No. SC95993
STEVEN MAURICE EVANS,
Appellant,
vs.
STATE OF FLORIDA,
Appellee.
[October 11, 2001]
PER CURIAM.
We have on appeal the judgment and sentence of the trial court imposing a sentence of death upon Steven M. Evans. We have jurisdiction. See art. V, ยง 3( b)( 1), Fla. Const.
For the reasons expressed below, we affirm both the conviction for first-degree murder and the death sentence.
Procedural and Factual Background
On April 26, 1996, Steven Maurice Evans (Evans), and his friends Edward Francis (Francis), Gervalow Ward (Ward), and Kenneth Lewis (Lewis), traveled from
Orlando to commit a home invasion robbery of a purported drug dealer who lived in Sanford, Florida. The robbery was called off when Lewis abandoned the men and left in the getaway car, which was owned by Evans' girlfriend's brother. Stranded, Evans, Francis, and Ward went to the nearby home of Mark Quinn, an acquaintance of Evans. Evans called home and warned his girlfriend that Lewis might be coming there. Evans also instructed her to call the police, report the car stolen, and remove money from the home because he believed Lewis was going to go back to the home and steal his money.
Evans, Francis, Ward, Quinn, and a man named Blaine Stafford (Stafford) then went to Evans' apartment to wait for Lewis to get there. Evans was acting agitated and strange. He was laughing and pacing and had a strange look on his face. When the men saw Lewis drive up to the apartment, they positioned themselves around the door. When Lewis entered the apartment, they jumped him and beat him. He was bound and gagged. At some point, the police arrived to investigate the reported stolen vehicle. Still bound and gagged, and at Evans' direction, Lewis was taken to a back room to wait with the other men until the police left.
After the police left, Evans directed one of the men to retrieve a shampoo bottle, and with it he made a homemade silencer by stuffing the shampoo bottle with
plastic bags. He taped the bottle to the barrel of his gun. He instructed Ward to check the backyard for any witnesses. Evans, Francis, and Ward then marched Lewis to the back of the apartment building to a culvert where Lewis was pushed down. Evans told Lewis that they were the last three people he would leave behind, and they were the last three people he would see on this earth. Evans then put the gun with the homemade silencer to Lewis's head and shot him six times. Five of the shots entered Lewis's head.
Evans was convicted of premeditated first-degree murder, and the jury recommended a sentence of death by a vote of eleven to one. In the sentencing phase of the trial, Evans presented the following evidence in mitigation. Evans was born out of wedlock. While his mother went to school, he was raised by his maternal grandparents until the age of six or seven. When she married, he moved in with his mother and stepfather, who raised him as a son. His parents were Jehovah's Witnesses. They had two more children, a son who was mentally impaired and a daughter. Evans was a devout Jehovah's Witness and cared for his mentally impaired brother and his sister. He participated with the Jehovah's Witnesses five days a week. He attended a public high school. When he was a teen, his stepfather accused him of masturbating and made him stand up in front of the congregation and ask for forgiveness. This evidence was apparently offered to show Evans was traumatized as a child and teen. Evidence also indicated Evans experienced two head injuries as a child, one at the age of nine when he fell off his bike, and one at around the age of nineteen, when he was in a car accident. Sometime after the second injury, the family noticed a change in Evans' personality. Evans married around the age of eighteen or nineteen. There was at least one episode after he was married where his parents had to help his wife subdue him. Evans had gone out and apparently consumed alcohol, and when he returned he was out of control and ran down the street in his underwear. He has three children. Around the age of twenty-two or twenty-three, Evans committed adultery and was disassociated from the Jehovah's Witness congregation. From that point, there is no testimony about Evans' personal life and nothing else in mitigation. At the time of this crime, Evans was twenty-eight years old.