Williams v. State, 61549

• Decision Date: 23 June 1983
• Docket Number: No. 61549,61549
• Parties: Freddie Lee WILLIAMS, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

Page 133

437 So.2d 133

Freddie Lee WILLIAMS, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. 61549.

Supreme Court of Florida.

June 23, 1983.

Rehearing Denied Sept. 29, 1983.

Charles A. Tabscott, Orlando, for appellant.

Jim Smith, Atty. Gen. and Richard W. Prospect, Asst. Atty. Gen., Daytona Beach, for appellee.

PER CURIAM.

Freddie Lee Williams appeals his conviction of first-degree murder and sentence of death. We have jurisdiction, article V, section 3(b)(1), Florida Constitution, and we affirm both the conviction and sentence.

The victim was Mary Robinson, Williams' longtime girlfriend. On the night of the murder, the victim went to her sister's house and there received a number of upsetting telephone calls from Williams. After these calls, the victim and her sister went to jai alai and returned to the Williams-Robinson apartment around eleven o'clock. The sister left; Williams soon arrived and shortly thereafter called the sister to report that something had happened to the victim. When the sister returned, the police were already present.

Earlier that evening, Williams had borrowed a neighbor's handgun, telling him that he was going gambling. He testified that he left the gun on the dresser in a bedroom at home when he went out and that upon his return, the victim staggered toward him, already shot. He called the police and an ambulance. He also testified he did not want the police to find the weapon in his possession since he was on parole; he thus went into the bedroom and took the pistol from the dresser and threw it outside under a bush.

The state's case revolved around long-standing domestic arguments between Williams and the victim and in particular Williams' anger over the victim's supposedly taking a shower that night, a sign he took to mean that the victim was cleaning up after being with a boyfriend.

After the conviction, the jury voted to recommend the death penalty. Upon finding two aggravating circumstances and nothing in mitigation, the trial court imposed a sentence of death.

Williams argues twelve issues on this appeal. We discuss only three; the remaining have been carefully considered and are found to be devoid of merit.

Williams first argues that the evidence is insufficient to support a verdict of first-degree murder. He asserts that the element that was not proved to the satisfaction of sufficiency of evidence standards was premeditation. He claims this is significant given the fact that there was no evidence of, nor did the prosecution argue, felony murder.

The proper role that this Court plays in capital cases has been enunciated in Tibbs v. State, 397 So.2d 1120 (Fla.1981), aff'd, 457 U.S. 31, 102 S.Ct. 2211, 72 L.Ed.2d 652 (1982). There we said that

an appellate court should not retry a case or reweigh conflicting evidence submitted to a jury or other trier of fact. Rather, the concern on appeal must be whether, after all conflicts in the evidence and all reasonable inferences therefrom have been resolved in favor of the verdict on appeal, there is substantial, competent evidence to support the verdict and judgment.

397 So.2d at 1123 (footnotes omitted). See also Spinkellink v. State, 313 So.2d 666 (Fla.1975), cert. denied, 428 U.S. 911, 96 S.Ct. 3227, 49 L.Ed.2d 1221 (1976). It is our function, then, to see if there is substantial, competent evidence to support this verdict. We find there is.

Resolving all conflicts in favor of the jury verdict, we find that the record is sufficient to find premeditation beyond a reasonable doubt. The jury was told that the telephone conversations between the victim and Williams were upsetting to the victim. There was evidence of a prior stormy relationship between the victim and Williams. And, most significantly, the jury was told that Williams borrowed a pistol that evening prior to the shooting and then complained to a friend that the victim was washing up after being with another man. We have stated elsewhere that

A premeditated design to effect the death of a human being is a fully formed and conscious purpose to take human life, formed upon reflection and deliberation, entertained in the mind before and at the time of the homicide. The law does not prescribe the precise period of time which must elapse between the formation of and the execution of the intent to take human life in order to render the design a premeditated one; it may exist only a few moments and yet be premeditated. If the design to take human life was formed a sufficient length of time before its execution to admit of some reflection and deliberation on the part of the party entertaining it, and the party at the time of the execution of the intent was fully conscious of a settled and fixed purpose to take the life of a human being, and of the consequence of carrying such purpose into execution, the intent or design would be premeditated within the meaning of the law although the execution followed closely upon formation of the intent.

McCutchen v. State, 96 So.2d 152, 153 (Fla.1957). We think that under the facts of the instant case, there clearly was sufficient time before the killing for Williams to have formed a premeditated design, and the borrowing of the gun and the statements made by Williams about his anger at the victim cleaning up bear this out.

This Court is not unmindful that "where the only proof of guilt is circumstantial, no matter how strongly the evidence may suggest guilt a conviction cannot be sustained unless the evidence is inconsistent with any reasonable hypothesis of innocence." McArthur v. State, 351 So.2d 972, 976 n. 12 (Fla.1977). See also Jaramillo v. State, 417 So.2d 257 (Fla.1982). At trial, the sole theory of defense was that the crime was committed by an unknown assailant. According to Williams, the victim was already wounded when he entered the apartment and he claimed he tried to help her. The state established by ballistics tests that the pistol Williams had borrowed was the murder weapon. The physical evidence presented at trial shows that Williams' story about an unknown murderer as well as the circumstances surrounding the disposal of the gun is clearly unreasonable. Williams did not present any reasonable hypothesis of innocence. The jury could properly conclude that Williams was not telling the truth and, given the evidence, that Williams' act represented premeditated murder.

Defense counsel in closing argument suggested that the evidence showed, at most, second-degree murder and that this killing could have been a domestic heat-of-passion murder. The jury could properly find otherwise based on what the evidence did not show. There was no evidence of any struggle or commotion or any facts which might suggest a confrontation of any physical or violent nature between the victim and Williams. Given the location of the victim crouching on the corner of the bed when she was shot, the presence of toothpaste and a toothbrush on the bed, and the fact that the gunshot wound was not suffered at close range, the jury could have found that Williams confronted the victim while she was brushing her teeth causing her to move to the bedroom. He then shot her once in the side of the neck while her head was turned away from him and while her arm was raised in a defensive posture. The fact that the victim was only shot once is not dispositive of lack of premeditation since, in this case, the wound was in the neck region and immediately caused massive and visible loss of spurting blood. While it was within the province of the jury to find second-degree murder in this case, despite appellant's claim of innocence, we cannot say that the evidence, including the physical facts, is such that the jury was precluded, as a matter of law, from finding first-degree murder.

We hold, then, that the jury could properly find the element of premeditation in this murder and that there was both substantial and competent evidence to support this.

Williams next argues that the trial court erred in refusing to give his instruction on circumstantial evidence. He relies on McCall v. State, 116 Fla. 179, 156 So. 325 (1934), overruled, State v. Anderson, 270 So.2d 353 (Fla.1972), as stated in Miller v. State, 403 So.2d 1014 (Fla. 5th DCA 1981), petition denied, 412 So.2d 468 (Fla.1982); Leavine v. State, 109 Fla. 447, 147 So. 897 (1933), overruled, State v. Anderson, 270 So.2d 353 (Fla.1972), as stated in Miller v. State, 403 So.2d 1014 (Fla. 5th DCA 1981), petition denied, 412 So.2d 468 (Fla.1982); Perez v. State, 371 So.2d 714 (Fla. 2d DCA 1979); Lee v. State, 362 So.2d 692 (Fla. 4th DCA 1978); and Newsome v. State, 355 So.2d 483 (Fla. 2d DCA 1978), disagreed with, Miller v. State, 403 So.2d 1014 (Fla. 5th DCA 1981), petition denied, 412 So.2d 468 (Fla.1982), for the proposition that an instruction on circumstantial evidence is required where the prosecution relies solely on circumstantial evidence to prove an essential element of the offense charged. We agree, but we also find that those cases precede our recent opinion revising the standard jury instructions. See In re Standard Jury Instructions in Criminal Cases, 431 So.2d 594 (Fla.1981). There we explicitly stated that the circumstantial evidence instruction is now unnecessary because the instructions on reasonable doubt and burden of proof are sufficient to properly instruct the jury and a separate instruction solely on circumstantial evidence would be duplicative.

Williams argues that the standard jury instructions are flexible guidelines and not inflexible rules and that the trial court still should have given the "old" circumstantial evidence instruction since circumstantial evidence was so prominent in this case. We appreciated this possibility when we noted in our jury instruction revision opinion that "[t]he elimination of the current standard instruction on circumstantial evidence does not totally prohibit such an instruction if a trial judge, in his or her discretion, feels that such...