Justus v. State

Decision Date01 September 1983
Docket NumberNo. 58912,58912
Citation438 So.2d 358
PartiesBuddy Earl JUSTUS, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
CourtFlorida Supreme Court

Jerry Hill, Public Defender, and David A. Davis, Asst. Public Defender, Tenth Judicial Circuit, Bartow, and Albert Rosebury Mander, III, Dade City, for appellant.

Jim Smith, Atty. Gen., and Michael A. Palecki, Asst. Atty. Gen., Tampa, for appellee.

BOYD, Justice.

This cause is before the Court on appeal from a circuit court judgment adjudicating appellant guilty of first-degree murder, robbery, kidnapping, and sexual battery, and sentencing him to death. We have jurisdiction of the appeal. Art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const.

On October 6, 1978, Stephanie Michelle Hawkins, a wholesale distributor of sunglasses marketed by Visual Scene, Inc., called on one of her customers at a drug store in a Tampa-area shopping center. While she was in her van in the parking lot, appellant approached, took over control of the van at gunpoint, and abducted Ms. Hawkins using her automobile. Dale Goins, appellant's companion and co-defendant, followed them driving appellant's car. They drove out into the country and went down a dirt road in Pasco County. There, the jury could have concluded from the evidence, appellant raped Ms. Hawkins and Goins stole sunglasses from her van and put them in appellant's car. Then appellant shot the victim twice in the head, killing her.

On the following day, appellant and Goins went to Gwinnette County, Georgia, where they abducted another woman from a shopping center parking lot. They took her to a secluded, outlying area where Goins committed sexual battery upon her after which appellant shot and killed her. They left appellant's car at the scene and departed in the woman's gold Dodge van, after removing the license tags from appellant's car.

After the Gwinnette County police discovered the crime scene, they were able to determine from the vehicle identification number that the car abandoned there was registered in New York in appellant's name. They learned that he was free on bond on a pending robbery charge. They also obtained appellant's birthdate, height, weight, and the number on the tags removed from appellant's car. At trial, witnesses who had seen appellant and Goins in Pasco County identified by photograph the abandoned car as the car the two men were using in Pasco County. When discovered in Georgia, appellant's car contained hundreds of Visual Scene sunglasses.

On October 10, 1978, the Gwinnette County, Georgia, law enforcement authorities obtained a warrant for appellant's arrest from a local magistrate. They published a nationwide look-out bulletin through the National Crime Information Center teletype. The teletype bulletin included appellant's license tag number and a description of the Georgia victim's gold Dodge van. The next day, the Georgia police learned from appellant's former wife that appellant might have gone to Grundy, Virginia, to visit his brothers and sisters. That evening, a Virginia state trooper, having been orally advised of appellant's possible whereabouts and the warrant for his arrest, went to the boarding school where appellant's siblings were staying. There he saw the gold Dodge van bearing appellant's license tag. The officer then located appellant and arrested him. A Gwinnette County, Georgia, detective then went to Grundy, Virginia, for the purpose of questioning appellant. After being advised of his fifth amendment rights, appellant confessed to the Georgia and Florida murders. He also confessed to an earlier murder which had occurred in Virginia. After being convicted of murder in Virginia, appellant was brought back to Florida for trial on the charges in the instant case.

The Gwinnette County, Georgia, detective who interrogated appellant testified at the trial concerning appellant's pre-trial statement. According to appellant's statement, he picked up the victim in the parking lot of an Eckerd Drugs store in Tampa. He drove her van to a bank so the woman could cash a check and give appellant some money. The bank declined to cash her check, so they went to another Eckerd's where she obtained some cash. Then they went out into the country. Appellant said that he and the victim engaged in sexual relations with her consent. Then, however, she tried to reach for his gun, they struggled, and the gun discharged, wounding her in the head. Then he shot her again and he and Goins left the area.

Appellant's pre-trial statement was corroborated in certain particulars by the testimony of a bank clerk and an Eckerd Drugs employee who told of seeing the victim during the time period when appellant forced her to try to cash a check so he could rob her. There was also testimony that appellant's fingerprints were found on the door of the victim's van. The state also introduced evidence of appellant's confession to the Georgia murder.

Appellant argues that his confessions should have been excluded as the products of an illegal arrest. The trial court found that the affidavit submitted in support of the application for the arrest warrant issued in Georgia was insufficient and that the warrant itself was therefore invalid. The court also found, however, that there was probable cause for the arrest and that the arrest was legal without a valid warrant, and therefore held the confessions admissible. Appellant relies on the case of Whiteley v. Warden of Wyoming State Penitentiary, 401 U.S. 560, 91 S.Ct. 1031, 28 L.Ed.2d 306 (1971). There a sheriff obtained an arrest warrant based on an insufficient complaint. A bulletin was sent out and a police officer in another county made the arrest and conducted a search incident to the arrest. The search uncovered evidence which was used in convicting Whiteley. The Supreme Court ordered a new trial, holding that the products of the search were inadmissible since there was no probable cause to issue the warrant.

Whiteley is distinguishable from the present case. In Whiteley the Supreme Court noted that in addition to the fact that the warrant was not supported by probable cause, there was no probable cause to justify the arrest itself. In this case, however, the trial court found and the record shows that the law enforcement authorities involved in the investigation did in fact have sufficient information to give them probable cause to believe that appellant had committed felonies.

In the case of United States v. Watson, 423 U.S. 411, 96 S.Ct. 820, 46 L.Ed.2d 598 (1976), the Court held valid the warrantless arrest of a suspect in a public place, based upon probable cause to believe the suspect had committed a felony. The Court said that "there is nothing in the Court's prior cases indicating that under the Fourth Amendment a warrant is required to make a valid arrest for a felony. Indeed the relevant prior decisions are uniformly to the contrary." Id. at 416-17, 96 S.Ct. at 824. The Court later recognized the only exception to this general rule, holding a warrant necessary for entry into the arrestee's home for the purpose of making an arrest. Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 100 S.Ct. 1371, 63 L.Ed.2d 639 (1980).

For example, in United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 70 S.Ct. 430, 94 L.Ed. 653 (1950), the defendant questioned the legality of his arrest on the ground of the insufficiency of the warrant to authorize the arrest. The Court held that the evidence obtained by search incident to the arrest was admissible since "[e]ven if the warrant of arrest were not sufficient to authorize the arrest for possession of the stamps, the arrest therefor was valid because the officers had probable cause to believe that a felony was being committed in their very presence." Id. at 60, 70 S.Ct. at 432-433. In a later case the Court reversed a conviction because the arrest warrant was not supported by a sufficient finding of probable cause. The Court refused to consider the government's argument that the arrest was justified by probable cause without regard to the warrant because this argument was being presented for the first time on appeal. The Court added, "This is not to say, however, that in the event of a new trial the Government may not seek to justify petitioner's arrest without relying on the warrant." Giordenello v. United States, 357 U.S. 480, 488, 78 S.Ct. 1245, 1251, 2 L.Ed.2d 1503 (1958).

Similarly, in the present case, after finding the warrant itself invalid, the court was correct in looking at the factual basis supporting the officers' determination that they had probable cause for arrest. Appellant argues that the trial court should have held that the invalidity of the warrant was determinative of the legality of the arrest. He cites Orr v. State, 382 So.2d 860 (Fla. 1st DCA 1980), where the court applied the rule that a magistrate should only consider the supporting affidavit when issuing a warrant. In the present case, however, we are not concerned with the question of whether the warrant was valid--the trial court found that it was not--but with whether there was probable cause to make the arrest without a warrant. Since the validity of the warrant was thus irrelevant, there was no reason for the court to limit itself to the information in the supporting affidavit when deciding whether there was probable cause for the arrest.

There is an abundance of evidence to support the trial court's finding that there was probable cause to arrest appellant. The Gwinnette County, Georgia, police had been told that on the day of the Georgia murder two men were seen sitting in a car in the parking lot of a grocery store near the shopping center where the victim was abducted. The grocer became suspicious, wrote down the license plate number, and described the car to the police. The description fit that of the car later found at the scene where the victim's body was discovered. The police learned that the license number was issued in appellant's name. The...

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