Bevel v. State

376 So.3d 587

Thomas BEVEL, Appellant,

v.STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. SC2022-0210

Supreme Court of Florida.

October 26, 2023

An Appeal from the Circuit Court in and for Duval County, Adrian G. Soud, Judge, Case No. 162004CF004525AXXXMA

Jessica J. Yeary, Public Defender, and Barbara J. Busharis, Assistant Public Defender, Second Judicial Circuit, Tallahassee, Florida, for Appellant

Ashley Moody, Attorney General, Tallahassee, Florida, and Doris Meacham, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Daytona Beach, Florida, for Appellee

PER CURIAM.

Thomas Bevel appeals his two death sentences, which were imposed by the trial court for the second time following this Court’s grant of postconviction relief and remand for a new penalty phase. See Bevel v. State, 221 So. 3d 1168, 1185 (Fla. 2017). We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. For the reasons we explain, we affirm Bevel’s death sentences.

I. BACKGROUND

Bevel was convicted in 2005 of the first-degree murders of his friend and roommate, Garrick Stringfield, and Stringfield’s thirteen-year-old son, Phillip Sims, and the attempted murder of Feletta Smith, whom Bevel and Stringfield knew from childhood. Bevel v. State, 983 So. 2d 505, 513 (Fla. 2008). This Court summarized the facts of Bevel’s crimes in the original direct appeal as follows:

Thomas Bevel, who was twenty-two years old at the time of the crime[s], resided with Garrick Stringfield, who was thirty. The two were close friends, such that Stringfield referred to Bevel as "nephew" or "Tom Tom" and Bevel referred to Stringfield as "Unc." On February 28, 2004, both men were at a street parade in Jacksonville where they ran into Feletta Smith, whom they both knew from their childhood. Smith exchanged telephone numbers with Stringfield and made plans to meet later that evening.

After leaving the parade, Bevel and Stringfield purchased a bottle of gin and went back to Stringfield’s house later in the evening. Because Stringfield was going out, he asked Bevel to wait for his thirteen-year-old son, Phillip Sims, who was being dropped off by his mother, Sojourner Parker. Although Parker noticed that Stringfield’s car was not in thedriveway when she arrived at the house, she was unconcerned because Bevel, a person she considered Stringfield’s roommate, answered the door and let her son inside.

Around 9 p.m., Stringfield met Smith at a Walgreens store and she followed him back to his house. When they arrived at Stringfield’s house, Bevel and Sims were playing video games in the living room where Smith and Stringfield joined them. Although no illegal drugs were being consumed, Smith stated that Bevel and Stringfield were drinking gin out of the bottle and she had a half cup of gin and grapefruit juice. At some point, Smith and Stringfield went into his bedroom to watch television. Stringfield showed Smith an AK-47 rifle that he kept under his bed and, because Smith was scared of it, he handed the gun to Bevel who removed it from the room. Stringfield and Smith remained in the bedroom with the door closed. Smith said that she last saw Sims playing video games in the living room.

Bevel then drove Stringfield’s car to a BP gas station to meet his girlfriend, Rohnicka Dumas, took her to a bar where he purchased another bottle of gin, and brought her back to the house. When they returned, Stringfield and Bevel went into the backyard, Dumas went inside, Smith remained in Stringfield’s bedroom, and Sims continued to play video games in the living room. Stringfield and Bevel then came back into the house and each had a gun in his possession; Stringfield was carrying a smaller handgun and Bevel had the AK-47 rifle that Stringfield had handed to him earlier in the evening. Bevel and Dumas went into the other bedroom, located across the hall from Stringfield’s room, and talked.

Bevel then left the bedroom with the AK-47 rifle in his hand. He went to Stringfield’s bedroom, where Smith and Stringfield were lying in bed nearly asleep, knocked on the door and said, "Unc, open the door." Stringfield got up from the bed, unarmed, and opened the door in his pajamas. Bevel immediately shot Stringfield in the head and he instantly fell to the floor in the doorway. Smith began screaming and Bevel yelled, "Bitch, shut up" while he shot her several times as she lay in the bed. Smith became quiet and pretended to be dead. She testified that there was "no doubt in [her] mind" that Bevel was the shooter. Rohnicka Dumas corroborated Smith’s testimony. She observed Bevel pick up the rifle, go out into the hallway, knock on Stringfield’s bedroom door and say, "Unc, look here." She testified that multiple shots were fired, during which she heard both the woman in the other room screaming and Bevel yell, "Bitch, shut up."

Bevel then went into the living room where Sims was still sitting on the sofa with the television remote in his hand and shot him twice, once grazing his arm and chest and once in the face. Subsequently, Bevel returned to the bedroom where Dumas had been and they walked out the front door. Bevel locked the burglar bar door, a barred security gate located on the outside of the front door to the house, and drove away in Stringfield’s car with Dumas sitting in the passenger seat. While driving to Dumas’s house, Bevel held the AK-47 rifle under his chin and stated that he did not mean to kill the boy (Sims), but had to because he was going to be a witness. Bevel abandoned Stringfield’s car near Dumas’s house.

Smith was eventually able to reach 911 by using Stringfield’s cell phone. Because Smith was unable to give the police an exact address, it took some time for the police and rescue to find the house. Ultimately, rescuers were able to transport her to the hospital where shestayed for almost a month while undergoing multiple surgeries for various gunshot wounds to her pelvis and upper legs.

After hiding for almost a month, Bevel was finally found by officers from the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office on March 27, 2004. Bevel was informed of his constitutional rights and indicated his understanding of each right by signing the rights form. The police questioned Bevel on two occasions over the course of twenty-four hours. During these two interviews, Bevel gave four different versions of the story but ultimately confessed to the murders.

Although Bevel confessed to murdering Stringfield and Sims, his version of events was contrary to the testimony of both Smith and Dumas. Bevel stated that he and Stringfield had been fighting recently about money that Stringfield believed he was owed and that Bevel feared that Stringfield was going to try and kill him. He said that when he brought Dumas back to the house that night, Stringfield began to get angry, saying that he should have killed Bevel a long time ago. While Dumas and Smith were in opposite bedrooms, the fight escalated until Stringfield was pointing the handgun at Bevel and Bevel had picked up the AK-47 rifle. Then, Stringfield went into his bedroom and, when Bevel heard a clicking noise that sounded like a magazine being loaded into the handgun, Bevel moved towards the room and shot Stringfield when he reached the door. Bevel said the gun went off several times but he did not mean to shoot Smith.

Id. at 510-11 (second alteration in original).

In 2017, on appeal from the denial of his motion for postconviction relief, this Court reversed and remanded for a new penalty phase after concluding that counsel was ineffective during the penalty phase and that Bevel was entitled to relief under Hurst v. State, 202 So. 3d 40 (Fla. 2016), receded from in part by State v. Poole, 297 So. 3d 487 (Fla. 2020), for the death sentence imposed for Stringfield’s murder. Bevel, 221 So. 3d at 1172, 1177, 1185.

Both Bevel and the State presented witnesses at the second penalty phase. Particularly relevant to this appeal, Bevel presented testimony from three expert witnesses: Steven Gold, Ph.D., a psychologist specializing in trauma; Robert Ouaou, Ph.D., a psychologist with a specialization in neuropsychology; and Geoffrey Negin, M.D., a diagnostic radiologist. After hearing the evidence, the jury unanimously found that the proposed aggravators—prior violent felony (based on a prior attempted robbery conviction and the contemporaneous murder and attempted murder) as to both murders and that the murder was committed for the purpose of avoiding arrest as to Sims’s murder—were proven beyond a reasonable doubt and unanimously voted to sentence Bevel to death for each murder. None of the jurors found that any of the mitigating circumstances were established by the greater weight of the evidence. The trial court ultimately agreed with the jury that the aggravators were proven beyond a reasonable doubt and afforded each very great weight. As to the statutory mitigating circumstances, the trial court agreed with the jury that Bevel had not established that, he committed the murders while, under the influence of extreme mental, or emotional disturbance¹ and that Bevel’s age of twenty-two at the time of the offenses was not mitigating. As to the proposed other factors in Bevel’s background that would mitigate against imposition of the death penalty under section 921.141(7)(h), Florida Statutes (2021), the trial court found as follows: IQ of seventy-one (little weight); Bevel’s childhood was impacted by the trauma of his mother’s death at age twelve (little weight); Bevel’s father did not actively participate in his life and subsequently died due to heroin use (no weight); Bevel’s childhood and teenage years were plagued by witnessing repeated acts of violence and substance abuse within his family (no weight); Bevel was essentially raised by his grandmother, who attempted to raise multiple grandchildren with very little financial or emotional resources (no weight); Bevel grew up in the eastern part of downtown Jacksonville, where drug selling, gunshots, violence, and substance abuse were common (no weight); Bevel...