Santos v. State

• Decision Date: 26 September 1991
• Docket Number: No. 74467,74467
• Citation: 591 So.2d 160
• Parties: Carlos SANTOS, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee. 591 So.2d 160, 16 Fla. L. Week. S633
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

Page 160

591 So.2d 160

Carlos SANTOS, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. 74467.

591 So.2d 160, 16 Fla. L. Week. S633

Supreme Court of Florida.

Sept. 26, 1991.

Rehearing Denied Jan. 23, 1992.

Jack T. Edmund, Fort Meade, for appellant.

Robert A. Butterworth, Atty. Gen. and Anne Y. Swing, Asst. Atty. Gen., Tampa, for appellee.

PER CURIAM.

Carlos Santos appeals his conviction and sentence of death for two counts of murder and his conviction of aggravated assault with a firearm. We have jurisdiction. Art. V, Sec. 3(b)(1), Fla. Const.

On August 21, 1987, Santos killed his 22-month-old daughter Deidre Torres and her mother, Irma Torres. The mother died of two pistol rounds into the face and head. Deidre died of one round into the top of the head. All shots were fired at extremely close range.

A history of domestic problems preceded the murders. Santos and Irma had lived together without marrying for many years. Their relationship was sometimes stormy; and it foundered, Santos contended, because of meddling by Irma's family. After the breakup, Irma tried to stay away from Santos, who responded by making efforts to find her. The evidence adduced at trial showed that Santos was deeply disturbed by the fact that Irma had refused to give Deidre his last name and his belief that Irma and her family were restricting his access to the child. Expert psychological testimony indicated that Santos reacted with extreme emotion on this last matter, because he viewed it as a direct affront to a misguided, excessive sense of masculinity.

Two days before the murder Santos went to Irma's house, purportedly to visit his daughter. At this time, Irma said he threatened to kill her and that she saw him carrying a pistol and called the police. The police found no weapon when they searched Santos immediately after he left Irma's apartment. Santos argued that she had mistaken his wallet for a gun butt and said he purchased the murder weapon later.

The day of the murder, Santos went by taxi to a place near Irma's parents' house, where Irma was staying. At this time, Santos saw Irma walking along the street with Deidre and her son from a prior marriage, Jose. ¹ Several witnesses testified that they saw Santos proceeding at a fast pace toward the trio.

When Irma saw Santos coming, she screamed and began running with Deidre in her arms. Santos quickly caught her, grabbed her, spun her around, and fired the three fatal rounds.

Santos continued along the road and chanced upon the same taxi that had taken him to the scene. He entered it and gave directions to take him elsewhere. The cab soon was stopped by a deputy sheriff, who saw a pistol on the floorboard. He took the pistol and arrested Santos.

Ballistics comparisons showed that this pistol had fired the fatal shots. Santos' hands tested positive for having fired a weapon. Cynthia Torres, Irma's daughter from a prior marriage, also testified that Santos previously had threatened to kill her mother. There was testimony that Santos had told Irma he also intended to kill their child. The jury found Santos guilty of two counts of first degree murder and one of aggravated assault with a firearm.

In the penalty phase, a Dr. Kremper testified that, at the time of the murder, Santos was under extreme emotional distress, was involved in a denial phenomenon, had an impaired capacity to appreciate the criminality of his conduct, and had an impaired capacity to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law. Dr. Kremper also outlined instances of abusive conduct in Santos' childhood home environment, including episodes in which his father abused his mother. According to this unrebutted testimony, Santos' father disciplined the boy by methods such as forcing him to kneel on hard grains of rice and forcing him to sit in his own excrement for hours.

A psychiatrist, Dr. Ainsworth, reached similar conclusions and essentially concurred in Dr. Kremper's opinions. Ainsworth agreed that Santos more likely than not suffered from a severe emotional impairment at the time of the murders. As an example of such behavior, Dr. Ainsworth noted Santos' psychological reaction to the stress of incarceration and trial. In 1988, the trial for Irma and Deidre's murder had to be postponed because Santos suddenly became psychotic during the initial stages of the criminal proceedings. At that time, Santos was declared incompetent to stand trial and remained so until the following year.

Dr. Ainsworth testified that, when the court ordered him to evaluate Santos in 1988, he found his patient "chained to a little metal bed" and exhibiting bizarre and agitated behavior. Santos was mumbling and incoherent, suffered paranoid delusions, was "hearing voices," and "was making strange noises, grunts and snorts." On another occasion, Santos was observed throwing feces. Dr. Ainsworth explained that, based on scientific evaluation, Santos had a psychological tendency to slip into "a psychotic condition every once in a while, especially when under great stress." Dr. Ainsworth concluded that it was "likely" that Santos had descended into a similar condition when committing the murders because of the stress associated with his and Irma's ongoing domestic dispute.

On questioning by the State, Dr. Ainsworth also noted that Santos consistently denied Irma was dead and claimed to make telephone calls to her from the jail. Santos told Ainsworth that he had written letters to Irma and received responses from her. These delusions, stated Ainsworth, are consistent with the psychological phenomenon called "denial," in which a person's mind blots out an episode too painful to confront. When asked if he believed Santos was fabricating these delusions, Dr. Ainsworth stated:

At first I did. At first I really did in many ways. As I said earlier, that is a possibility, but the pattern of his consistency in denying these things to me is unusual and I would say denial is probably--now knowing all that I know, that denial is probably more likely ....

(Emphasis added.)

After hearing this testimony, the jury recommended death by a vote of 10 to 2. The trial judge agreed with the jury. It found three aggravating factors: (1) previous conviction of a violent felony, i.e., any of the other two crimes Santos committed when he murdered Irma and Deidre; (2) the murders were "heinous, wicked, evil, atrocious, or cruel"; and (3) the murders were cold, calculated, and premeditated.

The judge found no statutory mitigating factors. He specifically stated that there was no evidence that Santos was under the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance or that Santos could not appreciate the criminality of his conduct or conform his conduct to the requirements of the law. The trial court then stated that it had reviewed the nonstatutory mitigating factors and found that they "do not outweigh the aggravating circumstances in this case." The court did not state what these factors might be.

We find that only one of Santos' arguments has merit. ² Santos argues that the aggravating factors were improperly found and that valid mitigating factors were erroneously ignored.

Here, the record discloses that the State failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the present murder was cold, calculated, and premeditated. We acknowledge that the evidence shows that Santos acquired a gun in advance and had made death threats--facts that sometimes may support the State's argument for cold, calculated premeditation.

However, the fact that the present killing arose from a domestic dispute tends to negate cold, calculated premeditation. In the recent case of Douglas v. State, 575 So.2d 165 (Fla.1991), we rejected a trial court's finding of cold, calculated premeditation in a killing that arose from a domestic dispute associated with a lover's triangle. We did so even though the evidence showed that the assailant had obtained a rifle, tracked down a woman with whom he had been romantically involved, torturously abused her by forcing her to have sex with her newlywed husband, and then brutally bludgeoned and shot the husband to death as the woman watched. The entire episode lasted some four hours. Id. at 168 (Ehrlich, Senior Justice, dissenting).

The sheer duration of this torturous conduct, in another context, might have supported beyond a reasonable doubt a conclusion that the killing met the standard for cold, calculated premeditation established in Rogers v. State, 511 So.2d 526, 533 (Fla.1987), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 1020, 108 S.Ct. 733, 98 L.Ed.2d 681 (1988), i.e., that it was the product of a careful plan or prearranged design. The opinion in Douglas, however, rested on our conclusion that the killing arose from violent emotions brought on by the defendant's hatred and jealousy associated with the love triangle. In other words, the murder in Douglas was a classic crime of heated passion. It was not "cold" even though it may have appeared to be calculated. There was no deliberate plan formed through calm and cool reflection, see Rogers, only mad acts prompted by wild emotion.

In the present case, we find much the same situation. Santos was involved in an ongoing, highly emotional domestic dispute with Irma and her family. The unrebutted expert testimony indicated that this dispute severely deranged him. According to this testimony, he was under extreme emotional distress at the time of the murders, was involved in a denial phenomenon, had an impaired capacity to appreciate the criminality of his conduct, and had an impaired capacity to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law. The psychological experts supported these conclusions with unrebutted factual testimony indicating that similar stress had sent Santos into a psychotic state during the early stages of his trial.

This testimony is entirely consistent with a crime of irrational, heated passion brought on by a domestic dispute, such as that in Douglas. Accord Irizarry v....