Spann v. State

857 So. 2d 845, 2003 WL 1740646
CourtSupreme Court of Florida
DecidedApril 3, 2003
DocketSC00-1498
StatusPublished
Cited by61 cases

This text of 857 So. 2d 845 (Spann 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
Spann v. State, 857 So. 2d 845, 2003 WL 1740646 (Fla. 2003).

Opinion

857 So.2d 845 (2003)

Anthony A. SPANN, Appellant,
v.
STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. SC00-1498.

Supreme Court of Florida.

April 3, 2003.
Rehearing Denied October 16, 2003.

*849 Robert A. Norgard, Special Public Defender, Bartow, FL, for Appellant.

Charles J. Crist, Jr., Attorney General, and Melanie A. Dale, Assistant Attorney General, West Palm Beach, FL, for Appellee.

PER CURIAM.

We have on appeal a judgment for first-degree murder and a sentence of death. We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. For the reasons expressed below, we affirm both the conviction for first-degree murder and the sentence of death.

Factual and Procedural History

On November 13, 1997, Anthony Spann (Spann) drove his blue Subaru as the getaway car for the robbery of a pawn shop. Leonard Philmore (Philmore) and Sophia Hutchins (Hutchins) robbed the pawn shop. They took handguns and jewelry, but little or no money. That evening, Spann, Philmore, and two women, Keyontra Cooper (Cooper) and Toya Stevenson (Stevenson), spent the night in a local motel.

The next morning, on November 14, 1997, while the four were still at the motel, Cooper's friend paged her to tell her that police were looking for Philmore. Spann and Philmore decided to leave town and planned to rob a bank for the money to do so. They planned to use the Subaru as the getaway car from the bank robbery. Since they assumed police would be looking for the Subaru, they planned to carjack a different vehicle to use as transportation to leave town. They specifically targeted a woman for the carjacking to make it easier, and then planned to kill her so that she could not identify them later.

At about noon, Spann and Philmore took Cooper and Stevenson home to get ready to leave town. Spann and Philmore then went to a shopping mall to search for a victim. When their attempts failed, they went to what Spann described as "a nice neighborhood" where they spotted a gold Lexus with a woman driver. They followed her to a residence. When she pulled into the driveway, Philmore approached her, asked to use her cell phone, then forced her back into the car at gunpoint.

Philmore rode in the Lexus with the victim, Kazue Perron, and Spann followed in the Subaru. The victim was nervous and crying. She offered Philmore her jewelry, which he took and then later threw away because he was afraid it would get him in trouble. They drove down an isolated road, and when they stopped, Spann motioned to Philmore, a motion which Philmore understood to mean that he should kill the woman. Philmore told the victim to go to the edge of a canal, but according to him, the woman instead came toward him. Philmore testified that he shot her in the forehead using a gun he had stolen the day before from the pawn shop. Philmore picked up the victim's body and threw it into the canal, and got blood on his shirt.

Philmore and Spann left together in the Subaru to rob a bank. In the car, Philmore took off his bloody t-shirt, which was later recovered by police, and put on Spann's t-shirt. Philmore went into the bank, grabbed approximately one thousand dollars cash from the hand of a customer at the counter, and got back into the passenger's side of the blue Subaru. As planned, Spann and Philmore abandoned the Subaru and picked up the Lexus. They then went to pick up Cooper and Stevenson.

Stevenson testified that between 2:30 and 3:00 that afternoon, Spann and Philmore *850 picked her up in the Lexus. They picked up Cooper, then headed back to Sophia Hutchins' house. Stevenson and Cooper questioned Philmore and Spann about the car and they were told not to worry about it.

Before they reached Hutchins' house, at around 3:15 p.m., Officer Willie Smith, who was working undercover for the West Palm Beach Police Department, saw Spann driving the gold Lexus. Smith knew Spann had an outstanding warrant so he signaled surveillance officers, who began to pursue him. Spann tried to outdrive the police and a chase began at speeds of up to 130 miles per hour through a residential neighborhood. They drove onto the interstate, and the police lost Spann. Eventually the Lexus blew a tire and went off the road at the county line. A motorcyclist saw the Lexus drive off the road and four people get out and run into an orange grove. The motorcyclist called 911 on his cell phone.

The grove owner was working with a hired hand that day trapping hogs in the grove. He saw people come into the grove from the road and later identified one of the men as Spann. The grove owner heard a helicopter overhead and saw that the men had guns. He told them to hide in the creek brush, then he called 911. The grove owner met troopers by the road and helped search for Spann and the others. Six hours after the manhunt began, Spann, Philmore, Cooper and Stevenson were found in the grove. Days later, the grove owner found a gun and beeper in the water near the creek brush where the four were hiding. Police recovered a second gun in the same water.

Spann and Philmore were both indicted on the charge of first-degree murder, but their trials were severed. Spann was also indicted for the crimes of conspiracy to commit robbery with a deadly weapon, carjacking with a deadly weapon, kidnapping, robbery with a deadly weapon, and grand theft. Philmore was tried first and convicted of first-degree murder. See Philmore v. State, 820 So.2d 919 (Fla. 2002), cert. denied, 537 U.S. 895, 123 S.Ct. 179, 154 L.Ed.2d 162 (2002). Before his sentencing phase trial, Philmore testified for the State against Spann. Philmore was eventually sentenced to death and the conviction and sentence were affirmed on appeal. See id.

As for Spann, the jury returned verdicts of guilty on each count, including the first-degree murder of Kazue Perron. Spann waived both the presentation of mitigating evidence and a jury advisory recommendation. The trial court conducted hearings on these matters, found that Spann's decision was made knowingly and intelligently, and discharged the jury. Defense counsel proffered evidence in mitigation, and the State presented three witnesses in support of certain aggravating circumstances. The parties filed sentencing memoranda, and the trial court conducted a Spencer[1] hearing. The trial court then sentenced Spann to death for first-degree murder; fifteen years for conspiracy to commit robbery with a deadly weapon; life for carjacking; life for kidnapping; life for robbery with a deadly weapon; and five years for grand theft. Spann now appeals, raising seven issues not including our required proportionality review. The issues are restated as follows: (1) whether the trial court erred in admitting expert testimony as to handwriting identification because the expert testimony does not satisfy the test set forth in Frye v. United States, 293 F. 1013 (D.C.Cir.1923); (2) whether the trial court *851 failed to adequately follow the procedures required for granting a defendant's request to waive mitigation as set forth in Koon v. Dugger,

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Bluebook (online)
857 So. 2d 845, 2003 WL 1740646, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/spann-v-state-fla-2003.