IAPE Evidence Blog

The Ledger (Lake­land, FL), METRO; Pg. B1
BYLINE: By SUZIE SCHOTTELKOTTE

Lake Wales, FL

Lake Wales police say they can­not find lineup pic­tures used to iden­tify defen­dant Leon Davis.

BARTOW — Author­i­ties may have lost the pho­tos used in a lineup that led to mur­der defen­dant Leon Davis’ arrest, and his lawyers now are ask­ing a judge to exclude that eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tion dur­ing Davis’ upcom­ing mur­der trial.

In a motion filed Fri­day, defense lawyer Bob Nor­gard said pros­e­cu­tors haven’t pro­duced the photo pack in which Bran­don Greis­man iden­ti­fied Davis as the assailant in a Decem­ber 2007 attack that left two Lake Wales women dead.

Davis, 32, faces five counts of first-degree mur­der in the worst series of killings in Polk County his­tory. He is charged in the death of the two women in Lake Wales, the death of the pre­ma­ture son born to one of those women and the slay­ing of two con­ve­nience store clerks in Lake Alfred a week earlier.

Absent the photo pack, Nor­gard argued, his client would be denied the right to due process and to con­front wit­nesses against him.

Lake Wales police detec­tives con­ducted the photo lineup, and Chief Herb Gillis acknowl­edged Fri­day that the photo pack is missing.

“We are search­ing every cor­ner of the evi­dence room and going through every report in this case to find that photo pack,” he said. “We are, how­ever, con­fi­dent in Greisman’s iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of Davis.”

A two-day hear­ing on Norgard’s motion is sched­uled to begin June 7.

Greis­man, who said he was shot in the nose when he con­fronted Davis in the street within min­utes of the attack, has tes­ti­fied that he iden­ti­fied Davis from the photo pack while in the hos­pi­tal under­go­ing treat­ment for his injuries. He said he hadn’t known Davis before that, and hadn’t yet seen pho­tos of him in the media.

Davis, 32, is sched­uled to stand trial in July on three counts of first-degree mur­der for the Lake Wales attack.

Author­i­ties allege he intended to rob the Headley Nation­wide Insur­ance office in Lake Wales, where he had his auto pol­icy, and when clerks Juanita Luciano and Yvonne Bus­ta­mante said they had no money, Davis doused them in gaso­line and set them on fire.

Luciano was six months preg­nant, and doc­tors were forced to deliver her son that night. He died three days later, and the two women died within two weeks of the Dec. 13 attack.

The state is seek­ing the death penalty if Davis is convicted.

Davis faces two addi­tional first-degree mur­der charges for an unre­lated shoot­ing at a BP con­ve­nience store a week ear­lier. That trial is sched­uled for February.

Ear­lier this week, Nor­gard filed a motion seek­ing to sup­press the state­ments Luciano and Bus­ta­mante made at the scene when they iden­ti­fied Davis, whom they knew, as their assailant. Nor­gard argued that the state­ments are hearsay evi­dence unless the women knew they were going to die at the time they made them.

A two-day hear­ing on those motions is sched­uled to begin Thursday.

[ Suzie Schot­telkotte can be reached at suzie.schottelkotte@theledger.com or 863 – 533-9070. ]

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