Davis v. State
Decision Date | 03 June 1999 |
Docket Number | No. 93,816.,93,816. |
Citation | 736 So.2d 1156 |
Parties | Allen Lee DAVIS, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee. |
Court | Florida Supreme Court |
John W. Moser, Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, Harry P. Brody, John P. Abatecola and Jeffrey M. Hazen, Office of the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel— Middle Region, Tampa, Florida, for Appellant.
Robert A Butterworth, Attorney General, and Curtis M. French, Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, Florida, for Appellee.
Allen Lee Davis, a prisoner under sentence of death, appeals a trial court order denying his third motion for postconviction relief filed pursuant to Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850. We have jurisdiction. Art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. We affirm.
Allen Lee "Tiny" Davis was convicted and sentenced to death for the May 11, 1982, murders of Nancy Weiler and her two minor daughters, Kristina and Katherine, in their Jacksonville home. This Court affirmed each conviction and death sentence. Davis v. State, 461 So.2d 67 (Fla.1984), cert. denied, 473 U.S. 913, 105 S.Ct. 3540, 87 L.Ed.2d 663 (1985). For a detailed history of Davis's postconviction filings and the disposition thereof, see Davis v. Singletary, 853 F.Supp. 1492, 1506-11 (M.D.Fla.1994), affirmed, 119 F.3d 1471 (11th Cir.1997), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 118 S.Ct. 1848, 140 L.Ed.2d 1097 (1998).
Davis filed his third 3.850 motion in April 1998. The trial court's order denying this motion is currently before the Court. Davis's motion raises a claim of newly discovered evidence regarding the trial testimony of Donald Havekost, an Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) analyst. This claim stems from a report released in 1997 by the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (OIG) concerning an internal investigation into allegations of wrongdoing and improper practices within certain sections of the FBI Laboratory. In this report, the OIG mentions Havekost in connection with the work of another FBI analyst in an unrelated case. Pointing to the report's reference to Havekost, Davis asserts that evidence may exist which would prove Havekost's trial testimony to be unreliable, misleading, and false. Based on this speculation that evidence may exist, Davis moved the court for additional time to review a plethora of documents received from the Department of Justice through a Freedom of Information Act request. See § 5 U.S.C. 552 (1994 & supp.1996).
The trial court rejected this claim, concluding that Davis failed to allege a sufficient factual basis upon which to challenge Havekost's trial testimony and that the report upon which Davis relied actually refuted his claim by implication. With respect to the second portion of the court's ruling, the court found that although the OIG investigated several individual analysts, the report did not conclude that Havekost engaged in any improper conduct. The court also noted that the OIG did not investigate the Elemental Analysis Unit, the unit in which Havekost worked at the time he testified in Davis's trial. The trial court order reads in pertinent part:
To be entitled to an evidentiary hearing on a newly discovered evidence claim, Davis must, in addition to satisfying the due diligence requirement of rule 3.850(b), allege that he has discovered evidence which is "of such nature that it would probably produce an acquittal on retrial." Williamson v. Dugger, 651 So.2d 84, 89 (Fla.1994) (quoting Jones v. State, 591 So.2d 911, 915 (Fla.1991)). We find that Davis's...
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...(Fla. 3d DCA 1982)). This Court also notes postconviction relief is not warranted on the basis of "tenuous speculation." Davis v. State, 736 So.2d 1156, 1159 (Fla. 1999).Ex. W at 229-30. The trial court remained unconvinced by Petitioner's averments, which amounted to sheer speculation that......
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