Eagle v. State

• Decision Date: 25 May 1971
• Docket Number: No. N--225,N--225
• Citation: 249 So.2d 460
• Parties: Donald L. EAGLE, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

Page 460

249 So.2d 460

Donald L. EAGLE, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. N--225.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, First District.

May 25, 1971.

Rehearing Denied July 9, 1971.

Louis O. Frost, Jr., Public Defender, Gerald Sohn and Bartley K. Vickers, Asst. Public Defenders, for appellant.

Robert L. Shevin, Atty. Gen., and Nelson E. Bailey, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee.

WIGGINTON, Acting Chief Judge.

Appellant was indicted, tried by a jury and found guilty of the offense of forcible rape. He seeks review and reversal of the judgment affirming the jury's verdict and sentencing him to imprisonment for a term of twenty years.

On April 25, 1969, appellant was charged in two separate indictments returned by the grand jury of Duval County. By the first indictment he was charged with killing Sandra Sue Lincicome with a premeditated design to effect her death by strangling her with his hands and a woman's stocking. By the second indictment he was charged with having forcibly raped the same Sandra Sue Lincicome at the same time and place which he was charged in the first indictment with having killed her.

Appellant was first brought to trial on the indictment charging him with murder. At the outset of the trial the prosecuting attorney made an opening statement to the jury in which he assured it that the State's evidence would establish that defendant raped and murdered the victim named in the indictment. He carefully pointed out to the jury that the prosecution was not contending, nor would it attempt to prove, that defendant killed the victim with any premeditated design to effect her death. He explained that the offense of first degree murder with which defendant was charged could be established by proof that the victim was killed by defendant while perpetrating or attempting to perpetrate the criminal offense of rape. The prosecutor then proceeded to outline the State's evidence by which he expected to prove that defendant killed the victim while in the act of raping her, which proof would establish his guilt of first degree murder as charged in the indictment.

The evidence introduced by the State during the trial supported only the single theory of felony murder. ¹ If believed by the jury, it was sufficient to reasonably support the conclusion that following a prolonged drinking party defendant left the premises with the victim and upon reaching a vacant lot adjacent to the apartment building in which the party was held, he raped her, and in the process of the struggle which accompanied this effort, he strangled her to death with his hands and a stocking drawn tightly around her neck. None of the proof offered by the proseuction to sustain a conviction established or attempted to establish that defendant killed the victim from a premeditated design to effect her death. The evidence adduced on behalf of the defendant was wholly sufficient, if believed by the jury, to establish that although the victim was raped and died from strangulation by the one who assaulted her, the person guilty of the crime was someone other than defendant. For the purpose of deciding the controlling question of law which this appeal presents, we perceive that no useful purpose would be served by recounting the gruesome details and deplorable events that surrounded the homicide with which defendant was charged.

At the conclusion of the evidence, defendant's counsel made a motion for a directed verdict on the ground that the State had failed to prove by any competent or substantial evidence that defendant killed the victim from a premeditated design to effect her death as charged in the indictment. From our review of the evidence it clearly appears that had the prosecution been predicated upon the theory that defendant committed the murder from a premeditated design to effect the victim's death, the motion would have been well-founded. In denying the motion the trial judge recognized that the prosecution was not relying upon proof of premeditation but upon its proof of felony murder to support the conviction it sought when he stated that he was satisfied from the evidence that the victim was killed while in the process of being raped.

In the conference between the court and counsel on the instructions to be given the jury, the prosecuting attorney clearly declared the State's position to be that its case was not based in any way on proof of a premeditated design to effect the death of the victim, but was grounded exclusively on the felony murder rule. ² In conformity with this theory the trial court carefully and correctly instructed the jury on the law relative to felony murder and meticulously defined the various elements of forcible rape. ³ In its instructions the court admonished the jury that the defendant was not being tried at that time for the crime of rape and the only reason why evidence relating to such crime had been admitted was so that the jury could consider it in connection with the alleged murder.

In his closing argument to the jury the prosecuting attorney again emphatically declared that the State was not asking that defendant be found guilty of having murdered the victim from any premeditated design to effect her death, and it was not the State's position that defendant set about deliberately to kill the murdered girl. The prosecutor explained that the theory of the State's case was that defendant was guilty of felony murder by having strangled the victim while in the process of raping her. He then proceeded to recount to the jury the evidence which supported the State's theory of rape by defendant and her death from strangulation. It was upon a consideration of the foregoing circumstances that the jury, after careful deliberation, returned its verdict finding defendant not guilty as charged.

The totality of the evidence reasonably leads unerringly to the single conclusion that the victim was stangled to death while in the process of being sexually assaulted and raped. The evidence is not reasonably susceptible of any contrary hypothesis. It is equally clear that the prosecution failed to convince the jury beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant accompanied the victim when she left the party on the night in question and was the one who assaulted and killed her as contended by the State. The jury apparently preferred to accept the contrary evidence which tended to establish that defendant did not leave the party with the victim but remained at all times within the apartment where the party was held until the next morning when he returned to his place of employment.

Following his exoneration of the charge of murder, defendant was placed on trial for the offense of rape as charged in the second indictment. The public defender representing defendant filed a motion to dismiss the indictment on the ground of former jeopardy, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. It was defendant's position that in his prosecution for felony murder the issue of whether he was the person who unlawfully assaulted and raped the victim was an essential element of the prosecution against him and an issue which was tried by the jury and determined in his favor. Such being the case, defendant insisted that to again be placed on trial for the identical rape which was an essential issue in the prosecution for murder for which he was acquitted, places him for a second time in jeopardy for the same criminal offense contrary to the constitutional prohibition against former jeopardy and in violation of the law of collateral estoppel. Upon consideration of the motion so filed by defendant, the trial court entered its order of denial and directed that the case proceed to trial. The evidence introduced at the trial of this case was essentially the same as that introduced in the trial for murder. At the conclusion of the trial, however, the jury in this case found defendant guilty as charged, and it is from the judgment of conviction and sentence based upon that verdict that this appeal is taken.

The declaration of rights embodied in our state constitution provides that no person shall be twice put in jeopardy for the same offense. ⁴ In Benton v. Maryland ⁵ the Supreme Court of the United States held that the former jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment is applicable to the states by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution.

In State ex rel. Glenn v. Klein, ⁶ the petitioner Glenn had been indicted and tried for first degree felony murder which occurred while defendant was attempting to perpetrate the crime of robbery. He was convicted of manslaughter, a lesser offense included in the greater one for which he was indicted. The evidence in that case established that Glenn and a confederate were engaged in the act of committing a robbery when his confederate was killed by the intended victim. Glenn was prosecuted on the theory that the killing of his confederate occurred at a time when he and the confederate were engaged in the commission of a felony. Since the evidence revealed without dispute that it was the victim, and not Glenn, who killed the confederate, Glenn's guilt of the offense charged rested entirely upon proof that he was participating in the crime of robbery at the time the killing occurred.

Glenn was later charged by information with the same robbery involved in the felony murder prosecution against him. His motion to quash the information on the ground of double jeopardy was denied, and he sought a writ of prohibition in the Third District Court of Appeal. In granting prohibition the District Court held that under the facts of that case, the...