Stephens v. State
| Decision Date | 12 January 2022 |
| Docket Number | 1D19-3427 |
| Citation | 331 So.3d 1241 |
| Parties | Roy Allen STEPHENS, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee. |
| Court | Florida District Court of Appeals |
J. Jervis Wise of Brunvand Wise, P.A., Clearwater, and David R. Carmichael of Boswell & Dunlap LLP, Bartow, for Appellant.
Ashley Moody, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Jeffrey H. Siegal, Assistant Attorney General, Tampa, for Appellee.
This case involves the starvation death of a three-week-old infant. The jury, after a week-long trial, convicted Roy Allen Stephens of first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse, and aggravated manslaughter of a child. Stephens challenges those convictions, arguing the trial court erred by (1) denying his motion for judgment of acquittal; (2) permitting dual convictions for both first-degree murder and aggravated manslaughter of a child; (3) failing to properly instruct the jury on the first-degree murder and aggravated manslaughter counts; (4) precluding from trial statements made by Stephens's co-defendant; and (5) denying Stephens's motion for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence. We affirm.
On December 22, 2014, Stephens and his wife (the co-defendant), left their home in Indiana to visit family in Lakeland, Florida. They brought their three children with them on the road trip, including the three-week-old victim. The family arrived in Lakeland the next evening and stopped at a restaurant to meet Stephens's sister. It was then that Stephens and the co-defendant noticed the infant was unresponsive. Stephens called 911 and first responders quickly arrived at the scene. They transported the victim to the hospital where she was pronounced dead. An autopsy revealed the victim had starved to death. In time, Stephens was indicted for (1) first-degree murder, (2) aggravated child abuse, and (3) aggravated manslaughter of a child. Stephens ultimately elected to have the trial in Hamilton County.
At trial, the State presented testimony from various witnesses, including several first responders, health care officials, and a medical examiner. The State also introduced into evidence text and Facebook messages involving Stephens, as well as a recorded interview between law enforcement and Stephens.
In the early evening of December 23, 2014, the Lakeland Fire Department and other first responders responded to a call about an unresponsive infant. They arrived at the restaurant parking lot around 6:15PM and discovered the victim, who appeared to be lifeless. They performed CPR and transported the victim to Lakeland Regional Medical Center, where the victim was pronounced dead at 6:45PM.
Multiple nurses and paramedics testified that they had never seen an infant as malnourished and emaciated as the victim. This contrasted with the "very healthy" appearance of the two other young children. First responders described the victim as skeletal; her eyes were sunken; and she appeared to have been dead for some time before they arrived. One paramedic said the victim was small and rubberlike and noted "her arms were the size of my one finger." Another stated that the victim looked like "a skeleton with skin draped over it."
An ER physician recalled informing Stephens and the co-defendant at the hospital of the victim's death. The co-defendant stated she breastfed the victim, the victim had no health issues, and shortly before arriving at the restaurant, the co-defendant had touched the victim's foot and elicited a response. The physician testified, contrary to the co-defendant's assertions, it was impossible for the victim to react that way or respond in any significant manner. To the physician (as well as the first responders), the victim appeared to have been dead "for some period of time." The paramedic who transported the victim to the hospital explained that, by the time he arrived at the restaurant parking lot, rigor mortis had begun to set in.
Multiple witnesses commented at trial on Stephens's unusually calm demeanor that day. Lakeland Police Officer Dagon Leach testified that, while the co-defendant was somewhat upset, Stephens did not "appear to be distraught or upset at all, and throughout the time on scene, was able to carry on, you know, small talk in a normal conversation." One firefighter paramedic even noticed Stephens laughing with others at the restaurant. A chaplain who encountered Stephens and the co-defendant at the hospital shortly after the victim was pronounced dead referenced Stephens's lack of emotion. According to the chaplain, Stephens was emphatic that he did not want to visit the victim. At one point, the co-defendant expressed concern to Stephens about finances, to which he responded, "Don't worry, we have life insurance."
Later that night, law enforcement interviewed Stephens and the co-defendant. Detectives described Stephens as calm and lacking emotion, but he became agitated when the questions focused on the victim's feeding.
During the interview, Stephens explained he is always home because of his disability and unemployment status. Stephens maintained the co-defendant's pregnancy went smoothly, and the victim had no health issues after birth. Stephens described the victim as "healthy as can be" because she felt healthy when he held her and she smiled at him when he spoke to her. Stephens thought the victim weighed the same on the day she died as she did shortly after her birth.
According to Stephens, he and his family left their home in Indiana on December 22 to visit his sister in Lakeland. That first evening, they stopped at a hotel in Macon, Georgia. The next morning, the family traveled to Lakeland, where they planned to meet Stephens's sister that evening at the restaurant. From there, the plan was to spend Christmas with the co-defendant's parents, who reside in Oklahoma.
Stephens said the family stopped often because of the children. Particularly, they stopped when the victim cried so the co-defendant could breastfeed the victim. The co-defendant fed the victim every half hour to two hours during the trip. When the co-defendant fed the victim, Stephens did other things, like clean the car, feed the other children, and change diapers.
When pressed about the possibility that the victim was dead for a long time, Stephens replied that was not possible. After vacillating about when he observed the co-defendant feed the victim, he said he witnessed the co-defendant breastfeed the victim once in Macon and at some time during the day of December 23. When the family arrived at the restaurant in Lakeland, Stephens removed a cover from the victim and realized she was dead, at which point he called 911. At the end of the interview, in response to a question about the circumstances surrounding the victim's death, Stephens declared that there was "no neglect."
Based on the autopsy examination, the medical examiner testified that no parent could look at the victim and determine that she was fine. The victim appeared "extremely malnourished" and "extremely dehydrated." The victim's bones were visible in many areas, and her skin was hanging and wrinkled because of a lack of fat. The medical examiner opined the victim did not develop this physical condition over the course of a day, but over time. And during this time, the victim suffered pain from the effects of starvation.
At the time of examination, the victim weighed around four pounds, which is around two pounds less than what she weighed at birth and more than two pounds less than the normal weight of an infant that age. According to the medical examiner, it would take around twelve days without adequate sustenance for an infant to lose two pounds. Based on the victim's gastrointestinal tract, the medical examiner concluded the victim had not been fully fed for at least thirty hours.
The medical examiner explicitly rebutted some contentions made by Stephens during his interview with law enforcement. The medical examiner asserted the victim could not have been smiling at Stephens the night before she was pronounced dead as the victim was largely lethargic and comatose at that time. Nor could Stephens have witnessed the co-defendant breastfeed the victim shortly before Stephens called 911 because the victim was dead at that point.
The victim's body temperature revealed that the victim died "three to six hours, or a little bit longer" before her temperature was taken at the hospital. The medical examiner noted, however, that the victim was likely in full rigor mortis when she was taken to the hospital. Thus, she could have died anywhere from eight to twelve hours before her temperature was taken. Based on the examination, the medical examiner determined the victim starved to death and suffered from no conditions that would prohibit her from maintaining an appropriate weight if properly fed.
The autopsy prompted a criminal investigation, superintended by Lakeland Police Detective Brian Wallace. After the autopsy, Detective Wallace conducted a second interview with the co-defendant. According to the co-defendant, she experienced no complications with the victim after birth, and she fed the victim exclusively by breastfeeding. The co-defendant explained that insurance issues precluded her from taking the victim to a follow-up medical appointment on December 18.
The co-defendant also explained Stephens was not happy about the victim living in their home because the infant resulted from the co-defendant's extramarital affair. Stephens's interaction with the victim was "very minimal," and he only held the victim a few times during her lifetime. Stephens devoted most of his attention to his other two children. During their travel from Indiana to Florida, Stephens provided no attention to the victim. The co-defendant maintained that, at the time of the victim's death, she thought the victim looked healthy.
The State introduced multiple text messages and Facebook messages between Stephens and the co-defendant. In these, Stephens complained that another individual...
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