King v. State
| Decision Date | 21 May 2012 |
| Docket Number | No. SC09–2421.,SC09–2421. |
| Citation | 89 So.3d 209 |
| Parties | Michael L. KING, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
James Marion Moorman, Public Defender, and Steven L. Bolotin, Assistant Public Defender, Tenth Judicial Circuit, Bartow, FL, for Appellant.
Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, Tallahassee, Florida, and Scott Andrew Browne, Assistant Attorney General, Tampa, 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 the convictions and the sentences imposed by the trial court.
On February 6, 2008, Michael L. King was indicted on one count of first-degree murder for the killing of Denise Amber Lee. The trial court record reflects that on January 17, 2008, at approximately 3:30 p.m., Nathan Lee returned to his home on Latour Avenue in North Port, Florida, to find his wife, Denise Amber Lee, missing. The doors were locked, but her keys, purse, and cellular telephone were in the house. The couple's two sons, ages six months and two years, were in a crib together, which was not typical. At around 4 p.m. that day, Detective Chris Morales of the North Port Police Department was notified that Denise Lee was missing. When Morales responded to the home on Latour Avenue, he found no signs of forced entry or a struggle, and the children were unharmed.
Earlier that day, between 1 and 2 p.m., a neighbor of the Lees was watching television from a position which provided a view of the street. During that time, she saw a green Camaro “creeping up and down my road going very slow.” The Camaro had a black “car bra,” which is a leather or vinyl casing across the front of the car which protects against impact from insects or rocks. The neighbor observed the car circle the street four or five times. When the neighbor walked outside to investigate because the driver appeared to be lost, the car pulled into the Lees' driveway. The neighbor made eye contact with the driver but, believing that the operator of the vehicle had found the residence he was looking for, she returned to her house. Ten or fifteen minutes later, the neighbor again stepped outside and saw the Camaro depart from the Lees' residence. The neighbor did not observe Denise Lee entering or being forced into the Camaro.
Later that day, between the hours of 5:30 and 6 p.m., Michael King unexpectedly arrived at the home of his cousin, Harold Muxlow. King was wearing a white shirt with a design. King asked Muxlow for a flashlight, a gas can, and a shovel, explaining that his lawnmower was stuck in his front yard. After Muxlow provided King the tools, King immediately left. As Muxlow was walking back to his house, he heard a female voice from the vehicle exclaim, “Call the cops.” Muxlow turned around and walked down the driveway toward King, asking what he was doing. King lifted his head from beside the passenger side of the car and replied, “Nothing, don't worry about it.” Muxlow initially turned and began to walk toward his house but, curious, he turned around once again and walked to the edge of the street toward the car. There, he saw King crawling over the console in the Camaro and pushing the head of a person with shoulder-length hair down in the back seat. He also observed part of the person's knee rise up. King then climbed into the driver's seat and drove away.
Thinking the incident was suspicious, Muxlow drove to King's residence to investigate if King had returned and whether a lawnmower was in fact stuck in the yard. When Muxlow arrived, he found neither King's green Camaro nor a lawnmower in King's yard. Muxlow placed an anonymous 911 phone call in which he provided a description of King's vehicle and informed the dispatcher that a person might be in the described vehicle against her will.
At 6:14 p.m., the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office received another 911 call. During trial, the parties stipulated that the female voice on this 911 call was that of Denise Lee. Harold Muxlow testified that a second, male voice also present on the 911 recording was that of his cousin, Michael King. The recording of the 911 call presented during trial was transcribed by the court reporter as follows: 1
DISPATCHER (to supervisor): I'm thinking too, that he doesn't know.
At that moment, the call was terminated. The cellular telephone number from which the 911 call was dialed was identified as belonging to Michael King. Law enforcement proceeded to King's residence in North Port and forcibly entered the premises; however, neither Lee nor King was there.
During the early evening of January 17, while Shawn Johnson was stopped at a traffic light, he heard an adult female voice screaming for help. At the North Port police station, Johnson subsequently selected Michael King from a photo lineup as the man who was operating the green Camaro from which the screams for help were emanating. Johnson also identified King as the driver during trial.
On that same day, at approximately 6:30 p.m., Jane Kowalski was stopped at a traffic light on Highway 41 when she heard someone screaming and a “commotion” coming from the Camaro that was in the traffic lane beside her. Kowalski made eye contact with the male driver of the Camaro. She subsequently identified King from a photo lineup and also during trial as the man who was driving the car. Kowalski described the screaming as, As she watched, the man driving the Camaro turned around and began to push something down in the backseat. After the driver finished the downward motion, Kowalski saw a hand rise up from the back seat and begin banging loudly on the passenger-side window. When the traffic light turned green, Kowalski hesitated with the intent to be in a position to read the license...
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Evidence
...regarding tool mark comparisons on shell casings when there is no gun retrieved that can be tied to the fired shells. King v. State, 89 So. 3d 209 (Fla. 2012) (See Wyatt v. State , 78 So. 3d 512 (Fla. 2011) for extensive discussion of the effect, as newly discovered evidence, of the FBI’s a......
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