Craven v. State

310 So.3d 891

Daniel Jacob CRAVEN, Jr., Appellant,

v.STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. SC18-1643

Supreme Court of Florida.

October 22, 2020

Andy Thomas, Public Defender, and A. Victoria Wiggins, Assistant Public Defender, Second Judicial Circuit, Tallahassee, Florida, for Appellant

Ashley Moody, Attorney General, and Michael T. Kennett, Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, Florida, for Appellee

PER CURIAM.

Daniel Jacob Craven, Jr., appeals his conviction for first-degree murder and his sentence of death. We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. For the reasons below, we affirm Craven's conviction and sentence.

BACKGROUND

While serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole for a conviction of first-degree murder with a weapon, Craven stabbed his cellmate, John H. Anderson, to death with a homemade knife that Craven had fashioned from a piece of their cell door. Craven confessed, multiple times, to killing Anderson and was charged with first-degree premeditated murder. During the guilt-phase opening statements at Craven's trial, defense counsel admitted that Craven had murdered Anderson but argued that Craven was guilty of second-degree murder.

The evidence presented at trial established that upon Craven's arrival at Graceville Correctional Facility in early April 2015, Craven, a white supremacist with a swastika tattoo, was assigned to share a cell with the victim, who was African American. Craven almost immediately requested to be reassigned to a different cell, claiming that he and the victim were not getting along, but ultimately withdrew the request and indicated that he and the victim would work it out.

On June 25, 2015, three days before the victim's murder, Craven called his mother and demanded that she come to visit him. When Craven's mother stated that she might not be able to make the trip, Craven told her, "Then don't plan on it for about five years." During their phone call, Craven's mother advised him to wait to give himself some time "for whatever is on [his] mind," to which Craven responded, "I made up my mind a long time ago." On June 27, 2015, the day before the victim's murder, Craven's mother visited with him for several hours. After Craven's mother left the facility, Craven called her and told her "not to worry" and that "he loves her."

At 10:07 p.m. on June 27, after watching the movie Selma , the victim entered the two-person cell that he shared with Craven. Craven entered the cell just after 1 a.m. on the morning of June 28, 2015. A corrections officer conducted a visual inspection of the cell door at 1:31 a.m. and did not note anything unusual. At 4:44 a.m., Craven left the cell for breakfast and placed a sign on the window, purportedly from the victim, that stated "[s]tomach bug, sleeping, please do not knock or disturb my rest." Craven entered and exited the cell several times throughout the morning of June 28. At 12:25 p.m., Craven told a corrections officer that he had killed his roommate around 2 a.m. that morning.

Corrections officers found Anderson's body in the cell, and he was pronounced dead. Craven subsequently confessed multiple times to stabbing Anderson to death, to cleaning up the cell, and to hiding the murder weapon in a sock and placing it in a shower grate, where law enforcement later recovered it.

The medical examiner testified that Anderson suffered approximately thirty wounds to his head, throat, neck, and upper torso, twelve of which were stab wounds that punctured Anderson's skin and the remainder of which were incision wounds that cut Anderson's skin. Stab wounds to Anderson's windpipe and jugular vein were critical, and the cause of death was a combination of significant blood loss and the inhalation of blood as a result of the stab wounds. The medical examiner further testified that there were no injuries that would have likely rendered Anderson unconscious, that there were defensive wounds on Anderson's palms and wrists, and that Anderson's death was not immediate and may have taken from minutes to half an hour, during which time Anderson received painful stab and incision wounds while he essentially drowned in his own blood.

During law enforcement's investigation, bloodstains on Craven's socks and boxer shorts and blood recovered from Craven's ear matched Anderson's DNA. Additionally, a partial DNA match to Anderson was found on the murder weapon, and blood recovered from a wall in Craven and Anderson's cell matched Anderson's DNA.

Craven's jury also heard testimony from an inmate who was housed a few cells away from Craven and Anderson's cell. On the morning of Anderson's murder, the inmate testified that, between 1:30 and 2 a.m., he heard "stumbling" and someone saying "get off of me" and "help me" from the vicinity of Craven and Anderson's cell.

In addition, the jury heard statements that Craven had made to law enforcement, in which he admitted stabbing Anderson to death and that the killing was "planned out," plus letters that Craven had written to government officials, in which he confessed to killing Anderson and threatened his "personal brand of justice" unless he was sentenced to death. One of Craven's letters was titled "Full Confession to a Capital Murder from the Killer," and in it Craven described how he carried out his plan to kill Anderson, who Craven said was asleep in his bunk for an hour to an hour and a half before he began his attack:

I, Daniel Craven, stood up and moved my cards as not to get blood on them, and put up my radio for the same reason, started setting up for the plan I had for about two days. As I started to carry out the assassination on J. Anderson, ... the thought of another walk-through at 2:00 AM made me hold off. As the officers did their walk, I did my normal and watched them. They left the dorm, and I turned my attention to John. Mindful of how far a scream can flow in an open quiet gym style living condition, I aimed for [his] throat. I walked over to John, put my hand over his mouth, and before he opened his eyes, I stabbed him in the thr[o]at once. He instantly started screaming and kicking and clawing, but I am 300 pounds with wrestling and cage experience, and also have been some form of bouncer my whole life, he wasn't going anywhere. All of my stabs were intentional aims and placed with purpose. I took my time, none were accidental or in self defense or wild. I did not count, but I'm sure it was more than ten but less than 20, 13 to 16 best guess, with one exception: I tried to see if I could bury the knife through the skull on the left side top, but he moved and it didn't catch right.

... When John finally stopped spitting blood everywhere, I grabbed his face and told him to go to sleep. His eyes faded. I shoved him down back on his bed and stripped. I grabbed all his clothes and my clothes and started cleaning up the blood, not to get away with anything, just to buy time until I could do a proper farewell to my brothers. With all the bloody clothes, most of them were slung under his bunk, the rest stuffed in his drawer, I took a bath in the sink with his soap. I then rolled about three and a half grams into two sticks (joints) and smoked and listened [to music], and played [cards] until the doors were open for chow. Assuming people or officers were coming to see what the noise was earlier, I made my rounds. No one came. I grabbed my food and gave it away, locked my door so I could open it, and went back to hanging out. ... Then came lunch. I ate, smoked again, and then tried to go to rec. I couldn't get on the yard, and so as I was tired and bored, I went and had to tell the officer hey I killed my bunkie. This was around 2:00 PM same day.

On June 28, 2018, Craven's jury found him guilty of first-degree murder.¹ The penalty-phase proceeding was held the following day. After hearing witness testimony from the prosecutor in Craven's prior murder case, Craven's halfbrother, and mental health experts for both Craven and the State, and arguments from the State and Craven, the jury unanimously found that the State had proven the following aggravating factors beyond a reasonable doubt: (1) Craven was previously convicted of a felony and under sentence of imprisonment; (2) Craven was previously convicted of another capital felony or of a felony involving the use of violence to another person; (3) the first-degree murder was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel (HAC); and (4) the first-degree murder was committed in a cold, calculated, and premeditated manner without any pretense of moral or legal justification (CCP). The jury unanimously concluded that the aggravating factors were sufficient to warrant a possible sentence of death and that the aggravating factors outweighed the mitigating circumstances.² Ultimately, the jury unanimously concluded that Craven should be sentenced to death.

After holding a Spencer³ hearing, at which Craven presented additional mitigation, including his medical, school, and Department of Corrections records, the trial court sentenced Craven to death. In so doing, the trial court made its own findings with respect to the aggravation and mitigation. Specifically, the trial court found and assigned the noted weight to the following statutory aggravating factors: (1) the capital felony was committed by a person previously convicted of a felony and under sentence of imprisonment (some weight); (2) prior violent felony based on Craven's prior conviction for first-degree murder with a weapon, a capital felony (very great weight); (3) the first-degree murder of Anderson was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel (very great weight); and (4) the first-degree murder of Anderson was committed in a cold, calculated, and premeditated manner without any pretense of moral or legal justification (very great weight). The trial court found these four aggravating factors "sufficient to warrant the death penalty."

Under the catchall statutory mitigating circumstance of any factors in ...