Seibert v. State
| Citation | 923 So.2d 460 |
| Decision Date | 16 February 2006 |
| Docket Number | No. SC03-800.,SC03-800. |
| Parties | Michael SEIBERT, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court of Florida |
Bennett H. Brummer, Public Defender and Scott W. Sakin, Special Assistant Public Defender, Eleventh Judicial Circuit, Miami, FL, for Appellant.
Charles J. Crist, Jr., Attorney General, Tallahassee, FL and Sandra S. Jaggard, Assistant Attorney General, Miami, FL, for Appellee.
We have on appeal a judgment of conviction of first-degree murder and a sentence of death. We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. For the reasons that follow, we affirm the conviction and sentence of death.
The evidence presented at the trial of appellant Michael Seibert revealed the following. On March 16, 1998, Karolay Adrianza, an eighteen-year-old high school student, was picked up from her home by Danny Korkour Navarres at approximately 10 p.m. The Navarres and Adrianza families were friends, and according to the trial testimony of Adrianza's sister, Adrianza and Navarres had been dating. Adrianza's sister also testified that Adrianza and Navarres had planned to go out in Miami Beach on the evening of March 16.
On March 16, William "Ace" Green, who had lived with Michael Seibert for approximately three weeks, left Seibert's apartment at 1136 Collins Avenue in Miami Beach at approximately 10:30 p.m. Green testified that Seibert was the only person in the apartment at the time he left. When he returned a few hours later, at about 12:30 a.m., Adrianza and Navarres were at the apartment with Seibert. Green recognized the two because he had seen them at the apartment several times in the prior week. Green testified that the three of them were using cocaine when he arrived at the apartment, and they each continued to use cocaine in equal amounts throughout the night. Green snorted one line of cocaine and estimated that the other three consumed all together more than an eight ball (three and a half grams) of cocaine throughout the night. Testimony at trial revealed that the cocaine was likely "cut," or diluted, with Lidocaine.
Green testified that he thought that Seibert was interested in Adrianza because of the way Seibert acted around her. He stated that there was some rivalry between Navarres and Seibert because both were flirting with Adrianza, but he could not point to any specific examples to demonstrate this rivalry.
At about 3 a.m., Navarres and Green left in Navarres' car to get beer and cigarettes after Seibert asked Green to go and Navarres offered to drive. The errand took approximately five to ten minutes, and upon their return, Navarres dropped Green off at the apartment building, explaining that he had another place to go and that he would return later. When Green returned to the apartment, Adrianza asked where Navarres was, and upon learning that he had left, began using the apartment phone continuously, apparently in an attempt to reach Navarres. Evidence at the trial revealed that Seibert's phone was used to dial Navarres' cell and home phones nearly 100 times between 3:09 a.m. and 5:48 a.m. A half hour later, Seibert asked Green to go downstairs in the apartment building and to call him if he saw Navarres return. Green went downstairs and looked around, and then returned to the apartment.
At around 4 or 5 a.m., Seibert asked Green to leave to give him some time alone with Adrianza. Green left and went to a laundry where a friend of his worked, which was located behind the apartment building. Green proceeded to call Seibert at home and on his pager five or six times in an attempt to convince Seibert to let him return to the apartment. At some point, Green spoke with Seibert. Green testified that Seibert told him to relax and then indicated that he needed a few more minutes with Adrianza because he thought he had an opportunity to have intercourse with her.
At 6:30 a.m., Marsha Hill, who lived below Seibert, heard a noise like someone was rolling on the floor in Seibert's apartment. This noise lasted for about six to seven minutes. A minute or so later, Hill heard a female voice scream for help twice.1 Green left the laundry sometime between sunrise and 8:15 a.m. and went back to the apartment a few times. He testified that he would knock on the door and make calls from the payphone outside of the apartment building, but Seibert refused to let him in. Seibert's next-door neighbor, Jeanette Sosa, testified that at around 7:15 a.m., she left her apartment for work and saw Green outside the door of Seibert's apartment. Green asked her whether Seibert was home and told her that he had been knocking on Seibert's door for some time.
Arcelis Korkour, Navarres' aunt, with whom he was living in March of 1998, testified that three calls were received at her house in the early morning of March 17, 1998. At 5 a.m., following the third call, she called the number from which she had received the calls, and her husband spoke with the person who answered the phone, whom he identified as an American male. Then a woman got on the phone, identifying herself as "Patricia," but Korkour testified that her husband recognized the voice to be that of Adrianza. After her husband hung up the phone, he went to check on Navarres. Korkour testified that his bedroom door was locked from the inside and that Navarres always locked it when he was home but would leave it open when he was out. She testified that Navarres did not open the door when her husband knocked.
On Green's final attempt to speak with Seibert and enter the apartment much later that morning, Seibert asked him to leave and buy cigarettes. When Green refused, Seibert began to act erratically and stated that Green looked crazy and that he did not want to open the door for Green. Seibert then told Green that he (Seibert) was crazy and was going to kill himself. After this conversation, at 10:55 a.m., Green called 911.
At 11 a.m., Miami Beach Police Department (MBPD) Officer Douglas Bales and Sergeant Howard Zeifman were dispatched to Seibert's apartment in response to the 911 call from Green. When the officers arrived, they spoke with Green, who was waiting on the sidewalk in front of the apartment building when the officers arrived. Green led them to the apartment that he shared with Seibert, which was on the second floor of the building. The officers knocked on Seibert's door and, after realizing that someone was in the apartment, told Seibert that they had received a suicide call and that they had to see that he was all right. After four or five minutes of knocking on the door by the officers, Seibert opened the door approximately three or four inches so that the officers could only see Seibert's torso but not his arms or his legs. Seibert told the officers that he was okay and that they could leave. He then shut the door. The officers decided to knock again because they had not fully seen Seibert. After another two to three minutes of the officers attempting to persuade Seibert to open the door, Seibert again opened the door. Sergeant Zeifman stuck his baton in the door so that Seibert could not shut it again, and the officers entered the apartment. The officers told Seibert to sit down on a bed in the studio apartment. Officer Bales testified that he wanted to ensure that Seibert was alone, so when he asked Seibert whether anyone else was in the apartment, he backed up, glancing around to ensure that there was no one else in the room. As he was backing up, he saw, to his right and through the bathroom door that was slightly open, a severed foot on the edge of the bathtub. He shouted to Sergeant Zeifman a signal indicating that there was a homicide, and Seibert ran out of the apartment. The officers were able to apprehend Seibert in the hallway and placed him under arrest.
After Seibert was taken to the police station, he stated that he was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol. He also told Detective Michael Jaccarino that Navarres had nothing to do with the crime. He said at one point that there were other people in the apartment who had knocked him out and that he did not know what had happened. When he was told that he was under arrest for murder, Seibert said that he had messed up and then stated, according to Detective Jaccarino, "I guess I am going to prison."
Dr. Emma Lew, the Deputy Chief Medical Examiner for Miami-Dade County, examined the scene of the murder on March 17. The victim's body, later identified as Adrianza, was in the bathtub. Dr. Lew testified that although the bathtub area was very bloody, the rest of the bathroom was clean, and that the rugs, trash can, soap, and a plant from the bathroom were placed in a closet. Most of the soft tissue from the waist down had been removed from the body. Also, parts of the abdominal wall and the bowels were gone. The police did not recover any of these portions of the body, and the State theorized in its closing statement that Seibert had flushed these body parts down the toilet. The left hand, left foot, and left ankle had been severed from the body. Adrianza was approximately five feet tall, and Dr. Lew estimated that she weighed between 140 and 150 pounds before her murder. Her body weighed 101 pounds after it was recovered from the crime scene. Dr. Lew determined the cause of death to be mechanical asphyxiation caused by the killer's hands, although a shoelace and blue thread were wrapped around Adrianza's neck. There was a large knife that had been placed in the chest of the victim's body, although Dr. Lew testified that this was most likely done after the victim's death. The victim had blunt trauma injuries to her head, eyes, mouth, ears, back, and arms. There were also many sharp force injuries on the body, but Dr. Lew could not determine whether those injuries occurred before or after death. The time of death was estimated to have been between 4:30 a.m. and 9 a.m. on March...
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