Covington v. State

348 So.3d 456

Edward Allen COVINGTON, Appellant,

v.STATE of Florida, Appellee.

Edward Allen Covington, Petitioner,

v.Ricky D. Dixon, etc., Respondents.

No. SC21-295

No. SC21-1077

Supreme Court of Florida.

August 25, 2022

Eric Pinkard, Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, David D. Hendry and Cortney L. Hackett, Assistant Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, Middle Region, Temple Terrace, Florida, for Appellant/Petitioner

Ashley Moody, Attorney General, Tallahassee, Florida, and Marilyn Muir Beccue, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Tampa, Florida, for Appellee/Respondent

PER CURIAM.

Edward Allen Covington appeals an order denying his motion to vacate his convictions and sentences—including three convictions for first-degree murder and three sentences of death—filed under Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.851, and petitions this Court for a writ of habeas corpus. We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(1), (9), Fla. Const. For the reasons expressed below, we affirm the denial of postconviction relief and deny Covington's habeas petition.

I. BACKGROUND

In 2014, Covington pleaded guilty to murdering his girlfriend and her two children, mutilating their bodies, and beating their dog to death with a hammer. He waived a jury for the penalty phase and was sentenced to death. On direct appeal, this Court set forth the facts of the murders as follows:

In May 2008, Lisa Freiberg lived in Lutz, Florida, with her two children, seven-year-old Zachary and two-year-old Heather Savannah, and her boyfriend, Edward Allen Covington. Covington met Lisa through an online dating site and moved into her home in April 2008. On May 11, 2008, Covington murdered Lisa, Zachary, and Heather Savannah. He also killed the family dog, Duke.

....

... On Monday, May 12, 2008, when Lisa did not drop the children off at the babysitter's house as expected, Barbara [Lisa's mother] and her husband drove over to Lisa's house to check on her. When Barbara opened the door and looked into the house, she saw Zachary's deceased, nude body and called 911.

Law enforcement responded to the scene and found the home in complete disarray. The furniture was turned over and there was blood on the floors, walls, and surfaces in every room except the bathroom. In addition to Zachary's body, they found the bodies of Heather Savannah, Lisa, and the dead dog at various locations throughout the house. Heather Savannah had been dismembered and decapitated. Zachary's genitals had been mutilated. Lisa's body was in the doorway of the master bedroom, with a bloody handprint on the wall nearby. The dog's body was on the floor in Heather Savannah's bedroom. Two hammers and five knives that appeared to have been used in the murders were found and collected. A mesh bag containing bloody clothing was found under the mattress in the master bedroom.

Law enforcement found Covington in a closet in one of the bedrooms. He indicated that he had taken a number of pills. Depakote and Seroquel pills prescribed to Covington were found in the house. Covington was medically cleared by paramedics at the scene but transported to the hospital for further diagnosis and clearance. As he was being transported to the hospital, Covington looked back and stated, "I can't believe what I've done." After Covington was released from the hospital on May 14, 2008, he was transported to the Sheriff's Office, where he was interviewed by detectives and confessed to the murders.

....

Covington's May 14, 2008, interview with detectives was played at the penalty phase. In the interview, Covington said that he met Lisa through an online dating site in August 2007, and they hit it off. He said that he had been living with Lisa on and off but officially started living with her a couple of weeks before the murders and everything was going great. He said Lisa and the children loved him. He talked about the days leading up to the murders. He said that he and Lisa were having problems potty-training Heather Savannah and that she had not been eating properly. He knew that Barbara had seen marks on Heather Savannah and that she thought he was abusing the children. Barbara told Lisa that she did not want Lisa to take the children back home while Covington was there. Covington denied abusing the children and said it "really, really ticked [him] off" that Barbara thought he was. He admitted that he had hit Heather Savannah on the leg when she picked up a cell phone a couple of days before the murders but said he did not mean to hit her hard. He also admitted that the marks could have occurred when he spanked Heather Savannah, but he said he did not realize he spanked her that hard.

Covington said that Lisa picked up the children from Barbara's on Saturday afternoon, the day before the murders. Covington prepared lunch for the children and dinner for the four of them. They ate dinner around 6 p.m. and then took the children to visit with [Heather Savannah's father's] family. While the children and Lisa were visiting, Covington said he needed to go check his mailbox and left, but he actually went to buy and smoke crack cocaine.

According to Covington, when they got home around 9:30 p.m. or 10 p.m., the children went to bed, and Covington and Lisa had a drink together and had sex. Covington then played a computer game. He and Lisa went to bed around midnight or 1 a.m. Before bed, Covington said he "took a handful of Seroquel" because he was "dog tired" and it had not been as effective recently. He said he took roughly 1,000 milligrams of Seroquel (including four 200-milligram, extended release pills), which he described as "a hundred [milligrams] over the max[imum] safe dose." Covington said when the Seroquel works properly, "it's like turning off a light switch.... [A]ll the extra thought ... shuts off, everything goes quiet." The extended release Seroquel was new to Covington and he said the first time he took one 200-milligram pill, the effects lasted twenty-six hours. Covington said that Lisa fell asleep in his arms. Covington initially told the detectives that he did not know what happened next, but he then admitted that he "kind of" remembered what happened the next morning and described what he said he remembered about the murders.

Covington said that Lisa and Zachary were still in bed around 10:30 Sunday morning when he found Heather Savannah awake and lying on the couch in the living room. Covington asked Heather Savannah "what she was doing up and she just started to cry." He said "that is the last recollection of being in control I know of" and the next thing he remembered was all the chaos and killing. He said that he killed Heather Savannah first, that he "hurt her the most," and that he "cut her in half" with a bread knife. He said the first thing he did was cut Heather Savannah's throat, "the jugular," while she was lying on the couch and he was standing over her. He used four back-and-forth motions. He said he then "literally ripped Savannah in half," "almost like carving a pig." He said he had to get her undressed in order to cut her in half. He believed she was dead at that time but could not be sure. He also decapitated Heather Savannah and set her head by the front door. Although he initially said Heather Savannah was crying, he later said she never yelled or cried. He specifically remembered that the bread knife he used on Heather Savannah was bent in the process. When asked about a bite mark on Heather Savannah's arm, he said he may have left that the night before, because she was biting Zachary and in order to "break[ ] her on that[,] ... we would bite her back."

After he killed Heather Savannah, Covington remembered choking and strangling Lisa. He said he did not remember punching her but thought he might have because he remembered her having a bloody face. He said he used a two-and-a-half-inch-wide butcher knife and an upward motion to stab her in the chest, which he believed "probably perforated the heart and the lung."

Zachary was still asleep in his top bunk when Covington stabbed him. Zachary did not say anything during the stabbing, and Covington thought that was because he stabbed Zachary's heart. He thought he stabbed Zachary three times, once in the back and twice in the chest cavity. He remembered a "chopping knife" breaking off inside Zachary when it hit bone. Covington then brought Zachary to the living room and removed his scrotum and penis. He said that the mutilation did not have a sexual basis and that he used pliers to touch Zachary's penis.

Covington killed Duke last, by punching him and hitting him with a hammer.

Covington said that after Lisa was dead, he kept hearing her voice, so he cut her again. Then he "got what [he] could find of Savannah and Zachary and put ‘em over by the front door." He remembered calling his ex-wife, Cheri, twice, but she did not answer, and he thought he may have left a message the second time he called.

Covington said that at some point he thought this must be a nightmare and that he better take some more Seroquel. He thought it was at that time that he took Depakote, aspirin, Tylenol, and caffeine. He vaguely remembered falling down in the closet while he was looking for clothes. The next thing he remembered was the police officers telling him to get out of the closet. He did not know how long he had been in the closet but remembered that it was daylight when he went in.

Covington v. State , 228 So. 3d 49, 52-56 (Fla. 2017) (footnote omitted) (alterations in original), cert. denied , ––– U.S. ––––, 138 S. Ct 1294, 200 L.Ed.2d 482 (2018).

The medical examiner testified that Lisa was beaten and stabbed. Id. at 56. The fatal wound was a large gaping wound to her neck, which appeared to have been made by a back-and-forth sawing motion with a knife. Id. Her skull was fractured and fragmented in a manner consistent with blows from the smaller hammer found at the scene. Id. After her death, she was stabbed in her abdomen and pubic region. Id. Heather Savannah died as a...