Hayward v. State

• Decision Date: 27 August 2009
• Docket Number: No. SC07-1234.,SC07-1234.
• Citation: 24 So.3d 17
• Parties: Steven Douglas HAYWARD, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

24 So.3d 17

Steven Douglas HAYWARD, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. SC07-1234.

Supreme Court of Florida.

August 27, 2009.

As Revised on Denial of Rehearing December 10, 2009.

Carey Haughwout, Public Defender, and Gary Lee Caldwell, Assistant Public Defender, Fifteenth Judicial Circuit, West Palm Beach, FL, for Appellant.

Bill McCollum, Attorney General, Tallahassee, FL, and Leslie T. Campbell, Assistant Attorney General, West Palm Beach, FL, for Appellee.

PER CURIAM.

Steven Douglas Hayward appeals from a judgment of conviction of first-degree murder and sentence of death.¹ He also appeals his convictions for armed robbery, armed burglary of a conveyance, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. For the reasons set forth below, we affirm the convictions and the sentence of death.

OVERVIEW

Steven Douglas Hayward (Hayward) was convicted of the first-degree murder of Daniel Destefano (Destefano) in St. Lucie County. Hayward was also convicted of robbery with a deadly weapon, burglary of a conveyance while armed, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Destefano, a newspaper delivery man in Fort Pierce, was robbed and shot while filling up a newsstand at a convenience store in the early morning hours of February 1, 2005. The jury found Hayward guilty of all charges. During the penalty phase, after considering several aggravating circumstances, including Hayward's prior conviction for second-degree murder, and mitigation presented by the defense, the jury voted eight to four to recommend a sentence of death, which the trial court imposed.

Hayward raises nine claims on appeal. In addition to considering the claims raised by Hayward, we have a mandatory duty to examine the sufficiency of the evidence and to determine if Hayward's death sentence was proportionate. We first examine the facts surrounding the murder.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

The Circumstances of the Murder and the Investigation

Sometime before 4 a.m. on the morning of February 1, 2005, Destefano arrived at a convenience store and began filling the vending machine with newspapers. Destefano had secured a concealed weapons permit for a .357 caliber silver revolver which he was wearing in a holster on his belt. Roosevelt McDowell (McDowell), a resident of a nearby rooming house, heard "hollering" and heard Destefano shout, "I don't have no more, I don't have no more." McDowell then heard two gunshots followed by another, louder gunshot. He opened the door to his room and saw a person he described as Mexican² on one knee who was continuing to say, "I don't have no more." McDowell saw a black man searching through a nearby car. McDowell testified that the man then went to the street light on the corner where McDowell could see the man examining his bleeding left hand. According to McDowell, the man was wearing some sort of head covering. McDowell then saw Destefano limp away in an easterly direction and saw the black man take a short-cut around McDowell's rooming house, leaving the area in a westerly direction.

Sometime shortly after 4 a.m., Destefano was found about a block away by an early morning fisherman, who called 911. Officer James Grecco of the Fort Pierce Police Department received the 911 dispatch and quickly responded, arriving about two or three minutes before the paramedics arrived. As the paramedics prepped Destefano for transport, Officer Grecco asked Destefano, "What happened?" Destefano stated that a black male with a black stocking cap over his face ran up to him and shot him. He also told the officer that he fired back with his handgun, but that he "didn't know what happened to it." Soon thereafter, Destefano lost consciousness and died.

Dorothy Smith, Hayward's girlfriend, lived in a rooming house a few blocks away from the convenience store where Destefano was shot. According to Smith, on the morning of the shooting, Hayward arrived at her room just before dawn with an injury to his hand. He claimed the injury was inflicted by two black men who robbed him and shot him in the hand. Smith immediately urged him to go to the hospital and asked if he wanted her to call an ambulance or the police. Hayward vehemently refused Smith's offer and even unplugged the telephone to prevent her from calling anyone. Hayward then went around the rooming house asking various residents to sew up his hand, but no one would do so.

A few hours later, when Smith learned from a television newscast that someone had been shot at the convenience store, she asked Hayward about the shooting. He denied any involvement and told her that he had been shot at a different location. Just before Smith left for the store that morning to buy something for breakfast, she retrieved a bloody ten-dollar bill Hayward had placed in a drawer that morning. When she returned, she found Hayward packing his bags to leave, but she convinced him to stay. Shortly thereafter, Hayward sold a silver handgun for $100.³

Two days after the shooting, the police responded to Smith's rooming house after receiving a report that someone there had a possible gunshot wound to the hand and had been asking the residents to sew it up. When the officers arrived, they found the front door open but asked and received permission from other residents to enter the common area. The residents then directed the officers to Smith's open door where they knocked on the door frame and Smith answered. As Smith was talking to the officers, Hayward came out of the communal bathroom located directly across from Smith's room and walked into the hallway where the officers were standing. The officers immediately noticed his bandaged hand and asked if they could see the wound. Hayward removed the bandage and, when the officers asked him what happened, he and Smith both indicated that Smith had "cut" him with a knife. At this point, Detective Dan Flaherty asked Officer Darren Mace and Hayward to go outside so he could talk with Smith alone. Hayward complied and stepped outside with the officer, where Officer Mace asked him to come to the police station to talk about the "cut" on his hand. Hayward agreed and was handcuffed before being placed in the back seat of the police car. Officer Mace told Hayward that he was not under arrest, and that it was police policy to handcuff anyone being transported in a police car.

After being handcuffed, but just before entering the car, Hayward suddenly stated to Officer Mace that he "wasn't going to lie," that he had been robbed the other day and thought he had been shot. Officer Mace left Hayward in the squad car and went to inform Detective Flaherty of Hayward's statement. Smith, who was within hearing distance of the officers' conversation, then revised her story as well. She said that she had gotten in an argument with Hayward the afternoon before the murder and had stabbed him in the hand. She added that when he returned the next morning, he told her that he had been shot in the very same hand by two black men who robbed him.

Once at the police station, Officer Mace took off Hayward's handcuffs but secured him by an ankle bracelet to a table in an interview room. Hayward was then advised of his Miranda rights.⁴ After waiving his Miranda rights and agreeing to discuss the incident, Hayward provided the officers with several different versions of how his hand was injured. He told the officers that he lied when he first claimed he had been stabbed. He explained that he had actually been robbed by two men, one black and one Mexican, while trying to sell marijuana at the convenience store. Hayward told the officers that he was shot in the hand as he tried to take the gun away from the black robber.

Hayward subsequently changed his story again, this time stating that he was not robbed at all, but instead had witnessed Destefano being robbed and shot by a lone black man. Hayward said that he attempted to pick up a gun left at the scene but dropped it and it went off, shooting him in the hand. He told the officers that even though his hand was bleeding, he went through Destefano's car looking for anything of value. After concluding his statement, Hayward was arrested for Destefano's murder.

A few months later, when the common laundry room in Smith's rooming house was renovated, a black .22 caliber revolver identified as the murder weapon was found behind a board covering a vent in the wall. Hayward's blood was discovered inside the gun's firing chambers.

Medical Examiner Dr. Charles Diggs testified that Destefano suffered a nonfatal injury to his left thigh from a .22 caliber bullet that entered the thigh horizontally, which was consistent with Destefano standing up when the shot was fired. Destefano died as a result of internal bleeding caused by a second .22 caliber bullet that entered Destefano's upper left chest area and traveled downward at a forty-five-degree angle, coming to rest in his lower intestine. This was consistent with Destefano having been shot from above, while kneeling.

Because he bled internally, Destefano's blood was not found at the crime scene. On the other hand, a great deal of Hayward's blood was found at the crime scene, on several of Destefano's personal items found strewn around his car, on the door frame of Destefano's car, on several locations on the outside walls of McDowell's rooming house, and on a fence post adjacent to the rooming house. The hooded jacket that Hayward was wearing the morning of the murder evidenced a number of heavy blood transfer stains⁵ originating from Hayward. There was a large tear on the inside pocket of the jacket, which also bore evidence of Hayward's blood. Criminalist Earl Ritzline testified that the tear was big enough to have been used as a hiding place for two guns. Significantly, even though in his statement to the police Hayward denied touching Destefano, the front and back of Destefano's pants were stained with large amounts of Hayward's blood, including heavy...