McMillian v. State

94 So. 3d 572, 37 Fla. L. Weekly Supp. 429, 2012 WL 2428230, 2012 Fla. LEXIS 1259
CourtSupreme Court of Florida
DecidedJune 28, 2012
DocketNo. SC10-2168
StatusPublished
Cited by11 cases

This text of 94 So. 3d 572 (McMillian 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
McMillian v. State, 94 So. 3d 572, 37 Fla. L. Weekly Supp. 429, 2012 WL 2428230, 2012 Fla. LEXIS 1259 (Fla. 2012).

Opinion

PER CURIAM.

Justin Ryan McMillian appeals his conviction and sentence for the premeditated first-degree murder of Danielle Stubbs.1 For the reasons stated below, we affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

The defendant, Justin McMillian, and his victim, Danielle Stubbs, began dating in the spring of 2008. On Wednesday or Thursday, January 6 or 7, 2009, Stubbs moved from an apartment into a nearby townhouse on Pineverde Lane in Jacksonville. McMillian assisted Stubbs and her family with the move. Friday afternoon, Stubbs took McMillian and her mother to lunch at Olive Garden as a thank-you for helping with the move. There, McMillian told Stubbs’ mother that he and Stubbs were breaking up, that he was quitting his job, and that he was going back to Georgia spend time with and take care of his two children.

Saturday night, Stubbs left her town-home and drove to a coworker’s apartment so that the two could then be driven by Allen Morris, another coworker, to a beachside nightclub. At the nightclub, Stubbs consumed several alcoholic beverages, became intoxicated, and, at some point, had sexual intercourse with Morris in the back of Morris’ car.

Morris, Stubbs, and the coworker left the nightclub around 2:45 a.m. on Sunday, January 11. Morris first drove the coworker back to his apartment and had to stop a couple of times on the way to allow Stubbs to vomit. After dropping off the coworker, Morris drove Stubbs home because she was too inebriated to drive her own car. A few minutes from Stubbs’ townhouse, at around 3:30 a.m., Morris stopped to get Stubbs something to eat in an effort to settle her stomach. From there, he drove Stubbs to her townhome. Initially, and at Stubbs’ request, Morris drove down Stubbs’ street past her townhouse, and stopped for a few minutes to allow Stubbs to eat some food and to compose herself. Morris then dropped Stubbs off in front of her townhouse, watched her walk past McMillian’s Cadillac, which was backed into Stubbs’ driveway, and drove away after she waved. Other than the defendant, Morris was the last person to see Stubbs alive.

Stubbs had plans with her mother during the day Sunday. When Stubbs’ family could not reach her by phone throughout the morning and into Sunday afternoon, they became increasingly alarmed and began to actively search for her by calling around to her friends and going to her townhome and recently emptied apartment. At one point that morning, McMilli-an called Stubbs’ mother to say that he could not find Stubbs and to inquire as to whether the family knew where she was. That evening, McMillian called again to say that he still could not find Stubbs. Stubbs’ parents and younger brother eventually called the police Sunday evening to report Stubbs missing and then drove to her townhome. Upon arriving and finding the front door locked, Stubbs’ father and [575]*575brother went around to the back of the townhome while Stubbs’ mother waited at the front door.

Stubbs’ brother and father discovered that the sliding glass door at the rear of Stubbs’ townhome was unlocked. Stubbs’ brother immediately went inside, ran upstairs, and began screaming. Stubbs’ father went to the front door, unlocked the doorknob and the deadbolt, let his wife in, and went upstairs with her. There, they found Stubbs dead in a pool of blood. She had been shot through the arm and the top of the head. Stubbs’ parents immediately called 911 and were waiting outside when the police, who were already en route due to Stubbs’ parents’ earlier call to report Stubbs missing, arrived minutes later.

The police recovered several important pieces of evidence from Stubbs’ bedroom. An unfired .45 caliber cartridge was found on the floor just inside the doorway to Stubbs’ bedroom. Further inside Stubbs’ bedroom, at the foot of her bed and beside her dresser/TV stand, a fired .45 caliber shell casing was recovered. Another fired .45 caliber shell casing was recovered from the floor beside Stubbs’ body on the side of the bed furthest from the bedroom door. Stubbs’ bedding was bloodstained and had holes in it which were consistent with being caused by fired bullets. A fired .45 caliber bullet, later matched to McMillian’s pistol, was also found lying on top of Stubbs’ bedding.

Stubbs’ autopsy confirmed that Stubbs was shot once through the right arm and once in the top of the head and was alive when both shots were fired. The shot to the head likely would have immediately rendered Stubbs unconscious and likely would have killed her within seconds, though it is possible that she survived for as long as a couple of minutes. The bullet that killed Stubbs was recovered from her skull and was later matched to McMillian’s gun.

The day after the murder, McMillian called the Jacksonville Sheriffs Office (JSO) and said that his girlfriend had been found dead in her apartment and he wanted to speak with someone about her case. He also said that he had been in Georgia since 3 a.m. the morning of the murder.2 A detective called McMillian back shortly thereafter. In that conversation, McMilli-an stated that he had last seen Stubbs around 6 the night before the murder and had last spoken to her on the phone around 9 p.m., before she went out with her coworkers. McMillian also said that he was about to return to Jacksonville and would meet the detective at the station. When McMillian failed to show, the detective contacted a special task force to have him brought in.

Two days later, the task force saw McMillian and two other men leave a Jacksonville house in McMillian’s Cadillac. The task force followed McMillian, with an unmarked SUV initially leading several trailing task force vehicles. Shortly thereafter the lead was passed off from the SUV to a marked JSO K-9 unit so that a traffic stop could be initiated. Once the marked unit was behind McMillian, it turned on its lights and siren, but McMilli-an continued driving as though nothing were happening. After a short distance, McMillian turned onto a side street and abruptly stopped without pulling off the road. As McMillian was coming to a stop, the two passengers opened the passenger [576]*576side car doors and ran a short distance from the vehicle before going to the ground.

At this point, as the K-9 officer was getting out of his patrol car, McMillian exited his vehicle, reached behind his back, pulled a .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol, and began to fire at the K-9 officer. The K-9 officer exited his patrol car with his dog on its leash, leading him out the door. When he realized that McMillian was shooting at him, the K-9 officer took cover behind his door and deployed the K-9. However, because the K-9 was facing the wrong direction when deployed, it ran to the rear of the patrol car and engaged another task force member who had been in a trailing vehicle. The task force members returned fee at McMillian as he feed and fled from his car on foot. McMillian ran a short distance down the street and then ran between two houses, causing the task force members to lose sight of him. McMillian was found between those two houses, having collapsed due to multiple gunshot wounds.

Police recovered several pieces of evidence from the scene of the shootout, including McMillian’s semiautomatic .45 caliber Desert Eagle pistol, two .45 caliber bullets which struck the JSO K-9 patrol car in the driver’s side headlight and in the driver’s door, an unfeed .45 cartridge, and spent .45 shell casings.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
94 So. 3d 572, 37 Fla. L. Weekly Supp. 429, 2012 WL 2428230, 2012 Fla. LEXIS 1259, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/mcmillian-v-state-fla-2012.