Cox v. State

• Decision Date: 23 May 2002
• Docket Number: No. SC00-1751.,SC00-1751.
• Citation: 819 So.2d 705
• Parties: Allen Ward COX, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

819 So.2d 705

Allen Ward COX, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. SC00-1751.

Supreme Court of Florida.

May 23, 2002.

Rehearing Denied July 23, 2002.

James B. Gibson, Public Defender, and Christopher S. Quarles, Assistant Public Defender, Seventh Judicial Circuit, Daytona Beach, FL, for Appellant.

Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General, and Stephen D. Ake, Assistant Attorney General, Tampa, FL, for Appellee.

PER CURIAM.

We have on appeal a judgment of conviction of first-degree murder and a sentence of death. We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const.

Background

On February 5, 1999, a grand jury indicted Appellant, Allen Ward Cox, for premeditated murder and battery which occurred in a detention facility.¹ The charges against Cox resulted from a chain of events within the Lake Correctional Institute ("LCI") that culminated in the death of Thomas Baker and an assault upon Lawrence Wood. At trial, the State presented the testimony of numerous corrections officers and inmates regarding the circumstances surrounding the murder of Baker, who was also a LCI inmate. On December 20, 1998, the appellant discovered that someone had broken into his personal footlocker and stolen approximately $500. Upon making this discovery, Cox walked out onto the balcony of his dorm and announced that he would give fifty dollars to anyone willing to identify the thief. He also indicated that when he discovered who had stolen from him, he would stab and kill that person, and that he did not care about the consequences.

During the prison's lunch period on December 21, the appellant called Baker over to him, and then hit him with his fists to knock him down. During the attack, the victim continuously attempted to break free from Cox, and also denied stealing from him multiple times. At a lull in the beating, the appellant said, "This ain't good enough," and stabbed Baker with an icepick-shaped shank² three times. After the stabbing, Appellant walked away stating, "It ain't over, I've got one more ... to get." He then walked behind the prison pump house and hid the shiv in a pipe. Cox proceeded from the pump house to his dorm, where he encountered Donny Cox (unrelated to the appellant). There, Appellant questioned him about his stolen money and told him that if Cox had his money, he would kill him also. Following this exchange, the appellant returned to his cell, where he next attacked his cellmate, Lawrence Wood, advising him that Wood was "lucky I put it up, or I'd get [you]."

While the appellant was returning to his cell, the stabbing victim fled the attack scene and ran to corrections officers in a nearby building. The officers present at the time testified at trial that Baker had blood coming from his mouth, and that he was hysterically complaining that his lungs were filling with blood. Baker also responded to the prison officials' questions regarding who had attacked him by saying, "Big Al, Echo dorm, quad three." Although the corrections officers attempted to expedite emergency treatment of the victim by placing him on a stretcher and carrying him on foot to the prison medical center, Baker died before arriving at the hospital.

Doctor Janet Pillow testified that upon her autopsy of the victim, she found that the victim had been stabbed three times. Two of the wounds inflicted were shallow punctures of the lower torso, but the fatal wound had entered the victim's back and traveled through the chest cavity, between two ribs, and finally pierced the lungs and aorta. She testified that a conscious person with this wound would suffer from "air hunger," and would be aware of the "serious danger of dying." She described the wound as being approximately 17.5 centimeters deep, although only two millimeters wide. Doctor Pillow verified that the shank found by the pump house was consistent with the victim's injuries, despite the fact that the wound was deeper than the length of the weapon. She attributed the discrepancy between the length of the weapon and the depth of the wound to the elasticity of human tissue.

The appellant also testified, contending that all of the previous witnesses were correct, except that they had not seen what truly happened when he, Baker, and Vincent Maynard, a third inmate, were close together. According to Cox, it was he who had in fact dodged Baker and Maynard's attempts to stab him, and it was Maynard who actually stabbed Baker in the back accidentally. In Cox's version of the events, he had only struck the victim because he was defending himself from both of the other attacking men. Following the conclusion of the guilt phase testimony and argument, the jury deliberated, apparently rejected the view of the evidence offered by Cox, and found the appellant guilty of first-degree murder.

After hearing the penalty phase testimony presented by both the defense and the prosecution, the jury deliberated and recommended a sentence of death by a vote of ten to two. Following a Spencer³ hearing, the trial court followed the jury's recommendation and sentenced Cox to death, finding four aggravating circumstances.⁴ While the court found no statutory mitigating factors, it found and considered numerous nonstatutory mitigators.⁵ On appeal, Cox raises ten claims⁶—we address each in turn.

Discussion

I. Discovery Violation

At trial, Inspector Cornelius Faulk of the Florida Department of Corrections testified regarding his investigation of Baker's murder. He relayed to the jury his investigatory methods, and during his description of an interview with the appellant, he said that Cox told him, "I heard you found a weapon." The substance of the conversation was important to Inspector Faulk because until the time of this statement, Cox had been in administrative confinement. Despite being isolated, Cox detailed for Faulk exactly where the weapon had been hidden—a description that matched the location where the suspected murder weapon had been discovered by corrections officers. On cross-examination, the defense asked Faulk why the "I heard you found a weapon" quote was not included in his investigation notes, and had not been disclosed to the defense during his deposition.⁷ The defense then moved for a mistrial based upon this discovery violation, a Richardson⁸ inquiry was held, and the court denied the motion.

The appellant asserts that the State's failure to turn this statement over to the defense prior to trial was certainly a violation of Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.220(b)(1)(C), and that this misconduct prejudiced the defense because the defense theory "embraced the shank found in the pipe" as a weapon belonging to Cox that could not possibly have caused the death of Baker. Additionally, Cox asserts that the introduction of the statement enabled the State to undermine this theory of defense by arguing that Cox had heard about the shorter weapon and wanted to encourage the investigators to focus on it, but had actually killed Baker with a different, longer knife.

As the trial court held a Richardson hearing in response to the appellant's motion for a mistrial, its decision is subject to reversal only upon a showing that it abused its discretion. See State v. Tascarella, 580 So.2d 154, 157 (Fla.1991)

. However, where the State commits a discovery violation, the standard for deeming the violation harmless is extraordinarily high. A defendant is presumed to be procedurally prejudiced "if there is a reasonable probability that the defendant's trial preparation or strategy would have been materially different had the violation not occurred." Pomeranz v. State, 703 So.2d 465, 468 (Fla.1997) (quoting State v. Schopp, 653 So.2d 1016, 1020 (Fla.1995)). Indeed, "only if the appellate court can say beyond a reasonable doubt that the defense was not procedurally prejudiced by the discovery violation can the error be considered harmless." Id.

During the Richardson hearing, both attorneys questioned Faulk about why he had neither included the statement in his investigatory journal nor disclosed the statement during his deposition. Faulk advised the court that he had not made his notes on the conversation until after Cox had left the room, and that he thought the substance of the conversation which addressed the description of the weapon provided by Cox (which was included in his notes) was more important than any statement Cox may have used to simply initiate the conversation. The trial court concluded that no discovery violation had occurred, and even if one had occurred, it was inadvertent.

Clearly, under Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.220(b)(1)(C), the State was obligated to disclose the substance of this oral statement to the defense. See Fla. R.Crim. P. 3.220(b)(1)(C) ("[T]the prosecutor shall ... disclose to the defendant ... the substance of any oral statements made by the defendant ...."). Thus, we must conclude that a discovery violation occurred here. It is just as plain, however, that the State's discovery violation here was inadvertent. The State turned over all of Faulk's investigatory materials to the defense, and Faulk's somewhat confusing deposition statements were likely the result of a misunderstanding of the term "evidence," as the context of the particular questions demonstrated. The State explained to the trial court that Faulk probably interpreted the term with reference to physical evidence beyond the substance of the appellant's statements. Since Inspector Faulk was not aware of physical evidence or anything else independent of Cox's oral statement, his deposition answers were not intended to be evasive or misleading. The investigatory materials contained the entirety of Cox's description of the knife— the most important component of Cox's statements to Faulk—and only omitted the appellant's conversation-opening remark.

Although we conclude that an inadvertent discovery violation occurred here, an examination of the record reveals that the defense was not...