Kaczmar v. State
| Decision Date | 28 December 2012 |
| Docket Number | No. SC10–2269.,SC10–2269. |
| Citation | 104 So.3d 990 |
| Parties | Leo Louis KACZMAR, III, Appellant, v. STATE Of Florida, Appellee. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Nancy Ann Daniels, Public Defender and David A. Davis, Assistant Public Defender, Second Judicial Circuit, Tallahassee, FL, for Appellant.
Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General and Charmaine Millsaps, Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, FL, for Appellee.
This case is before the Court on appeal from a judgment of conviction of first-degree murder and a sentence of death. We have jurisdiction. Seeart. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. For the reasons that follow, we affirm Kaczmar's conviction but remand for a new penalty phase.
Leo Louis Kaczmar, III, was convicted of the first-degree murder of Maria Ruiz. Ruiz's body was found in the kitchen of the home in which she and Kaczmar lived. She had been stabbed and suffered blunt force trauma to her head. The house had been set on fire in an apparent attempt to hide the murder. Kaczmar was indicted by a grand jury for first-degree murder, attempted sexual battery, and arson. A jury returned a verdict of guilty on all three counts and recommended Kaczmar be sentenced to death by a vote of 11 to 1; the trial court ultimately entered judgment and sentence accordingly. This is Kaczmar's direct appeal.
On March 2, 2009, Leo Louis Kaczmar, III, was indicted for attempted sexual battery, arson, and first-degree murder of Maria Ruiz. Her body was found on December 13, 2008, in the kitchen of Kaczmar's grandmother's house in Green Cove Springs, in which Kaczmar, his wife (Priscilla), their two children, his uncle (Ed), his father (Leo, Jr.),1 and Jr.'s girlfriend (Ruiz) all lived. Ruiz had been stabbed and suffered from blunt force trauma to her head. The house had been set on fire in an apparent attempt to hide the murder.
Kaczmar agreed to speak with police and denied any knowledge of the murder or arson and claimed that he had been fishing in Jacksonville all morning. Kaczmar agreed to have his truck searched and his clothes taken for testing. Kaczmar's socks appeared to have blood on them, and they were sent for testing.
A jury trial commenced on August 9, 2010. Dr. Jessie Giles, the medical examiner who conducted the autopsy on Ruiz, testified that she died from blood loss resulting from approximately ninety-three sharp force injury wounds, consistent with lacerations from a knife. Dr. Giles testified that the sexual assault kit indicated no signs of sexual assault.
Over defense objection, the State called Priscilla Kaczmar to testify twice, once in regard to her learning that the house was on fire the morning after the murder, and once in regard to Kaczmar's plan to frame Kaczmar's friend and neighbor, Christopher Ryan Modlin, for Ruiz's murder.
Modlin testified that he and Kaczmar snorted cocaine and smoked marijuana the night before the murder in Kaczmar's room, and Kaczmar smoked crack cocaine. Modlin testified that Kaczmar's behavior became increasingly paranoid, during which Kaczmar paced around his room, thought there were holes in his bed, and claimed water was coming from the bathtub into his room. Modlin testified that Kaczmar told him that he wanted Ruiz to use drugs so that they would have sex and that Kaczmar watched pornography on his television and turned up the volume so Ruiz would hear it. Modlin testified that he left Kaczmar's house around 11:00 p.m. and returned to his own home.
Julia Ferrell, Kaczmar's neighbor, testified that she was awakened by loud screaming coming from the Kaczmar home at approximately 5:00 a.m. or 5:30 a.m. on December 13. She identified the voice screaming as that of Kaczmar. Eva Mitchell, another neighbor of Kaczmar's, testified that she called 911 when she and her husband saw the Kaczmar house engulfed in flames on December 13, between 6:05 a.m. and 6:10 a.m.
Fire marshal detective, Jerry Baker, testified that the fire pattern in the house showed that the fire started in the front of the house, in the living room, near where Ruiz's body was found, and then spread toward the back. Ryan Bennett, a crime lab analyst for the fire marshal, testified that five of the samples he took from the Kaczmar house tested positive for gasoline.
The State presented pictures and video surveillance from the Hess gas station that showed Kaczmar buying $2 worth of gas at 5:59 a.m. on December 13. Priscilla told police, “that's Leo,” when asked to identify the man in the surveillance pictures at the Hess gas station.
Detective Danillo Matos testified that according to cell phone tower records, Kaczmar was in Green Cove Springs at 10:53 p.m., 11:04 p.m., 1:40 a.m., and 1:41 a.m., the night of the murder. At 6:26 a.m., Kaczmar's cell phone signal hit the Green Cove Springs tower, then the Middleburg tower, and then the Jacksonville tower. Matos testified that this pattern showed that Kaczmar left Green Cove Springs en route to Jacksonville at 6:26 a.m., which contradicted Kaczmar's statements to police that he had been in Jacksonville all morning. Kaczmar's cell phone signal hit the Green Cove Springs tower again at 7:31 a.m., showing that Kaczmar was once again in Green Cove Springs by that time.
The State introduced evidence from Kaczmar's socks that were taken by police during their questioning of Kaczmar at the police station. Blood analysis determined blood found on the socks was a mixture of Kaczmar's and Ruiz's blood.
William Filancia, Kaczmar's former cellmate, testified that Kaczmar told him in jail that he had wanted to get lucky and “f—her” the night of the murder. Filancia testified that Kaczmar told him that he chased Ruiz into the bathroom and eventually ended up in a struggle in the kitchen where Kaczmar cut his thumb on a knife Ruiz had pulled out from the kitchen drawer. This sent Kaczmar into a rage and he killed Ruiz with a knife he kept in his pants pocket for fishing. Filancia testified that Kaczmar told him that after he killed Ruiz, he changed his clothes, put them into a garbage bag, buried it in the backyard, bought $2 worth of gas to burn down the house, and then drove to Jacksonville to create an alibi that he was fishing all night. Filancia also testified that Kaczmar discussed plans with him to frame Modlin for the murder with the help of a friend who Filancia knew named Carlos.
Detective Charlie Sherman was contacted by Filancia's attorney and told by Filancia that Kaczmar planned to frame Modlin for Ruiz's murder. In response, Sherman assigned Detective Humphrey to pose as Carlos in order to record conversations between Kaczmar and himself regarding the plan to frame Modlin. Detective Humphrey met with Kaczmar four times at the jail, and Kaczmar arranged for a map of Kaczmar's and Modlin's neighborhood to be sent to Humphrey via an attorney so that it would not be opened by jail personnel. Humphrey testified that at one of the meetings with Kaczmar, he showed Kaczmar that he had received the map and that Humphrey wrote on the back of the map the name Ryan Christopher Modlin and that Kaczmar wanted him to place items beneath Modlin's house that would implicate him in Ruiz's murder. Kaczmar also wanted Humphrey to make a call to the Crime Stoppers hotline once the items had been planted and asked Humphrey if he could intimidate another witness into testifying that Modlin implicated himself in Ruiz's murder.
The defense moved for a judgment of acquittal on each of the charges. The trial court denied the motions. The jury returned a verdict of guilty on all counts.
The penalty phase commenced on August 13, 2010. At the outset of the penalty phase, the State and defense stipulated that Kaczmar had previously been convicted of robbery, in which he and a codefendant repeatedly struck and kicked the victim and then forcibly took his jewelry and wallet. The trial court acknowledged on the record that this stipulation was sufficient for the State to have met its burden of proving the existence of the prior violent felony aggravator pursuant to section 921.141(5)(b), Florida Statutes (2007). The State presented a victim impact statement from Ruiz's brother. The defense presented testimony from Kaczmar's family and friends depicting Kaczmar as a good person and respected business partner who had a troubled upbringing due to his father's abuse. Dr. Miguel, a child psychiatrist, testified on behalf of the defense that Kaczmar was traumatized as a child by his father's alcoholism and his own chronic drug abuse. Dr. Miguel also testified that although he believed Kaczmar to be competent during trial, he did not think Kaczmar knew what he was doing on the night of the murder and did not know right from wrong. The jury recommended a sentence of death by a vote of 11 to 1.
A Spencer2 hearing was held on September 10, 2010, during which neither the State nor the defense presented testimony. The defense submitted a sentencing memorandum in which evidence for twenty-two mitigators was submitted.
In the trial court's Sentencing Order, the court found four aggravators, all of which were given great weight: (1) the capital felony was committed by a person previously convicted of a felony and under sentence of imprisonment or placed on community control or felony probation; (2) the capital felony was committed while Kaczmar was engaged in the commission of or an attempt to commit a sexual battery; (3) the capital felony was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel; and (4) the crime was committed in a cold, calculated, and premeditated manner, without any pretense of moral or legal justification.
In mitigation, the sentencing court found the following mitigators under the statutory catch-all provision, all of which were given slight weight: (1) Kaczmar was raised by an alcoholic father; (2) Kaczmar was raised by a physically and emotionally abusive father; (3)...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Calloway v. State
...Calloway now asserts that these limitations were improper. Self-serving hearsay statements are generally inadmissible. Kaczmar v. State , 104 So.3d 990, 1000 (Fla. 2012) (citing § 90.803(18), Fla. Stat. (2007) ). However, if a partial statement, writing, or recording is admitted, the rule o......
-
Nock v. State
...concluded that Foster is contrary to section 90.806(1), precedent of the Fourth District, and this Court's decisions in Kaczmar v. State , 104 So.3d 990 (Fla. 2012), and Huggins v. State , 889 So.2d 743 (Fla. 2004) . Nock , 211 So.3d at 324-25 .The Fourth District rejected the remaining......
-
Owens v. Jones
...for an attorney who does not misstate the law to relate it to the facts of the case in closing argument. See Kaczmar v. State, 104 So. 3d 990, 1006 (Fla. 2012) (citation omitted). However, "the correct practice does not permit counsel to read authorities to the jury, and while counsel may s......
-
Hall v. State
...a reasonable doubt. We note that our conclusion in this regard is also consistent with our pre- Hurst precedent in Kaczmar v. State , 104 So.3d 990, 1008 (Fla. 2012), where we held that, upon striking the CCP and felony-murder aggravating factors so that only one valid aggravating factor re......