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RICHARD RAEKEThe lawyer seeking a new trial for a man sentenced to death for murdering a woman in 1996 says all the evidence in the case was circumstantial.
In March 2001, a jury convicted Michael Peter Fitzpatrick of murdering Laura Lynn Romines. When Circuit Judge Maynard Swanson sentenced Fitzpatrick to death he compared him to a "sadistic torturer of old."
Corrections officer Kyle Hughes found Romines, 28, walking a stretch of Parkway Boulevard in Land O'Lakes on the morning of Aug. 18, 1996. He had been coming back from a night out in Tampa. Romines, who had been stabbed in the trachea and raped, said that a man named "Steve" was responsible. Her wound slowly bled, and she died two weeks later in a Tampa hospital.
But Fitzpatrick, now 41, had no motive for the murder, there were no eyewitnesses to the crime and Romines told deputies that "Steve did it," Robert Moeller, his attorney told the Florida Supreme Court on Friday during oral arguments to win a new trial for Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick was convicted of the murder on circumstantial evidence, Moeller said.
Isn't that a matter for the jury to decide, said Justice Barbara Pariente. The bite mark on Romines' breast, cigarette burns on her thigh and bruising did not indicate consensual sex, she added later.
And what about the DNA evidence linking Fitzpatrick to Romines, the victim's battered body and the fact he had sex with her around the time of her stabbing, said Justice R. Fred Lewis.
"How do you explain that away?" he asked.
The DNA showed only that Fitzpatrick and Romines had sex, Moeller said. As for when they had sex, that's speculative, he added. During his trial, Fitzpatrick said he paid Romines $25 for sex earlier in the day.
Moeller argued that a blood sample drawn from Fitzpatrick was illegally obtained when his probation officer said failing to consent would be a parole violation.
Detectives also tainted the photo line-up by using Fitzpatrick's driver's license picture alongside packaged pictures of other potential suspects. The other men had beards, and Fitzpatrick was clean-shaven, Moeller said.
Lewis and Pariente questioned Kimberly Hopkins, the attorney for the state, about the probation officer's coercion to obtain a blood sample. That could be viewed as an illegal search.
If the officer acted improperly, was there another way to get the blood sample, Pariente asked. Hopkins said the state had built enough of a case to obtain a search warrant and compel a blood sample.
Moeller also argued that detectives ruled out as a suspect Stephen Kirk, a hotel security guard with whom Romines had become friends early that summer. Romines, who lost her voice in the hospital, later shook her head when Kirk's name was mentioned. Moeller said she had undergone surgery and was on medication.
Hopkins disputed the validity of Romines' statement at the scene in which she named a "Steve."
"She was clearly not coherent. The (emergency medical technician) said she could have been hallucinating," Hopkins said.