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 Lakeland,
Florida | January 24, 2003 |
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Published Friday, January 24, 2003 Murder Conviction OverturnedState Supreme Court orders that Darryl Moody be given a new trial. jeff.scullin@theledger.com BARTOW -- The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday overturned the first-degree murder conviction and death sentence of Darryl Moody, who was convicted of killing Christopher Scott Mitchell, a member of a prominent Bartow citrus family. The court ordered that Moody, who has been on death row since 1998, be given a new trial. In a split decision, the state high court found that Polk Circuit Judge Susan Roberts erred in dismissing a motion Moody's lawyers brought during his original trial to suppress evidence gathered as a result of what a majority of the court deemed to be an illegal traffic stop. "The traffic stop of Moody was unlawful because it was not based on a reasonable suspicion," the court said in an unsigned opinion. "The fruits of that unlawful stop, the guns and the evidence gathered . . . should have been suppressed." In May 1998, a jury convicted Moody, 41, of first-degree murder, shooting at an occupied vehicle, burglary, grand theft and dealing in stolen property. Authorities charged Moody in the murder of Mitchell, 32, who was shot twice in the head. Investigators said Mitchell had driven up on Moody and his brother, Dexter, while they were stripping a stolen Buick of valuables. Mitchell was found dead in his pickup truck on May 16, 1994, in a grove that his family's company, L & M Citrus, maintained near Alturas. Chip Thullbery, administrative assistant state attorney, said the State Attorney's Office was weighing whether to re-try Moody. Moody's attorney, Bob Norgard, said prosecutors would have a hard time convicting his client without key evidence -- including the gun used to kill Mitchell -- gathered as a result of the illegal traffic stop of Moody a week after Mitchell was killed. "I think there's no question, given that the court is now saying that it should be suppressed, that it significantly weakens the state's case," Norgard said. "The remaining evidence is insufficient for a conviction." But Norgard conceded that prosecutors aren't likely to relinquish a death-penalty conviction without a fight and will look for a way to re-try Moody. In the appeal before the Supreme Court, the debate centered around whether Roberts should have granted a defense lawyer's request to suppress key evidence that investigators uncovered as a result of the illegal traffic stop of Moody. On May 23, 1994, an officer stopped Moody's car in a high-crime area because he recognized Moody as the driver and, from past encounters, suspected he was driving with a suspended license, according to court records. The officer arrested Moody after learning he was driving without a license and searched his car. During the search, officers found a pistol in Moody's car that had been stolen from the Buick found where Mitchell had been killed. In subsequent searches of Moody's house and car and the house of one of Moody's friends, police found several items stolen from the Buick. Eventually, police also recovered one of the guns used to shoot Mitchell, which Moody had sold to a friend. In its opinion issued Thursday, the court argued that, because the officer who stopped Moody had not checked his driving record for a year or more, he did not have sufficient information to suspect Moody was driving with a suspended license. The court also ruled that the state had failed to argue that the challenged evidence was legally admissible, in spite of the illegal traffic stop. To do so, the state would have had to have shown that the evidence could have been independently discovered, that it would have been discovered in the course of a legitimate investigation or that the connection between the evidence and the illegal stop was insignificant. The court found none of those to be true. But in separate dissenting opinions, Justices Charles T. Wells and Major B. Harding argued that, based on his past encounters with Moody and his training, the officer was justified in stopping him. "The U.S. Supreme Court (has) stated that an investigatory stop is justified if there is `some object manifestation' that the person about to be stopped is engaged in unlawful activity," Harding wrote. "(The officer) relied on his experience to make a reasonable inference from the cumulative information available to him." The state Attorney General's Office, which handled the appeal before the Supreme Court, now has 15 days to decide whether to ask the court to re-hear the case or to clarify its ruling. Once the court's ruling is final, the Attorney General has 90 days to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case.
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