Opinion ID: 1942962
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Ability to Conform Conduct

Text: Coday argues the trial court erred in failing to find and give any weight to the mitigating factor of lack of ability to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law at the time of the homicide. We begin our discussion of this issue with a review of the basic principles that have evolved over the years on the proper analysis that must be accorded evidence that is offered in mitigation of a possible death sentence. Generally, the weight assigned to a mitigating circumstance is within the trial court's discretion and subject to the abuse of discretion standard. Blanco v. State, 706 So.2d 7, 10 (Fla.1997). However, while the trial court can determine the weight to be given to a particular mitigator, the trial court must find as a mitigating circumstance any proposed factor that is both reasonably established by the greater weight of the evidence and mitigating in nature. See Campbell v. State, 571 So.2d 415, 419 (Fla.1990). More particularly, in Campbell we said: The court must find as a mitigating circumstance each proposed factor that is mitigating in nature and has been reasonably established by the greater weight of the evidence: A mitigating circumstance need not be proved beyond a reasonable doubt by the defendant. If you are reasonably convinced that a mitigating circumstance exists, you may consider it as established. Fla. Std. Jury Instr. (Crim.) [7.11 Penalty Proceedings Capital Cases]. The court must next weigh the aggravating circumstances against the mitigating and, in order to facilitate appellate review, must expressly consider in its written order each established mitigating circumstance. Although the relative weight given each mitigating factor is within the province of the sentencing court, a mitigating factor once found cannot be dismissed as having no weight. Id. at 419-20 (footnotes omitted). Over the years that followed Campbell, we further defined the parameters of the trial court's discretion in considering mitigating factors. For example, in Nibert v. State, 574 So.2d 1059, 1062 (Fla. 1990), after citing Campbell with approval, we explained: Thus, when a reasonable quantum of competent, uncontroverted evidence of a mitigating circumstance is presented, the trial court must find that the mitigating circumstance has been proved. A trial court may reject a defendant's claim that a mitigating circumstance has been proved, however, provided that the record contains competent substantial evidence to support the trial court's rejection of these mitigating circumstances. Kight v. State, 512 So.2d 922, 933 (Fla.1987), cert. denied, 485 U.S. 929, 108 S.Ct. 1100, 99 L.Ed.2d 262 (1988); Cook v. State, 542 So.2d 964, 971 (Fla.1989). . . . In Nibert this Court found the trial court improperly rejected statutory and nonstatutory mitigating circumstances, including the factor of physical and psychological abuse for many years during the defendant's youth. The trial court rejected the factor because the defendant was twenty-seven years old at the time of the murder and had not lived with his mother since the age of eighteen. This Court said that the fact that the abuse had come to an end did not diminish the fact that the defendant had suffered more than a decade of abuse. We opined that to hold otherwise would mean that a defendant's history of child abuse would never be accepted as a mitigating factor. Therefore, we concluded that because Nibert had presented a large quantum of uncontroverted mitigating evidence and that there was no competent, substantial evidence in the record refuting the mitigating evidence, the trial court erred in failing to find and weigh a substantial number of statutory and nonstatutory mitigating circumstances. See also Mansfield v. State, 758 So.2d 636 (Fla. 2000) (citing with approval Campbell and Nibert ); Mahn v. State, 714 So.2d 391, 400-401 (Fla.1998) (citing with approval Nibert and Kight ). Thus, a trial court can only reject uncontroverted mitigating evidence as being unproven if there is competent, substantial evidence to support that rejection. We have also addressed the trial court's discretion when dealing with expert opinion testimony. In Foster v. State, 679 So.2d 747, 755 (Fla.1996), we said that even uncontroverted expert opinion testimony may be rejected if that testimony cannot be squared with the other evidence in the case. Accord Morton v. State, 789 So.2d 324, 330 (Fla.2001). Recently, we applied these principles in a situation, similar to the one that is now before this Court, where the defendant contended that the trial court erred in failing to find and weigh evidence that he suffered from organic brain damage. See Crook v. State, 813 So.2d 68 (Fla.2002). During the penalty phase in Crook, evidence was presented by three medical experts that Crooks suffered from brain damage which impaired his ability to control his impulses. The experts also stated that Crook's brain damage was exacerbated by his use of alcohol and drugs at the time of the murder. This brain damage was substantiated by objective testing done by the experts. In reversing the trial court's rejection of this mitigating evidence, we said: In contrast to Robinson, [3] the trial court in the present case did not find and weigh Crook's brain damage as a valid mitigating circumstance, and rejected its connection to this crime, even though three defense experts, two of whom specialized in brain injuries, presented uncontroverted testimony that Crook suffered from frontal lobe brain damage that established a statutory mental mitigator. Perhaps most significantly, unlike the experts in Robinson, the expert testimony in this case also explained the causes and origins of Crook's frontal lobe brain damage and established that there was a causal link between Crook's brain damage and the homicide. Accordingly, we hold that the trial court erred in rejecting the uncontroverted evidence of Crook's brain damage. We conclude that based upon the expert testimony, there was a reasonable quantum of competent, uncontroverted evidence establishing its existence and its connection to the crime in question. Spencer [v. State], 645 So.2d [377, 385 (Fla.1994)]. Certainly, this is not a case where there was little or no evidence presented to support a finding of brain damage, see Shellito v. State, 701 So.2d 837, 844 (Fla.1997), or where the expert testimony pertaining to a mitigating circumstance was equivocal. See Robinson, 761 So.2d at 276-77; see also Franqui v. State, 699 So.2d 1312, 1326 (Fla.1997). . . . Thus, given the unrefuted expert testimony in this case, we conclude that the trial court erred in failing to find and weigh the evidence of Crook's brain damage in its assessment of statutory mental mitigation. Id. at 75-76. Not only have we addressed the issue of when trial courts should consider and find certain mitigating evidence to be established, but we have also addressed the trial court's discretion in the weighing process. While adhering to the basic premise that the weight to be given a mitigating circumstance is addressed to the sound discretion of the trial court, we refined that proposition in Trease v. State, 768 So.2d 1050 (Fla.2000), by holding that in some instances a trial court could give no weight to a mitigating circumstance. In Trease, a case involving the question of whether a trial court could give little or no weight to a nonstatutory mitigating circumstance, we receded from Campbell to the extent that Campbell would not have allowed a trial court to give no weight to a mitigating circumstance once that circumstance was established. We further explained that a mitigating circumstance may be given no weight based on the unique facts of a particular case, such as when a defendant demonstrates he was a drug addict twenty years prior to the murder and the prior drug addiction has no real bearing on the present crime. Id. at 1055. In summary, we have established a number of broad principles for the trial courts to use in evaluating the mitigating evidence offered by defendants. A trial court must find as a mitigating circumstance each proposed factor that has been established by the greater weight of the evidence and that is truly mitigating in nature. However, a trial court may reject a proposed mitigator if the mitigator is not proven or if there is competent, substantial evidence to support its rejection. Even expert opinion evidence may be rejected if that evidence cannot be reconciled with the other evidence in the case. Finally, even where a mitigating circumstance is found a trial court may give it no weight when that circumstance is not mitigating based on the unique facts of the case. In the case now before us, the trial court stated that the statutory mitigating circumstance of Coday's inability to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law had not been established. Initially, it appears that the trial court confused the standard for insanity with the mental mitigation in question. The trial court stated that the testimony of the mental health experts does not convince the Court that the Defendant is relieved of accountability for his conduct, or otherwise, was not aware of the consequences of his actions upon Gloria Gomez. [4] The trial judge relied on evidence that Coday had conducted himself without incident since his return from Germany and stated that because Coday could conform his conduct for so many years, he must have had the capacity to follow and abide by the law at the time of the homicide. However, six defense mental health experts testified that Coday was unable to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law at the time of Gomez's murder. The Stated presented no expert testimony in rebuttal. Dr. Allan Goldstein, a clinical and forensic psychologist; Dr. David Shapiro, a professor of psychology and forensic psychologist; Dr. William Vicary, a psychiatrist; Dr. M. Ross Seligson, a licensed psychologist; Dr. Lenore Walker, a clinical and forensic psychologist; and Dr. Martha Jacobson, a clinical and forensic psychologist, testified at the penalty phase or at the Spencer hearing that Coday satisfied this statutory mitigating circumstance. All the doctors testified concerning their visits with Coday and the various psychological tests that were administered. All found Coday to be suffering from some form of severe depression with psychotic features or borderline personality disorder or both. Dr. Goldstein essentially stated that Coday loses control when he is faced with extreme stress in his personal relationships. His psychosis is triggered when he feels rejected, and Coday felt rejected when the victim in this case told him that she did not love him. At that point Coday's emotions of resentment and rage overpowered his ability to reason. Dr. Goldstein stated that Coday was either not engaged in thinking or that thoughts were not registering. Dr. Goldstein opined that Coday went into a dissociative state, described as an out-of-body state, where the defendant was aware of what he was doing but could not control it. The doctor further opined that Coday's suicide attempt while in jail also occurred during a psychotic episode brought on when he received divorce papers from his wife. Dr. Shapiro also stated that Coday viewed the victim's statement that she did not love him as rejection, which brought on active psychosis. Dr. Shapiro opined that Coday was actively psychotic after receiving the divorce papers. In keeping with the other doctors' testimonies, Dr. Vicary stated that Coday gets into intense emotional situations and when they do not work out he has feelings of abandonment. Dr. Seligson testified that Coday's relationships are based on fantasy and when the relationships unravel Coday likewise unravels and deteriorates into a dissociative state. Dr. Seligson further stated that when Coday's relationship with the victim unraveled, his condition deteriorated on the day of the murder. Despite finding that Coday was highly intelligent, Dr. Walker found the defendant to be mentally ill. She stated that Coday lived a very contained, constrictive life, and when emotions got too high, he could not control them and deteriorated into a psychotic state. Dr. Walker opined that Coday felt rejected by the victim, and that he equated laughing at him with an incident from his childhood where other children laughed at him and locked him in an unused freezer. Because of the situation with the victim, Coday was unable to contain himself and an explosion was unleashed, with no cognitive ability to contain it. Dr. Walker believed that this was the same situation that occurred when Coday was served with divorce papers. Coday's attempted suicide was the same type of violent reaction, but it was released on himself. Lastly, Dr. Jacobson opined that Coday had a fantasy view of his relationship with the victim. When she said she did not love him, it brought on feelings of abandonment that triggered Coday's disintegration into depression and then psychosis. As noted above, the State did not offer any expert witnesses to refute this testimony. The evidence relied upon by the State to rebut the testimony of the defense experts was the testimony of lay witnesses who had interacted with Coday prior to Gomez's murder. The lay witnesses who personally knew Coday testified that from September 12, 1978, when Coday was arrested for the murder of Lisa Hullinger in Germany, until the murder of Gloria Gomez on July 11, 1997, Coday led a lawful existence. These witnesses indicated that Coday had numerous romantic relationships during this time frame and was married twice. The witnesses also said that Coday was well liked and had numerous friends. One of Coday's coworkers testified that he was meticulously punctual, reliable as an employee, and had attended the University of Michigan where he obtained a degree in order to become a librarian. By all accounts of these lay witnesses, Coday was able to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law. We conclude, under these circumstances, that it was error for the trial court to find that this statutory mitigator had not been established. As we said in Campbell, The court must find as a mitigating circumstance each proposed factor that is mitigating in nature and has been reasonably established by the greater weight of the evidence. 571 So.2d at 419. Six mental health experts testified that Coday was not able to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law at the time of the offense. Their testimony not only indicated that the mitigating circumstance existed but tied that circumstance to the defendant's mental illness and the facts of this case. They essentially said that, while the defendant could normally conform his conduct, he goes into a dissociative state where he is unable to conform his conduct when he is faced with rejection in a personal relationship. The evidence offered by the State to counter this mitigation evidence can be squared with the expert testimonies. The lay witnesses believed Coday could conform his conduct because he had lived for a number of years without incident. They related that Coday had several romantic relationships during this twenty-year period, including two marriages. However, none of these witnesses recited any stressful relationship-based incidents where the defendant was able to cope. The mental health experts clearly related Coday's inability to conform his conduct to situations that occur when he is, or feels that he is, being rejected in relationships involving women. The expert testimony from the defense could be rejected only if it did not square with other evidence in the case. While we have given trial judges broad discretion in considering unrebutted expert testimony, we have always required that rejection to have a rational basis. For example, the expert testimony could be rejected because of conflict with other evidence, credibility or impeachment of the witness, or other reasons. However, none of those reasons are present here. Instead, the State relies on evidence we find not in conflict with the defense evidence. Under these circumstances, the mitigating factor of inability to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law was reasonably established by the greater weight of the evidence and should have been considered by the trial judge as having been established. Because we conclude the trial court erred in finding that this mitigating circumstance had not been established, we vacate the death penalty imposed in this case and remand to the trial judge for reevaluation of the mitigation and the sentence. [5]