Marquard v. Secretary for Dept. of Corrections
| Decision Date | 10 November 2005 |
| Docket Number | No. 05-10904.,05-10904. |
| Citation | 429 F.3d 1278 |
| Parties | John C. MARQUARD, Petitioner-Appellant, v. SECRETARY FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, Attorney General of Florida, Respondents-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit |
James Vincent Viggiano (Court-Appointed), Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, Tampa, FL, for Petitioner-Appellant.
Kenneth Sloan Nunnelley, Dept. of Legal Affairs, Daytona Beach, FL, for Respondents-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida,
Before EDMONDSON, Chief Judge, and CARNES and HULL, Circuit Judges.
John C. Marquard appeals the district court's denial of his 28 U.S.C. § 2254 petition challenging his death sentence. On appeal, Marquard argues primarily that his trial counsel was ineffective in various ways during the penalty phase of his trial. After review and oral argument, we affirm Marquard's death sentence.
Marquard was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death for the 1991 murder of his girlfriend, Stacey Willets. After Willets's remains were discovered by hunters in the woods, Marquard and codefendant Michael Abshire were arrested, and both confessed. The facts relating to the murder, as recited by the Florida Supreme Court, are as follows:
John Marquard, Mike Abshire, and the victim, Stacey Willets, decided to move from North Carolina to Florida in June 1991 using Stacey's car and sharing expenses. Prior to leaving, Marquard and Abshire discussed killing Stacey for her car and money, and during a stop in South Carolina Marquard told Abshire that he was going to kill her because he was tired of arguing with her. In St. Augustine, Marquard and Abshire formulated a plot to kill Stacey that night after luring her into the woods.
Marquard and Abshire invited Stacey to attend a party, drove her to a deserted area, and walked her into the woods. Marquard grabbed her from behind, stabbed her, threw her to the ground, and sat on her back. She was still breathing, so Marquard held her head under the rainwater that had accumulated in a puddle until she stopped breathing. When her body convulsed, he held her head underwater again. Abshire then stabbed her and the two tried to decapitate her. Marquard was arrested and confessed, saying he remembered walking into the woods with Stacey and standing over her body with a knife in hand. Abshire testified at trial, giving a detailed account of the murder.
Marquard v. State, 641 So.2d 54, 55-56 (Fla.1994). Marquard was convicted of first-degree murder and armed robbery.
At trial, Marquard contended that he was present for the murder of Stacey Willets, but that codefendant Abshire, and not Marquard, actually initiated and committed the murder.1 Abshire, on the other hand, testified that it was Marquard who planned to kill and ultimately did kill Willets.
Abshire testified that Marquard first mentioned killing Willets in South Carolina, at the first stop on their trip. Some luggage had fallen off the car, where Marquard had tied it down, and Marquard and Willets fought over the incident. Marquard then discussed with Abshire killing Willets, as follows:
Abshire testified that Marquard again discussed killing Willets after they arrived in St. Augustine and Marquard and Willets had an argument about their search for jobs. Willets stayed back in the motel room the three shared while Marquard and Abshire went out to look for jobs and to look for a room in a boarding house. When Marquard and Abshire spoke to the proprietor of the boarding house, Marquard told her that it would just be Marquard and Abshire. When Abshire questioned Marquard about Willets, Marquard indicated that he intended to kill her, and the two then discussed how they would kill her:
And he said that — you know, he again brought up killing her.
According to Abshire's testimony, when he and Marquard arrived back at the motel, they told Willets there was going to be a party that night and where it was going to be, and the three began getting ready to go to the party. After drinking a beer, Marquard, Abshire, and Willets drove out Highway 16, with Marquard at the wheel. Abshire testified that he and Marquard looked for a bridge with water because they had discussed leaving Willets's remains where they could be destroyed by alligators. When they found a bridge over water, they got out and followed a trail through the woods with Willets walking between Marquard and Abshire. They were unable to find a trail to the water they had hoped for, but it was raining hard and the ground was very wet, with shin-deep water in some parts. The three of them decided it was not worth walking through the thick, wet trails, and decided to turn back. When Abshire came to a clearing in the woods, he heard a muffled scream and turned around to see Marquard murder Willets:
[ABSHIRE]: ... John had Stacy [sic] from behind and was like backing up, keeping her feet off the ground, and she was struggling and still screaming. And then I saw his hand come up, and I saw the knife in his hand, and I saw him stab her at least once. I don't know how many other times. I saw him stab her one time. And then he threw her on the ground in the middle of the clearing and sat on her back, pretty much looked at her, and then he saw she was still alive. And the water was, you know, pretty deep; so he ... he held her head under water till she quit breathing.
Then he handed me the knife, and I washed the blood off it. And he sat there just looking at her. And then she jerked like, you know, like — like a gasp or something, and I thought she was still alive. And he put her head under water again and, you know, made sure.
Then he told me to stab her. She was already dead, but he told me to stab her. So I did. And I washed it off and gave the knife back to him.
Abshire testified that he then, at Marquard's direction, hacked at Willets's neck with a second knife. Marquard then tried to dig a hole to bury Willets's body but gave up because there were too many roots.
Abshire testified that the motivation for killing Willets was for her car and the remaining $150 she had at the time of the killing. After killing her, they went through her pockets, took some money and a knife, and returned to the motel to shower and wash their bloody clothes.
At the close of the trial, the jury unanimously found Marquard guilty of one count of first-degree murder and one count of armed robbery with a deadly weapon.2
During Marquard's penalty phase, the State presented North Carolina parole officer Patricia Rawls, who testified that Marquard was on parole in North Carolina at the time of the killing, a statutory aggravating factor under Florida law.
To establish mitigating factors, the defense counsel presented testimony from Dr. Harry Krop, a licensed...
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