Knowles v. State, 79644

• Decision Date: 16 December 1993
• Docket Number: No. 79644,79644
• Citation: 632 So.2d 62
• Parties: 18 Fla. L. Weekly S646, 19 Fla. L. Weekly S103 Randall Scott KNOWLES, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

Page 62

632 So.2d 62

18 Fla. L. Weekly S646, 19 Fla. L. Weekly S103

Randall Scott KNOWLES, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. 79644.

Supreme Court of Florida.

Dec. 16, 1993.

Rehearing Denied Feb. 24, 1994.

Nancy A. Daniels, Public Defender, and David A. Davis, Asst. Public Defender, Second Judicial Circuit, Tallahassee, for appellant.

Robert A. Butterworth, Atty. Gen., and Sara D. Baggett, Asst. Atty. Gen., West Palm Beach, for appellee.

PER CURIAM.

Randall Scott Knowles, a prisoner under two sentences of death, appeals his convictions and sentences. We have jurisdiction. Art. V, Sec. 3(b)(1), Florida Constitution.

On July 13, 1991, at approximately 5:30 p.m., thirty-eight-year-old Randall Knowles entered a trailer next door to his father's trailer and shot and killed a ten-year-old girl whom he had never met. Knowles then shot his father who was outside in the father's truck. After pulling the elder man from the truck and throwing him to the ground, Knowles left the scene in the truck.

According to testimony at trial, the day of the murders began with Knowles' friend, Earl Wingate, coming to Knowles' father's trailer with a hitchhiker. Knowles and the hitchhiker went to the store to buy a case of beer and then returned to the trailer to drink beer and play cards. Around 11 a.m., Knowles and Wingate left the trailer with the hitchhiker. After dropping the hitchhiker off at a truck stop, Knowles and Wingate drank more beer and "huffed" ¹ toluene, a solvent that is used as, among other things, a lacquer thinner. Although Knowles generally huffed about a gallon of toluene each week, that day he shared a quart can with Wingate. While the two were riding around, Wingate purchased a .22 caliber rifle. Wingate and Knowles went behind Wingate's mother's house to test fire the new rifle. Knowles watched as Wingate shot cans. Around 3:30 or 4 p.m., Wingate went into the house and went to sleep, leaving Knowles in the woods behind the house. According to Wingate, when he last saw Knowles, Knowles was "torn up" but was not on a toluene high. Around 5 p.m., Wingate's mother, Alice Pitts, returned home to discover Knowles still sitting in her back yard. Mrs. Pitts testified that when she asked Knowles to leave, he did not respond, he sat there and stared at her. Knowles was the worst Mrs. Pitts had ever seen him; he was acting "like he was completely gone." Sometime between 5 and 5:30 p.m., Knowles stumbled off into the woods in the direction of his father's trailer.

Knowles returned to the trailer, got a .22 caliber semiautomatic rifle, and went next door, where ten-year-old Carrie Woods was helping June Skipper prepare for a birthday party. While waiting for the guests to arrive the two girls began to dance. As they danced, Knowles appeared on the front porch, opened the storm door, and entered the trailer. When June looked up, Knowles was standing in the trailer. His eyes were very bloodshot and he was holding a rifle at his side. The rifle was pointed at June. Knowles snapped his head back and turned the rifle to June's right and fired three shots, each of which struck Carrie Woods in the arm. One of the bullets passed through the young girl's arm into her body, puncturing her lung and aorta. The girl died a short time later.

After shooting the girl, Knowles exited the trailer and walked over to his father who had just gotten into his truck. The two exchanged words and Knowles grabbed the elder man's shoulder. Knowles said, "No you won't," and shot his father twice in the head. Knowles then pulled the seventy-seven-year-old man from the truck, threw him to the ground, where he died, and drove away in the truck.

Knowles drove to Glenn Roberts' house two hundred fifty miles away in Mulberry, Florida. Along the way, Knowles sold the rifle for beer and gas money, and picked up a woman with whom he had sex. When he arrived at Roberts' house the next morning looking "haggard," Roberts asked, "What's wrong with you.... Did you kill someone?" Knowles admitted that he had and told Roberts that he had kicked in a trailer door and shot "a bunch" of people. Knowles also said that he shot one in his truck that he thought "might have been daddy." Roberts took Knowles to a telephone booth where Knowles called the Nassau County Sheriff's Office to inquire about any outstanding warrants issued for his arrest. However, Knowles hung up before obtaining the information. After determining that Knowles was wanted for the murders, Roberts informed police that Knowles was at his house. Knowles was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder.

At trial, Wayne Johnson testified that approximately six weeks before the murders, Knowles told him that his father had a surprise coming because "he don't think I'm going to do it, but I am going to blow his s--t away." There was also testimony that several months before the murders, Knowles told Earl Fagin, an occupant of the trailer where Knowles later shot Carrie Woods, that "the day might come that he just may loose it" and start shooting people in the trailer park. But Knowles doubted "it'd be you all." According to the testimony, Knowles was drinking at the time he made each of these statements.

Knowles raised the defenses of insanity and voluntary intoxication and testified in his own behalf. Knowles testified that he started drinking moonshine when he was fourteen or fifteen years old, and started huffing lacquer thinner at the age of fifteen or sixteen. According to Knowles, around the time of the murder he would start drinking beer at 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning and would continue to drink all day. He would huff about a gallon of toluene a week. Although Knowles would remain high for around ten minutes from a single huff, once he started huffing he would generally "stay on it all day," causing him on occasion to hallucinate and have memory blackouts. Knowles explained that when he would come down off a toluene high he would get nauseous and have headaches. To kill the pain he would have to huff more toluene or take massive quantities of "Goody's Headache Powders." When Knowles would finally stop huffing the high would last thirty minutes to an hour. Knowles also described his memory deficit and various physical problems, such as the coughing up of blood and numbness and tremors in the extremities.

Knowles claimed that he did not remember the shootings. Knowles did remember Earl Wingate bringing the hitchhiker to the trailer. He remembered buying beer and returning to the trailer. He also claimed to remember huffing toluene with the hitchhiker and then waking up "down Florida" with a woman, selling the rifle and going to Roberts' house where he was later arrested. Knowles maintained that he had no wish to harm either his father whom he loved or Carrie Woods whom he did not know.

There also was extensive guilt phase testimony from both defense and state mental health experts that Knowles suffers from an organic mental disorder, has a low average intelligence, has chronic memory impairment, and shows signs of organic brain damage from long-term alcohol and solvent abuse. There was also testimony that Knowles was insane at the time of the murders or was so intoxicated that he was incapable of premeditating. Although the state presented expert testimony that Knowles was both sane and able to premeditate at the time of the murders, even one of the state's mental health experts agreed that Knowles' capacity to premeditate was decreased due to his use of alcohol and toluene.

During the penalty phase Knowles presented testimony of various friends and family members.

Knowles was found guilty of both counts of first-degree murder. The trial court followed the jury's recommendation of death for both murders. The court found one aggravating circumstance in connection with the murder of Carrie Woods ² and three aggravating circumstances in connection with the murder of Alfred Knowles. ³ The trial court rejected the statutory mental mitigating circumstances that the murders were committed while the defendant was under the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance and while the defendant's capacity to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law was substantially impaired. However, as nonstatutory mitigating factors the court "considered" the fact that Knowles has "a limited education, had on occasion been voluntarily intoxicated on drugs and alcohol, had two failed marriages, has a low average intelligence, has a poor memory, had inconsistent work habits, and loved his father."

Knowles raises thirteen points on appeal, ⁴ only eight of which merit discussion. Knowles' first claim is that the trial court erred by denying the defense's challenge of two prospective jurors for cause and then refusing to give requested extra peremptory challenges. This claim was not properly preserved for our review.

In Trotter v. State, 576 So.2d 691, 693 (Fla.1990), we explained that

"[t]o show reversible error, a defendant must show that all peremptories had been exhausted and that an objectionable juror had to be accepted." By this we mean the following. Where a defendant seeks reversal based on a claim that he was wrongfully forced to exhaust his peremptory challenges, he initially must identify a specific juror whom he otherwise would have struck peremptorily. This juror must be an individual who actually sat on the jury and whom the defendant either challenged for cause or attempted to challenge peremptorily or otherwise objected to after his peremptory challenges had been exhausted. The defendant cannot stand by silently while an objectionable juror is seated and then, if the verdict is adverse, obtain a new trial.

(footnotes omitted) (quoting Pentecost v. State, 545 So.2d 861, 863 n. 1 (Fla.1989)). Knowles failed to object to a specific venireperson who ultimately served on his jury. Even now, Knowles does...