Davis v. State
| Decision Date | 05 June 1997 |
| Docket Number | No. 86135,86135 |
| Citation | 698 So.2d 1182 |
| Parties | 22 Fla. L. Weekly S331, 22 Fla. L. Weekly S563 Eddie Wayne DAVIS, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
James Marion Moorman, Public Defender and Robert F. Moeller, Assistant Public Defender, Tenth Judicial Circuit, Bartow, for Appellant.
Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General and Candance M. Sabella, Assistant Attorney General, Tampa, for Appellee.
We have on appeal the judgment and sentence of the trial court imposing the death penalty upon Eddie Wayne Davis. We have jurisdiction. Art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const.
On the afternoon of March 4, 1994, police found the body of eleven-year-old Kimberly Waters in a dumpster not far from her home. She had numerous bruises on her body, and the area between her vagina and anus had been lacerated. An autopsy revealed that the cause of death was strangulation.
On March 5, police questioned Davis, a former boyfriend of Kimberly's mother, at the new residence where he and his girlfriend were moving. Davis denied having any knowledge of the incident and said that he had been drinking at a nearby bar on the night of the murder. Later that same day police again located Davis at a job site and brought him to the police station for further questioning, where he repeated his alibi. Davis also agreed to and did provide a blood sample.
While Davis was being questioned at the station, police obtained a pair of blood-stained boots from the trailer Davis and his girlfriend had just vacated. Subsequent DNA tests revealed that the blood on the boots was consistent with the victim's blood and that Davis's DNA matched scrapings taken from the victim's fingernails. A warrant was issued for Davis's arrest.
On March 18, Davis agreed to go to the police station for more questioning. He was not told about the arrest warrant. At the station, he denied any involvement and repeated the alibi he had given earlier. After about fifteen minutes, police advised Davis of the DNA test results. Davis insisted they had the wrong person and asked if he was being arrested. Police told him that he was. At that point Davis requested to contact his mother so she could obtain an attorney for him, and the interview ceased. Davis was placed in a holding cell.
A few minutes later, while Davis was in the holding cell, Major Grady Judd approached him and, making eye contact, said that he was disappointed in Davis. When Davis responded inaudibly, Judd asked him to repeat what he had said. Davis made a comment suggesting that the victim's mother, Beverly Schultz, was involved. Judd explained that he could not discuss the case with Davis unless he reinitiated contact because Davis had requested an attorney. Davis said he wanted to talk, and he did so, confessing to the crimes against Kimberly and implicating Beverly Schultz as having solicited the crimes. Within a half hour after this interview, police conducted a taped interview in which Davis gave statements similar in substance to the untaped confession. Davis's full Miranda 1 warnings were not read to him until the taped confession began.
In May, 1994, Davis wrote a note asking to speak to detectives about the case. In response, police conducted a second taped interview on May 26, 1994. Police asked Davis if he was willing to proceed without the advice of his counsel, to which Davis responded yes, but specific Miranda warnings were not recited to Davis. During this interview, Davis again confessed to killing Kimberly but stated that Beverly Schultz was not involved. Davis explained that he originally went to Schultz's house to look for money to buy more beer. Because Schultz normally did not work on Thursday nights and because her car was gone, Davis believed that no one was home. Indeed, Schultz was not home at the time because she had agreed to work a double shift at the nursing rehabilitation center where she was employed. However, her daughters, Crystal and Kimberly, were at the house sleeping. When Davis turned on the lights in Beverly Schultz's bedroom, he saw Kimberly, who was sleeping in Schultz's bed. Kimberly woke up and saw him. He put his hand over her mouth and told her not to holler, telling her that he wanted to talk to her. Kimberly went with him into the living room. Davis put a rag in her mouth so she could not yell.
Davis related that they went outside and jumped a fence into the adjacent trailer park where Davis's old trailer was located. Davis said that while they were in the trailer, he tried to put his penis inside of Kimberly. When he did not succeed, he resorted to pushing two of his fingers into Kimberly's vagina. Afterwards, Davis took Kimberly to the nearby Moose Lodge. He struck her several times, then placed a piece of plastic over her mouth. She struggled and ripped the plastic with her fingers but Davis held it over her mouth and nose until she stopped moving. He put her in a dumpster and left.
Davis moved to suppress the March 18 and May 26 statements he made to law enforcement officers, arguing that his Miranda rights were violated. The trial court denied those motions. The jury found Davis guilty of first-degree murder, burglary with assault or battery, kidnapping a child under thirteen years of age, and sexual battery on a child under twelve years of age. The jury unanimously recommended a sentence of death and the trial court sentenced Davis to death.
In aggravation, the trial court found that the murder was: (1) committed by a person under sentence of imprisonment; (2) committed during the commission of a kidnapping and sexual battery; (3) committed for the purpose of avoiding or preventing a lawful arrest; and (4) especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel. As statutory mitigation, the court found that the murder was committed while the defendant was under the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance and gave this factor great weight.
As nonstatutory mitigation, the court found that Davis was capable of accepting responsibility for his actions and had shown remorse for his conduct and offered to plead guilty; that he had exhibited good behavior while in jail and prison; that he had demonstrated positive courtroom behavior; that he was capable of forming positive relationships with family members and others; that he had no history of violence in any of his past criminal activity; that he did not plan to kill or sexually assault the victim when he began his criminal conduct; that he cooperated with police, confessed his involvement in the crime, did not resist arrest, and did not try to flee or escape; that he had always confessed to crimes for which he had been arrested in the past, accepted responsibility, and pled guilty; that he had suffered from the effects of being placed in institutional settings at an early age and spending a significant portion of his life in such settings; and that Davis obtained his GED while in prison and participated in other self-improvement programs. Although the trial court gave "medium weight" to several of these nonstatutory mitigators, most of them were assigned little weight.
Davis raises ten issues in this appeal. As his first issue, Davis contends that the trial court erred in admitting the statements he made to law enforcement officers on March 18 and May 26. We address the statements made at each stage separately. First, with respect to the statements Davis made at the police station on March 18 before he was arrested, the trial court found that whether a Miranda violation had occurred was moot because Davis had not made any incriminating statements during that interview. However, Miranda prohibits the use of all statements made by an accused during custodial interrogation if the accused has not first been warned of the right against self-incrimination and the right to counsel. 2 Thus, statements obtained in violation of Miranda are inadmissible, regardless of whether they are inculpatory or exculpatory.
Nevertheless, we uphold the admissibility of Davis's prearrest statements on a different basis. Miranda warnings are required whenever the State seeks to introduce against a defendant statements made by the defendant while in custody and under interrogation. Absent one or the other, Miranda warnings are not required. Alston v. Redman, 34 F.3d 1237, 1243 (3d Cir.1994) (citing Miranda, 384 U.S. at 477-78, 86 S.Ct. at 1629-30); Sapp v. State, 690 So.2d 581 (Fla.1997); see also Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U.S. 291, 300, 100 S.Ct. 1682, 1689, 64 L.Ed.2d 297 (1980) (). Although custody encompasses more than simply formal arrest, the sole fact that police had a warrant for Davis's arrest at the time he went to the station does not conclusively establish that he was in custody. Rather, there must exist a "restraint on freedom of movement of the degree associated with a formal arrest." Roman v. State, 475 So.2d 1228, 1231 (Fla.1985). The proper inquiry is not the unarticulated plan of the police, but rather how a reasonable person in the suspect's position would have perceived the situation. Id.
The circumstances of this case lead us to conclude that Davis was not in custody at the time he made the prearrest statements. Police had questioned Davis several times prior to March 18. At least once he had gone to the police station voluntarily for questioning and was permitted to leave. It is therefore unlikely that a reasonable person in Davis's position would have perceived that he was in custody until he was formally arrested. In any event, any error in admitting these prearrest statements was harmless. Davis did not say anything during the prearrest interview that he had not already said to police on previous occasions.
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Photographs, slides, films and videos
...between the decedent and his mother, and to support the mother’s claims of mental anguish from the subject death. In Davis v. State , 698 So.2d 1182 (Fla. 1997), during the penalty phase of a capital murder case, a photopack photograph which showed the defendant with long hair and facial ha......
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Photographs, Slides, Films and Videos
...between the decedent and his mother, and to support the mother’s claims of mental anguish from the subject death. In Davis v. State , 698 So.2d 1182 (Fla. 1997), during the penalty phase of a capital murder case, a photopack photograph which showed the defendant with long hair and facial ha......
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Photographs, Slides, Films and Videos
...between the decedent and his mother, and to support the mother’s claims of mental anguish from the subject death. In Davis v. State , 698 So.2d 1182 (Fla. 1997), during the penalty phase of a capital murder case, a photopack photograph which showed the defendant with long hair and facial ha......
-
Photographs, Slides, Films and Videos
...between the decedent and his mother, and to support the mother’s claims of mental anguish from the subject death. In Davis v. State , 698 So.2d 1182 (Fla. 1997), during the penalty phase of a capital murder case, a photopack photograph which showed the defendant with long hair and facial ha......