Snipes v. State
| Decision Date | 22 April 1999 |
| Docket Number | No. 90,413.,90,413. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
| Parties | David Paul SNIPES, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee. |
James Marion Moorman, Public Defender, and Deborah K. Brueckheimer, Assistant Public Defender, Tenth Judicial Circuit, Bartow, Florida, for Appellant.
Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General, and Carol M. Dittmar, Assistant Attorney General, Tampa, Florida, for Appellee.
We have on appeal the judgment and sentence of the trial court imposing the death penalty upon David Paul Snipes for first-degree murder. We have jurisdiction. Art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. For the reasons expressed, we affirm the conviction for first-degree murder, but we vacate the sentence of death and remand for the imposition of a life sentence.
The facts of this case are as follows. Snipes and John Saladino were charged with the first-degree murder of Markus Mueller. Saladino was allowed to plead guilty to second-degree murder, and he was sentenced to fifteen years in prison to be followed by ten years of probation. Snipes was tried and convicted based on the following evidence presented at trial. In February 1995, Markus Mueller was found dead in his home by his former girlfriend, Danielle Bieber. Mrs. Bieber called police when she found him. When police arrived, she was very upset and had to be asked to leave. She told police that her husband, David Bieber, "could have done this." David Bieber had followed Mrs. Bieber to Mueller's home in a separate vehicle but did not enter Mueller's home; police spoke briefly to him at the scene but did not arrest him.
Medical evidence reflected that Mueller had been shot three times; twice in the torso and once in the head. He died from the gunshot wound to the head. The bullets could have been fired from a .38 snubnose revolver. The murder weapon was not recovered.
For some time, Mr. Bieber was the main suspect. He had made numerous statements to others that he wanted Mueller dead and he had contacted Mueller on the night of the crime. There were two possible motives: steroid trafficking and jealously over Mrs. Bieber. Mrs. Bieber had married Mr. Bieber just four days before the crime. Apparently, before that marriage, Mrs. Bieber had been dating Mueller but had been seeing Mr. Bieber secretly while she was dating Mueller. Mr. Bieber disappeared some time after the murder and has not been found; there is an outstanding warrant for his arrest.
Subsequent to the murder, Michael Larson told police that he lived next door to David Snipes; that he and Snipes were friends; that Snipes had borrowed Larson's.38 pistol shortly before the murder; and that Snipes had never returned the gun. In February, Snipes' girlfriend also noticed that Snipes had extra money. Snipes told his girlfriend that he had been hired to shoot Mueller for $1,000. While Snipes was in jail awaiting trial, he also confessed to two of his uncles, telling one of them that Mr. Bieber had asked Saladino to find someone to commit the murder and that Saladino had then arranged for Snipes to commit the murder. Additionally, Snipes gave a taped confession to police.
Snipes was convicted as charged.
At the penalty phase proceeding, Mueller's father and sister testified briefly as to how Mueller's death had affected them. Snipes presented testimony from a clinical psychologist, who stated that Snipes functioned normally in many respects but was emotionally immature, was very insecure, and was somewhat inadequate in making social judgments. The psychologist testified that Snipes had a need to prove his masculinity; that Snipes had been involved with drugs and alcohol since the age of twelve or thirteen, including glue, gasoline, marijuana, and LSD; and that he was easily led by older individuals. He also stated that Snipes had a behavioral disorder and was suffering from the continuing mental duress of having experienced life in a dysfunctional family where he had poor role models and alcoholic parents and was sexually abused for some time by an uncle when he was very young (this oral sexual abuse occurred to both Snipes and his slightly older brother when Snipes was 3, 4, 5, and then again when he was around 7). He also stated that Snipes was a good candidate for rehabilitation.
A mitigation specialist noted that there were a number of family problems when Snipes was young such as family fights, a divorce, the mother's remarriage, alcoholism and drug abuse among family members, and sexual abuse. The specialist also stated that the uncle who sexually abused Snipes was allowed to move back into Snipes' father's home when Snipes was living with his father even though the family knew of the prior abuse. The specialist further noted stated that Snipes voluntarily got his GED in 1993 and that, while he was awaiting trial, his girlfriend bore his son and he then married her.
Other family members testified as to Snipes' good disposition, his drug use, the love he received from his parents, his capacity for rehabilitation, the lack of direction he received when growing up, the physical fights between his mother and father and between his mother and stepfather, and the fact that he has been a good father to the extent possible given that his child was born while he was in jail.
The jury recommended death by an eleven-to-one vote. The trial judge followed that recommendation. The trial judge found two aggravating circumstances: (1) the murder was committed for pecuniary gain; and (2) the murder was committed in a cold, calculated, and premeditated manner (CCP). The judge found one statutory mitigating circumstance: Snipes was seventeen when he committed the murder. He also found numerous nonstatutory mitigating circumstances to each of which he gave some, little, slight, or minimal weight (Snipes' parents were divorced when he was three; he has positive personality traits and rehabilitation potential; he obtained a GED on his own, has a sweet and loving character; he used drugs and alcohols at a very young age; Snipes had a difficult childhood, behaved at trial, and behaved during pretrial incarceration; he has a dysfunctional family; he voluntarily confessed to the crime and told others about it; he expressed remorse; the State depended on Snipes' statements to obtain a conviction; his statements assisted in obtaining an arrest warrant against a codefendant; he participated in a drug rehabilitation program; the person who hired Snipes to kill Mueller was older than Snipes; Snipes was not known, prior to this case, to be a violent person; he was a loving father; he has a personality disorder (impulsiveness and feeling of inadequacy); he has a behavioral disorder based on his dysfunctional family and lack of proper role models; he suffered childhood trauma; he did not flee the jurisdiction; he has some emotional disturbance, but not extreme; he has some impairment but not enough to rise to the level of a statutory mitigator; he is devoted religiously; and he suffers from stress). The judge also gave considerable weight to the fact that Snipes had been sexually abused as a young child and, although he found the sentence to be proportionate, he found that such a review was best left to this Court. He rejected the argument that Snipes' sentence was disproportionate when compared to the treatment afforded the codefendants. He noted that Snipes was the shooter, whereas Saladino was simply the go-between, and that Bieber had never been located. He also found no evidence to show that Snipes was under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of the crime.
In this appeal, Snipes raises six issues.1 In his first issue, he asserts that the trial court erred in permitting the State to amend the indictment. The indictment in this case gave various spellings of the victim's name: "Markus Mueller a/k/a Markus Muller a/k/a Markus Muller a/k/a Kark Markus Muller." (Emphasis added.) The State asked the trial court to amend the indictment as to the victim's name in the fourth variation from "Kark" to "Karl." Snipes objected to the change on the ground that the victim's name is an essential element of the charge and because indictments cannot be amended. The trial court granted the State's motion and allowed the indictment to be amended.
Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.140 governs indictments and informations. That rule provides as follows regarding the amendment of indictments and informations:
(Emphasis added.) Under this rule, the caption of an indictment may be amended and unnecessary allegations may be stricken. The rule specifically provides for the amendment of an indictment's caption, for the striking of unnecessary allegations in either an information or an indictment, and for the amendment of an information. It does not provide for any other amendment of an indictment. As stated in the committee notes to the rule, subsection (j) as proposed contained no provision for the amendment of an indictment because (1) "presumably, a grand jury may not amend an indictment which it has returned and which is pending, although it may return another indictment and the first indictment may be disposed of by a nolle prosequi," and (2) a "federal indictment cannot be...
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