White v. State

• Decision Date: 04 April 2002
• Docket Number: No. SC00-1148.,SC00-1148.
• Citation: 817 So.2d 799
• Parties: William Melvin WHITE, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

817 So.2d 799

William Melvin WHITE, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. SC00-1148.

Supreme Court of Florida.

April 4, 2002.

Rehearing Denied May 16, 2002.

Chandler R. Muller, Winter Park, FL, for Appellant.

Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General, and Stephen D. Ake, Assistant Attorney General, Tampa, FL, for Appellee.

PER CURIAM.

William Melvin White appeals his sentence of death following resentencing. We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. For the reasons expressed below, we affirm the death sentence.

The facts of the crime and procedural history of this case are detailed in White v. State, 729 So.2d 909 (Fla.1999):

[White] was convicted of the first-degree murder of Gracie Mae Crawford. The facts of the crime are detailed in our opinion on direct appeal.

White was a member of a Kentucky chapter of the Outlaws, a motorcycle gang, but was visiting the Orlando chapter. A group of the Outlaws, accompanied by some girl friends, visited an Orlando nightclub where they met Gracie Mae Crawford. Gracie Mae accompanied some of the Outlaws back to their Orlando clubhouse. Soon after returning to the clubhouse, White retired to a bedroom with his girl friend. Sometime thereafter White was called by Richard DiMarino who stated that Crawford liked blacks and that they had to teach her a lesson. White dressed and went into the kitchen area where he joined DiMarino and Guy Ennis Smith in severely beating Crawford. Whether DiMarino or White led the assault is unclear, but one witness testified of White's hitting Crawford with his fist and knocking her to the floor. After the beating, DiMarino and White placed Crawford in the middle of the front seat of White's girl friend's car. White started driving but along the way stopped the car and DiMarino drove the car to the end of a deserted road. (The victim, White and DiMarino had done a lot of drinking that evening, but White's girl friend testified that he knew what he was doing.) After they stopped the car, DiMarino and White pulled Crawford from the car, passed her over a barbed wire fence, and laid her on the ground. White then straddled her, took out his knife, stabbed her fourteen times and slit her throat. He handed the knife to DiMarino who also cut her throat. Crawford died as a result of the wounds inflicted upon her.

While leaving the area White and DiMarino ran out of gas at the Seaworld parking lot and were later identified by Seaworld security guards who had given them gas. White and DiMarino went back and picked up the body of the deceased and thereafter discarded it at a different place. The body was discovered that afternoon.

White v. State, 415 So.2d 719, 719-20 (Fla.1982). After a penalty phase proceeding in which defense counsel proffered no witnesses or evidence, the advisory jury unanimously recommended that appellant be sentenced to death. The trial court, finding that the three aggravating circumstances [n. 1] outweighed the sole statutory mitigating circumstance, [n. 2] sentenced appellant to death in accordance with the unanimous jury recommendation. We affirmed the conviction and sentence. Id. at 719-21. The United States Supreme Court denied certiorari review on November 29, 1982. See White v. Florida, 459 U.S. 1055, 103 S.Ct. 474, 74 L.Ed.2d 622 (1982).

[n. 1]. The trial court found: (1) the murder was committed during the course of a kidnapping; (2) the murder was committed to disrupt or hinder enforcement of laws; and (3) the murder was heinous, wicked, and cruel.

[n. 2]. The trial court found that appellant had no prior violent felony conviction.

Appellant filed [his] initial rule 3.850 motion in 1983. In 1987, while appellant's rule 3.850 motion was pending, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Hitchcock v. Dugger, 481 U.S. 393, 107 S.Ct. 1821, 95 L.Ed.2d 347 (1987). Hitchcock held that a Florida jury charge which precluded the trial court and the advisory jury from considering nonstatutory mitigation was unconstitutional. Appellant subsequently filed a petition for habeas relief based on Hitchcock. The trial court stayed further proceedings in this postconviction motion until final disposition of the habeas petition. We rejected appellant's claim for relief, concluding that "[t]he charge which may have limited the jury to a consideration of statutory mitigating circumstance was clearly harmless." White v. Dugger, 523 So.2d 140, 141 (Fla.),cert. denied, 488 U.S. 871, 109 S.Ct. 184, 102 L.Ed.2d 153 (1988). The trial court subsequently held an evidentiary hearing on most of appellant's claims and denied relief on all claims by order. ...

Id. at 910-11.

In White's appeal of the denial of his 3.850 motion, this Court affirmed the trial court's order as to his conviction. See id. at 910. However, on the basis of a Hitchcock error,¹ we vacated White's death sentence and remanded for a new sentencing proceeding before a jury. See id.

On remand, the resentencing jury voted ten to two in favor of imposing the death sentence. In sentencing White to the death penalty, the trial court found four aggravators.² The trial court also found and assigned weight to one statutory and nine nonstatutory mitigating factors.³ In weighing the nature and quality of these aggravators and mitigators, the trial court found that the aggravators greatly outweighed the mitigators.

On appeal to this Court, White raises five issues: (1) the trial court erred in not permitting the cross-examination of the key State witness concerning the underlying facts of the witness's subsequent murder conviction; (2) the trial court erred in finding that the murder was committed to disrupt or hinder the enforcement of laws; (3) the trial court erred in rejecting the statutory mitigating factor that the murder was committed while White was under extreme duress or under the substantial domination of another; (4) the imposition of the death penalty is disproportionate; (5) White's execution, after serving more than twenty-two years on death row, will constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

We summarily reject White's fifth claim, as it has previously been considered and rejected. See Rose v. State, 787 So.2d 786, 805 (Fla.2001)

(prolonged delay in imposing death penalty does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment). We now turn to the issues that merit discussion.

I. COLLATERAL EVIDENCE

White claims that the trial court erred in preventing defense counsel's full cross-examination of Richard DiMarino, the State's key witness and the other perpetrator of the 1978 murder of Crawford, regarding the facts underlying the third-degree murder to which DiMarino pled guilty in Maryland in 1990. This Maryland crime occurred twelve years after White was convicted for the first-degree murder of Crawford.

The facts underlying DiMarino's Maryland crime occurred in July 1990, when DiMarino and a codefendant were involved in an incident while riding their motorcycles. Words with two rival biker gang members escalated into a fight with the two rival bikers at an intersection. One of the two rival bikers fled, while DiMarino and a codefendant continued to fight with the remaining biker. In the fight, the remaining biker was stabbed and died from a single stab wound to the chest. DiMarino agreed to plead guilty to third-degree murder and agreed to testify against his codefendant in exchange for a reduced sentence of twenty years with ten years of the sentence suspended.

Prior to DiMarino's testimony at the resentencing proceeding, the State filed a motion in limine seeking to prohibit defense counsel from questioning DiMarino regarding the underlying facts of the 1990 Maryland murder conviction. After hearing argument from counsel, the trial court stated:

I certainly understand the State's argument on this particular motion. However, I'm also aware that this is the penalty phase of a first degree murder conviction. And that in the penalty phase the court can step outside the bounds of the traditional rules of evidence, step out of bounds in the allowing of hearsay testimony.

Therefore, my ruling is going to be as follows: the defense in order to evaluate the credibility of Mr. DiMarino and also evaluate, properly put before the jury clearly what weight should be given to mitigating circumstances, the defense may ask Mr. DiMarino whether he has since his conviction for this particular crime been convicted of a felony. The defense may also ask him what type of felony it was, but may not delve into the facts of this case, i.e., was there a stabbing, was a throat slit, et cetera. You may also ask him if he negotiated some type of lesser sentence for his testimony against a codefendant, if that in fact was the circumstance of that particular murder.

The defense may also inquire as to his lifestyle.

DiMarino gave testimony, on direct and cross-examination, that in 1978, he was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years in prison for the third-degree murder of Crawford. Thereafter, DiMarino agreed to testify against his codefendants, Guy Ennis Smith and White, in exchange for concurrent time in prison on other unrelated felony charges. To protect DiMarino from retaliation from members of the Outlaws motorcycle gang, the State agreed to remove a tattoo and transfer DiMarino to an out-of-state prison facility.

DiMarino further testified that he had been convicted of more than twenty-five felonies, including the 1990 Maryland third-degree murder for which he received a twenty-year sentence with ten years of the sentence suspended, in exchange for his testimony against his codefendant. Furthermore, defense counsel established that DiMarino was on parole for the 1990 Maryland third-degree murder conviction; thus, any deviation from DiMarino's original 1978 testimony in the Crawford case could have been the basis for a perjury charge, constituting a parole violation that could have required DiMarino to serve his complete sentence for the 1990 Maryland murder...