McCoy v. State

132 So.3d 756

Thomas Ford McCOY, Jr., Appellant,

v.STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. SC12–676.

Supreme Court of Florida.

Dec. 19, 2013.

Rehearing Denied Feb. 27, 2014.

Nancy A. Daniels, Public Defender, and David A. Davis, Assistant Public Defender, Tallahassee, FL, for Appellant.

Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, Tallahassee, FL, and Tamara Milosevic, Assistant Attorney General, Miami, FL, for Appellee.

PER CURIAM.

Thomas Ford McCoy, Jr., who was forty-two years old at the time of the crime, pled guilty to the April 2009 first-degree murder of his former colleague, thirty-seven-year-old Curtis Brown. In this proceeding, McCoy appeals the death sentence imposed by the trial court for this murder. We have jurisdiction. Seeart. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. For the reasons set forth below, we affirm McCoy's conviction for first-degree murder and sentence of death.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

McCoy pled guilty to first-degree murder with a firearm. A penalty-phase proceeding was subsequently conducted before a jury, during which the following evidence was presented regarding the murder of Curtis Brown.

Curtis Brown was a service technician employed by the Coca–Cola Company, operating out of the company's Valparaiso, Florida, location. This job required Brown to respond to service calls regarding vending, fountain, and ice machines and to repair the machines where they were located. Brown was a very thorough and precise technician who liked to help others, and he had advanced to the service technician position after beginning his employment with the Coca–Cola Company delivering products to vending machines.

On Friday, April 10, 2009, Brown responded to a service call regarding a Coca–Cola machine in a break room at the Northwest Florida State College campus in DeFuniak Springs, Florida, which is in Walton County, in the northwest part of the state. Although another technician, Ray Jackson, typically serviced machines in DeFuniak Springs, Brown would often respond to service calls wherever he was needed and offered to help Jackson by responding to the service call for the Northwest Florida State College machine. Upon responding to the call, Brown was shot six times and killed in the break room where the Coca–Cola machine was located. When emergency personnel arrived, they found Brown lying dead on the floor of the break room. The medical examiner testified that all six wounds could have been fatal and that the time of death from the infliction of the wounds could have been “within seconds or minutes” but was not immediate.

Law enforcement determined that the service call regarding the Northwest Florida State College Coca–Cola machine was placed by Thomas McCoy, a former Coca–Cola employee and colleague of Brown and Jackson until McCoy resigned from the company in June 2006. McCoy had worked for Coca–Cola for about twelve years, beginning in 1994, as part of the five-man service technician team that also included Brown and Jackson. The group liked to play practical jokes on one another, such as turning the windshield wipers on or the radio up in a vehicle that was left unlocked, but there were never any reported or visible signs of animosity between McCoy and the other service technicians.

Despite outward appearances that everything was friendly between the group, however, McCoy apparently had taken offense at certain comments made by Brown and Jackson that he perceived as slights about his lack of a family, and he believed that others were picking on him in situations where his coworkers were simply joking around. In other words, as one of the psychologists who later examined McCoy after the murder explained, “relatively minor things that happen in day-to-day jobs were taken as pretty bad affronts” by McCoy. Further, although he wanted to get married and have children, McCoy struggled to form relationships with women.

McCoy resigned from Coca–Cola in the summer of 2006, prompted by his dissatisfaction with the company's policy change regarding when it would begin to pay service technicians for their work. Specifically, Coca–Cola changed its policy to begin paying technicians when they arrived at their first service call, rather than from the time they left their houses in the morning. McCoy spoke to Jackson about this change in policy and decided to complain to their supervisor, Ralph King. However, McCoy later reported to a former coworker, Wendell Kilgore, that he felt as though Jackson did not “have his back” regarding this complaint. Until his resignation from Coca–Cola, McCoy was a good worker who was very meticulous, and King, his supervisor, testified that he never had any problems with McCoy's work.

Following his resignation from Coca–Cola, McCoy sought medical assistance for psychological issues. In November 2006, McCoy was diagnosed with bipolar disorder by Dr. Mehul Patel, a general practitioner. Dr. Patel prescribed Lamentil, which is an antidepressant, and Seroquel, which is a type of antipsychotic medication that is sometimes used for mood stabilization in people with bipolar disorder. McCoy reported that he tried taking the Seroquel but discontinued it after three or four days due to excessive sedation. In addition, the Seroquel was very expensive, and McCoy stated that he had some trouble affording his medications.

In December 2006, a month after he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, McCoy was diagnosed with depression by another general practitioner, Dr. David Campbell, and was prescribed Cymbalta, an antidepressant. In February 2007, McCoy told Dr. Campbell that he wanted to change his medication to Zoloft, a different antidepressant. Dr. Campbell complied and also prescribed Xanax, which is an anti-anxiety medication. McCoy reported that he did not understand the instructions for taking the Zoloft and believed it was like a tranquilizer that could be taken only on days when he felt stressed and not on days when he felt better. In actuality, the medication should have been taken regularly in order to build up a certain amount in the body. Aside from his self-reporting, however, it is unknown whether McCoy took the medication properly or not.

McCoy also struggled to find steady employment after resigning from Coca–Cola and continued to struggle to form successful relationships with women. In addition, McCoy faced economic uncertainty, including worrying about losing his home and affording his medications without insurance. A former girlfriend who worked as a nurse at a clinic McCoy attended would, with Dr. Campbell's permission, sometimes obtain samples of Zoloft for McCoy when they were available.

During the approximately three years after he left Coca–Cola, McCoy developed an intense hatred for his former colleagues Ray Jackson, Ralph King, and Curtis Brown. McCoy felt that Jackson had not checked in on him when he was going through some hard times with his employment and had even laughed at him when McCoy called Jackson after losing a subsequent job. McCoy also regularly contacted King to express interest in reacquiring his job with Coca–Cola, but King informed McCoy on numerous occasions that there were no openings and that he could not create a position for McCoy. Some evidence indicated that McCoy blamed King, Jackson, and Brown for his inability to reacquire his job with Coca–Cola.

In addition, McCoy told Kilgore, his former coworker, that he was upset with Brown because Brown had previously commented in a meeting that McCoy did not have a family. This comment, which hurt McCoy's feelings, was apparently uttered in connection with a benefits meeting Brown and McCoy attended, wherein the subject of health insurance, which was more expensive for families than for a single person, was discussed. McCoy also reported to Kilgore that Jackson liked to put him down about his lack of relationships with women.

In November 2008, McCoy saw James Leddon, another Coca–Cola employee and one of McCoy's former coworkers, at a local convenience store, and the two conversed. McCoy told Leddon that he was going to kill Jackson and stated that he had already purchased the gun and the materials to build a silencer. McCoy also stated that he was going to shoot Jackson in one knee, then shoot him in the other knee while Jackson was screaming in pain, after which McCoy would walk up to Jackson, laugh in his face, and shoot him between the eyes. Leddon explained that McCoy was visibly upset, as evidenced by the noticeable blood vessels in his face and neck, while making these comments.

According to Jackson, this was the first he knew of a problem between himself and McCoy. Coca–Cola employees reported McCoy's comments about killing Jackson to the Valparaiso Police Department, and then-Captain Matthew Willingham contacted McCoy to discuss the threat. McCoy indicated that he had been taking Zoloft and that “someone could have taken what he said out of context.” He did state, however, that he did not like Jackson because Jackson never checked in on him when he was going through some hard times after leaving Coca–Cola, and McCoy asked Captain Willingham to pass along a message to Jackson that if McCoy and Jackson ever ran into each other, they should keep their distance.

On the Tuesday before the crime, McCoy called his former coworker, Kilgore, to chat. McCoy and Kilgore talked frequently, and McCoy, who sounded to Kilgore like he was sad, told Kilgore that he “had something big planned up” and that Kilgore “may see it on CNN.” Kilgore did not know what McCoy meant, but did not think the comment seemed right. After Kilgore got off the phone with McCoy, he reported McCoy's statements to Ed Hall, then the highest ranking official at the Valparaiso Coca–Cola facility. Upon consulting with a Coca–Cola Company security officer, Hall reported the comment to the Okaloosa County Sheriff's Department, who dispatched a deputy to the facility. The sheriff's department informed Kilgore that requesting a wellness...