Huck v. State

• Decision Date: 16 July 2004
• Docket Number: No. 5D03-1906.,5D03-1906.
• Parties: Brent Robert HUCK, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

881 So.2d 1137

Brent Robert HUCK, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. 5D03-1906.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fifth District.

July 16, 2004.

Rehearing Denied September 20, 2004.

Gregory W. Eisenmenger and Robert R. Berry of Eisenmenger, Berry & Peters, Melbourne, for Appellant.

Charles J. Crist, Jr., Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Kellie A. Nielan, Assistant

Attorney General, Daytona Beach, for Appellee.

MONACO, J.

Brent Robert Huck appeals his convictions for the kidnapping and felony murder of his former girlfriend, Misty Morse. The felony murder is based on the kidnapping. While Mr. Huck raises numerous issues on appeal, we conclude that none merit reversal of his judgment and sentence, and therefore, we affirm. There are, however, a number of issues brought to our attention by Mr. Huck that warrant discussion.

I. FACTS.

There was no eyewitness to the murder. The State's case was based entirely on circumstantial evidence. Nevertheless, the evidence adduced both establishes each element of the offenses charged, and excludes each reasonable hypothesis of innocence advanced by Mr. Huck. See Pagan v. State, 830 So.2d 792, 803 (Fla.2002)

; Orme v. State, 677 So.2d 258 (Fla.1996). In view of the finding of guilt by the jury, the description of the evidence that follows is given from the perspective of the State.

Shortly after midnight on July 20, 2000, the victim's mother heard the victim showering and drying her hair in preparation for going out. She later heard the victim's phone ring twice and heard her talking on the phone. The victim left the house, and told her mother that she would see her in the morning. The victim's mother left for work at about 3:00 a.m., and would never see her daughter alive again.

The records for the victim's cell phone reflected that on July 20 she received a two-minute call from Mr. Huck at 1:58 a.m., and a second one-minute call from Mr. Huck at 2:23 a.m. No other calls were successfully made to or from the victim's phone. Later on July 20, Bobby Cooper, who had recently started dating the victim, unsuccessfully tried on a number of occasions to reach her by cell phone. Her mother also tried, but failed to reach her on July 21.

On July 23, 2000, the nude body of the victim was found in the Indian River near the shoreline of a residence. The victim's hands and feet were bound together with white rope that bore an unusual double-diamond pattern. Two broken plastic bags were attached to her feet by a length of spline.¹ The victim had white duct tape on her head and neck. The medical examiner was unable to determine the exact time of death. Because of the condition of the body, he testified that the death could have occurred at any time between the early morning hours of July 20th and the time the body was found.

Mr. Huck, who was the former boyfriend of the victim, gave a taped statement to the police on July 26, 2000, that was eventually published to the jury. In summary, Mr. Huck said in his statement that he met the victim about a year and a half prior to her death. They dated for a while, but broke up because, according to Mr. Huck, the victim slept with his roommate. Although they were no longer a couple, Mr. Huck continued to have sex with the victim, most recently on July 11, 2000, nine days before she disappeared. Mr. Huck indicated that the victim did not have any unusual sex habits, and did not like atypical sex, including choking or similar activities, during sex. He confirmed that he spoke to her by phone in the early morning hours of July 20th. He had been drinking with friends earlier that night when he was told by a friend that the victim was telling people that she was pregnant with Mr. Huck's child. Mr. Huck's statement indicates that when he talked to her on the phone, he told her:

[L]ook, what the hell is going on? I saw you and your (sic) not pregnant, why do I keep hearing this, you have really ruined my life.

His recorded statement later explained:

AGENT: So, you bitched to her about the pregnancy?

MR. HUCK: Yeah — just that it was still coming up — flat out why — I have my girlfriend, I've been cheating on my girlfriend with her, and my girlfriend comes up spends the weekends on me — with me.

...

MR. HUCK: I told her, you know my girlfriend comes to town every weekend and we go out to the bars. I've been dating her over nine months, and this is not going to go, you know, if rumor of this gets out — this is not gonna go.

Mr. Huck related in his recorded statement that he was with his fiancee from 9:00 p.m. on July 21, until 7:00 a.m., July 24, 2000. He indicated later that he had returned to his home at about 2:00 a.m. on July 20th. He said he was told by a friend on the evening of July 24th that the victim had been murdered, but his friend did not tell him how she was murdered. During the police interview, the investigator told Mr. Huck that the victim had been thrown in the river and had washed up on shore. After the interview concluded, the following conversation took place, according to the police investigator, in the investigator's car while they were traveling to one of Mr. Huck's residences:

A. I said if he was involved in her death — he could explain the death.

Q. What was his response when you said that to him?

A. There was a hesitation, and he said, "You can't explain a woman tied up and thrown in the river."

Q. Did he say anything else?

A. He paused and he said, "My position is I didn't do it."

Significantly, the police had not yet revealed to him that the victim had been tied up. It is noteworthy, however, that this incriminating statement was not contained in either the taped interview of Mr. Huck, or in any of the investigator's notes.

At the request of the Brevard County Sheriff's Office, Mr. Huck signed a consent form authorizing a search of his own house, as well as his parents' house. Mr. Huck lived from time to time at both locations. At Mr. Huck's parents' house an investigator recovered some black spline from a shelving unit in the garage. According to the officer, the spline was hanging down as if it had just been cut. He also recovered some white duct tape from Mr. Huck's bedroom. He testified that when he walked into the kitchen with the piece of tape, Mr. Huck's mouth dropped open. The investigator next recovered from the kitchen a tan plastic Publix bag with the words, "Baby Club," printed on it. Finally, the investigator recovered two hairs from the deck of a boat owned by Mr. Huck.

A few days later the police obtained a search warrant and searched both real properties and the boat again. The investigator found and retained a portion of matted hair from a fishing rod holder in Mr. Huck's boat. The investigator also seized some hairs for comparison purposes from a dog named Cheba that was owned by Mr. Huck. In addition, a diver for the Sheriff's Office recovered a small piece of rope with a red and white diamond pattern from the water near the seawall in the river near Mr. Huck's parents' house. All of the evidence that was recovered was subjected to forensic testing. The plastic bags that were attached to the victim's body and the plastic bag seized from Mr. Huck's kitchen counter were all Publix bags with "Baby Club" printed on them. This variety of bag, of which about 3,000,000 were made, was in Publix stores for approximately three months from June through August of 2000. The bags bore quality control markers which showed when and where they were manufactured, and the specific operator who made them. The bags recovered from Mr. Huck's kitchen and the bags recovered from the victim's body were produced in the same lane, by the same employee, in the month of June, 2000.

The rope with the unusual double diamond pattern recovered from the victim's body and the rope found in the water in front of the Huck residence were consistent in all respects. Attempts to locate similar rope in the area were unsuccessful. An assistant manager of a local marine supply store testified that in his ten years in the business he had never before seen rope with that specific pattern. He said that he tried to locate the pattern through most of the U.S. manufacturers, but was not successful.

The white duct tape found on the victim was compared to the duct tape recovered from Mr. Huck's residence by a microanalyst with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. He concluded that the two pieces of tape were of the same type and same grade, and were most probably made by the same manufacturer. He noted that only four to six per cent of the duct tape manufactured in the United States is white, but he was unable to match the tape to a specific manufacturer.

Another microanalyst with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement compared the spline that attached the bags to the victim's body to the spline seized from Mr. Huck's garage. She concluded that they were produced by the same manufacturer, in the same manufacturing plant, and on the same extrusion line.

An expert in DNA testing testified concerning the two hairs found on Mr. Huck's boat. The hairs were about 33 centimeters and 15 centimeters in length. The expert indicated that he examined the mitochondrial DNA of the hairs because the more specific nuclear DNA cannot be tested in hair. Mitochondrial DNA is maternally inherited, and therefore is not unique to a specific individual. Thus, for example, all brothers and sisters would have the same mitochondrial DNA profile because they would have inherited it from their common mother. Nevertheless, according to the testimony, the hairs from the boat matched the mitochondrial DNA of muscle tissue from the victim. He concluded that only about 1 in 51 Caucasians (or less than 2 percent), would have this same mitochondrial profile.

A trace evidence examiner with the Federal Bureau of Investigation microscopically compared samples of the victim's hair with hair seized from Mr. Huck's boat and vehicles. The samples...