Dennis v. State
| Decision Date | 31 January 2002 |
| Docket Number | No. SC95211.,SC95211. |
| Citation | 817 So.2d 741 |
| Parties | Labrant D. DENNIS, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
Bennett H. Brummer, Public Defender, and Louis Campbell and Christina A. Spaulding, Assistant Public Defender, Eleventh Judicial Circuit, Miami, FL, for Appellant.
Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General, and Curtis M. French, Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, FL, for Appellee.
We have on appeal a judgment and sentence of the trial court imposing a death sentence on Labrant D. Dennis. We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. We affirm the conviction and sentence of death.
On the morning of April 13, 1996, University of Miami football player Earl Little arrived at his on-campus apartment to pick up the keys to his truck, a black Ford Explorer, he had loaned to his roommate and teammate, Marlin Barnes. Little loaned Barnes the truck the previous evening to attend a party at Club Salvation in Miami Beach and advised him that he would return to the apartment early the next morning to retrieve his vehicle. Little, who spent the night at another on-campus apartment, arrived at the apartment complex between 7 and 7:30 a.m. As he approached his third-floor apartment he noticed that his truck, which was parked outside the apartment, was tilting towards its right side. Little examined his truck and observed a puncture mark in his right rear tire. He then went upstairs to his apartment.
When Little attempted to open the door to his apartment he discovered that it was unlocked, but when he tried to push the door open he experienced resistance. Finally, after several attempts the door gave way enough for him to peer inside the apartment where he discovered Barnes' body lying against the front door. Little called Barnes' name and Barnes drew only a heavy breath in response. Upon calling his name a second time, Barnes turned his head and Little saw for the first time that Barnes' face was badly beaten and bloodied. Little raced to a nearby apartment and called police.
Dan Oppert of the Coral Gables Police Department arrived on the scene at 7:34 a.m. Upon entering the apartment Oppert observed Barnes lying on the floor with his head leaning against the front door. As Oppert proceeded through the apartment to secure the premises he discovered the body of Timwanika Lumpkins in a bedroom. Lumpkins was lying face down and had severe trauma to the back of her head. As he continued his search of the apartment he observed that the back door was dead-bolted. When Oppert returned to the living room he watched Barnes make an attempt to get up and then collapse.
Wayne Sibley of the Coral Gables Fire Rescue arrived at the scene at 7:39 a.m. and Barnes was no longer breathing. Sibley and other emergency personnel quickly attended to Lumpkins who was still breathing. Barnes was pronounced dead at the scene and Lumpkins was pronounced dead after being airlifted to a nearby hospital.
When Miami-Dade Police officer Thomas Charles arrived at the scene, he first investigated the apartment's exterior. Charles examined Little's Explorer, observing that both tires on the right side had puncture marks. The only blood Charles noted on the exterior of the apartment was immediately outside the front door. Upon entering the apartment through the rear door, he observed no blood in the hallway meeting the rear door and no blood in one of the bedrooms. When he entered the bedroom in which Lumpkins' body was found, he observed a pool of blood in the middle of the room, with broken fingernails, strands of hair, and an earring belonging to Lumpkins.1
Charles next entered the living room where Barnes' body lay. Therein he found wooden splinters strewn about the floor which did not match any of the furniture found in the room. Additionally, he discovered a small metal fragment consistent with a shotgun trigger guard. Charles also observed a similar piece of metal along with bone fragments and teeth adjacent to Barnes' boot. Other items found near Barnes included a live 12-gauge shotgun shell, two gold colored bracelets and a football championship ring. The police surmised that robbery was not a motive for the crime as homicide detective Clarence Poitier also found $59 in Barnes' pocket, a gold chain with a medallion around his neck, $103 in Lumpkins' purse, and $550 in a bedroom dresser drawer.
That morning Edward Hudak, who served as liaison between the University of Miami and the Miami Police Department, organized a meeting of the football team on campus to break the news and uncover any leads. At that meeting some of the players indicated that Lumpkins had an ex-boyfriend who was a member of rap group by the name of "The Dawgs."
At 4 p.m. that afternoon, the lead detective at the crime scene, Thomas Romagni, was advised to head back to the station to interview members of "The Dawgs" who wanted to talk about the murders.
When Romagni arrived at the station, Lumpkins' ex-boyfriend, Labrant Dennis, was waiting with friend, Keith Bell. After Romagni advised Dennis that Lumpkins had been murdered, Dennis informed Romagni that he was romantically involved with Lumpkins for five years and that they had a child together. When asked about his relationship with Lumpkins, Dennis told Romagni that the two had arguments and that he might have slapped her on occasion. As to Barnes, Dennis indicated that he knew him and he believed that he lived on campus. Dennis, however, told Romagni that he had never been to Barnes' apartment.
Dennis told Romagni that he and Lumpkins had an argument the previous week after she came home late after an evening out with Barnes. Lumpkins was staying with Dennis at the house of his cousin, Carolyn Williams, and her boyfriend, Jesse Pitts. After the argument Lumpkins moved out on April 6. According to Dennis, Pitts informed him that the person who helped her move out was driving a black Explorer. Dennis believed that person to be Barnes.
As to his whereabouts the previous evening, Dennis told Romagni that he went to a bachelor party after 11 p.m., remaining there until 1:30 a.m. Dennis then went home, changed clothes, and went to the party at Club Salvation, leaving his cousin's house at 2 a.m. According to Dennis, his cousin Carolyn saw him when he came home after the bachelor party. Dennis denied seeing either Barnes or Lumpkins at the club. He remained at the club for about an hour and returned to his cousin's apartment and slept until the next morning.
Dennis consented to having his fingerprints taken and his car searched. Police also took pictures of him and observed no injuries on his body. Dennis then volunteered to have the clothes he wore the previous evening inspected, accompanying Romagni to his cousin's apartment for that purpose. Romagni examined the clothing and did not observe blood or other trace evidence. Thereafter, Romagni returned to the station with Dennis and Bell and told them that they were free to leave.
Several Miami-Dade detectives canvassed the Miami Beach area for information and encountered Nidia El-Djeije, an attendant at a Amoco gas station located within blocks of Club Salvation. El-Djeije told police that on the morning of April 13 at around 3 a.m. she observed a gray Nissan parked at the gas station. Between 3:30 and 4 a.m., El-Djeije became suspicious after observing a black man matching Dennis's general physical description, dressed entirely in black with a hooded sweatshirt covering his face, standing and walking around the car. El-Djeije called police. According to El-Djeije, the man walked towards her glass booth and turned towards Club Salvation. He returned no more than five minutes later, got in the car, and left before the police arrived. As soon as the police left, he returned and remained in the car. El-Djeije observed that the car had tinted windows and did not have a license plate. El-Djeije called Jose Rodriguez from Miami Beach Towing to advise the individual that the car would be towed if he did not leave. Rodriguez arrived at the gas station about fifteen to twenty minutes later, pulling up next to the driver's side of the Nissan. Rodriguez described the vehicle as a two-door light silver Nissan. The driver's side window was cracked open slightly and Rodriguez advised the person that he had to move the car. According to Rodriguez, the Nissan was pointed in the direction of a Chevron station across the street where a black Explorer with a flat tire or tires on its right side was being loaded onto a flat-bed truck. The driver of the Nissan drove off without responding to Rodriguez.
Detectives showed El-Djeije a picture of Dennis's car, a Mazda Protege, but she could not recognize it. Instead, El-Djeije definitively told police that the car she saw the previous evening was a Nissan. Several days later detectives interviewed Watisha Wallace, Dennis's ex-girlfriend. Wallace owned a gray two-door Nissan Sentra which Dennis drove occasionally. On the weekend of the murders Wallace traveled to Daytona with several friends in a rental car, leaving her car behind. Wallace's car did not have a license plate displayed in the usual place. It was positioned in the rear window. The police took photographs of Wallace's car and showed them to El-Djeije. Upon seeing the photographs, Djeije identified Wallace's Nissan as the car she saw in the early morning hours of April 13.
After learning that Joseph Stewart, an acquaintance of Dennis, might have some information about the murders the police interviewed him on April 29. Stewart told police that on April 7, only a day after Lumpkins moved out, Dennis came to the apartment of Stewart's girlfriend, Zemoria Wilson. At that time, Dennis asked Stewart if he had any guns Dennis could borrow. Stewart told Dennis about an old sawed-off shotgun he had at his mother's house. The shotgun was missing the shoulder stock and had a long screw...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Jones v. State
...(Glickman, J., concurring) (collecting cases for the proposition that accomplice testimony is presumptively unreliable); Dennis v. State, 817 So. 2d 741, 751 (Fla. 2002) (discussing a jury instruction that directs jurors to "use great caution in relying on the testimony of a witness who cla......
-
Lynch v. Sec'y, Dep't of Corr.
...that the murder of Morgan was carefully planned, supporting the CCP aggravating factor. Fla. Stat. § 921.141(5)(I); Dennis v. State, 817 So.2d 741, 765 (Fla.2002) (upholding CCP where facts showed defendant arrived at the apartment before the victim and waited for her arrival). Although the......
-
Perez v. State
...in other cases where this mitigating circumstance has been given little weight in the trial court's sentencing order. See Dennis v. State, 817 So.2d 741 (Fla.2002); Howell v. State, 707 So.2d 674 (Fla.1998); Pooler v. State, 704 So.2d 1375 Perez also challenges that which he perceives as th......
-
Simmons v. State
...495, 518 (Fla.2005), and this Court has held that these factors also apply to the identification of physical evidence. Dennis v. State, 817 So.2d 741, 760 (Fla. 2002) ("The factors to be considered in the determination of whether the identification of the vehicle was reliable are all compar......
-
Evidence
...broke into the house where the victim lived and accused her of having sex with a man who was staying there. Held: Under Dennis v. State , 817 So. 2d 741 (Fla. 2002), evidence of prior domestic difficulties between the defendant a victim are admissible to show a motive for a later homicide. ......
-
Silenced by Instruction
...App. 2004); State v. Grimes, 982 P.2d 1037, 1041 (Mont. 1999); State v. Moore, 981 A.2d 1030, 1059-60 (Conn. 2009); State v. Dennis, 817 So. 2d 741, 751 (Fla. 2002); State v. Adams, 943 A.2d 851, 864 (N.J. 2008); Banks v. Dretke, 540 U.S. 668, 701-02 (2004) (advising that the issue of an in......