Cruz v. State

• Docket Number: SC2021-1767
• Decision Date: 06 July 2023
• Parties: CHRISTIAN CRUZ, Appellant, v. STATE OF FLORIDA, Appellee.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

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CHRISTIAN CRUZ, Appellant, v. STATE OF FLORIDA, Appellee.

No. SC2021-1767

Supreme Court of Florida

July 6, 2023

NOT FINAL UNTIL TIME EXPIRES TO FILE REHEARING MOTION AND, IF FILED, DETERMINED.

An Appeal from the Circuit Court in and for Volusia County, Raul A. Zambrano, Judge - 642013CF102943XXXADL

J Rafael Rodriguez of Law Offices of J. Rafael Rodriguez Miami, Florida, for Appellant

Ashley Moody, Attorney General, Tallahassee, Florida, and Patrick Bobek, Assistant Attorney General, Daytona Beach, Florida for Appellee

PER CURIAM.

Christian Cruz appeals his sentence of death, which was imposed by the trial court for the second time following this Court's reversal of his original death sentence "and remand for the limited purpose of requiring the trial court to perform a new sentencing evaluation and provide a new sentencing order." See Cruz v. State, 320 So.3d 695 731-32 (Fla. 2021). We have jurisdiction. See art V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. For the reasons we explain, we affirm Cruz's sentence of death.

I. BACKGROUND

In 2019, Cruz was convicted of first-degree murder, burglary, robbery, and kidnapping and was sentenced to death for the murder. Cruz, 320 So.3d at 710, 716. This Court summarized the relevant facts as follows:

In 2013, Christian Cruz and codefendant Justen Charles were indicted for the first-degree murder of Christopher Jemery, as well as burglary while armed, robbery with a firearm, and kidnapping. Cruz and Charles were tried separately but before the same trial court. Charles' trial occurred after Cruz's trial but before Cruz's sentencing. The evidence presented at Cruz's trial showed that on April 26, 2013, Jemery was attacked in his Deltona apartment. The evening before the attack, both Cruz and Charles were together in an apartment in the vicinity of Jemery's apartment. Cruz and Charles were aware that the former resident of the apartment where Jemery was living sold drugs out of the apartment, and Cruz and Charles discussed Jemery's apartment the day before the murder.

The evidence showed that both Cruz and Charles forcefully entered Jemery's apartment. The physical evidence obtained from the apartment showed that there was an assault and attack on Jemery. Blood throughout the apartment demonstrated that Jemery was beaten while inside the apartment. Bloody footprints matching the shoes of Cruz and Charles were found inside the apartment. One of the bedrooms appeared ransacked and had additional blood, the kitchen cabinets had been opened, and a television was taken from the apartment.

Cruz and Charles then placed Jemery in the trunk of Jemery's rental car, drove him to a remote location, and shot him in the head. Jemery was found near the Sanford airport in Seminole County, Florida. Workers at an industrial area saw what they thought was the body of a person lying on the ground in a field adjacent to their warehouse. Because the body lacked identification, the person was given the name of John Doe. John Doe was later identified as Christopher Jemery.

Upon first arrival at the field, emergency personnel made a notation that Jemery was bound with wire and duct tape on his arms and mouth, was alive but nonresponsive, and his breathing was very shallow. Medical examiner testimony would later reveal that Jemery was shot in the head and also sustained a number of injuries to his head, face, hands, and torso, including cuts, bruises, lacerations, and defensive wounds. His wrists showed what appeared to be tape residue from being bound with duct tape. Jemery initially survived the attack but succumbed to his injuries in a hospital within a day.

Evidence showed that the duct tape recovered from the area where Jemery was found matched the leftover roll of duct tape found in Jemery's apartment. A live .22 bullet was found on the floor of Jemery's apartment, which was the same caliber and manufacturer as the .22 shell casing found near Jemery's body. Cruz's fingerprint was found on a piece of duct tape recovered from Jemery's body. Cruz's DNA was found on a swab of blood taken from the front right kick panel and the right front door of Jemery's rental car. Cruz's fingerprint was also found on the Air Jordan shoe box found at Jemery's apartment and on Jemery's cell phone, which was recovered from his rental car. Jemery's rental car was not at his apartment and was later found backed into some bushes near a grocery store in Deltona. The evidence also showed that the same night Jemery was taken from his apartment, Cruz was seen on a bank's ATM surveillance camera using Jemery's bank card and personal identification number (PIN) to withdraw $440 cash from Jemery's account.

Id. at 705-06.

During the guilt phase of Cruz's trial, the State presented the testimony of 17 witnesses. The State did not, however, present at Cruz's trial 2 items of evidence that it did introduce at the trial of Charles: first, the testimony of Charles' girlfriend that she had seen Cruz with a .22 caliber firearm, and second, a stipulation between the State and Charles' trial counsel that Cruz was the shooter.

Id. at 708.

To establish the prior violent felony aggravator, the State presented evidence of a robbery of a Hungry Howie's committed by Cruz and Charles days after the murder in this case. At the conclusion of the penalty phase, the jury unanimously recommended that Cruz be sentenced to death. Id. at 710.

[T]he trial court followed the jury's recommendation and sentenced Cruz to death. The trial court found 5 aggravating factors: (1) Cruz was previously convicted of a felony involving the use or threat of violence to another person for the Hungry Howie's robbery committed shortly after murdering Jemery (great weight); (2) the first-degree murder was committed while Cruz was engaged in a robbery, burglary, or kidnapping, merged with the first-degree murder was committed for financial gain (great weight); (3) the first-degree murder was committed for the purpose of avoiding arrest (great weight); (4) the first-degree murder was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel (great weight); and (5) the first-degree murder was committed in a cold, calculated, and premeditated manner (great weight). The trial court considered and found as proven all 37 of Cruz's proffered mitigators, assigning slight weight to 24, moderate weight to 11, great weight to 1, and extraordinarily great weight to 1.

In its sentencing order, the trial court conducted an Enmund^[n.4]-Tison^[n.5] analysis, finding as follows:

The jury found Mr. Cruz to be the individual who shot and killed Mr. Jemery. In Mr. Charles's case, the State abandoned any efforts to establish Mr. Charles as the shooter. The jury in Mr. Charles' case did not have to make a determination as to who the shooter was because of the State's concession.

However, the jury in Mr. Charles' case did find him guilty of both, premeditated murder AND felony murder.

Therefore, this court finds that Mr. Cruz in fact killed Mr. Jemery and no further analysis is needed.

[N.4] Enmund v. Florida, 458 U.S. 782 (1982). [N.5] Tison v. Arizona, 481 U.S. 137 (1987).

In the sentencing order, the trial court explained that he heard and considered evidence of the case in Cruz's and codefendant Charles' trials.

Id. at 710-11 (footnote omitted).

On appeal, we agreed with Cruz's argument that he was improperly sentenced to death based on extrarecord facts:

In sentencing Cruz to death, the trial court relied on evidence from Charles' trial, specifically the testimony of Charles' girlfriend regarding seeing Cruz with a .22 caliber firearm, as well as the stipulation in Charles' trial that Cruz was the shooter. However, there is no competent, substantial evidence presented in Cruz's trial to support the jury's finding that Cruz was the shooter. We cannot determine what weight the trial judge gave to the finding that Cruz was the shooter or what part the nonrecord evidence from codefendant Charles' trial played in Cruz's sentence. Here, this was error that cannot be considered harmless.

Id. at 725. We thus overturned the death sentence "and remand[ed] for the limited purpose of resentencing by the trial court and a new sentencing order." Id. at 723. At that time, we declined to address Cruz's argument that his sentence was "disproportionate in comparison to other death sentences and Charles' life sentence." Id. We explained that there was no need to address comparative proportionality in light of our decision in Lawrence v. State, 308 So.3d 544 (Fla. 2020), in which we receded from the judge-made requirement to review the comparative proportionality of death sentences as contrary to the conformity clause of article I, section 17 of the Florida Constitution. Because of the need for resentencing caused by the error of reliance on facts not in evidence, we also did not reach the issue of relative culpability in light of Charles's life sentence. Id.

On remand in 2020, aside from a slight change in weight to one aggravator and one mitigator-both of which were favorable to Cruz-the trial court found and assigned the same weight to each aggravator and mitigator and again sentenced Cruz to death. The trial court decreased the weight it assigned to the cold, calculated, and premeditated aggravator from great to moderate and increased the weight it assigned to the "minor participation" mitigator from slight to moderate. This appeal follows.

II. ANALYSIS

Cruz's sole challenge to his death sentence is that this Court's relative culpability review requires that the sentence be reduced to life imprisonment because his equally culpable codefendant, Charles, who was convicted of the same offenses and to whom the same aggravating factors were proven applicable, was sentenced to life imprisonment by the same judge....