Jordan v. State

176 So.3d 920

Joseph Edward JORDAN, Appellant,

v.STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. SC13–2091.

Supreme Court of Florida.

Oct. 8, 2015.

Jeffrey Duane Deen, Regional Counsel, and Michael Paul Reiter, Assistant Regional Counsel, Fifth District, Ocala, FL, for Appellant.

Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, Tallahassee, FL, and Stacey E. Kircher, Assistant Attorney General, Daytona Beach, FL, for Appellee.

Opinion

PER CURIAM.

This case is before the Court on direct appeal from a judgment of conviction of first-degree felony murder¹and a sentence of death. We have jurisdiction. Seeart. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. For the following reasons, we affirm Jordan's convictions and sentences.

STATEMENT OF THE CASE AND FACTS

Joseph Edward Jordan lived with Keith Cope in Edgewater, Florida, and was also an employee of Cope's construction company. On or about Friday, June 26, 2009, Jordan and Cope partied together, drinking and using drugs. As they partied, Jordan asked Cope for money that Cope owed Jordan for construction work he had completed. Cope claimed that he did not have the money to pay Jordan even though Cope had money to pay for drugs. Jordan then pistol-whipped Cope; tied him up; took his money, guns, and drugs; and drove away with his Ford F–450 truck. Later that evening, Jordan appeared at the Hollywood, Florida, residence of his friend and former coworker Mathew Powell.

Mathew's girlfriend, Sadia Haque, was also present when Jordan arrived. Jordan eventually shared with Mathew that Cope was literally tied up and that Mathew could go to Cope's house and clean out his gun safe, but Jordan did not want to go back to the Daytona Beach area or go near Cope's truck. Mathew decided to go, and asked his brother and ex-girlfriend, Marlon Powell and Cassandra Castellanos, to go with him.

Mathew, Sadia, Cassandra, and Marlon left Hollywood and arrived at Cope's house on Sunday, June 28, 2009, at approximately 6 a.m. Mathew and Sadia entered Cope's residence when no one answered the door. Mathew did not immediately see anyone after he entered, so he continued to search the house. When he walked into the back bedroom, he saw Cope at the foot of the bed, suspended by rope that was attached to it. Mathew removed tape from Cope's mouth and cut off the rope from Cope who then fell to the floor. Mathew then attempted to cut the tape from Cope's legs. Sadia called 911, and first responders arrived shortly thereafter.

Detective Eric Seldaggio of the Edgewater Police Department responded with another officer to Cope's house. Mathew, Sadia, Cassandra, and Marlon met the officers and directed them inside to the back bedroom. When Detective Seldaggio entered the bedroom, which strongly smelled of urine, he observed Cope lying at the foot of the bed with his hands bound behind his back and duct tape wrapped around his head and neck. Cope's ankles were also bound with duct tape and rope. Mathew indicated that he had cut a rope that was tied on the bed and wrapped around Cope's arm. Detective Seldaggio also observed rope tied to the four bedposts, a roll of duct tape on the bed, and rope embedded in Cope's left bicep that had turned a greenish color and was cold to the touch due to suspension by that arm for a lengthy period of time. According to a responding emergency medical technician, Cope initially appeared deceased, but after multiple layers of duct tape were cut from his head to free his airway, Cope opened his eyes and moaned. Cope was later transported by ambulance to the hospital where he underwent emergency surgery to amputate his left shoulder and arm.

A day after the amputation, Cope's treating physician, Dr. Melinda Rullan, learned that Cope had been bound and gagged for three days. Based on her review of Cope's medical records, Dr. Rullan concluded that Cope's body was “literally dying.” Dr. Rullan determined that Cope entered the hospital in critical condition with a life-threatening illness related to a compartment syndromeof the left upper extremity. He had little or no blood pressure, suffered from cardiovascular collapse and multiple organ failures, and had multiple clots throughout his body. Cope also developed acute signs of a left-sided strokeand lung complications. His original physical examination evidenced that he had bindings on his right wrist and both ankles and dead tissue on his right wrist, arm, and both feet. Cope was unresponsive upon entering the hospital and remained unresponsive until his death on July 13, 2009, after being removed from life support. Medical examiner Dr. Marie Hermann opined that “Cope died as a result of complications of being bound and gagged for days, including ischemic gangreneof the left upper extremity, bilateral cerebral infarctions, and bronchopneumonia.”

Following interviews with the four people who found Cope in his bedroom, Jordan was arrested on July 18, 2009, and indicted by a grand jury for one count of first-degree murder and one count of robbery with a firearm or other deadly weaponin August, 2009. On April 19, 2013, a jury found Jordan guilty of first-degree felony murder of Cope and also convicted him as charged on the robbery count. During the penalty phase, the jury recommended a sentence of death by a vote of ten to two for the murder conviction. Following the August 2013 Spencer²hearing, the trial court imposed a sentence of death for the murder conviction and a life sentence for the conviction for robbery with a firearm or other deadly weapon. In imposing the death sentence, the trial court concluded that the three aggravating circumstances,³which were proven beyond a reasonable doubt, far outweighed the one statutory mitigating factor and thirty-seven nonstatutory mitigators.⁴This is Jordan's direct appeal.

On appeal, Jordan raises six issues: (1) that the trial court should have declared a mistrial due to the prosecutor's improper statements during closing arguments; (2) that the trial court erred in finding the heinous, atrocious, or cruel aggravating circumstance; (3) that the trial court abused its discretion by admitting the victim impact statements into evidence; (4) that the trial court declined to find as a mitigating circumstance Jordan's ability to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law was substantially impaired; (5) that the sentence of death should be reversed under this Court's proportionality review; and (6) that Florida's death penalty statutory scheme is facially unconstitutional under Ring v. Arizona,536 U.S. 584, 122 S.Ct. 2428, 153 L.Ed.2d 556 (2002). Additionally, we review the sufficiency of the evidence to uphold Jordan's convictions. For the following reasons, we deny each of Jordan's claims on appeal. We also find that there is competent, substantial evidence to sustain Jordan's convictions.

DISCUSSION

Prosecutorial Misconduct

Jordan argues that the trial court should have ordered a mistrial due to ten comments made by the State during its guilt-phase closing argument. We review a trial court's ruling on a motion for mistrial under an abuse of discretion standard. See Salazar v. State,991 So.2d 364 (Fla.2008).

“A motion for mistrial should be granted only when it is necessary to ensure that the defendant receives a fair trial.” Cole v. State,701 So.2d 845, 853 (Fla.1997). Stated differently, “[a] motion for a mistrial should only be granted when an error is so prejudicial as to vitiate the entire trial.” England v. State,940 So.2d 389, 401–02 (Fla.2006); see Hamilton v. State,703 So.2d 1038, 1041 (Fla.1997)(“A mistrial is appropriate only where the error is so prejudicial as to vitiate the entire trial.”). Under the abuse of discretion standard, a trial court's ruling will be upheld unless the “judicial action is arbitrary, fanciful, or unreasonable.... [D]iscretion is abused only where no reasonable [person] would take the view adopted by the trial court.” Trease v. State,768 So.2d 1050, 1053 n. 2 (Fla.2000)(second alteration in original) (quoting Huff v. State,569 So.2d 1247, 1249 (Fla.1990)). Thus, “[i]n order for the prosecutor's comments to merit a new trial, the comments must either deprive the defendant of a fair and impartial trial, materially contribute to the conviction, be so harmful or fundamentally tainted as to require a new trial, or be so inflammatory that they might have influenced the jury to reach a more severe verdict than that it would have otherwise.”

Id.at 372.

In this case, Jordan asserts one preserved prosecutorial misconduct claim. He argues that the prosecutor impermissibly attempted to sway the jury by giving the impression that the State's interpretation of felony murder was supported by caselaw. We have held that “[i]t is appropriate for an attorney who does not misstate the law to relate it to the facts of the case in closing argument.” Kaczmar v. State,104 So.3d 990, 1006 (Fla.2012). However, “[t]he correct practice does not permit counsel to read authorities to the jury, and while counsel may submit his [or her] theory of the law in written requested charges, it is the function of the trial court to charge the law applicable to the issues in the case.” Id.(quoting Tindall v. State,99 Fla. 1132, 128 So. 494, 498 (1930)) (internal quotation marks omitted) (second alteration in original).

During closing arguments of the guilt phase, the prosecutor made the following statement:

So let's take a look at the first-degree felony murder instruction. To prove the crime of first-degree felony murder, the State must prove the following three elements:

Keith Cope is dead. Agreed by both sides and testified to by every witness.

The death occurred as a consequence of and while Joseph Jordan was engaged in the commission or attempting to commit a robbery.

The way the caselaw interprets that, the way the law—

Defense counsel objected, and the parties approached the bench outside the hearing of the jury. Defense counsel then moved for a mistrial, arguing that it was improper for the State to support its theory of the case in closing...