Hayes v. State

581 So. 2d 121, 1991 WL 83561
CourtSupreme Court of Florida
DecidedMay 23, 1991
Docket75040
StatusPublished
Cited by34 cases

This text of 581 So. 2d 121 (Hayes v. State) 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
Hayes v. State, 581 So. 2d 121, 1991 WL 83561 (Fla. 1991).

Opinion

581 So.2d 121 (1991)

Tony Leon HAYES, Appellant,
v.
STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. 75040.

Supreme Court of Florida.

May 23, 1991.
Rehearing Denied July 8, 1991.

*122 James B. Gibson, Public Defender and Christopher S. Quarles, Asst. Public Defender, Daytona Beach, for appellant.

Robert A. Butterworth, Atty. Gen. and Barbara C. Davis, Asst. Atty. Gen., Daytona Beach, for appellee.

PER CURIAM.

Tony Leon Hayes appeals from his convictions of first-degree murder and other offenses, and the imposition of the sentence of death.[1] We affirm.

Evidence showed that on July 20, 1988 in Daytona Beach, Hayes and his friends, Nathan Watson and Anthony Gillam, conspired to rob and shoot a taxicab driver. The jury heard firsthand accounts of the crime from Watson and Gillam, both of whom testified after pleading guilty to second-degree murder and armed robbery. According to their testimony, Hayes, Watson, and Gillam spent the evening drinking beer and consuming cocaine and marijuana. At some point that evening they walked to the Bethune Cookman College campus where they discussed finding ways to raise money to buy more cocaine. Gillam proposed that they rob a taxicab driver. Hayes pointed out that they would have to shoot the driver because taxicab drivers are known to carry guns. When the others were reluctant, Hayes volunteered to do the shooting. They borrowed a .25-caliber handgun from a friend of Gillam and walked to the Greyhound bus station. Hayes told the others that Watson would sit in the front with the driver while he and Gillam sit in the back. Then, Hayes would have the driver turn onto a street he knew, at which time he would shoot the driver and Watson would seize control of the car.

When they arrived at the bus station shortly before midnight, Hayes phoned for a taxicab. A cab arrived a few minutes later, driven by the victim, Thomas Pabst. As they had planned, Watson sat beside the driver, Hayes sat behind the driver, and *123 Gillam sat next to Hayes. During the ride, Hayes shot Pabst in the back of the neck. The shot severed his spinal cord, probably rendering Pabst unconscious immediately and causing his death within seconds or minutes. The taxi careened off the road and came to a halt when it tore through some bushes and struck a tree in the back yard of a nearby home. Gillam and Watson attempted to wipe off fingerprints from the taxi[2] while Hayes pulled Pabst's body out of the car and went through his pockets, taking about forty dollars in cash before they fled. Hayes and Watson ran off together in one direction and Gillam ran off another way.

Other witnesses testified that they saw Watson and Hayes at the scene of the crime. Furthermore, two sisters, one of whom had dated Hayes, testified that Hayes acknowledged involvement in the crime, and one of the sisters said Hayes admitted he was the one who shot Pabst.

In the penalty phase, uncontroverted evidence showed that Hayes, eighteen at the time of the murder, was the product of a neglectful, abusive, and deprived environment. His father deserted him during infancy, and his stepfather physically abused him from the age of thirteen or fourteen until Hayes managed to leave home permanently a year or two later. His mother neglected him as a child, leaving him alone for days or weeks at a time, forcing him to virtually raise himself. During one period of his childhood, Hayes was forced to sleep in abandoned cars or on park benches.

A clinical psychologist, Dr. Malcolm Graham, testified that Hayes had been a heavy drinker since the age of fifteen and experienced multiple blackouts and memory loss. Dr. Graham described Hayes as immature and functionally illiterate with the reading, spelling, and arithmetic skills of a five-year-old child. His IQ of seventy-four placed him in the borderline range of intellectual ability, and he had poor judgment skills. Dr. Graham found that Hayes suffers from central nervous system dysfunction, particularly in the left parietal and central lobes of the brain, the areas that typically deal with reading, writing, spelling, and arithmetic. Hayes began heavily consuming alcohol on a regular basis at the age of fifteen, drinking as much as three and one-half six packs of beer and a fifth of "Mad Dog 20-20" each day for three years prior to the murder. In addition to the alcohol, Hayes had been smoking on the average of five marijuana cigarettes a day for three years, plus periodic consumption of cocaine. Nonetheless, Hayes never received any counseling or rehabilitative treatment. Dr. Graham said drug use coupled with low intellectual functioning and central nervous system dysfunction combine to increase the probability of aggressive behavior. In Dr. Graham's opinion, Hayes's ability to conform his conduct to the requirements of law was impaired on the day of the crime due to drugs and alcohol, although it is unclear as to how much alcohol and drugs were consumed in the few hours immediately preceding the murder. Additionally, he believed that Hayes knew the difference between right and wrong when the crime occurred. Hayes does not suffer from any serious emotional disturbance and would be able to stabilize and perform very specific kinds of manual labor if he is kept free of drugs and alcohol, Dr. Graham concluded.

Hayes was convicted of first-degree murder, armed robbery with a firearm, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, and conspiracy to commit armed robbery. The jury recommended death by an eleven-to-one vote. The trial court imposed the death sentence, finding in aggravation that (1) the murder was cold, calculated, and premeditated without any legal or moral justification;[3] and (2) merging as one circumstance the aggravating circumstances of murder committed for pecuniary gain[4] and murder committed while engaged in an *124 armed robbery.[5] The only statutory mitigating circumstance found was Hayes's age, which the court deemed to be "a minor mitigating factor."[6] As to nonstatutory mitigating circumstances, the court found that Hayes is of low intelligence; he is developmentally learning disabled; and he is the product of a deprived environment.

I. GUILT PHASE

Hayes raises seven issues in the guilt phase of his trial, only some of which merit discussion.[7] Initially, Hayes argues that two points of identification evidence should not have been admitted. First, we address his claim that the trial court erred in admitting an out-of-court statement identifying codefendant Nathan Watson at the scene of the crime. Witness Bruce Hayes (no relation to appellant) was driving in the neighborhood with his thirteen-year-old son, Sedrick, when they saw the taxi crash. As they watched the men flee the crash, Sedrick said "daddy, that's Nay-Nay and them." (Bruce and Sedrick Hayes knew Nathan Watson by the name "Nay-Nay.") Bruce Hayes then contacted Detective Greg Smith and described what he and Sedrick had seen. When Smith went out to investigate that night, he questioned appellant because the detective knew that appellant and Watson were close friends who spent a lot of time together.

Sedrick's identification of Watson was introduced through Bruce Hayes. Appellant objected to the admissibility of Sedrick's out-of-court statement solely on the ground that it was hearsay. The state argued the evidence was admissible because "a specific exception to the hearsay rule, identification of a witness is not hearsay, [or] is excepted" under the Florida Evidence Code. The trial court overruled Hayes's objection.

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Bluebook (online)
581 So. 2d 121, 1991 WL 83561, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/hayes-v-state-fla-1991.