07-1208 LAURIE BARTLETT, v. STATE OF FLORIDA

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State: Florida

Court: Florida First District Court

Docket No: 07-1208

Case Date: 10/29/2008

Preview:IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL FIRST DISTRICT, STATE OF FLORIDA NOT FINAL UNTIL TIME EXPIRES TO FILE MOTION FOR REHEARING AND DISPOSITION THEREOF IF FILED

LAURIE BARTLETT, Appellant, v. STATE OF FLORIDA, Appellee. _____________________________/

CASE NO. 1D07-1208

Opinion filed October 29, 2008. An appeal from the Circuit Court for Bay County. Don T. Sirmons, Judge. Nancy A. Daniels, Public Defender, and Steven L. Seliger, Assistant Public Defender, Tallahassee, for Appellant. Bill McCollum, Attorney General, and Philip W. Edwards, Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, for Appellee.

BROWNING, C.J. Laurie Lynn Bartlett (Appellant) was charged with the second-degree murder of her live-in boyfriend, Ernest Lamar, arising from the stabbing of the victim with a

knife. Pursuant to Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.201, the defense filed notice of intent to rely on self-defense based on the "battered-spouse syndrome." The jury found Appellant guilty of the lesser-included offense of manslaughter, and she was sentenced to ten years' incarceration, to be followed by five years' probation. Appellant argues that the trial court abused its discretion in allowing the primary detective in this case to testify that before he obtained a warrant for Appellant's arrest, he ruled out the possibility that the killing was done in self-defense. Concluding that it was error to allow the detective to opine to the jury that he had ruled out selfdefense, and that the State has not met its burden under State v. DiGuilio, 491 So. 2d 1129, 1139 (Fla. 1986), to show there is no reasonable possibility that the error affected the verdict, we are constrained to reverse Appellant's conviction and sentence and remand for a new trial. Investigator Mark Walton was the Bay County Sheriff's Department case agent responsible for investigating Appellant's case. Walton observed Appellant and briefly spoke to her at the trailer where the stabbing occurred. Appellant was crying and seemed to be upset but did not appear to have any physical injuries. A number of photos were taken of the stabbing scene, which were published without an objection. With Appellant's permission, Walton looked inside the trailer where Mr. Lamar's body was located. At the trial, Walton was shown photos of the crime scene. He -2-

identified a single stab wound in the victim's chest as the apparent cause of death. He explained certain details relating to the crime scene and the location of Mr. Lamar's body. The prosecutor asked Walton if he is the individual who had signed the complaint, and he answered "yes." Walton testified that he had written "murder" on the complaint as the crime in question. When questioned as to whether he had to rule out self-defense in signing the complaint, Walton answered "yes." When the State asked Walton why he had ruled out self-defense, Appellant's attorney objected because the question called for "opinion, speculation." The court sustained the objection. Next, the State approached the bench and argued as follows: The new self-defense law requires them to make that particular finding before they sign the complaint, they have to rule it out before, so it's part of the statutory requirement for him to be able to sign that complaint. He should be able to testify what went into his thinking process before he made that decision. The trial judge changed his mind, stating: That is a requirement, then as long as you are going to ask him the facts that he relied on, not just as to his speculation, then the objection is overruled, so rephrase your question. The State then asked Walton what facts and evidence he had observed that led him to rule out self-defense. He testified:

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When I first got to the scene I went in and looked at Mr. Lamar's body. The stab wound, which is located about here, you could look at it and see with the naked eye it was a very significant downward angle. The knife would have had to go in at an angle like this, just sort of common sense. Anybody looking at it would have been able to deduce that. The original explanation for the wound was that he had been walking down the hallway, he had tripped, and that the knife had gone into his [sic], that he had basically accidentally fallen on the knife. He was supposed to have been carrying a plate of pizza with the knife in one hand and that's when this was supposed to have occurred as he walked down the hallway. This would have meant that he would have taken the knife and gone at a severe downward angle into his own chest and that did not match that statement. So I had this to begin with, this story which was inconsistent with the facts at the scene. We started working from there and, in fact, later found the knife that was used to cut the pizza that night, which was a completely separate knife from the one that stabbed Mr. Lamar. There were no traces of the pizza on the knife that stabbed Mr. Lamar. Only his own blood up to the hilt of the knife. In my experience, um, with the numerous occasions that I have been called for fights involving weapons or any kind of altercation between people, someone who is simply trying to ward off an aggressor with a knife - Defense counsel objected because the State was "going into war stories" that were not relevant. The objection was overruled. Walton continued testifying: [I]n my experience the knife is held out to ward someone off. This wouldn't explain this wound. This wound came from someone who brought the knife down into his chest with a great deal of force, making it not an accident. The inconsistent stories with the evidence, which continued up until the end to be inconsistent with the evidence. The evidence would show that a knife, that someone took a knife and used a great deal of force to enter it into Mr. Lamar's body at a downward angle and the absence of any kind of wounds that I observed on [Appellant] led me to believe that this was not a self-defense situation. In addition to the -4-

fact that we had two witnesses that advised in their statements - After defense counsel objected on hearsay grounds, the prosecutor cut off any further statement by Walton on direct examination. On cross-examination, Investigator Walton reiterated that he had observed a single stab wound in the upper chest area. He noted that at the autopsy, several "poke" wounds were described. Walton testified that these wounds indicated that someone had poked Mr. Lamar with some type of instrument that did not break the victim's skin. These poke wounds were not evident to Walton at the crime scene. Two knives were found at the site, one on the living-room coffee table and the other between the couch cushions. One of the knives had pizza sauce on it, and the other had what appeared to be blood on it. Walton acknowledged that in ruling out selfdefense, he had assumed that Mr. Lamar was standing upright when he was stabbed. When he was asked whether the downward angle of the wound could be explained if Mr. Lamar, as the aggressor, had lunged or leaned forward toward Appellant, with a level extension of the knife, Walton testified he did not believe that was the case. On redirect, when Walton was asked why he did not agree with the defense's hypothesis, he testified: Like I said, two things that I believe why that does not work, because, of course, I had to try to consider that. He would have to run at her with enough force sufficient enough to impale himself completely with that -5-

knife, which means the full weight of his body would be coming at her and she would have to be supporting that quite a bit. That's my first issue with it, with that hypothesis. It was a very deep angle so he would almost have to be, the top half of his body would almost have to be parallel to the floor, which does not seem real reasonable. The other problem I have with it is a statement that [Appellant] made in one of her statements that she made on tape. Um, in talking to Captain Stanford, he asked her: And did he run into you before, he saw you with the knife before he run [sic] into you or did he know you had the knife? I don't even know if he knew I had it but what he did, he came at me, I just threw my hands up and I said I can't take no [sic] more and I come [sic] down, both my hands, and that's when he just grabbed himself. And she was referring to here when he was grabbing himself about grabbing the wound. The questioning of witness Walton ended. Appellant contends that the trial court's initial ruling sustaining the objection to the question of why Investigator Walton had ruled out self-defense is correct. Section 776.032(2), Fla. Stat. (2006), states: A law enforcement agency may use standard procedures for investigating the use of force as described in subsection (1), but the agency may not arrest the person for using force unless it determines that there is probable cause that the force that was used was unlawful. Appellant notes that this subsection of the statute is not a substantive change in how the police investigate a case. Before any police officer can sign a criminal complaint, the officer must have probable cause to believe a crime has been committed. See Amend. IV, U.S. Const.;

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