Wolfe v. State

34 So. 3d 227, 2010 Fla. App. LEXIS 6559, 2010 WL 1881095
CourtDistrict Court of Appeal of Florida
DecidedMay 12, 2010
Docket4D07-4555
StatusPublished

This text of 34 So. 3d 227 (Wolfe v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court of Appeal of Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Wolfe v. State, 34 So. 3d 227, 2010 Fla. App. LEXIS 6559, 2010 WL 1881095 (Fla. Ct. App. 2010).

Opinion

STEVENSON, J.

A jury convicted Michael Wolfe of the first-degree murder of David Jackson, and the trial court adjudicated him guilty and sentenced him to life in prison. On appeal, Wolfe argues that the trial court erred in overruling certain defense objections during his trial. We disagree and affirm Wolfe’s judgment of conviction and sentence.

The narrative which follows is recounted from the testimony at trial most in harmony with the jury’s verdict. Sometime around 1983, the victim, nineteen-year-old Jackson, met Barbara Britton. She became pregnant, and the couple married. Barbara continued to live with her parents though, and after she gave birth to their son, Jackson continually had to fight for visitation. Eventually, they divorced. In June 1987, Barbara met and married the defendant, Michael Wolfe, and they moved from Broward County to Arizona with the baby. In November 1987, Jackson and his friend, Alvaro Bracho, visited Barbara and the baby in Arizona.

Subsequently, Jackson was awarded visitation in Florida during the second and third week of July 1988. Jackson told his mother, Judy Carlson, that he wanted to get back together with Barbara. On June 25, 1988, prior to Barbara and the baby’s scheduled arrival in South Florida, Carlson called her son at 8 p.m. His roommate, Bracho, explained that Jackson had received a phone call from a woman, showered, borrowed a couple of dollars, and said he would be back later. Carlson never heard back from her son, and he neither went to work the next day, nor picked his brother up from the airport as planned.

Bracho and Carlson reported Jackson missing. On September 22, 1988, police recovered Jackson’s car at the Fort Laud-erdale airport. It had been there for only thirty-five days, even though Jackson had been missing for eighty-eight. No fingerprints were found in the car, but officers recovered a six-pack of Heineken with one beer missing and a box of bullets. Jackson owned several guns and always kept one in his bedroom and one in his car. The gun he was known to keep under the front seat of his ear has never been recovered.

*230 During the summer of 1989, a construction worker, building a Wal-Mart in Bro-ward County, discovered some bones and notified the police. The medical examiner determined the bones were human, so officers returned to the scene and recovered an additional twenty-one bones. The bones did not show any sign of trauma, and did not have any sufficient identifying factors, especially because a skull was never found.

In 2003, police contacted Carlson regarding Jackson’s cold case. Carlson supplied them with a letter written by Jackson to a friend named Sue five days before he went missing. In Jackson’s letter to Sue, he mentioned Barbara’s impending visit and his hope that they would get back together. Carlson also provided the officers with a DNA sample, which was used to match the bones discovered at the Wal-Mart construction site to her son. There was only a six in 10,000 chance this match was a coincidence.

After identifying the bones, the missing persons unit recommenced investigating the case. Wolfe had adopted Jackson’s son after his disappearance, but in 1993, Wolfe and Barbara divorced. In 2003, Wolfe lived in Ohio. Pembroke Pines officers traveled to his home, and though Wolfe was not there, he voluntarily met the officers at the local police station the next day. While at the station, Wolfe wrote a letter, explaining that three months before Jackson disappeared, Barbara, the baby, and he visited Barbara’s parents in South Florida. Barbara’s parents lived approximately two miles from the Wal-Mart. Wolfe and Barbara’s father, Harry, went for a walk, and Harry expressed concern about allegations that Jackson abused the baby. Harry suggested that Jackson “should be gone.” Wolfe, unsure if Harry was serious, advised that the park they were in would be a good spot to dispose of a body due to salt in the sand. Wolfe suggested using Barbara as bait to lure Jackson to a place where Harry could use a small caliber gun, a .22, to shoot Jackson in the head once or twice. Wolfe explained that he did not know if Harry would listen, and when Barbara and the baby returned to Florida the week of Jackson’s disappearance, there was no mention to Wolfe of any foul play. According to Wolfe, Barbara and the baby had simply gone to South Florida before the scheduled July visitation in order to see Barbara’s parents.

Upon further investigation, police learned Wolfe had been a military police officer in the air force, and twenty-one days before Jackson’s disappearance, he obtained a federal firearms license. His gun sales records reflected he had sold a firearm to Nancy Graham. Graham, who resided in Alabama in 2003, was contacted by police and explained that she had been married to Wolfe from 1993 to 1998. Prior to divorcing, Barbara and Wolfe moved from Arizona back to South Florida. After they split, Wolfe met Graham and began living with her in Fort Lauderdale. One night, while sitting on the patio drinking alcohol, Wolfe mentioned to Graham that his son’s biological father, Jackson, had gone missing. He stated that Barbara and her father had come up with a plan to get rid of Jackson because Jackson had been abusing the baby. Wolfe went along with the plan, and he and Barbara flew from Arizona to Fort Lauderdale under assumed names, using other people’s identification cards. Then, Barbara contacted Jackson and asked him to meet her at a motel, but not tell anyone she was in town. Wolfe was in the motel bathroom, drunk. When Jackson arrived, Wolfe shot him in the head twice. Barbara and Harry cleaned up; then, Wolfe and Harry took Jackson’s car to the airport. Next, Wolfe and Harry took Jackson’s body to a lot and *231 buried him. Subsequently, Harry learned about construction of a Wal-Mart at that site, so Wolfe and Barbara again flew from Arizona to Florida, and Wolfe and Harry dug up the bones and put them in the trashcans outside Harry’s home.

Based on Graham’s statement, an arrest warrant issued for Wolfe. When arrested during a traffic stop in Ohio, Wolfe replied, “I’m f****d.” The story was on the news, and Carol Larson, Wolfe’s wife of twelve years before he met Barbara, learned about Wolfe’s arrest. She contacted officers and explained that several years after Wolfe and Barbara divorced, she was attending nursing school outside of Orlando, and Wolfe contacted her. This was during the time Wolfe lived with Graham. One night, while drinking, Wolfe confessed to killing Barbara’s ex-husband in a motel room by twice shooting him in the head.

Wolfe was indicted for first-degree murder. At trial, he testified that only Barbara and the baby were in Florida on the days surrounding Jackson’s disappearance. He denied confessing to Jackson’s murder to either Graham or Larson, but admitted to alcoholism. The jury found him guilty as charged, and the trial court sentenced him to life in prison.

Wolfe avers that the trial court erred in admitting, over objection, his statements to Graham and Larson because the State failed to establish the corpus delicti of murder. “ ‘To admit a defendant’s confession, the state must prove the corpus delicti either by direct or circumstantial evidence.... [P]roof beyond a reasonable doubt is not mandatory.’ ” Barrow v. State, 27 So.3d 211, 220 (Fla. 4th DCA 2010) (quoting Meyers v. State, 704 So.2d 1368, 1369 (Fla.1997) (citation omitted)).

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
34 So. 3d 227, 2010 Fla. App. LEXIS 6559, 2010 WL 1881095, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/wolfe-v-state-fladistctapp-2010.