Williams v. State

• Decision Date: 19 January 2017
• Docket Number: No. SC14–814,SC14–814
• Parties: Donald Otis WILLIAMS, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

209 So.3d 543

Donald Otis WILLIAMS, Appellant,

v.STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. SC14–814

Supreme Court of Florida.

[January 19, 2017]

James S. Purdy, Public Defender, and Nancy Jean Ryan, Assistant Public Defender, Seventh Judicial Circuit, Daytona Beach, Florida, for Appellant

Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, Tallahassee, Florida; and C. Suzanne Bechard, Assistant Attorney General, Tampa, Florida, for Appellee

PER CURIAM.

Donald Otis Williams, who was fifty years old at the time of the crime, was convicted of the 2010 kidnapping, robbery, and first-degree murder of eighty-one-year-old Janet Patrick. A jury recommended that Williams be sentenced to death for the murder by a vote of nine to three, and the trial court, after concluding that the aggravating factors outweighed the mitigating circumstances, imposed the death penalty. Williams appeals his convictions and death sentence. We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const.

For the reasons set forth below, we affirm Williams' convictions but reverse the death sentence based on the United States Supreme Court's opinion in Hurst v. Florida (Hurst v. Florida ), ––– U.S. ––––, 136 S.Ct. 616, 193 L.Ed.2d 504 (2016), and this Court's opinion on remand in Hurst v. State (Hurst ), 202 So.3d 40 (Fla. 2016). Although a special verdict form was used in Williams' penalty phase, the jury did not unanimously conclude that there were sufficient aggravating factors to impose death or that the aggravation outweighed the mitigation—critical findings that must be made by a unanimous jury under the Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution and article I, section 22, of the Florida Constitution. See Hurst , 202 So.3d at 43–44. Further, the jury's recommendation for death by a vote of nine to three in this case does not satisfy the constitutional requirement explained in Hurst that the jury's final sentencing recommendation be unanimous. Id. Thus, we conclude that the Hurst error in Williams' sentencing was not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. See id. at 66–69. Accordingly, we reverse Williams' sentence of death and remand for a new penalty phase.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

The Guilt Phase

The victim, Janet Patrick, was last seen alive on October 18, 2010, after shopping for groceries at Publix near her home in Lake County, Florida. The defendant, Donald Otis Williams, through both security video and eyewitness testimony, was identified as accompanying her at Publix and getting into the passenger seat of her vehicle, a white Chevrolet Impala. Multiple witnesses testified that they later saw Williams in a white Chevrolet similar to the one owned by the victim. One of the witnesses, an acquaintance of Williams, testified that Williams borrowed his shovel in the days following the victim's disappearance, and never returned it. On October 23, a law enforcement officer found Williams in Polk County, Florida sitting in the victim's car with her credit cards in his pocket.

While in police custody, Williams gave interviews to the media, in which he admitted to being with the victim at Publix but denied harming her. He told the press that he and the victim were abducted by an unidentified assailant. Williams claimed that during the abduction, both he and the victim were in the trunk and prayed together, and the victim told Williams that she was afraid something "too personal" for Williams to discuss with the press was going to happen to her. According to Williams, the assailant beat the victim and eventually stopped the car somewhere in Polk County, where he ordered Williams to put the victim on the ground. Williams claimed that he was then able to escape in the victim's car.

Law enforcement officers investigated Williams' story about an assailant but were unable to corroborate it. Witnesses who interacted with Williams in the days following the victim's disappearance testified that there was no indication that he had been abducted. Williams eventually repudiated the story. The day after Williams' press interviews, law enforcement found the victim's nude, partially skeletonized remains in Polk County beneath two tires in a wooded area a mile and a half from Williams' former residence, where he lived from 1991 to 1996.

Crime scene investigators documented and processed the scene where the body was found. They found the victim's grocery shopping list next to her remains. There were drag marks that lined up to where the body was found. Officials did not find any jewelry on or near the body or inside the car, nor did they find the victim's wallet or purse. The body itself was unclothed, with the exception of a pair of socks and a medical alert necklace, and severely decomposed.

The medical examiner, Dr. Barbara Wolf, performed the autopsy and reviewed the victim's medical records, photos from the crime scene, Lake County Sheriff's Office reports, laboratory reports, and interviews that Williams gave to the media. Because of the condition of the victim's body when it was found, Dr. Wolf testified that the cause of death could not be determined, but ruled out accidental death and opined that the manner of death was homicide. Carlton Jane Beck Findley, an expert in forensic entomology, determined that the victim most likely died between sunrise on October 19, 2010, and sunset on October 20, 2010. Katie Skorpinski, an expert in forensic anthropology, examined the remains at the C.A. Pound Human Identification Lab at the University of Florida and found that the body had no fractures from around the time of death, no signs of thermal damage, and no other perimortem damage.

Crime scene investigators processed the victim's automobile. Testifying at trial, they explained the various items that were recovered from the vehicle. In the trunk, they found two separate pieces of trunk carpeting, the spare tire cover from beneath the trunk carpeting, a spare tire locking device, and a piece of plastic irrigation tubing. In the passenger compartment, they found another piece of plastic irrigation tubing on the front passenger floorboard, a towel on the dashboard, one pair of green and white shorts on the backseat, two pairs of underwear briefs—one inside of the other—on the backseat, one pair of jeans on the floor in front of the driver's seat, a walking cane, and various other items.

Later, in a nearby cemetery, where some of Williams' family members were buried, law enforcement found the shovel that Williams had borrowed from his acquaintance in the days after the victim's disappearance. Tubing similar to that which was found in the victim's vehicle was found near the shovel. An expert in the field of trace evidence analysis testified that the tubing found at the cemetery appeared to have been stretched and had characteristics consistent with being connected to the piece of tubing that had been in the trunk.

Dr. Mohammad Amer, an expert in DNA profiling

, then testified regarding the scientific significance of these items. He testified that objects recovered from inside the trunk of the victim's vehicle contained blood stains that matched the victim. Specifically, on the carpeting of the trunk, Dr. Amer testified about a stain that "gave chemical indications for the presence of blood," which had a mixed DNA profile, with the major DNA profile of this stain matching the victim's profile. The other profile was indeterminate. The major DNA profile matching the victim had a frequency of occurrence for unrelated individuals of one in 620 quadrillion Caucasians, one in 45 quintillion African–Americans, and one in 170 quadrillion Southeastern Hispanics.

Dr. Amer testified that the spare tire cover also had a stain giving "chemical indications for the presence of blood" that had a partial DNA profile that matched the victim with statistical chances of the partial profile occurring in the population of one in 12 Caucasians, one in 31 African–Americans, and one in 10 Southeastern Hispanics. The spare tire locking device had four stains that gave "chemical indications for the presence of blood," three of which resulted in partial profiles matching the victim. In two of the stains, the statistical chances of finding the partial profile were one in 470 Caucasians, one in 1.7 billion African–Americans, and one in 290 million Southeastern Hispanics. In the third stain, the statistical chances of the profile being found in the population were one in 1 billion Caucasians, one in 4.1 billion African–Americans, and one in 500 million Southeastern Hispanics. There were also two stains inside the trunk lid, which both "gave chemical indications for the presence of blood" that matched the victim's DNA profile. In one of those stains, the frequency of occurrence of that DNA profile was one in 2 quadrillion. In the other stain, the frequency of occurrence was one in 310 quadrillion.

Dr. Amer also testified about various items found inside the interior of the victim's vehicle. He tested some of the items and found DNA that matched Williams' DNA profile. These items included the towel that was found on the dashboard, which contained Williams' complete DNA profile. The chances of this DNA profile occurring in the population were one in 2.5 quintillion Caucasians, one in 3.5 quintillion African–Americans, and one in 19 quintillion Southeastern Hispanics. Dr. Amer also tested the pair of green and white shorts found in the backseat, which contained a hair. The shorts contained cells with a partial profile matching Williams, with the chances of appearing in the population of one in 18 quadrillion, and the hair contained a partial profile matching Williams, with the chance of finding it in the population of one in 290,000.

Dr. Amer also testified regarding other items found in the interior of the vehicle that contained the DNA of both Williams and the victim. Specifically, these items were the pair of jeans that was found on the floor in front of the driver's seat and the two pairs of underwear briefs, which had been found...