Smith v. State

• Citation: 7 So.3d 473
• Decision Date: 19 March 2009
• Docket Number: No. SC05-703.,SC05-703.
• Parties: Corey SMITH, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

7 So.3d 473

Corey SMITH, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. SC05-703.

Supreme Court of Florida.

March 19, 2009.

Teresa Mary Pooler, Miami, FL, for Appellant.

Bill McCollum, Attorney General, Tallahassee, FL, and Carol M. Dittmar, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Tampa, FL, for Appellee.

PER CURIAM.

This case is before the Court on appeal from a judgment of first-degree murder and a sentence of death as well as convictions for a number of other offenses. We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. For the reasons explained below, we affirm both the convictions and the death sentence.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

In December 2000, Corey "Bubba" Smith and seven other individuals were indicted by a Miami-Dade County grand jury in a seventeen-count indictment for crimes committed in connection with the John Doe organization. Smith was alleged to be the leader of the group and named in fourteen counts of the indictment, including conspiracy to engage in a criminal enterprise, engaging in a criminal enterprise, conspiracy to traffic in marijuana, conspiracy to traffic in cocaine, five counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Leon Hadley, Cynthia Brown, Jackie Pope, Angel Wilson, and Melvin Lipscomb, four counts of conspiracy to commit murder, and second-degree murder for the death of Marlon Beneby.

The John Doe organization had been the subject of a joint state and federal task force.¹ The task force surveillance included pen registers on several phones, followed by wiretaps on the phones of Smith and his second-in-command, Latravis Gallashaw. The wiretaps recorded calls on Gallashaw's cell phone (which was registered to Smith) and Smith's landline at his residence. These wiretap recordings and transcripts of the recordings were admitted into evidence at Smith's trial.

The state criminal conspiracy count was based on the operation of the John Doe organization, a criminal enterprise that processed, packaged, and distributed powder and crack cocaine and marijuana in the Liberty City area of Miami-Dade County over a six-year period from July 1994 through January 1999. At its peak, the John Doe organization operated seven "holes," locations where they distributed drugs. The holes had two different names, John Doe and No Fear, to keep people from knowing that all of them belonged to one organization. The group also packaged their drugs in different colored bags to confuse the police and others about the extent of the John Doe enterprise.

Smith's trial took place in October 2005, with jury selection and the guilt phase of trial lasting over thirty days. The State called eighty-four witnesses. The defense called one witness, the attorney who had represented Smith on a previous first-degree murder charge in the death of Dominique Johnson. Smith did not testify.

The court ordered additional courtroom security for the trial, including a second magnetometer (metal detector) on the seventh floor of the courthouse and required potential jurors, attorneys, and spectators to pass through the magnetometer before entering the courtroom. Two armed police officers searched all individuals, including jurors, who entered the hallway outside the courtroom. Multiple armed police officers were stationed inside and outside the courtroom. Smith was required to wear a stun belt. Spectators had to present photo identification before being admitted to the courtroom.

During jury selection, Smith's mother Willie Mae Smith was asked to leave the courtroom when the rule was invoked. When the mother passed the seventy potential jurors assembled in the hallway she said, "God bless you and have a blessed day." When this remark was reported to the court the next day, the judge questioned the jurors about the mother's comment and whether it would have an effect on their ability to be fair to Corey Smith. Many of the venire members did not hear the comment at all. Of those who did hear it, only a few expressed any concerns about the comment or felt it would affect their decision-making. In light of these responses by the venire, the court denied the defense's motion to have the panel stricken. The court entered a written order that Smith's mother was not to have contact with the jurors, not to enter the building unless called as a witness, and not to come within 1000 feet of the building.

The State's witnesses during the guilt phase of trial fell into three categories: (1) professional witnesses such as police officers and investigators, crime scene technicians, medical examiners, and forensic experts; (2) witnesses who provided legal identification of the homicide victims or who had personal knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the various homicides and acts of violence; and (3) members of the John Doe organization or Smith's associates who connected him to the homicides and the drug enterprise. Because Smith's trial involved a number of separate charges, the facts regarding each will be discussed separately below, including the facts pertinent to Smith's appellate claims. These facts were developed through witness testimony and evidence presented at trial.

Drug Enterprise and Organization

A number of witnesses who had been involved in John Doe testified about the organization and operation of the seven drug holes. According to their testimony, Smith was the head of John Doe, Latravis Gallashaw was the second-in-command, and Julian Mitchell was the third. Smith started out as a member of the Lynch Mob, a drug group that predated John Doe in the same neighborhood. The leader of this group was Mark Roundtree, who had both a friend and mentor relationship with Smith. Smith opened his own drug hole across the street from his mother's house on Northwest 58th Street and 15th Avenue in 1994. Smith engaged in intimidation and violence to take over other drug spots or to run competitors out of business.

Each drug hole employed a number of workers, including a "bombman" who sold the drugs, a "watchout" who looked out for the police and marketed the drugs by yelling slogans to potential customers, a "gunman" who kept the peace and enforced the rules, and a "street lieutenant" who dropped off drugs and collected money. In addition, John Doe also employed "tablemen" who processed and packaged the drugs for street sale, "turnover lieutenants" who tracked the money to provide a count for paying the workers, and "enforcers" or "hit men" who carried out the group's violence. The employees worked regular shifts at their jobs and were paid in cash by the lieutenants.

Various witnesses and documentary evidence also revealed a type of accounting system through tally sheets which enabled John Doe to keep track of how much and what kind of drugs were sold and how much money was collected and paid out. Letter codes were used to indicate the type of drug and the size of the bags. Witnesses also testified that workers at the drug holes were permitted to buy guns that they might be offered by individuals and pay for them with John Doe money. The guns were kept by the workers at the holes. However, the workers had to get special permission to buy machine guns, which were stashed in a special location and not kept by the general drug hole workers.

When a drug unit officer attempted to conduct a controlled buy at the residence of Antonio Allen in September 1998, Allen was alerted when the officer's radio made a transmission. Allen was arrested with over 500 bags of cocaine, a .380-caliber semiautomatic gun with a four-inch barrel, and $922 in cash. Allen admitted the possession of these items. In September 1998, the wiretap revealed that a sack of narcotics was going to be delivered to the residence of Charles Clark. The search produced over 100 bags of crack cocaine, $846 in cash, two handguns and ammunition, and rubber bands for bundling cash. The task force executed search warrants for various residences of John Doe members in late October and early November of 1998. The search of Smith's mother's residence revealed two homemade grenades in the attic, a 9-millimeter pistol in Smith's room, various boxes of ammunition, magazines, and clips, a bullet-proof vest, a loaded derringer in the mother's bedroom along with $850, drug residue in the kitchen, and a copy of the police report in the Johnson case in the nightstand of Smith's bedroom. The search of the home of Todra Smith and William Austin, Smith's sister and brother-in-law, uncovered several bricks of marijuana, hundreds of small bags of marijuana, a loaded 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol, a .25-caliber pistol and magazine, and a variety of drug paraphernalia. The search of Latravis Gallashaw's house uncovered various paraphernalia for processing and packaging cocaine, including scales and thousands of empty bags for packaging, tally sheets of packaging and sales, two bricks of marijuana, rock and powder cocaine, empty kilo wrappers in the garbage, and $16,000 in cash. The search of the residence that Smith shared with his girlfriend Crystal Boyd uncovered a radio frequency detector to detect bugs or wires, a phone guard that was supposed to detect wiretaps, a diamond-studded Rolex watch, $500 in cash in Smith's shorts pocket, a bag containing $185,724 in cash bundled with rubber bands, an AK-47 drum that can hold up to 75 rounds of ammunition, and a small amount of marijuana. In November 1998, a search of the Steady Mobbin' Car Wash² on Northwest 17th Avenue uncovered a number of weapons in a locked storage room, including a .357 handgun, a Mac-10 semiautomatic handgun, a Rueger Mini-14 rifle, and a Mac-90 rifle. There was also a ski hat in the storage room.

On December 11, 1998, the John Doe "hitmen" Jean Henry, Julius Stevens, and Eric Stokes did a drive-by shooting of the Northwest 98th Street residence of Patricia Harvey, who is related to Anthony Fail. There were a number of adults and children at the residence that day, as they were celebrating the "Soul...