Wickham v. State
| Decision Date | 17 October 2013 |
| Docket Number | SC12–303.,Nos. SC11–1193,s. SC11–1193 |
| Citation | 124 So.3d 841 |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
| Parties | Jerry Michael WICKHAM, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee. Jerry Michael Wickham, Petitioner, v. Michael D. Crews, etc., Respondent. |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Martin J. McClain of McClain & McDermott, P.A., Wilton Manors, FL, and Frederick T. Davis, Kristin D. Kiehn, Corey S. Whiting, and Elizabeth A. Kostrzewa of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, New York, NY, for Appellant/Petitioner.
Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, and Stephen R. White, Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, FL, for Appellee/Respondent.
Jerry Michael Wickham appeals an order of the circuit court denying his motion for postconviction relief filed under Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850 and petitions this Court for a writ of habeas corpus.1 For the reasons that follow, we affirm the denial of his postconviction motion and deny his habeas petition.
Wickham was convicted of the 1986 first-degree murder of Morris “Rick” Fleming and was sentenced to death. We previously summarized the facts of this case in the Court's opinion on direct appeal:
In March 1986, Wickham together with family members and friends, including children, were driving along Interstate 10 when they discovered they were low on money and gas. While at least some members of the party felt they should stop at a church for help, Wickham and others decided they would obtain money through a robbery. The group continued along Interstate 10 and exited at Thomasville Road in Tallahassee.
Proceeding north almost to the Georgia border, the group decided to trick a passing motorist into stopping. They placed one of the vehicles conspicuously on the roadside. One of the women, apparently accompanied by some of the children, then flagged down the victim, Morris “Rick” Fleming. The woman told Fleming her car would not work. Wickham later told a fellow inmate that he had deliberately used the woman and children because “that's what made the guy stop and that's what I was interested in.”
After examining the car, Fleming told the woman he could find nothing wrong with it. At this time, Wickham came out of a hiding place nearby and pointed a gun at Fleming. Fleming then turned and attempted to walk back to his car, but Wickham shot him once in the back. The impact spun Fleming around, and Wickham then shot Fleming again high in the chest. While Fleming pled for his life, Wickham shot the victim twice in the head.
Wickham then dragged the body away from the roadside and rummaged through Fleming's pockets. He found only four dollars and five cents. At this point, Wickham criticized the woman-decoy for not stopping someone with more money.
The group drove to a gas station and put two dollars' worth of gas in one of the cars, and two dollars' worth in a gas can. Wickham changed his clothes and threw his bloodstained pants and shoes into a dumpster. Wickham directed one of the others to throw the empty bullet casings and live rounds out the window. A short while later, the group drove past the murder scene and saw that the police and ambulances had begun to arrive. They then headed back south and drove to Tampa, obtaining more gas money by stopping at a church along the way.
At trial, defense counsel submitted extensive evidence about Wickham's prior psychological problems, which included extended periods of confinement in psychiatric hospitals during his youth. There also was evidence that Wickham was alcoholic, had suffered an abusive childhood, and that his father had deserted the family.
Other evidence, however, indicated that Wickham was not legally insane during the events in question and had not been drinking at the time of the murder, and that he had not been confined in mental institutions for many years. One expert, Dr. Harry McClaren, stated that Wickham both appreciated the criminality of the murder and chose to engage in this conduct despite his awareness of its nature. Dr. McClaren stated his opinion that Wickham had murdered Fleming to avoid arrest, because Wickham previously had been incarcerated for another robbery in Michigan. Although Dr. McClaren agreed that Wickham suffered from alcohol abuse, an antisocial personality disorder, and schizophrenia in remission, he concluded that these conditions did not impair Wickham's ability to understand the nature of his actions in murdering Fleming.
After being convicted of the murder, the jury recommended by a vote of eleven to one that Wickham be sentenced to death. The trial judge concurred after finding six aggravating circumstances and no mitigating circumstances.[2
Wickham v. State, 593 So.2d 191, 192–93 (Fla.1991).
On direct appeal, we affirmed Wickham's conviction and death sentence. 3Id. at 194. Subsequently, Wickham filed a motion for postconviction relief, and the trial court denied all of his claims after an evidentiary hearing in 2004. Wickham v. State, 998 So.2d 593 (Fla.2008). Wickham appealed the denial, and we remanded for a new evidentiary hearing, finding that Wickham's motion to disqualify all Second Circuit judges from deciding his postconviction motion should have been granted because Wickham's trial counsel ran for circuit court judge while acting as Wickham's counsel and became a Second Circuit judge shortly after Wickham's trial. Id. at 596.
A new evidentiary hearing was held in 2010 and was presided over by a judge from outside the Second Circuit. Following the evidentiary hearing, the circuit court issued an order denying postconviction relief on all claims, concluding the claims were either procedurally barred, refuted by the record, or otherwise without merit.
Wickham appeals the denial of his postconviction motion and petitions this Court for a writ of habeas corpus.
Wickham raises multiple claims alleging that the State withheld material evidence concerning several of the State's witnesses in violation of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963). Additionally, he claims that the State presented, or failed to correct, false or misleading testimony in violation of Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150, 92 S.Ct. 763, 31 L.Ed.2d 104 (1972).4 After outlining the Brady and Giglio standards, we will address each claim in turn as it relates to each witness.
In order to establish a Brady violation, a defendant must show the following: (1) evidence favorable to the defendant, either exculpatory or impeaching; (2) was willfully or inadvertently suppressed by the State; and (3) because the evidence was material, the defendant was prejudiced. Strickler v. Greene, 527 U.S. 263, 281–82, 119 S.Ct. 1936, 144 L.Ed.2d 286 (1999); see also Duest v. State, 12 So.3d 734, 744 (Fla.2009). To establish the materiality prong, the defendant must demonstrate “a reasonable probability that, had the evidence been disclosed to the defense, the result of the proceeding would have been different.” United States v. Bagley, 473 U.S. 667, 682, 105 S.Ct. 3375, 87 L.Ed.2d 481 (1985). “A ‘reasonable probability’ is a probability sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome.” Id. With regards to the second prong of Brady, “[t]here is no Brady violation where the information is equally accessible to the defense and the prosecution, or where the defense either had the information or could have obtained it through the exercise of reasonable diligence.” Floyd v. State, 18 So.3d 432, 451 (Fla.2009)(quoting Provenzano v. State, 616 So.2d 428, 430 (Fla.1993)).
To establish a Giglio violation, three elements must be shown: (1) the prosecutor presented or failed to correct false testimony; (2) the prosecutor knew it was false; and (3) the false testimony was material. Guzman v. State, 868 So.2d 498, 505 (Fla.2003) (citing Ventura v. State, 794 So.2d 553, 562 (Fla.2001)). With regards to the third prong, “the false evidence is material ‘if there is any reasonable [possibility] that the false testimony could have affected the judgment of the jury.’ ” Id. at 506 (quoting United States v. Agurs, 427 U.S. 97, 103, 96 S.Ct. 2392, 49 L.Ed.2d 342 (1976)). The State bears the burden of proving that the false testimony was not material by demonstrating that it was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. See id.; see also Johnson v. State, 44 So.3d 51, 64–65 (Fla.2010).
Additionally, because both Brady and Giglio claims present mixed questions of law and fact, this Court applies a mixed standard of review, deferring to the trial court's factual findings that are supported by competent, substantial evidence and reviewing the application of the law to the facts de novo. Sochor v. State, 883 So.2d 766, 785 (Fla.2004).
Wickham contends that the State violated Brady by (1) failing to disclose the prosecutor's hand-written notes made during plea negotiations with Tammy Jordan's attorneys, and (2) failing to disclose evidence of Tammy's previous arrest and guilty plea for felony burglary in Hillsborough County. We affirm the circuit court's denial of these claims.
During the guilt phase of the trial, Tammy was the only co-defendant to testify that Wickham had said there might be a killing involved in the robbery prior to the crime occurring. Wickham argues that Tammy's testimony that he made this “killing statement” prior to the crime was the primary support for the CCP aggravator, and the prosecutor's notes were valuable impeachment evidence because they indicate that the first time Tammy ever made this statement was in the context of plea negotiations. The circuit court denied this claim finding that Wickham could not establish the materiality prong of Brady. We agree.
At trial, Wickham's counsel thoroughly cross-examined Tammy regarding her prior statements and insinuated that she fabricated Wickham's alleged killing statement for the purposes of entering a...
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