Jones v. State

• Decision Date: 02 March 2017
• Docket Number: No. SC14–990,SC14–990
• Citation: 212 So.3d 321
• Parties: Henry Lee JONES, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

212 So.3d 321

Henry Lee JONES, Appellant,

v.STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. SC14–990

Supreme Court of Florida.

[March 2, 2017]

James S. Purdy, Public Defender, and George Donald Edward Burden and John M. Selden, Assistant Public Defenders, Seventh Judicial Circuit, Daytona Beach, Florida, for Appellant

Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, Tallahassee, Florida; and Vivian Ann Singleton, Assistant Attorney General, Daytona Beach, Florida, for Appellee

PER CURIAM.

Henry Lee Jones appeals his conviction for the first-degree murder of Carlos Perez and sentence of death. We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. For the reasons explained below, we affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

On August 27, 2003, the body of nineteen-year-old Carlos Perez was found in a motel room in Melbourne, Florida. Jones was indicted for the murder in 2011. Jones waived his right to counsel and represented himself at his 2013 trial, after which the jury returned a verdict of guilty of first-degree premeditated murder and unanimously recommended a sentence of death. Following a hearing held pursuant to Spencer v. State , 615 So.2d 688 (Fla. 1993), in 2014, the trial court followed the jury's recommendation and sentenced Jones to death. This appeal follows.

A. Guilt Phase

The evidence presented during the guilt phase of Jones's trial established the following. In August 2003, Carlos Perez was living with his father, William Perez, in Wilton Manors, Florida, and working for Dependable Temps, a labor pool in Fort Lauderdale. On August 26, 2003, Perez left for work at 4:30 a.m. and never returned. The next day around noon, housekeeping staff at the Super 8 motel in Melbourne discovered Perez's body rolled up in a comforter on the bed in room 217. His head was covered with a pillow and there was a significant amount of blood on the pillows, headboard, and comforter. It was clear that Perez had been strangled and his throat was slashed.

There were no personal effects in the room and all the towels, washcloths, and pillow cases were missing. The telephone cord had been removed from the back of the phone, and a section of it had been cut out and was missing from the room. A hair on the carpet was later determined to have a mitochondrial DNA profile that matched Jones's mitochondrial DNA profile, and footwear impressions from the bathroom floor were determined to be consistent with—and one of them most likely made by—shoes that were found in Jones's car.

Dr. Sajid Qaiser, the medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Perez, confirmed that the cause of death was strangulation with a ligature and multiple incised wounds

to the neck. Perez suffered a total of eight incised wounds to the neck, ranging from superficial to fatal. The largest wound was a large, gaping slash that severed the windpipe, cut through muscles and the larynx, and reached deep enough to damage the front of the cervical bones at the back of the neck. Although no ligatures were found on Perez's body, there were ligature marks around his neck, wrists, and ankles. Contusions on Perez's ankles and forearms were caused by hurried removal of the ligatures after death. Petechiae in Perez's eyes indicated that the neck ligature was tightened and released several times before Perez died. Perez's anal area was dilated and abraded and his rectum was filled with mucus, which indicated that he was sexually abused and penetrated either by an object or another person's penis at or near the time of his death. According to Dr. Qaiser, the petechial hemorrhaging and sexual penetration indicated that Perez had been subjected to sexual asphyxia, which Dr. Qaiser described as a practice involving the application and release of pressure to the neck in order to enhance the sexual pleasure or excitement of one of the parties.

As to the sequence of Perez's injuries, Dr. Qaiser opined that Perez was laid face down, his hands were tied at the wrists, his legs were tied at the ankles, and then the sexual penetration occurred. The ligature was applied to the neck and was tightened and released multiple times. The perpetrator then inflicted multiple superficial, incised wounds

to the neck that would have been painful and bled a small amount. The cutting to the neck then got deeper and deeper until finally the neck was slashed and the windpipe, jugular vein, vertebral bone, and muscles were cut.

Detectives from the Melbourne Police Department assigned to the case initially identified Perez from the driver license he used to check in to the motel. According to the front desk clerk, Perez checked in around noon on August 26, 2003, and paid cash for one night. Around the time Perez checked in, the manager of the motel observed a white, four-door car with two men inside pull into the parking lot. A young, white male got out and entered the lobby check-in area. The driver, a black male, waited for the white male to return to the car after checking in, and the men then entered the motel together through a side entrance.

Early in the investigation, Detective Johnny Lawson learned that the Brevard County Sheriff's Office was investigating the use of a credit card in Brevard County a few days before the Perez murder that was stolen from Lillian James, one of the victims of a double homicide that occurred in Bartlett, Tennessee, on August 22, 2003. Although there was no immediate connection between those crimes and the Perez murder, Detective Lawson made a "courtesy call" to police in Bartlett and later reviewed surveillance video from the gas station where Mrs. James's stolen credit card was used in Brevard County, which depicted the driver of a white 1993 Lincoln Town Car using the stolen card.

On September 4, 2003, Detective Lawson and other Melbourne detectives traveled to Fort Lauderdale to visit Perez's employer, Dependable Temps, in order to gather records and speak to the management and other labor-seekers. Records from Dependable Temps showed that Perez signed in on the morning of August 26, 2003, but was not assigned to a job that day.

As the detectives spoke to the labor-seekers arriving that morning, Detective Lawson noticed a white Lincoln Town Car parked in front of the building that looked very similar to the one on the video of the transaction in which Mrs. James's stolen credit card was used in Brevard County. Detective Lawson ran the tag on the Town Car, which was "69 BAM." The search revealed that the tag belonged to Henry Lee Jones. Detective Lawson also discovered that Jones was stopped and cited by the Rockledge Police Department in Brevard County for driving while his license was suspended on August 15, 2003, which was eleven or twelve days before Perez's murder. The report from the August 15 stop indicated that Jones was driving a white, four-door Dodge Aries with tag number "W58 JKP" at the time. Jones's passenger at the time of the stop—K.F., a seventeen-year-old runaway from Illinois—had a valid driver's license and was allowed to drive the car away from the stop after Jones received his citation. When Detective Lawson ran the W58 JKP tag, he learned that the Dodge Aries was stopped again on I–95 in Brevard County on August 25, 2003, by Agent Carlos Reyes, only a few miles from where Mrs. James's stolen credit card was used the day before.

When Agent Reyes stopped the Dodge Aries on August 25, 2003, for speeding, changing lanes without a signal, and following too close to other vehicles, the driver was Tevarus Young. Young initially gave Agent Reyes a false name and said that he was following and attempting to catch up to his stepfather, who was driving a Lincoln Town Car. A few minutes after Young provided that story, Jones drove up in the Town Car and told Agent Reyes that he was not Young's stepfather but had just met him and paid him to drive the Aries back down to Fort Lauderdale because he had just purchased the Town Car in Mississippi. Agent Reyes then told Jones to leave the area for a few minutes while he dealt with Young.

When Agent Reyes confronted Young with the fact that Jones was not his stepfather, Young provided his real name, and Reyes discovered that Young had an outstanding warrant from Broward County and took him into custody. When Jones did not return, Agent Reyes took the key from the ignition of the Aries and left a note on the window advising Jones to call him to reclaim the key, but Jones never called.

When Detective Lawson learned that Agent Reyes ran both the W58 JKP tag and the 69 BAM tag, along with the name Henry Lee Jones during the August 25 traffic stop, he began to suspect that the Town Car involved in the use of Mrs. James's stolen credit card might be Jones's Town Car. Detective Lawson contacted the Bartlett, Tennessee, Police Department and learned that Jones had lived in Bartlett as recently as July 2003, and that his address in Bartlett was within one mile of the James residence, where Mr. and Mrs. James were murdered in August 2003. Once it became clear that Jones was in the vicinity of the James residence within a month of their murders and that he was within the vicinity of the Super 8 in Melbourne within a day of Perez's murder, Detective Lawson met with Detective Massey from the Bartlett Police Department to compare the details of the two crime scenes, which were significantly similar. The detectives tracked the use of Mrs. James's stolen credit card from Bartlett, south down I–55 through Mississippi, across north Florida along I–10, and then south down I–95 into Brevard County where it was used by the driver of the white Town Car. The detectives then interviewed Tevarus Young, who was still being held on his Broward County warrant. Young told the detectives that he was present when Jones murdered the Jameses.

Based on the interview with Young, the Bartlett Police Department obtained search warrants for Jones's Aries and Town Car. Some of the items seized from the cars were: a loaded 9mm handgun, a hook-bladed knife, a Puerto Rican flag, Nike Air Moto shoes, towels...