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Case No. SC12-676
(FL S.Ct., Dec. 19, 2013)
FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
McCoy pled guilty to first-degree murder with a firearm. A penalty-phase proceeding was subsequently conducted before a jury, during which the following evidence was presented regarding the murder of Curtis Brown.
Curtis Brown was a service technician employed by the Coca-Cola Company, operating out of the company’s Valparaiso, Florida, location. This job required Brown to respond to service calls regarding vending, fountain, and ice machines and to repair the machines where they were located. Brown was a very thorough and precise technician who liked to help others, and he had advanced to the service technician position after beginning his employment with the Coca-Cola Company delivering products to vending machines.
On Friday, April 10, 2009, Brown responded to a service call regarding a Coca-Cola machine in a break room at the Northwest Florida State College campus in DeFuniak Springs, Florida, which is in Walton County, in the northwest part of the state. Although another technician, Ray Jackson, typically serviced machines in DeFuniak Springs, Brown would often respond to service calls wherever he was needed and offered to help Jackson by responding to the service call for the Northwest Florida State College machine. Upon responding to the call, Brown was shot six times and killed in the break room where the Coca-Cola machine was located. When emergency personnel arrived, they found Brown lying dead on the floor of the break room. The medical examiner testified that all six wounds could have been fatal and that the time of death from the infliction of the wounds could have been “within seconds or minutes” but was not immediate.
Law enforcement determined that the service call regarding the Northwest Florida State College Coca-Cola machine was placed by Thomas McCoy, a former Coca-Cola employee and colleague of Brown and Jackson until McCoy resigned from the company in June 2006. McCoy had worked for Coca-Cola for about twelve years, beginning in 1994, as part of the five-man service technician team that also included Brown and Jackson. The group liked to play practical jokes on one another, such as turning the windshield wipers on or the radio up in a vehicle that was left unlocked, but there were never any reported or visible signs of animosity between McCoy and the other service technicians.
No. SC12-676
Appellant,
vs.
STATE OF FLORIDA,
Appellee.