Barry Trynell Davis, Jr. v. State of Florida

217 So. 3d 1006, 42 Fla. L. Weekly Supp. 558, 2017 WL 1954979, 2017 Fla. LEXIS 1055
CourtSupreme Court of Florida
DecidedMay 11, 2017
DocketSC15-1794
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 217 So. 3d 1006 (Barry Trynell Davis, Jr. v. State of Florida) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Barry Trynell Davis, Jr. v. State of Florida, 217 So. 3d 1006, 42 Fla. L. Weekly Supp. 558, 2017 WL 1954979, 2017 Fla. LEXIS 1055 (Fla. 2017).

Opinion

PER CURIAM.

Barry Trynell Davis, Jr., appeals his convictions and sentences of death for the murders of John Gregory Hughes and Heidi Ann Rhodes. We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. For the reasons that follow, we affirm Davis’s convictions but vacate the sentences of death and remand for a new penalty phase pursuant to Hurst v. State (Hurst), 202 So.3d 40 (Fla. 2016), petition for cert. filed, No.16-998 (U.S. Feb. 13, 2017), due to the jury’s nonunanimous recommendations of death for both victims, which are not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.

FACTS AND BACKGROUND

The murders occurred on May 7, 2012. At the time of the murders, Davis was twenty-six years old and had one child, Andreian (“Drey”), with Tiffani Steward, his on-and-off girlfriend of several years.

The victims, John Gregory Hughes and Heidi Ann Rhodes, were last seen on May 7, 2012. Hughes was forty-nine years old. Rhodes was almost forty-one years old. Rhodes’ dog, Molly, who went almost everywhere with Rhodes, was also missing. At the time of their disappearance, Hughes and Rhodes had been dating for approximately one year. The victims lived together in Hughes’ house in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, although Rhodes also rented another property.

Davis and Hughes knew each other from previously being incarcerated at the same time. According to witnesses, the two stayed in contact after them independent releases. Davis sold drugs to Hughes.

On May 9, 2012, Rhodes’ employer, Ray Webb, became concerned about Rhodes’ well-being after she did not show up for an appointment. Webb drove to Hughes’ house and Rhodes’ house and found no one at either place. There was no sign of Molly *1009 at either house. Webb, however, noticed “a lot of cleaning materials, buckets and mops and things sitting in the edge of the driveway” of Hughes’ house.

A few days later, Webb reported Rhodes missing. At Webb’s request, the Walton County Sheriffs Office (WCSO) went to Hughes’ house to conduct a welfare check on Rhodes. WCSO found no persons or vehicles present, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

WCSO then received a missing-persons report from Rhodes’ sister, Cecaire McPherson. Rhodes’ family had become worried when Rhodes did not contact her mother on Mother’s Day. WCSO conducted welfare checks on Rhodes at both Rhodes’ house, which appeared to be in a normal, lived-in condition, and Hughes’ house, which appeared to be empty. When the welfare checks did not locate Hughes or Rhodes, WCSO initiated missing-person investigations.

Rhodes’ sisters also went to Rhodes’ house and Hughes’ house looking for the victims. Both houses were vacant, and Rhodes’ mailbox was completely filled. When they looked inside Hughes’ house, they saw a commercial mop bucket in the middle of the living room floor. The only furniture in Hughes’ house was a pool table, and it looked like the TV had been pulled off the wall. Hughes’ 2003 Cadillac Escalade EXT was not visible on the property.

Officers were led to Davis as a person of interest in Hughes’ and Rhodes’ disappearance through a series of transactions on Hughes’ bank card and several checks written to the order of Davis from Hughes’ bank account. When asked about Hughes’ disappearance in a series of interviews, Davis told officers that Hughes paid him to load Hughes’ furniture into a rental truck and to later clean and manage Hughes’ residential property. Daws stated that (1) he last saw Hughes and Rhodes when they left Hughes’ house in the rental truck full of furniture, though he did not know where Hughes moved or how to contact him; (2) he remembered Hughes saying that he was moving to Barbados to hide from people to whom he owed money for drugs; 1 and (3) Molly no longer belonged to Rhodes.

On June 18, 2012, officers executed a search warrant on a storage unit at Free-port Storage that Davis and Donna Gee, Davis’s friend, were renting. Inside the storage unit, officers found four barstools that belonged to Hughes. 2 Also that day, investigators interviewed Cecil Galloway, Davis’s friend, who said he had helped Davis move furniture out of a house in Santa Rosa Beach. Galloway did not remember seeing a male owner or female at the house but remembered that, when he arrived, “the dressers [in the house] were already emptied,” although “the house appeared to have everything in it.” According to Galloway, everything in the house was loaded into a yellow Ryder pick-up truck in about three hours.

On July 10, 2012, officers executed a search warrant on Davis’s home in Argyle, Florida, 3 looking for Hughes’ Regions Bank debit card, which they did not find. Later that day, Davis was arrested for grand theft of Hughes’ vehicle and credit *1010 card fraud related to use of Hughes’ bank card.

While Davis was in jail, law enforcement officers interviewed Steward several times. However, she was not forthcoming with information. On September 25, 2012, Davis was released from jail. Following his release, Davis and Steward moved from Argyle to Destín, Florida and rented for several months a house referred to as “the Grand Key Loop house.”

In October 2012, WCSO found Hughes’ Escalade, which had been reported stolen, parked in the back of Kenneth Ingram’s property in DeFuniak Springs, Florida, covered by a tarp. Ingram told officers that Davis had asked to park the Escalade on his property. Upon searching the Esca-lade, officers discovered that the back bench seat was missing, and the back carpet had been roughly cut out. The carpet remaining inside the Escalade had bleach stains, and the interior was covered in mold. Cadaver dogs used in law enforcement’s investigation detected human remains inside the Escalade. Galloway stated that he last saw the vehicle at Davis’s home in Argyle, where he helped Davis remove the seat and carpet, which Galloway remembered being moist. According to Galloway, when he asked Davis why they were removing the seat and carpet from the Escalade, Davis said that a body had been in the vehicle. Galloway also reported seeing remnants of burnt carpet at Davis’s home in Argyle. Likewise, Steward recalled Davis burning the back seat of the Escalade at his home in Argyle.

On November 12, 2012, Steward met in secret with Investigator Armstrong at her and Davis’s previous home. Eventually, the interview was relocated to the sheriffs office, where Chief Assistant State Attorney Greg Anchors and Steward’s attorney were also present. After the interview, Armstrong arrested Steward under a warrant for dealing in stolen property and took her to jail.

The next day, Steward, with her attorney, met with the State Attorney and recounted the entire story of what she witnessed on May 7, 2012, and the weeks following, Steward was told she would be given immunity for testifying against Davis. While Steward had previously withheld information from law enforcement as to the details of what happened that night, she was the only witness, other than Davis, who could recount at trial what happened at Hughes’ house that night.

Steward testified at trial that, on May 7, 2012, Davis was on his way to Hughes’ house when he stopped to see Steward.

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Bluebook (online)
217 So. 3d 1006, 42 Fla. L. Weekly Supp. 558, 2017 WL 1954979, 2017 Fla. LEXIS 1055, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/barry-trynell-davis-jr-v-state-of-florida-fla-2017.