Hurst v. State

Citation147 So.3d 435
Decision Date01 May 2014
Docket NumberNo. SC12–1947.,SC12–1947.
PartiesTimothy Lee HURST, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
CourtFlorida Supreme Court

147 So.3d 435

Timothy Lee HURST, Appellant
v.
STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. SC12–1947.

Supreme Court of Florida.

May 1, 2014.
Rehearing Denied Sept. 4, 2014.


147 So.3d 436

Nancy Ann Daniels, Public Defender, and David A. Davis and William Carl McLain, Assistant Public Defenders, Tallahassee, FL, for Appellant.

Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, and Stephen Richard White, Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, FL, for Appellee.

Opinion

147 So.3d 437

PER CURIAM.

Timothy Lee Hurst appeals his sentence of death that was imposed for the 1998 first-degree murder of Cynthia Harrison. We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. For the reasons set forth below, we affirm his sentence.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

Hurst was convicted for the May 2, 1998, first-degree murder of Cynthia Harrison in a robbery at the Popeye's restaurant where Hurst was employed in Escambia County, Florida. The victim, also an employee, had been bound and gagged and repeatedly cut and stabbed with a weapon consistent with a box cutter found at the scene. Hurst's conviction and death sentence were originally affirmed in Hurst v. State, 819 So.2d 689 (Fla.2002). In that decision, we set forth the facts surrounding the murder as follows:

On the morning of May 2, 1998, a murder and robbery occurred at a Popeye's Fried Chicken restaurant in Escambia County, Florida, where Hurst was employed. Hurst and the victim, assistant manager Cynthia Lee Harrison, were scheduled to work at 8 a.m. on the day of the murder. A worker at a nearby restaurant, Carl Hess, testified that he saw Harrison arriving at work between 7 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. Afterwards, Hess said that he saw a man, who was about six feet tall and weighed between 280 and 300 pounds, arrive at Popeye's and bang on the glass windows until he was let inside. The man was dressed in a Popeye's uniform and Hess recognized him as someone he had seen working at Popeye's. Shortly after the crime, Hess picked Hurst from a photographic lineup as the man he had seen banging on the windows. Hess was also able to identify Hurst at trial.
On the morning of the murder, a Popeye's delivery truck was making the rounds at Popeye's restaurants in the area. Janet Pugh, who worked at another Popeye's, testified she telephoned Harrison at 7:55 a.m. to tell her that the delivery truck had just left and Harrison should expect the truck soon. Pugh spoke to the victim for four to five minutes and did not detect that there was anything wrong or hear anyone in the background. Pugh was certain of the time because she looked at the clock while on the phone.
Popeye's was scheduled to open at 10:30 a.m. but Harrison and Hurst were the only employees scheduled to work at 8 a.m. However, at some point before opening, two other Popeye's employees arrived, in addition to the driver of the supply truck. None of them saw Hurst or his car. At 10:30 a.m., another Popeye's assistant manager, Tonya Crenshaw, arrived and found the two Popeye's employees and the truck driver waiting outside the locked restaurant.
When Crenshaw unlocked the door, and she and the delivery driver entered, they discovered that the safe was unlocked and open, and the previous day's receipts, as well as $375 in small bills and change, were missing. The driver discovered the victim's dead body inside the freezer. The victim had her hands bound behind her back with black electrical tape and she also had tape over her mouth. Similar tape was later found in the trunk of Hurst's car. The scene was covered with a significant amount of the victim's blood, and it was apparent from water on the floor that someone had attempted to clean up the area.
The victim suffered a minimum of sixty incised slash and stab wounds, including severe wounds to the face, neck,
147 So.3d 438
back, torso, and arms. The victim also had blood stains on the knees of her pants, indicating that she had been kneeling in her blood. A forensic pathologist, Dr. Michael Berkland, testified that some of the wounds cut through the tissue into the underlying bone, and while several wounds had the potential to be fatal, the victim probably would not have survived more than fifteen minutes after the wounds were inflicted. Dr. Berkland also testified that the victim's wounds were consistent with the use of a box cutter. A box cutter was found on a baker's rack close to the victim's body. Later testing showed that the box cutter had the victim's blood on it. It was not the type of box cutter that was used at Popeye's, but was similar to a box cutter that Hurst had been seen with several days before the crime.
Hurst's friend, Michael Williams, testified that Hurst admitted to him that he had killed Harrison. Hurst told him that he had an argument with the victim, she “retaliated,” and that Hurst hit the victim and cut her with a box cutter. Hurst said he had killed the victim because, “he didn't want the woman to see his face.” Williams stated that Hurst had talked about robbing Popeye's on previous occasions.
Another of Hurst's friends, “Lee–Lee” Smith, testified that the night before the murder, Hurst said he was going to rob Popeye's. On the morning of the murder, Hurst came to Smith's house with a plastic container full of money from the Popeye's safe. Hurst instructed Smith to keep the money for him. Hurst said he had killed the victim and put her in the freezer. Smith washed Hurst's pants, which had blood on them, and threw away Hurst's socks and shoes. Later that morning, Smith and Hurst went to Wal–Mart to purchase a new pair of shoes. They also went to a pawn shop where Hurst saw some rings he liked, and after returning to Smith's house for the stolen money, Hurst returned to the shop and purchased the three rings for $300. An employee at the shop, Bob Little, testified that on the day of the murder, a man fitting Hurst's description purchased three rings. Little picked Hurst out of a photographic lineup as the man who had purchased the rings. The police recovered the three rings from Hurst.
Smith's parents were out of town the weekend of the murder but upon their return, and after discovering the container with the money from Popeye's in Smith's room, Smith's mother contacted the police and turned the container over to them. The police interviewed Smith and searched a garbage can in Smith's yard where they found a coin purse that contained the victim's driver's license and other property, a bank bag marked with “Popeye's” and the victim's name, a bank deposit slip, a sock with blood stains on it, and a sheet of notebook paper marked “Lee Smith, language lab.” On the back of the notebook paper someone had added several numbers, and one number was the same as the amount on the deposit slip. Smith's father also gave the police a pair of size fourteen shoes that appeared to have blood stains on them and that he had retrieved from the same trash can.
Jack Remus, a Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) crime lab analyst, testified that the shoes were tested with phenolpthalein to detect blood, and while the test results exhibited some of the chemical indications associated with blood, attempts at DNA testing were not successful. Remus also tested the blood-stained sock and determined that the DNA typing was consistent
147 So.3d 439
with the victim. Hurst's pants were also tested, but no blood evidence was detected. FDLE fingerprint expert Paul Norkus testified that the deposit slip in the garbage can had three of Hurst's fingerprints on it.
At trial, the State played the tape of an interview the police had conducted with Hurst shortly after the murder. Hurst said that on the morning of the murder he was on his way to work and his car broke down. He said that he telephoned Harrison at Popeye's to say he was unable to come to work, and when he talked to her, she sounded scared and he heard whispering in the background. Hurst then went to Smith's house and changed out of his work clothes. Hurst said he went to the pawn shop and bought necklaces for friends, but he did not mention purchasing the three rings or buying a new pair of shoes at Wal–Mart.
At the close of the guilt phase of the trial, the jury deliberated for approximately six hours before finding Hurst guilty of first-degree murder.

Hurst, 819 So.2d at 692–94 (footnotes omitted).

Hurst filed his initial, amended postconviction proceeding in circuit court.1 On appeal from denial of postconviction relief, we affirmed on all but one of his postconviction claims. See Hurst v. State, 18 So.3d 975 (Fla.2009). Although we concluded that the State should have disclosed certain field notes by investigator Donald Nesmith, and that the trial court's refusal

147 So.3d 440

to perpetuate the testimony of Willie Griffin was an abuse of discretion, we concluded no prejudice...

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  • Hurst v. State
    • United States
    • Florida Supreme Court
    • October 14, 2016
    ...616, 193 L.Ed.2d 504 (2016) (Hurst v. Florida ), following its certiorari review and reversal of our decision in Hurst v. State, 147 So.3d 435 (Fla.2014) (Hurst v. State ). In that case, we affirmed Timothy Lee Hurst's death sentence, which was imposed after a second penalty phase sentencin......
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