State v. PierreState v. Pierre
The defendant was charged by grand jury indictment with second degree murder in violation of
On January 22, 1986, Avoyelles Parish deputies found the body of thirteen-year-old Contrell Alexander wrapped in an army blanket on a deserted stretch of old Highway One, near Simmesport, Louisiana. Alexander had been savagely beaten to death with a tire iron, wielded with such force that the impression of its lug remained on the victim‘s body, and with a fence post discarded on the scene. The parish coroner found evidence that the victim had been raped within 24 hours of his death. Investigation of the murder eventually led to the arrest of Clifton Jones and a statement by Jones on August 31, 1991, placing himself at the scene of the murder with Michael Hill, Barry Courtney, and the defendant. In that statement, Jones admitted driving the moribund body of Contrell in his van out to Highway One where the victim was eventually killed, but blamed Courtney and Hill for the murder. Jones told the deputies that he and the defendant had both been intimidated by the older Hill and had not played an active role in the commission of the crime.
The state also asked jurors to consider the evidence provided by three other witnesses. David Antoine testified that he had seen Hill, Jones, Courtney, the defendant, and the victim together at the Washington Teenage Center in Simmesport on the evening of January 21, 1986, the night of Alexander‘s murder. Antoine then saw Jones early the next morning washing out his van. Pierce Taylor had also observed Jones cleaning his van at approximately 1:00 a.m. on the morning of January 22, 1986.
Robert Thomasie also testified for the state. Thomasie had written two letters from the parish prison to the authorities, the first on January 5, 1992, and the second two days later. Both letters were introduced at trial. In the first, Thomasie identified Jones, Hill, Courtney and the defendant by their initials and noted that the defendant “claims he was not there but seems to know all about it.” In the second, Thomasie recorded the defendant‘s admission that he had accompanied the others inside the abandoned home where the victim was then raped by Hill and Jones. According to this letter, the defendant and Courtney had gone back to Jones‘s van several minutes before Jones and Hill emerged from the house with the victim‘s body. The defendant blamed Hill and Jones for the subsequent murder. He placed the tire iron in Jones‘s hand and the fence post in Hill‘s.
At trial, Thomasie testified that the defendant told him that only two persons, Courtney and Jones, had gone inside the abandoned home with the victim where the rape occurred. According to Thomasie, the defendant also informed him that “they” had been riding around when they picked up Alexander; that after leaving the abandoned home, “they” realized that the victim was not dead; that after driving out to the deserted location where the body was found, “they” took “the little boy out of the van. One had a tire tool, the other one had a wooden object, post, or whatever, and they left with the little boy and came back, without the little boy.”
The state readily conceded at trial that the defendant did not personally strike any of the blows which ended Alexander‘s life and asked jurors to convict him as a principal in that offense. All persons “concerned in the commission of a crime” are principals,
The trial court properly instructed the jury according to these principles and jurors labored long and hard over the course of two days to apply them. In the end, however,
Jurors had no direct or circumstantial evidence that the defendant counseled or procured the others to kill Alexander, or that he participated in the actual murder. Thomasie‘s testimony made clear that the defendant used the all-inclusive “they” even when referring in context to Courtney and Jones. Jurors knew from the extent of his self-contradiction and the testimony of David Antoine and Pierre Taylor that Jones lied in his trial testimony when he denied any involvement in the murder. Even if jurors disobeyed the court‘s cautionary instructions about the proper use of Jones‘s prior inconsistent statements, however, they could find no reliable answers in those statements about the degree of the defendant‘s involvement, if any. Jones testified at Hill‘s trial that the defendant opened the back door of his van when Hill and Courtney emerged from the abandoned house with the victim‘s body. In his statement of August 31, 1991, which broke the case, however, Jones indicated that Hill was the one who opened the rear door and that the defendant had remained in the front seat of the van, staring fixedly out of the windshield while the victim was then beaten to death on old Highway 1.
The due process standard of review in Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979), preserves the role of the jury as the factfinder in the case but it does not allow jurors “‘to speculate if the evidence is such that reasonable jurors must have a reasonable doubt.‘” State v. Mussall, 523 So.2d 1305, 1311 (La.1988) [quoting 2 C. Wright, Federal Practice & Procedure, Criminal 2d § 467 (2d ed. 1982)]; see also State v. Lubrano, 563 So.2d 847 (La.1990). A jury‘s finding that the accused aided and abetted in the commission of the crime therefore “cannot be ‘mere speculation based upon guilt by association.‘” State v. Schwander, supra, 345 So.2d at 1175 [quoting State v. Williams, 310 So.2d 513, 515 (La.1975) ]. The evidence at trial did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant specifically intended to kill the victim so as to make him a principal in the crime.
The defendant‘s conviction for manslaughter is therefore reversed, and he is ordered discharged from custody on that offense.
CONVICTION AND SENTENCE REVERSED; DISCHARGE FROM CUSTODY ORDERED.