Steverson v. State, 86590

• Citation: 695 So.2d 687
• Decision Date: 12 June 1997
• Docket Number: No. 86590,86590
• Parties: 22 Fla. L. Weekly S345 Bobby STEVERSON, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Florida

Page 687

695 So.2d 687

22 Fla. L. Weekly S345

Bobby STEVERSON, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. 86590.

Supreme Court of Florida.

June 12, 1997.

James Marion Moorman, Public Defender and Jennifer Y. Fogle, Assistant Public Defender, Tenth Judicial Circuit, Bartow, for Appellant.

Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General; and Candance M. Sabella and Carol M. Dittmar, Assistant Attorneys General, Tampa, for Appellee.

PER CURIAM.

We have on appeal the judgment and sentence of the trial court imposing the death penalty upon appellant, Bobby Steverson. We have jurisdiction. Art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. In May, 1995, Steverson was tried and convicted by a jury for the first-degree murder of Bobby Lucas, armed burglary with assault of Mr. Lucas, and armed robbery for the taking of a television and VCR from Mr. Lucas's trailer. We find that Steverson was unfairly prejudiced by the trial court's error in allowing the State to present excessive evidence of a collateral crime involving the shooting of a police officer such that the other crime became the feature of this capital murder trial. Consequently, we must reverse Steverson's conviction and sentence and remand for a new trial where the jury's attention is properly focused on the actual charges at issue in this case.

APPEAL

Steverson raises five issues on appeal: (1) whether the trial court erred in denying Steverson's motion for a new trial where juror misconduct violated his constitutional right to a fair and impartial jury; ¹ (2) whether the trial court erred in admitting extensive evidence of a collateral crime such that its probative value was substantially outweighed by its unfairly prejudicial effect; (3) whether Steverson's death sentence is disproportionate; (4) whether the trial court erred in failing to conduct an adequate inquiry of jurors as to their exposure, just before penalty phase deliberations, to news articles relating Steverson's alleged post-guilt-phase confession to a corrections officer; and (5) whether section 921.141(5)(d), Florida Statutes (1995), Florida's felony murder aggravator, and the corresponding jury instruction, are unconstitutional.

UNFAIRLY PREJUDICIAL COLLATERAL CRIME EVIDENCE

Steverson contends that he is entitled to a new trial based on the trial court's failure, over repeated objections, to limit or exclude the extensive evidence presented by the State about the collateral offense of Police Detective Brian Rall's shooting four days after the murder of Mr. Lucas. ² Specifically, Steverson maintains that the Lucas trial became nothing more than a forum in which the State retried Steverson for the police officer shooting--although he already had been tried and convicted for that offense--and the unfairly prejudicial effect of this evidence on the jury far outweighed any relevancy or probative value it may have had in proving Steverson's guilt for the Lucas killing.

Section 90.403, Florida Statutes (1995), states in pertinent part:

Relevant evidence is inadmissible if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of issues, misleading the jury, or needless presentation of cumulative evidence.

In State v. McClain, 525 So.2d 420, 422 (Fla.1988), we explained the balancing test a trial court must perform under section 90.403 in determining whether relevant evidence also is admissible against a defendant at trial. We stated:

This statute compels the trial court to weigh the danger of unfair prejudice against the probative value. In applying the balancing test, the trial court necessarily exercises its discretion. Indeed, the same item of evidence may be admissible in one case and not in another, depending upon the relation of that item to the other evidence. E. Cleary, McCormick on Evidence, § 185 (3d ed. 1984).

Professor Ehrhardt explains the application of the statute as follows:

Although Section 90.403 is mandatory in its exclusion of this evidence, a large measure of discretion rests in the trial judge to determine whether the probative value of the evidence is substantially outweighed by any of the enumerated reasons. The court must weigh the proffered evidence against the other facts in the record and balance it against the strength of the reason for exclusion.

In excluding certain relevant evidence, Section 90.403 recognizes Florida law. Certainly, most evidence that is admitted will be prejudicial to the party against whom it is offered. Section 90.403 does not bar this evidence; it is directed at evidence which inflames the jury or appeals improperly to the jury's emotions. Only when that unfair prejudice substantially outweighs the probative value of the evidence is the evidence excluded.

....

... In weighing the probative value against the unfair prejudice, it is proper for the court to consider the need for the evidence; the tendency of the evidence to suggest an improper basis to the jury for resolving the matter, e.g., an emotional basis; the chain of inference necessary to establish the material fact; and the effectiveness of a limiting instruction.

1 C. Ehrhardt, Florida Evidence § 403.1 at 100-03 (2d ed. 1984) (footnotes omitted).

The proper application of this balancing test was central to our later decision in Henry v. State, 574 So.2d 73 (Fla.1991), where we reversed the defendant's conviction for the first-degree murder of his wife and remanded the case for a new trial because of the erroneous admission of excessive testimony concerning the defendant's murder of his wife's son. Although recognizing that the evidence was relevant to the case as being part of a prolonged criminal episode, we explained that it nevertheless was inadmissible:

Some reference to the boy's killing may have been necessary to place the events in context, to describe adequately the investigation leading up to Henry's arrest and subsequent statements, and to account for the boy's absence as a witness. However, it was totally unnecessary to admit the abundant testimony concerning the search for the boy's body, the details from the confession with respect to how he was killed, and the medical examiner's photograph of the body. Even if the state had been able to show some relevance, this evidence should have been excluded because the danger of unfair prejudice substantially outweighed its probative value. § 90.403, Fla. Stat. (1985). Indeed, it is likely that the photograph alone was so inflammatory that it could have unfairly prejudiced the jury against Henry.

Id. at 75. See also Long v. State, 610 So.2d 1276, 1280-1281 (Fla.1992) (although evidence connected with defendant's arrest in collateral crime was admissible to establish identity and connect him to victim of charged offense, details of collateral crime were not admissible). Even when evidence of a collateral crime is properly admissible in a case, we have cautioned that "the prosecution should not go too far in introducing evidence of other crimes. The state should not be allowed to go so far as to make the collateral crime a feature instead of an incident." Randolph v. State, 463 So.2d 186, 189 (Fla.1984).

In this case, the record reflects that Steverson visited Bobby Lucas on March 2, 1994, arriving at Lucas's trailer between 10 and 11 p.m. The two drank alcohol and smoked crack cocaine together. Steverson testified that Mr. Lucas was alive when he left the trailer that evening between 11:30 and midnight. The following morning, Thursday, March 3, two of Mr. Lucas's friends discovered his dead body in his trailer in west Lakeland. ³ In the course of investigating Mr. Lucas's death, police were on the lookout for a blue compact car after several acquaintances of both Lucas and Steverson told police they had seen a blue Honda resembling Steverson's CRX parked outside...