Johnson v. State, 59811

• Decision Date: 23 November 1983
• Docket Number: No. 59811,59811
• Citation: 442 So.2d 193
• Parties: Terrell M. JOHNSON, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

Page 193

442 So.2d 193

Terrell M. JOHNSON, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. 59811.

Supreme Court of Florida.

Nov. 23, 1983.

Rehearing Denied Jan. 13, 1984.

James B. Gibson, Public Defender and Ronald K. Zimmet, Chief Asst. Public Defender, Seventh Judicial Circuit, Daytona Beach, for appellant.

Jim Smith, Atty. Gen., and Mark C. Menser and Evelyn D. Golden, Asst. Attys. Gen., Daytona Beach, for appellee.

PER CURIAM.

This is an appeal from a conviction for first-degree murder and sentence of death. We have jurisdiction. Article V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. We affirm the conviction and the sentence.

On December 4, 1979, Terrell Johnson went to Lola's Tavern in Orange County to redeem a pistol he had pawned to James Dodson, the bartender/owner of the tavern. Although Dodson had given Johnson fifty dollars when the gun was pawned, he demanded one hundred dollars to return it. Before paying for the gun, Johnson asked to be allowed to test fire it and took the gun to an open field across the road from the bar where he fired several shots. While returning to the bar, Johnson, irate at what he considered to be Dodson's unreasonable demand, decided to rob the tavern. Johnson told police that he took Dodson and a customer, Charles Himes, into the men's room at the end of the bar, intending to tie them up with electrical cord. The customer lunged at Johnson and he began firing wildly, shooting both men. He then returned to the bar and cleaned out the cash drawer, also taking Dodson's gun, which was kept under the bar. As he was wiping the bar surfaces to remove fingerprints, Johnson heard movement from the back room and returned to find the customer still alive. Johnson shot him again, not, according to Johnson, "to see him dead," but to "stop his suffering."

Several weeks later Johnson was arrested in Oregon for an unrelated crime. He still had Dodson's gun--he had sold the murder weapon to an acquaintance in Florida--and thus was linked to the Florida murders based on information from the National Crime Information Center.

Johnson was tried in Orange County on an indictment charging two counts of first-degree murder. He admitted the killings but claimed they were provoked by the customer's attack and denied all premeditation. He was convicted of second-degree murder for the death of the customer and of first-degree murder in Dodson's death. On the first-degree conviction the jury recommended and the trial court imposed the death penalty.

The case was first appealed to the Florida Supreme Court in 1980. At that time the transcript of the trial court proceedings was discovered to be virtually incomprehensible because of omissions (including omissions of several bench conferences and the entire voir dire of the venire panel), misspellings, and obvious inaccuracies in either the recording or the transcription of the trial. This Court therefore relinquished jurisdiction to the trial court to attempt to reconstruct the record and to hold an evidentiary hearing on the accuracy of the transcript. The court reporter revisited her stenographic notes and met with the trial judge and trial counsel. The corrected and supplemented transcript was the subject of extensive hearings into its accuracy and reliability. At the close of those hearings, the presiding judge found the corrected transcripts to contain "no significant or material fault ... [nor to show] even one prejudicial omission or error" and issued an order submitting the revised transcript to this Court. It is this transcript upon which we rely in making our review of the record.

This revised transcript is also the subject of appellant's first point on appeal. He refers to inconsistencies between the original and the corrected transcripts, to the time elapsed between the trial and the reconstruction, and to possible omissions which make effective assistance of appellate counsel and independent appellate review impossible. However, he is unable to point to any omission, inconsistency or inaccuracy which prejudices the presentation of his case. The reconstruction and the evidentiary hearing were conducted pursuant to the order of this Court and in compliance with Florida Rule of Appellate Procedure 9.200(f). At the evidentiary hearing the trial judge, the court reporter and both trial attorneys testified to the substantial accuracy and completeness of the record in all material regards. In the absence of some clear allegation of prejudicial inaccuracy we see no worthwhile end to be achieved by remanding for new trial.

Appellant's second point on appeal merits particular attention because it relates to the issue of the admissibility of certain evidence both as it was presented to the jury in support of the first-degree murder verdict and as it relates to the finding, as a statutory aggravating factor, that the murder was cold, calculated and premeditated. The state presented evidence that Dodson's death had been caused by a close-range execution-style shot to the back of the head. This evidence consisted of testimony by the medical examiner about the pattern of stippling around the wound and testimony by police officer Park about the results of experiments he had conducted with the murder weapon. Park testified that he had fired the gun at white paper from various distances, and he described the marks made on the paper by the unexploded gunpowder discharged with the bullet. Park was not qualified as an expert witness and offered no opinion testimony. Neither did he attempt any comparison between the fatal wounds and the marks on the paper target.

Appellant cites McClendon v. State, 90 Fla. 272, 105 So. 406 (1925) for the proposition that admission of this evidence was prejudicial error. In McClendon, this Court ruled, on facts strikingly similar to those in the case at bar, that paper targets showing powder burns from shots fired at various ranges should not have been admitted into evidence on the issue of the range at which McClendon's alleged victim had been shot because it could not assume "that the effect of pistol fire upon human flesh and upon paper or cloth targets would be essentially similar, in respect to resulting powder burns or marks, when the requisite supporting proof is lacking." 90 Fla. at 280, 105 So. at 409.

The rule of "essential similarity" between test conditions and actual conditions first enunciated in Hisler v. State, 52 Fla. 30, 42 So. 692 (1906), has been eroded as to other types of experimental evidence since that time. Janke v. Corinthian Gardens, Inc., 405 So.2d 740 (Fla. 4th DCA 1981), cert. denied, 413 So.2d 876 (Fla.1982); Vitt v. Ryder Truck Rentals, 340 So.2d 962 (Fla. 3d DCA 1976). We are convinced that the issue is one of the weight to be given the evidence rather than its relevance or materiality. We, therefore, recede from McClendon insofar as it holds such evidence inadmissible, and we find no error on the record now before us.

Third, appellant raises a Witherspoon objection to the exclusion for cause of prospective jurors Horne and Bowman. While neither of these venirewomen stated on the record that she would "automatically vote against the imposition of capital punishment," Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 510, 516 n. 9, 88 S.Ct. 1770, 1774 n. 9, 20 L.Ed.2d 776 (1968), a review of the voir dire shows that they both made

unmistakably clear (1) that they would automatically vote against the imposition of capital punishment without regard to any evidence that might be developed at the trial of the case before them, or (2) that their attitude toward the death penalty would prevent them from making an impartial decision as to the defendant's guilt.

Id. at 522-23 n. 21, 88 S.Ct. at 1777 n. 21 (emphasis in the original). The totality of their testimony shows that excusing these women for cause was proper.

Fourth, appellant argues that the trial court should have automatically dismissed the charges against him once the 120-day limits specified in the Interstate Agreement on Detainers (IAD), section 941.45, Florida Statutes (1979), had elapsed. Appellant was brought to Florida from Oregon, where he was serving a sentence, pursuant to the IAD. He was booked into the Orange County jail May 15, 1980 and brought to trial September 23, 1980, obviously more than 120 days after entering the custody of the State of Florida. During this period he was represented by counsel and the IAD documents were a matter of record. Nonetheless, the appellant agreed to a continuance of the trial date from August 12, when trial was originally scheduled. Appellant failed to raise the issue of the 120-day limit at that time or at any time before bringing this appeal.

We cannot find any reason to hold the IAD's 120-day limit to be unwaivable and self-executing. Florida's speedy trial rule, Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.191,...