Williams v. State, No. SC08-965 (Fla. 5/20/2010)

• Decision Date: 20 May 2010
• Docket Number: No. SC08-965.,SC08-965.
• Parties: KIRK DOUGLAS WILLIAMS, Appellant, v. STATE OF FLORIDA, Appellee.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

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KIRK DOUGLAS WILLIAMS, Appellant, v. STATE OF FLORIDA, Appellee.

No. SC08-965.

Supreme Court of Florida.

May 20, 2010.

An Appeal from the Circuit Court in and for Walton County, Kelvin C. Wells, Judge — Case No. 06CF000788.

Nancy A. Daniels, Public Defender, and Nada M. Carey, Assistant Public Defender, Second Judicial Circuit, Tallahassee, Florida, for Appellant.

Bill McCollum, Attorney General, and Stephen R. White, Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, Florida, for Appellee.

PER CURIAM.

This case is before the Court on appeal from a judgment of conviction of first-degree murder and a sentence of death. This Court has mandatory jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. The defendant raises issues related only to the penalty phase: specifically, the trial court's findings of multiple aggravating factors and the trial court's failure to find uncontroverted statutory mitigation.

Williams is unquestionably guilty of first-degree murder and does not challenge his conviction.¹ As to the imposition of the death sentence, we conclude that this crime is not one of the most aggravated and least mitigated of murders to qualify for the ultimate penalty—death. Rather than a carefully planned murder, the evidence demonstrates that this murder occurred after an argument erupted with the victim, with whom Williams lived. For the reasons fully explained in this opinion, we vacate the death sentence and remand the case for the imposition of a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

The Guilt Phase

Kirk Douglas Williams, who was twenty-eight years old at the time of the crime, was convicted of one count of first-degree murder for the murder of Susan Littrell Dykes. Williams had been living with Dykes for a period of time prior to her murder. The murder occurred some time between the late afternoon hours of Tuesday, October 3, 2006, and the early morning hours of Wednesday, October 4, 2006.

Williams was unemployed at the time and had a long history of substance abuse. He was on a crack cocaine binge during the period leading up to the crime and following the crime. In the early morning hours of Tuesday, October 3, 2006, Williams used Dykes's ATM card to make the following withdrawals: $100 at 12:12 a.m., $100 at 1:49 a.m., $100 at 4:49 a.m., and $200 at 6:06 a.m. These withdrawals left Dykes's account $294.65 overdrawn. Evidence was presented that when Williams made these withdrawals, he was driving Dykes's vehicle. He had used Dykes's vehicle on several occasions over the past months and, at the time of the murder, had no working vehicle of his own.

At 5:12 a.m. that same morning, before the last withdrawal from the bank account, Williams purchased the following items from Walmart: a safety hasp,² a brass lock, a sponge, and a "ring light." A hasp similar to the hasp that Williams purchased was found on the inside of the back door of Dykes's trailer after the murder. However, the evidence presented at trial did not conclusively establish that the hasp and lock were the same hasp and lock purchased by Williams on October 3.

The morning of October 3, Dykes went to work as a security officer. She called the main office of her employer at 9:30 a.m. to report that she had arrived at the remote job site and to express concern about whether her employment would continue. In the late afternoon of October 3, Dykes visited her landlord to reimburse him for a water bill that he had paid. This was the last time that Dykes was seen alive by any of the witnesses testifying at trial. Dykes did not show up to work the next day.

Williams spent a large part of the day and evening of October 3 with Callie Williams, using Callie's car to drive around.³ Although not living together, Williams and Callie were married and had a child together.⁴ Callie testified that she and Williams were together on October 3 from around noon until 9 p.m. They went to the junkyard to get a fuel pump for Williams's car and smoked crack cocaine. Callie testified that they also went somewhere else that she could not remember. Williams dropped her off at her house at 9 p.m.

She saw Williams again about an hour later at 10 p.m. when he brought more crack cocaine to her house, which they smoked. He drove Dykes's car and parked it near the house. Then, he left to obtain more drugs. A short period of time later, he came back a final time with more crack cocaine, which they smoked, and he stayed until 4:45 a.m. on Wednesday, October 4. During this last visit, he was wearing different clothing than before. Additionally, instead of parking near the house, he parked in the woods some distance away.

As to the actual circumstances of the crime, the State presented three jailhouse inmates, who testified regarding admissions Williams made to them. The first, William Hawley, spoke to Williams at the jail. Williams asked Hawley if he knew anything about death penalty cases and showed Hawley the State's notice of its intent to seek the death penalty. Williams then explained to Hawley that "he was on a crack cocaine binge and that he was using and abusing [Dykes's] A.T.M. or credit cards" and that "he had a warrant for his arrest and that [Dykes] threatened to turn him in on the warrant because he was using and abusing the cards." Dykes also threatened to press charges against him for using her ATM cards. Williams "said that they got into a physical confrontation over it; that he beat her with a baseball bat and she died." Williams told Hawley that "he had been to prison twice before and knew he didn't want to go back to prison and he had to kill her."

The second inmate to testify was Billie Franklin Shirah, II. While incarcerated at the Walton County Jail, Shirah spoke about his wife to Williams; Shirah was angry at his wife and told Williams that he felt like killing her. Williams responded: "You don't want to do that. . . . You don't know what it's like; what you have to live with, not being able to sleep or anything, when you kill someone." Shirah asked what Williams was talking about. Shirah explained Williams's response as follows: "And he told me, he said, that Dykes woman. He told me she was coming in with $80 worth of crack every day; he didn't know where she was getting it from. And he told me he was on drugs and told me he killed her with a ball bat for the drugs." When asked on cross-examination whether the extent of what Williams admitted was "I killed her because of that crack cocaine," Shirah answered in the affirmative.

The third and final inmate to testify was Joseph Dewayne Cordell. He and Williams slept in the same cell at the Walton County Jail. Williams relayed the following account of the murder to Cordell: Williams and Dykes were at a friend's house. They had bought pot and crack and were smoking pot. They were going to smoke the crack, but then Dykes refused and they started arguing because she was not going to give him any crack. They were asked to leave, so they went to Dykes's house. Dykes confronted Williams about using her ATM card or bank account and said she was not going to smoke crack with him. While they were arguing, they knocked over some tools, and there was a bat. Williams picked up the bat and hit her in the head with it.

The three inmates were consistent in describing a confrontation and a beating death with a bat. Their testimony was inconsistent about the motive for the murder and whether Williams killed Dykes to avoid going to prison, as Hawley stated, over crack cocaine, as Shirah testified, or over whether they were going to smoke crack cocaine together, as Cordell testified.

Dykes's body was discovered on Saturday, October 7 floating in a nearby lake in a badly decomposed state. Her body was found tied to three cinderblocks—one attached to her chest, one attached to her waist, and one attached to her feet. All of the cinderblocks were tied to the body with a flat, thin nylon rope of the brand Nefco Incorporated, with the words "1,800 LB MULETAPE" stamped on it. A piece of the same type of rope was also tied through her mouth and around the back of her head with no cinderblock attached to it.

Investigators observed the following at Dykes's trailer. The back door of the trailer's locking mechanism was flimsy and easily pried open, but the door was additionally secured with a hasp and lock; the front door was securely locked and did not have a hasp and lock on it. Inside the trailer, investigators found blood in the master bedroom and a small aluminum tee ball bat inside the closet in the master bedroom, which had blood on it later identified as belonging to Dykes.⁵

As to the manner in which Dykes died, the medical examiner, Dr. Cameron Francis Snider, testified to five injuries consistent with the head being struck by the aluminum tee ball bat. The medical examiner was unable to testify without speculating about whether Dykes remained conscious after the first blow with the bat and further stated that any of the blows could have caused unconsciousness and death.

There was extensive evidence introduced at trial about Williams's post-murder attempts to cover up the crime by cleaning up the crime scene and disposing of the body in the lake. In particular, Williams was seen by two of Dykes's neighbors at around 6 or 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday, October 4, driving Dykes's car with a flat-bottom aluminum boat tied to the top. The boat was later identified as belonging to Callie's father. The aluminum boat, more of the same brand of rope that was found on the body and cinderblocks were found at Dykes's trailer. A pair of Dykes's jeans with her blood on them was found in a clothes hamper in the master bedroom. Williams also apparently attempted to use carpet cleaner to clean up blood in the master bedroom of the trailer. Finally, as to Williams's actions after the murder, Williams called Callie from jail on October 8 and asked her to go to Dykes's trailer,...