Hudson v. State

• Decision Date: 03 July 2008
• Docket Number: No. SC06-748.,SC06-748.
• Citation: 992 So.2d 96
• Parties: Russell HUDSON, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

992 So.2d 96

Russell HUDSON, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. SC06-748.

Supreme Court of Florida.

July 3, 2008.

As Revised on Denial of Rehearing September 25, 2008.

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

Bill McCollum, Attorney General, Tallahassee, Florida, and Sandra S. Jaggard, Assistant Attorney General, Miami, FL, for Appellee.

PER CURIAM.

Russell Hudson appeals from a judgment of conviction and sentence of death for the first-degree murder of Lance Peller. He also appeals his conviction for armed kidnapping of Jennifer Fizzuoglio and the consecutive life sentence he received for that conviction. We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. For the reasons explained below, we affirm the convictions and sentences.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

The Guilt Phase

In October of 2001, Lance Peller, who was twenty-two years old, was a drug dealer in Deerfield Beach, Florida, selling cocaine and ecstasy out of his apartment in the Tivoli Lakes Club Apartments. Russell Hudson, who was thirty-two years old at the time, was a friend of Lance Peller and was also involved in selling drugs by virtue of working for another drug dealer named Felipe Mejia. Peller and Hudson were members of a group of friends and acquaintances that partied together regularly and consumed large quantities of cocaine and ecstasy.

Hudson, by his own characterization, was being "groomed" to be the number two man to Mejia. As part of this grooming and newly accorded responsibility, Hudson was instructed by Mejia approximately three weeks before the murder that Peller was underselling Mejia and needed to be killed.¹ Mejia offered to supply Hudson with a gun. Although Hudson denied taking the gun from Mejia, Hudson's roommate, Jeffrey Stromoski, saw Hudson with a handgun similar to the murder weapon about a month before the murder.

Hudson went to Peller's apartment on the evening of Saturday, October 20, 2001, with Peller's own handgun that had been stolen in a burglary of Peller's apartment in August of 2001. Jennifer Fizzuoglio, a dancer, was Peller's girlfriend in October of 2001. She had not seen Peller all day Saturday and decided to drop by his apartment on the way to work. After talking with him by phone earlier that evening, she drove her red Ford Mustang to his apartment, arriving somewhere between 8 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. During her call to Peller, he did not say anything about a problem with Hudson and did not sound upset or nervous. When she arrived, Peller smiled, hugged her, and let her into the apartment.

When Fizzuoglio arrived, Hudson was already there, sitting in a chair in front of the coffee table. She knew Hudson only slightly after having met him at a party some weeks earlier. Fizzuoglio sat down on the floor next to the coffee table. Sometime after Fizzuoglio arrived, Peller's phone rang and while he talked on the phone, she and Hudson made small talk. When Peller got off the phone, Hudson rose and started moving toward the bathroom, which was visible from the living room in the small apartment. Suddenly, Hudson turned around, crouched down in front of the coffee table, and pulled out a gun.

Peller looked shocked and said something to the effect of, "how did you get my gun?" Hudson kept saying, "Tell me what I want to hear, Lance." Fizzuoglio began crying and "freaking out" and offered Hudson money, which she assumed was at the root of the problem between them. Hudson then made a cell phone call to someone and said, "Do I have to do this now? Somebody showed up." It appeared to Fizzuoglio that Hudson did not want to commit the murder and was attempting to find a way to get out of it. Hudson kept the gun in his hand during this call.

Hudson then decided to use some cocaine and tried to prepare it himself but could not do so while holding the gun. He made Fizzuoglio prepare the lines of cocaine and ordered Fizzuoglio and Peller to use some cocaine after him. Hudson then started "freaking out," saying there were people outside who would kill them all if he did not kill Peller. He kept looking out the window and the door peephole, but Fizzuoglio said she never saw anyone outside. He told Peller and Fizzuoglio to hide and Peller went into the bathroom and sat on the floor. Fizzuoglio crouched in the kitchen, where her fingerprint was later found on the floor.

Peller became very anxious and began hyperventilating. Fizzuoglio tried to calm him down, but they were both scared, especially when Hudson kept saying someone was outside. Peller asked Hudson to let Fizzuoglio go because she was not involved in the dispute. Finally, Peller asked Hudson for a phone to call his father to tell him goodbye and Hudson kicked a phone over to him. Peller called his father at 9:13 p.m. and, after no one answered, left a message.²

While Peller was on the telephone and Fizzuoglio was crouching in the kitchen, Hudson came over to her and said, "Are you going to be alright with this?" Hudson then went and banged his hand and his head on the door in what appeared to Fizzuoglio to be an effort to psyche himself up. She testified that, "with one movement, one second, he stops and he walks over and grabs a blanket and then he walks back—to where Lance was ... inside the bathroom" and "[h]e shot him." Hudson shot Peller once through the blanket into the top of Peller's head, killing him almost instantaneously.

Immediately after shooting Peller, Hudson put on latex gloves and searched the apartment, handing things to Fizzuoglio to carry, including Peller's wallet, keys, a scale, and several cell phones. He then forced her out the door and into the passenger side of her red Mustang after saying he could not find his keys to the black Nissan, which he had driven to the complex and left parked in the lot. Hudson put the gun under his left leg and drove while Fizzuoglio was in the passenger seat. She testified that he made a phone call during the ride as they proceeded west on 10th street. After he finished the call, he looked at her and said, "I'm sorry. I have to do this." At that moment, she jumped out of the car as it was moving and ran across the street into a ditch. She then banged on a car asking for help but the people in the car were afraid and drove off, calling 911. She stated that she also jumped on the back of a tow truck but jumped off when Hudson drove up. She saw a marked patrol car at a stop light and ran over, jumping onto the hood of the car. The car was driven by Deputy Kim Bauer, who was on her way to work when she was flagged down by Fizzuoglio.

Fizzuoglio was hysterical, crying, and screaming that she had just seen her friend killed and that someone was trying to kill her, but she did not identify who was involved or where it occurred. The female officer called for backup deputies, who arrived and heard the same story. Fizzuoglio also told them that she had ingested some cocaine and the deputies, because they thought she was overdosing on drugs, sent her to the hospital alone in an ambulance. Only later, upon receiving an anonymous call about the murder, did Broward deputies realize she was telling the truth and went to interview her at the hospital.

Sometime after Hudson had left the scene with Fizzuoglio, two teenage boys who had previously bought drugs from Peller went to his apartment to see about buying some cocaine. They had called around 9 p.m. or a bit earlier and were told by Peller that he was busy and to call back in about thirty minutes. Peller did not sound upset and did not tell them anything about Hudson or the gun. They called back a few more times beginning about 9:15 p.m. but no one answered, so they proceeded to the apartment and arrived around 9:30 p.m.

One of the boys stayed in the car while the other went in to see if Peller was home. He was able to enter the apartment because the door was ajar. He came back out and told his friend that he thought Peller was passed out in the bathroom. Both boys went back in and found Peller lying in the bathroom against the wall with blood on the floor and a beer bottle in his hand. The boys did not call the police but instead went through the apartment looking for drugs. The boys left and went their separate ways. One of the boys decided to report the murder and made an anonymous call to the police. The other boy returned alone to the apartment to look around and was there when the police arrived.

Robert Moreau was a friend of both Hudson and Peller. Moreau's apartment was within walking distance from Peller's apartment in the large complex. Around 11 p.m., Hudson called Moreau's apartment from a pay phone and asked to be picked up at a Dairy Queen located in Pompano Beach, which was a few miles away from his apartment. Moreau picked him up near the Dairy Queen at 11:15 p.m. Hudson appeared normal, which for a Saturday night meant "out of it." Moreau did not take Hudson to pick up his car, but took him to Moreau's apartment where Hudson changed clothes.

Also that same evening, around 11 p.m., Denver Wilson was walking through the parking lot of the First Presbyterian Church of Pompano Beach on the way to his house, which was located near the church. The First Presbyterian Church is located about 400 feet from the Dairy Queen where Hudson made his telephone call to Moreau. While walking toward his house, Wilson saw a red Mustang with the motor still running, backed into a parking space in the parking lot adjacent to the church. The car remained there all day Sunday. On October 22, a deputy was dispatched to the church to check out the red Mustang and found it parked there, with the keys in the ignition, still in the "on" position, and with a dead battery. The Mustang was identified as being owned by Fizzuoglio and Hudson's DNA was found on the steering wheel.

Fizzuoglio met with deputies several more times after leaving the...