Sheppard v. State

• Decision Date: 04 September 2014
• Docket Number: No. SC12–890.,SC12–890.
• Citation: 151 So.3d 1154
• Parties: Billy Jim SHEPPARD, Jr., Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

151 So.3d 1154

Billy Jim SHEPPARD, Jr., Appellant

v.STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. SC12–890.

Supreme Court of Florida.

Sept. 4, 2014.

Rehearing Denied Nov. 25, 2014.

Richard Adam Sichta, Jacksonville, FL, for Appellant.

Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, and Patrick M. Delaney, Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, FL, for Appellee.

Opinion

PER CURIAM.

Billy Jim Sheppard, Jr., appeals from two judgments 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 set forth below, we affirm his convictions and sentence of death.

BACKGROUND

Overview

Billy Jim Sheppard, Jr., was convicted and sentenced to death for the July 20, 2008, first-degree murder of Monquell Wimberly in Jacksonville, Florida. Sheppard was also convicted of the first-degree felony murder of Patrick Stafford, which occurred earlier on the same day, for which Sheppard was sentenced to life imprisonment.¹ As the discussion of the evidence will show, Patrick Stafford died after being shot repeatedly by two different guns in the early morning hours of July 20 after he was found in a car where he had been sleeping. Several hours later, Sheppard and his codefendant Rashard Evans stole a car at gunpoint from Dorsette James at a Prime Stop convenience store, with Sheppard driving it away from the store.

Shortly after 10 a.m., on that same day, Sheppard and an unidentified driver went in the stolen car to the Hollybrook Apartments where they encountered sixteen-year-old Monquell Wimberly, who was riding a bicycle. Sheppard was identified by a security guard as the person she saw on the passenger side of the stolen car who shot Wimberly multiple times from the window of the car. Ballistics evidence showed that the gun that fired two of the three projectiles recovered from Stafford's body was the same gun that killed Wimberly. In his statements to detectives, Sheppard admitted stealing Dorsette James's car but denied being armed, and he did not confess the murders to police. Evidence was presented, however, that Sheppard confessed to a jail inmate that he and Evans shot Stafford when he refused to cooperate with their attempt to steal the car in which Stafford had been sleeping. The inmate also testified that Sheppard confessed that he and Evans drove to the apartment complex where Sheppard shot Wimberly from the window of the car.

After the jury found Sheppard guilty of both murders, a penalty phase proceeding was held at which the jury recommended a sentence of death by an eight to four vote for the murder of Wimberly and a sentence of life in prison for the murder of Stafford. The trial court found one aggravator comprising a prior violent felony conviction for shooting and wounding a young man when Sheppard was age 14, for which he was prosecuted and sentenced as an adult, and the July 20, 2008, murder of Stafford. The court weighed this aggravator against the statutory mitigator of Sheppard's age of 21 and fifteen nonstatutory mitigators, including his difficult childhood, his slow mental ability, and his generally good character. After a Spencer² hearing at which letters from Sheppard's family members were submitted in further mitigation, the court sentenced Sheppard to death for the murder of Wimberly and imposed a sentence of life imprisonment for the murder of Stafford.

Sheppard raises five issues on appeal. However, before we discuss each issue, we review the evidence presented in the guilt phase in greater detail.

The Guilt Phase

Dtalya Barrett, a security guard at the Hollybrook Apartments on King Street in Jacksonville, testified that on the morning of July 20, 2008, she was working at the apartment's entrance gate. When she heard gunshots shortly after 10 a.m., she ran to the end of the sidewalk where she saw a person holding a gun out of the passenger side window of a passing car driving toward her. The person holding the gun shot a teenage boy, later identified as sixteen-year-old Monquell Wimberly, who was riding a bicycle. Barrett ran to call police and when she returned, she saw the shooter leaning out of the car window and looking back toward the boy on the ground. She could not see the driver but could see the passenger quite well from about ten to twelve feet away, and she said the shooter was a black male with “dreads.” When the police arrived, she was placed in the police car to wait but “ran off” because, as she explained, the police put her where everyone could see her and “they didn't think about whether he can come kill us or whatever.... I wanted to get out and get my kids and leave.” During a break, the trial judge spoke to counsel and noted that no objection was lodged to this testimony, “and it was probably not warranted,” but the judge did not want the attorneys to mention her comment in closing argument in any way to suggest a “Golden Rule”³ violation or suggest the jurors had anything to fear.

Barrett did meet with detectives the next day and was shown a series of photographs on the computer. She initially picked out one person as “looking like” the shooter, and although police investigated that person, he was not arrested. When Barrett met again with detectives and was shown more photographs she picked out Sheppard's photograph, and she identified Sheppard in court as the man she saw shoot Wimberly. She also identified Dorsette James's stolen car as matching the vehicle in which the shooter was riding.

Khalilah Mejors, a resident at the Hollybrook Apartments, was standing on the third-floor balcony on the morning of July 20, 2008, and saw the young man riding the bicycle. She testified that as a dark gray Ford Crown Victoria or Mercury vehicle approached the boy and slowed down, the boy put his hands in the air and was immediately shot, and he was shot several more times while on the ground. She could not see the shooter's face or that of the driver but did see the lower part of an arm sticking out of the passenger side window holding the gun. She ran to the victim and found him still alive but not speaking.

Kieva Sherrod was also a resident at the Hollybrook Apartments on July 20, 2008, where she lived on the third floor facing King Street. She was standing on the balcony with her cousin Khalilah Mejors that morning and also saw Wimberly ride by on a bicycle toward the entrance to the apartment complex. She saw the vehicle, which looked like a gray Ford Crown Victoria, drive up to the person on the bicycle and slow down, and the boy on the bicycle stopped. She testified that she sat down, but heard a gunshot and when she looked again, the boy on the bicycle had his hands up in the air. She saw a gun pointed out of the window of the car, but she could not see who was holding the gun, although she could see that there were two people in the car. Sherrod testified that the boy was shot several more times and fell off the bicycle. She ran inside to get her phone to call the police and then ran down to the boy to see if he was still alive. She said he was still alive but she did not hear him say anything. She identified a photograph of the car, which witnesses later identified as one stolen from Dorsette James at the Prime Stop convenience store, as the car she saw that morning.

Approximately one and a half hours before Wimberly was shot, a car matching the description of the Wimberly shooter's car was stolen at gunpoint from Dorsette James at the Prime Stop Food Store. Willie Lee Carter, Jr., testified that he was at the store with James, who was since deceased. Carter, who was outside but not in the vehicle, heard James exit the store and say, “Man, don't do it like that.” When Carter looked, he saw two men getting into James's car, a gray Crown Victoria. One man, described as shorter and with light brown skin and dreadlocks, got into the driver's side of the car. The other person, a tall man with darker skin, got in the passenger side and the car drove away. When Carter asked James why he let them take his car, Carter testified that James told him one of the men had a gun. James later picked Sheppard's photograph out of a photographic array as the driver and a photograph of Rashard Evans as the person who got into the passenger side of the car. Photographs taken from inside the Prime Stop store showed both Evans and Sheppard at the store that morning.

The stolen car was recovered that evening near where the shooting occurred, but no DNA was found for comparison purposes. Latent fingerprints and palm prints taken from the stolen car were submitted for examination and comparison. Fingerprint examiner Richard Kocik of the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office testified that some of the fingerprints taken from the stolen car were of no value and were not compared to anyone. The only prints of value taken from the vehicle, palm prints and some fingerprints, matched Rashard Evans.

Detective Bobby Bowers, Sr., of the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, testified that after learning of the identification of Evans in regard to the stolen car, an arrest warrant was sought, and that when Carter identified Sheppard in connection with the stolen car, Bowers also sought an arrest warrant for him. Sheppard was not immediately located and, after a special unit was contacted to apprehend him, Sheppard was taken into custody in Winter Haven by United States Marshals on August 8, 2008, and returned to Duval County.

Before Detective Bowers arrived to investigate the Wimberly shooting scene on King Street on July 20, 2008, he had been investigating the shooting of Patrick Stafford, which occurred at 6 a.m. that same morning on Academy Street in Jacksonville. Shamika Worthey lived on Academy Street and, in the early morning hours of July 20, 2008, went out to her car to retrieve some diapers and saw Patrick Stafford asleep in her brother's car. She returned to the house and went back to sleep but was awakened by the sound of gunshots at about 5:30 or 5:45 a.m. She could not see anything from...