three offenses.

Booker's case then proceeded to a penalty phase hearing. During the hearing, the prosecutor told the jury that the only mitigating circumstances they could consider were those listed in Florida's death penalty statute, and the trial court's jury instruction regarding mitigating circumstances was equivalent to the instruction later found to be invalid by the U.S. Supreme Court in Hitchcock v. Dugger, 481 U.S. 393, 107 S.Ct. 1821, 95 L.Ed.2d 347 (1987). At the conclusion of the penalty phase hearing, the jury, by a majority vote of nine-to-three, recommended that Booker receive the death penalty. The trial court followed the jury's recommendation, sentencing Booker to death after finding three aggravating circumstances¹ and no mitigating circumstances. Additionally, the trial court sentenced Booker to fifty-five years in prison on the sexual battery charge and thirty years in prison on the burglary charge, with those sentences running consecutive to both each other and the sentence on the first-degree murder charge.

This Court affirmed Booker's convictions and sentences on direct appeal, see Booker, 397 So.2d at 918,

and the Supreme Court of the United States denied certiorari review of that decision. See Booker v. Florida, 454 U.S. 957, 102 S.Ct. 493, 70 L.Ed.2d 261 (1981). Subsequently, Booker initiated—or otherwise participated in—numerous proceedings in both state and federal court.² Several of those proceedings are of particular relevance to the present proceedings. Specifically, in Booker v. Dugger, 520 So.2d 246, 247-49 (Fla.),

cert. denied, 486 U.S. 1061, 108 S.Ct. 2834, 100 L.Ed.2d 935 (1988), this Court found that the trial court's penalty phase jury instruction regarding mitigating circumstances was erroneous in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's 1987 decision in Hitchcock, but a majority of this Court found that such error was harmless.³ The Eleventh Circuit later determined, however, that the Hitchcock error was not harmless, see Booker v. Dugger, 922 F.2d 633, 634 (11th. Cir.),

cert. denied, 502 U.S. 900, 112 S.Ct. 277, 116 L.Ed.2d 228 (1991), and, as a result, Booker's case was remanded for resentencing. While awaiting resentencing, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619, 113 S.Ct. 1710, 123 L.Ed.2d 353 (1993), which, in essence, lessened the burden a state must meet to show that a constitutional violation did not prejudice a habeas petitioner's case. Based on Brecht, the State moved to vacate the relief previously granted to Booker, but the Eleventh Circuit rejected the State's arguments. See Booker v. Singletary, 90 F.3d 440, 442-44 (11th Cir.1996).

Booker returned for resentencing in 1997, and a new penalty phase hearing took place before a new jury in March 1998. During its case-in-chief, the State introduced documentary evidence showing that (1) Booker was convicted of robbery in 1974; (2) Booker was out of prison on "Mandatory Conditional Release" when he murdered Mrs. Harmon (the victim); (3) Booker was convicted of first-degree murder, sexual assault, and burglary for the 1977 criminal episode involving the victim; and (4) Booker was convicted of an aggravated battery which occurred in 1980. Further, the State called four witnesses to testify regarding (1) the underlying facts of the 1980 aggravated battery committed by Booker while he was in prison;⁴ and (2) the facts surrounding Booker's first-degree murder, sexual assault, and burglary convictions.⁵ The defense then presented its case.

The defense first introduced into evidence the affidavit of Booker's deceased grandmother, Florence Edmund, a longtime resident of Brooklyn, New York. In her affidavit, Ms. Edmund stated that Booker was born on September 1, 1953, and he grew up without knowing his father. Ms. Edmund recounted how Booker lived, at different times, with either her or his mother, and his behavior, while generally good, took a turn for the worse when he was about twelve years old. According to the affidavit, Booker was shot while in a fight, and during his hospital stay, he roomed with a person who used drugs; Ms. Edmund suspected that Booker began using drugs after his stay in the hospital. Ms. Edmund explained that Booker's mother died as the result of a stroke just before Booker's seventeenth birthday, and Booker joined the army shortly thereafter. While in the army, Booker had been hospitalized in Walter Reed Army Hospital. After his discharge from the army, Booker initially lived with Ms. Edmund, but he then unexpectedly moved to Florida. The last time that Ms. Edmund heard from Booker was through a letter he sent to her from jail in Fort Myers, Florida, and the first time that Ms. Edmund heard that Booker had been convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death was October 29, 1983.

The defense next introduced the affidavit of Ms. Patricia R. Singletary, a former employee in the New York City public school system. In the affidavit, Ms. Singletary summarized Booker's erratic educational history: Booker transferred in and out of eleven different schools between kindergarten and the sixth grade. Generally, the educational records described Booker as intelligent, doing particularly well in artistic endeavors, but the records also contained several references to disciplinary problems, including aggression. Absenteeism became an increasing problem as Booker grew older, and he officially left school in February 1970, at the age of sixteen.

As its first in-person witness, the defense presented Dr. George Barnard. Dr. Barnard, a psychiatrist, testified as an expert in both psychiatry and forensic psychiatry. Dr. Barnard's first contact with Booker came in December 1977, when he evaluated Booker pursuant to court order. At the conclusion of that and several other subsequent evaluations in early 1978, Dr. Barnard testified for the State during the guilt phase of the trial that Booker was both sane at the time of the murder and competent to stand trial. Dr. Barnard's next contact with Booker occurred in 1985, when defense counsel asked Dr. Barnard to review Booker's case to determine whether any mitigating circumstances existed. After reviewing Booker's case, Dr. Barnard determined that (1) Booker was under the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance at the time of the crime; and (2) at the time of the crime, Booker's ability to understand the criminality of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law was substantially impaired.

In 1997, Booker's counsel again requested that Dr. Barnard evaluate Booker, and Dr. Barnard did so, conducting a seven-and-one-half hour evaluation. In addition to such evaluation, Dr. Barnard reviewed various materials gathered in Booker's case since the initial trial had occurred. After evaluating Booker and reviewing the materials gathered in Booker's case, Dr. Barnard summarized for the jury various events in Booker's life, including Booker's mental health history.

Dr. Barnard testified that Booker started using alcohol and drugs at approximately age thirteen or fourteen, and, at age sixteen, a family court ordered that Booker undergo a psychiatric examination at Kings County Hospital in New York City. The family court ordered that Booker undergo such an examination because he had been threatening his mother and drinking more alcohol. Booker was discharged after being in the hospital for slightly over three weeks, with the recommendation that he receive some...