1

Filing # 62230239 E-Filed 10/01/2017 03:01:27 PM

2 IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE

EIGHTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT, IN AND
3 FOR BRADFORD COUNTY, FLORIDA

4 CASE NO: 04-2011-CF-000498-B

5 STATE OF FLORIDA

6 vs. EXCERPT

7 WILLIAM WELLS, PENALTY PHASE

8 Defendant

9 ______________________________/

10

11 Proceedings: OPENING STATEMENTS

12 Before: THE HONORABLE WILLIAM E. DAVIS

Circuit Judge
13
Date: September 29, 2017
14
Place: Bradford County Courthouse
15 Starke, Florida

16 Reporter: Pamela S. Connor

Registered Professional Reporter
17 Florida Professional Reporter

18 THE HONORABLE WILLIAM P. CERVONE, STATE ATTORNEY,

Eighth Judicial Circuit of Florida, by:
19 LUIS E. BUSTAMANTE and BRUCE A. HELLING
Assistant State Attorneys
20 Post Office Box 779
Starke, Florida 32091;
21 Attorneys for the State of Florida

22 TANIA Z. ALAVI TERENCE LENAMON

Attorney at Law Attorney at Law
23 108 North Magnolia Avenue 100 N. Biscayne, Suite 3070
Ocala, Florida 34475; Miami, Florida 33132;
24 Attorney for the Defendant Attorney for the Defendant

25 ALSO PRESENT: Kate O'Shea, Mitigation Specialist

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1 P R O C E E D I N G S

2 * * *

3 (Proceedings in the presence of the jury.)

4 THE COURT: State?

5 MR. BUSTAMANTE: May it please the court?

6 THE COURT: Yes, sir.

7 MR. BUSTAMANTE: Counsel.

8 Good morning.

9 Irene McMains Wells, John Wells -- John McMains, Bill

10 McMains, Richard Reese, James Young, those are the names

11 of the victims who were killed by the defendant in 2003.

12 The killing happened over a period of about a week and a

13 half in Mayport, Florida.

14 Christopher Powell, that is the name of an inmate who

15 was at Everglades Correctional Institute in Miami. The

16 defendant in that case tied his hands, and once his hands

17 were tied and his neck was tied, he proceeded to stab him

18 about 22 times. He survived. He was charged and

19 convicted of attempted first degree murder and was

20 sentenced to a life sentence.

21 Florida law allows only certain information or pieces

22 of information that can be considered as aggravators, and

23 I think we talked about the box and so forth, that we can

24 use to convince or try to persuade you that death is the

25 appropriate sentence in this case.

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1 The three aggravators that we will be presenting to

2 you during this penalty phase is, one, the defendant was

3 previously convicted of a felony and was under a sentence

4 of imprisonment. Very little doubt about that. By the

5 time that he kills Xavier Rodriguez, he was serving six

6 life sentences. He was under imprisonment.

7 The next aggravator that the state will prove to you

8 is that the defendant was previously convicted of another

9 capital felony or of a felony involving the use or threat

10 of violence to another person. The first five murders are

11 capital offenses and the attempted murder is a felony

12 involving violence. That's the second aggravator the

13 state is confident we'll prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

14 The third aggravator that we're going to talk about

15 is the first degree murder was committed in a cold,

16 calculated and premeditated manner without any pretense of

17 moral or legal justification. "Cold" means the murder was

18 a product of calm and cool reflection. "Calculated" means

19 having a careful plan or prearranged design to commit

20 murder.

21 "Premeditation," the killing is premeditated if it

22 occurs after the defendant consciously decides to kill.

23 The decision must be present in the mind at the time of

24 the killing. The law does not fix an exact period of time

25 that must pass between the formation of the premeditated

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1 intent to kill and the killing. The period of time must

2 be long enough to allow reflection by the defendant. The

3 premeditated intent to kill must be formed before the

4 killing.

5 But this one is a little different, and I want to

6 read you the rest of the definition. "However, in order

7 for this aggravator to apply, a heightened level of

8 premeditation demonstrated by a substantial period of

9 reflection is required."

10 When I started my first opening statement and my

11 closing arguments in the guilt phase, I read a quote from

12 the defendant, and I'll repeat that quote again. "You

13 doing this is like war. Your plan falls apart in the

14 first minute and you've got to improvise on that spot, so

15 we made alternative plans how to get him." We will be

16 able to give you context on that.

17 What does it mean your plan falls apart in the first

18 minute and you've got to improvise on the spot? I will

19 argue to you that the murder, the attempted murder from

20 2008 --

21 MS. ALAVI: Objection, your Honor, based on prior

22 motion.

23 THE COURT: Overruled.

24 MR. BUSTAMANTE: Is that a plan that fell apart that

25 was not successful? Is the murder of Xavier Rodriguez now

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1 a plan that was much better planned, heightened

2 premeditation and, therefore, successful? I would argue

3 to you it is.

4 We will argue that the aggravators will substantially

5 outweigh the mitigators. There are times when the

6 recommendation of death is warranted. There are certain

7 defendants, based on their heinous type of crime and their

8 character --

9 MR. LENAMON: Objection, Judge. Can we come sidebar?

10 THE COURT: Yes.

11 (Bench conference.)

12 MR. LENAMON: Judge, HAC was not an aggravator that

13 was accepted by the state or noticed to the defense. It's

14 not an aggravator that's in existence. He's using the

15 word heinous as a reference to an aggravating factor that

16 is not applicable to this case. I'm objecting to it and

17 moving for a mistrial.

18 I'm also moving for mistrial based on his -- our

19 previous objection when he indicated that he was going to

20 show that the 2008 murder was the beginning vehicle for

21 the final version of this killing which involved a

22 heightened premeditation, over our previous objection and

23 motion in limine.

24 THE COURT: Do you have a response as to the --

25 MR. BUSTAMANTE: No. I'm not using "heinous" as

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1 heinous, atrocious and cruel. It's just an adjective, but

2 I can change that adjective.

3 THE COURT: I'm going to overrule the objection on

4 both issues.

5 (Bench conference concluded.)

6 MR. BUSTAMANTE: Based on the nature of these crimes

7 and the defendant's character, ladies and gentlemen --

8 MR. LENAMON: Objection. Sidebar.

9 (Bench conference.)

10 MR. LENAMON: I'm moving for a mistrial, Judge. He

11 referenced his character as an aggravating factor for them

12 to consider. That is inappropriate.

13 THE COURT: Would you request a curative instruction?

14 MR. LENAMON: I would like a curative instruction,

15 Judge, but I don't think a curative instruction is going

16 to accomplish what's needed, but I will accept a curative

17 instruction by the court as I am required to by law.

18 THE COURT: Would you like a specific instruction,

19 just basically that his character is a mitigating factor

20 and is not an aggravating factor?

21 MR. LENAMON: Yes, Judge.

22 THE COURT: Okay. I'll grant that.

23 (Bench conference concluded.)

24 THE COURT: Members of the jury, the defendant's

25 character is actually a mitigating factor that I'm sure

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1 the defense is going to discuss and was part of the

2 instruction I gave you preliminarily but is not really an

3 aggravator that you are to consider. It is not improper

4 for that reason.

5 Defense?

6 MR. LENAMON: Thank you, Judge.

7 MR. BUSTAMANTE: And, ladies and gentlemen of the

8 jury, this is one of those times, after six murders, an

9 attempted murder, it is time and it is warranted that

10 death should be the right sentence.

11 Thank you.

12 THE COURT: Thank you, Mr. Bustamante.

13 Ms. Alavi?

14 MS. ALAVI: Judge, may I have just a few minutes to

15 set up the courtroom?

16 THE COURT: Members of the jury, we're going to set

17 up some boards or displays. I want to make sure everybody

18 can see it, so if you cannot see it, please raise your

19 hand.

20 (Pause in the proceedings.)

21 MS. ALAVI: The court's permission?

22 THE COURT: Yes, ma'am.

23 MS. ALAVI: Mr. Helling. Mr. Bustamante.

24 How do we get from here to here (indicating)? One

25 way is that when you're eight years old your father

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1 intentionally and purposely point-blank shoots you in the

2 foot, and he shoots you in the foot because you peed on

3 yourself.

4 You see, Billy had a problem, a disorder called

5 enuresis, so it caused him to wet his bed and wet himself,

6 and that infuriated his father. His father became

7 impatient, infuriated, and he suffered for it.

8 So one day when they were out on a boat and Billy

9 went to go on the boat with his dad -- his dad worked on

10 boats, and you will find out later that Billy also worked

11 on boats. When he went out on the boat with his dad, his

12 dad did what he knew best before shooting him, and that

13 was going and getting his bottle of Wild Turkey, which is

14 why he was nicknamed Wild Bill. He drank his bottle of

15 Wild Turkey, got drunk, like he always did, and shot him

16 in the foot. And then he said, "If you tell anybody, I'm

17 gonna burn the tip of your penis off." That's the kind of

18 man that he grew up with.

19 And people could have seen that coming, because even

20 before Billy was born in 1975, before that his father was

21 convicted of two DUI manslaughters on two seven-year-old

22 children. And when he was arrested for it, he laughed as

23 they were putting him in the patrol car. He thought that

24 was funny.

25 A few years later Billy was born, and from the very
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1 beginning he was at a great disadvantage. His mother was

2 a prostitute, his biological mother was a prostitute, who

3 his dad met while he was working. And when she had Billy,

4 his dad took him and brought him home to his then wife,

5 Selma, in Freeport, Texas.

6 And by the time his dad brought him home to Freeport,

7 Texas, William Sr. and his wife, Selma, were past the age

8 of wanting to be parents of a baby. They were in their

9 late 50s. They had other grown children who were already

10 out of the house.

11 You'll hear from Billy's sister during the course of

12 this trial, and she's 25 years older than he is. They had

13 four other children who were all out of the house. Her

14 name is Nancy, and Nancy has children who are Billy's

15 nieces and nephews that are actually older than he is.

16 Selma really didn't want any part of being a mother

17 at that point, because she had already been a mother for

18 years and her kids were grown and out of the house, but

19 William Sr. brought him home.

20 Now, when he came home, he was like many other kids;

21 running around, yelling, having a good time, playing, but

22 hyperactive. And he was on Ritalin for some period of

23 time, but his dad saw a better way to quell that

24 hyperactivity, so at the age of four he started giving

25 Billy shots and sips of whiskey, so that by the time he

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1 was 11 he was a full-blown alcoholic already. And when he

2 was 12, his teacher caught him on the bus drunk, and he

3 ended up getting treatment for alcohol abuse. That's how

4 his dad thought he should take care of the problem, and

5 Selma didn't intervene in that.

6 Now, through those years, and you can see I skipped

7 over a little part here, through those years I told you

8 that he had a problem wetting the bed and wetting his

9 pants. They lived -- it's kind of a one-bedroom trailer

10 on stilts basically, is where they lived in Freeport,

11 Texas. And in that one bedroom in the corner was a little

12 sort of cot that had like a rubber mat on it, because they

13 didn't want him wetting the bed, and they wouldn't let him

14 sleep in their bed because he wet the bed.

15 But when they wanted to have sex, which was quite

16 often, they didn't send him out to sleep on a living room

17 couch. They sent him out to sleep on the cold linoleum

18 floor in the kitchen. This was continuous and constant in

19 his life.

20 Throughout those years, these very formative

21 years -- and you will hear from Dr. Ross, who is a

22 neurologist. He will tell you about the effects of

23 alcohol on a child that age and on their brain development

24 through the most formative years of their lives.

25 This was the child that his father burned with

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1 cigarettes every time he wet himself.

2 This was the child who his father put in a closed

3 barrel and rolled down two flights of stairs in order to

4 try and get him to stop peeing in his pants. And he did

5 that because he knew Billy was afraid of the dark, so he

6 put him in a dark barrel and rolled him down two flights

7 of stairs.

8 This was the child that his father had him take a

9 meat cleaver and cut a cord while it was plugged in, and

10 he went flying and flew to the ground when he got shocked.

11 When he was 13 his dad had a great idea. He gets him

12 a prostitute for his birthday. He puts a hundred dollar

13 bill by her vagina and tells him, "Go get this with your

14 mouth and I'll guide you a little bit on how to do it."

15 That's the upbringing that he had. That's the abuse that

16 he suffered.

17 Now, there was a period of time where he went to go

18 live with his sister, Nancy, and that was the only period

19 of time actually -- and it wasn't very long. It was maybe

20 about two months -- where he had any stability, where he

21 did relatively well. But that was at a time when his

22 father took ill and was diagnosed with cancer and

23 emphysema.

24 Well, Selma, Nancy's mother, and Nancy were not

25 getting along. There were some issues going on between

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1 them. So Selma decided she was going to go get Billy and

2 yank him away from Nancy, the only stable thing he ever

3 had, and take him and Billy's father, William Sr., to

4 Florida, and they moved to Mayport, Florida.

5 And Mayport, Florida, and Freeport, Texas, are much

6 the same kind of town, sort of economically challenged

7 fishing towns, and they moved to Mayport. When Billy is

8 in Mayport, he has his first anxiety attack and he tries

9 to commit suicide.

10 Not long after that his dad dies, the only person,

11 really, that he had ever been connected to closely,

12 unfortunately, and that person dies. Soon after that,

13 after a break up with his high school girlfriend, he tries

14 to blow himself up.

15 Now, you can see the long trail that I have gone

16 through when I mentioned all of the hyperactivity and the

17 abuse and things like that. During this whole period of

18 time he is exhibiting -- Billy is exhibiting signs and

19 symptoms of different mental health issues and illnesses.

20 Some of them were diagnosed back in his early years and

21 some of them weren't diagnosed until later.

22 He has been diagnosed with several, several things;

23 hyperactivity, bipolar disorder, posttraumatic stress

24 disorder, depressive disorder, schizoaffective disorder,

25 bipolar disorder with psychotic features, and major

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1 depression with psychotic features. All of those he has

2 been diagnosed with.

3 And you will hear from some other doctors in this

4 case -- Dr. Heather Holmes, you'll hear from Dr. Joseph

5 Wu, and I told you you'll also hear from Dr. Ross -- about

6 all of these mental health issues around how they

7 developed and how they came to be and what is the

8 interplay between those and the abuse and neglect that he

9 suffered and the witnessing of domestic violence that he

10 saw.

11 While Billy is struggling with depression and all

12 these other symptoms, he meets Marilee Noble, who he

13 marries, but, again, pain in his life. Because what

14 happened was she got pregnant, and he wanted a child, but

15 she was having somebody else's child, so they ended up

16 getting divorced.

17 When he's about 23 he marries Irene McMains and

18 thinks everything is going to be great now. She's going

19 to give him the child that he wanted. And her nickname,

20 by the way, was Tootie. Everybody called her Tootie. And

21 not only did she give him a child, who they affectionately

22 called Frog, but she had two other children, small

23 children, from a prior relationship. But that all fell

24 apart. It fell apart when something happened that changed

25 not only Tootie's life but Billy's life forever.

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1 His stepson, Louis, who they called Poly, while Billy

2 is in Georgia working, Tootie and the three kids are

3 crossing the street in Mayport, and a truck comes and

4 violently kills Poly. He rushed back from Georgia, but

5 their lives were never ever the same. They both fell into

6 major depression, for obvious reasons, but it just kept

7 spiraling more downward and downward and downward for him,

8 more pain.

9 They moved to Georgia for some period of time, but

10 while they were there, the house was filthy, the house was

11 roach infested, because of the depression and the no

12 energy. Nobody wanted to do anything.

13 They finally moved back to Mayport, because Tootie's

14 family lives in Mayport, but when he gets back, shortly

15 after they get back, two more attempted suicides, and

16 Billy got Baker Acted for both of those, which means that

17 he was involuntarily hospitalized. Significantly, though,

18 after the first one he tried to get help, but he got

19 dropped by his insurance and then he couldn't afford it

20 anymore.

21 The depression, the mental health issues, certainly

22 not getting any better. And you'll hear about all of that

23 during the course of the trial.

24 So then we get to the tragedy of the murders in

25 Mayport. Billy and Tootie are living with Frog in a

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1 trailer that belongs to Tootie's brother, and they're

2 having some issues with each other, struggles that they're

3 having in their marriage partially as a result of the

4 mental health issues that are going on, drugs being used.

5 And one morning they wake up and there's an argument, a

6 disagreement over something. Tootie has a gun, then Billy

7 gets the gun and ultimately shoots her accidentally.

8 Now, the body, her body, he puts in a room. Her

9 brother comes over, and he shoots her brother and puts him

10 in a room. Now, the family had not been getting along

11 with one another. Her -- her family was not particularly

12 fond of the relationship between the two of them. And

13 then her father comes over looking for his two kids, and

14 Billy shoots the father, and so now there's three of them

15 in the trailer. This all took place over a 12-day period

16 of time inside the trailer.

17 Next comes over Richard Reese, who was -- Billy

18 believed was Tootie's boyfriend, because on another

19 occasion just a little bit prior to that incident Billy

20 had come home and Tootie was in her nightie and Mr. Reese

21 was on the couch in his boxers. So when Mr. Reese comes

22 over, Billy shoots him.

23 And then the next person that came over was a drug

24 dealer. And by this time, over the course of this 12

25 days, Billy has spent and is on massive, massive amounts

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1 of cocaine, and he kills the drug dealer.

2 Now, you might hear during the course of the rest of

3 this trial that some people after that had been in and out

4 of the trailer as well that obviously were not killed.

5 And at some point a friend of Billy's comes over and finds

6 out what's going on, the bodies in the house, and

7 ultimately the police are called and the Jacksonville

8 Sheriff's Department shows up.

9 Now, Billy had been concerned about losing his son

10 prior to this happening. Certainly there was lots of

11 dysfunction between he and Tootie, both of them were

12 cheating on one another, and he was afraid of losing his

13 son.

14 So when the sheriff's office shows up, Billy asks for

15 flowers and a pizza. He wants flowers so he can put them

16 by his wife's body because he was so remorseful about

17 shooting her. He wants pizza because he knows that he's

18 not gonna have a son anymore and he wants to spend some

19 time with his son. So he's got these bodies laying in the

20 trailer and he's asking for flowers and pizza. And

21 ultimately, after he gets those things, he lets his son go

22 and he releases his son to the sheriff's office.

23 When he gets arrested, he had taken actually a

24 handful of pills to try to kill himself but found himself

25 handcuffed to a hospital bed, and, not surprisingly, he

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1 wanted the death penalty. And you can see from the prior

2 acts of suicide attempts he had been chasing the death

3 penalty his entire life. But after a series of

4 evaluations by various doctors, he entered a plea to five

5 life sentences.

6 When he gets incarcerated, from the get-go they're

7 aware of the issues that he has, in part because he tries

8 to hang himself from one of the tiers in the prison, and I

9 believe it was a cellmate who saved him from that. Not

10 long after that he is sent from one prison to a particular

11 prison that has a crisis stabilization unit.

12 And then when he's at Everglades there's an attempted

13 murder on an inmate there. And the circumstances

14 surrounding that were that Mr. Wells had befriended an

15 inmate at the Everglades. That inmate's mother was

16 bringing in contraband. The victim in the case threatened

17 to tell on or snitch on the mother for bringing in the

18 contraband, and that's how that incident ended up

19 happening. Now, five days prior to that incident, Mr.

20 Wells told the staff at the prison, "I feel like I'm

21 falling off the deep end."

22 This entire time, from the Mayport murders through

23 this whole time, there is not a day that went by that

24 Billy wasn't having hallucinations of his wife's bloody

25 face, maggots crawling all over, hearing her voice,

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1 haunted by that every day, remorse for that every day.

2 And then we came to what we call the instant offense,

3 which is this case, and you heard the facts of this case.

4 And something that you need to know about this case is

5 that you heard about how you get to be a runaround. Mr.

6 Wells told the staff at the prison that he was not ready

7 for that. He told them that he was not -- "I am not ready

8 to be around people," but they still assigned him to be a

9 runaround. And even though he told them that he wasn't

10 ready to be around people, they told him, "If you don't,

11 you will be disciplined." And even though he told them

12 that he wasn't ready for that, he was compelled to be

13 partnered with Wayne Doty.

14 Now, the judge is going to read you an instruction

15 regarding aggravators and mitigators and that you have to

16 go through one step before you get to the next step. But

17 regardless of what you find in the first step, the second

18 step, and if you don't get past the second step, you don't

19 even get to the third step, he will tell you regardless of

20 your findings, you are neither compelled nor required to

21 vote for death ever, ever, even if you find aggravators

22 sufficient for whatever reason. It's a very individual --

23 and he will tell you, it is an individual personal and

24 moral decision.

25 You know from September 5th, we brought all of you in

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1 here, and you were told to sit there and you were told to

2 stand in this line and you were told to be back here at

3 8:30 and you were told we'll try to accommodate the

4 hurricane, all those sorts of things, and you've all

5 constantly been told, but it's each of you that actually

6 have individual power in this case. It's very individual.

7 Ms. Jones, it's your individual choice; Ms. Callaway,

8 your individual choice; Ms. Tilloston, your individual

9 choice; Ms. Proper, yours. You are the ones with the

10 power in the courtroom. But there is nothing ever, ever,

11 regardless of what you find, that requires you to impose a

12 sentence of death.

13 You know Billy has never stopped wanting to die.

14 Some days are better than others, but he is so haunted by

15 what he did back in 2003. He has the hallucinations that

16 I told you about, the hearing of the voices, and he

17 wonders about him (indicating). Billy wonders about him,

18 his son, who he hasn't seen since he released him to the

19 police and they took him away on that horrible day in

20 2003.

21 Over the years you're going to hear about the several

22 mental health diagnoses he had. One thing you need to

23 know about him is that he is tortured every day by what

24 happened to him and even more so by what he did. So we

25 are asking you to please not grant this man his death
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1 wish.

2 Thank you.

3 * * *

4 (Excerpt concluded.)

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3 C E R T I F I C A T E

5 STATE OF FLORIDA )

6 COUNTY OF ALACHUA )

7 I do hereby certify that I was authorized to and did

8 stenographically report the foregoing proceedings, pages

9 numbered 1 through 20, and that the transcript is a true and

10 correct record of my stenographic notes.

11 Dated this 1st day of October, 2017.

12

13 ________________________________
Pamela S. Connor
14 Registered Professional Reporter
Florida Professional Reporter
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