Summary
The Supreme Court of Florida affirmed Seburt Nelson Connor's convictions for two counts of first-degree murder, kidnapping, and burglary, as well as his death sentence for the murder of Jessica Goodine. The court held that Connor voluntarily accompanied police and consented to searches, and that any error concerning custody or consent was harmless. The court also concluded that the avoid-arrest aggravator was not supported beyond a reasonable doubt but determined that the error did not affect the sentence because other aggravating circumstances remained.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether Connor was unlawfully arrested when police asked him to accompany them to the station and whether the resulting consents to search were involuntary and tainted.
- Whether the trial court properly found the avoid-arrest aggravating circumstance for Jessica's murder.
- Whether the evidence supported the cold, calculated, and premeditated aggravating circumstance.
- Whether the trial court properly rejected the statutory mitigating circumstances of extreme mental or emotional disturbance and impaired capacity to appreciate the criminality of the conduct or conform conduct to law.
- Whether the trial court properly rejected the statutory mitigating circumstance of no significant prior criminal history.
- Whether Connor's death sentence was disproportionate.
Holdings
- The encounter was consensual, and Connor was not in custody when he agreed to accompany the police to the station.
- The evidence obtained from Connor's car, clothing, socks and shoes, house, and cottage resulted from voluntary consent and was properly admitted.
- The evidence was insufficient to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the sole or dominant motive for Jessica's murder was eliminating a witness, so the avoid-arrest aggravator was improperly found.
- The error in finding the avoid-arrest aggravator was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt and did not require reversal of the death sentence.
- The evidence supported the finding of the cold, calculated, and premeditated aggravator.
- The trial court properly rejected the statutory mitigators of extreme mental or emotional disturbance and impaired capacity to appreciate criminality or conform conduct to law.
- The trial court properly rejected the no-significant-criminal-history mitigator because Connor's prior burglaries, threats, and related conduct were discrete criminal acts rather than one substantially related criminal incident.
- The death sentence was proportionate under the totality of the circumstances.
Key quotations
“Accordingly, for the same underlying policy reasons enunciated in Ornelas and Thompson, appellate courts should continue to accord a presumption of correctness to the trial court's determinations of historical facts, reversing those only if not supported by competent substantial evidence in the record, but appellate courts must independently review mixed questions of law and fact that ultimately determine constitutional issues arising in the context of the Fourth and Fifth Amendment and, by extension, article I, section 9 of the Florida Constitution.” (at 608)
“Moreover, based on these findings, we hold that the trial court reached the correct legal conclusion that Connor was not in police custody when he left to go to the station and that the items seized by the police from Connor's house and car were the result of a consensual search.” (at 608)
Factual background
Connor had previously been involved with Margaret Bennett, who later married Lawrence Goodine and had two daughters, including ten-year-old Jessica. After Bennett ended her relationship with Connor, he allegedly harassed the family, threatened Margaret and her daughter, and violated the circumstances surrounding a domestic-violence injunction. Lawrence disappeared from the Goodine home on November 19, 1992, and was later found dead from multiple blows to the head; Jessica disappeared the same day and was found strangled in a cottage at Connor's residence. Police obtained multiple written consents to search Connor's car, clothing, socks and shoes, house, and cottage, and DNA testing linked blood on several items to Lawrence.
Procedural history
Connor was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder, kidnapping, and burglary. The trial court sentenced him to death for the murder of Jessica Goodine, to life imprisonment for the murder of Lawrence Goodine, and to consecutive twenty-year sentences for kidnapping and burglary. The Supreme Court of Florida reviewed the convictions and sentences on direct appeal and affirmed, while holding that the avoid-arrest aggravator was unsupported but harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.