McCorquodale v. State

• Decision Date: 03 December 1974
• Docket Number: No. 29131,29131
• Citation: 233 Ga. 369,211 S.E.2d 577
• Parties: Timothy W. McCORQUODALE v. The STATE.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

Page 577

211 S.E.2d 577

233 Ga. 369

Timothy W. McCORQUODALE v. The STATE.

No. 29131.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Dec. 3, 1974.

Rehearing Denied Dec. 17, 1974.

Robert L. Ridley, Glenn Zell, Atlanta, for appellant.

Lewis R. Slaton, Dist. Atty., H. Allen Moye, Asst. Dist. Atty., Arthur K. Bolton, Atty. Gen., Lois F. Oakley, Atlanta, for appellee.

Syllabus Opinion by the Court

JORDAN, Justice.

Timothy W. McCorquodale was indicted for murder by the Grand Jury of Fulton County, tried before a jury and found guilty. He was sentenced to death in the electric chair and appeals from the judgment and the sentence.

I.

The state presented evidence to establish the following facts:

On the evening of January 16, 1974, Donna, the victim, a 17 year old girl, and her friend, Pamela Pharris, were in the area of Peachtree and 10th Street in the City of Atlanta known as 'The Strip.' While in a restaurant they were accosted by a man named Leroy who invited them to a bar for a beer. While in the bar the two girls engaged in a conversation with two black men. Leroy left the bar and the girls later went to another bar on 'The Strip.' Leroy met them at this bar, approached their table and accused Donna and Pamela of stealing $40 or $50 from him and giving the money to a black pimp. At this point they were joined by the defendant McCorquodale and his girlfriend, Bonnie Succaw (now Johnson). At the request of Leroy and McCorquodale the girls were taken to a bathroom and searched by Bonnie and a friend. They found no money. McCorquodale and Leroy then summoned a cab, and joined by Bonnie, they took Donna with them to Bonnie's apartment. They arrived at Bonnie's apartment shortly after midnight and found Bonnie's roommate, Linda, and Bonnie's three year old daughter asleep. The appellant McCorquodale had lived some eight months prior to his time in the apartment with Bonnie. Linda joined them in the living room of Bonnie's apartment and at this point there was some conversation between McCorquodale and Leroy about Donna being a 'nigger lover' and that she needed to be taught a lesson.

The appellant, after telling Donna how pretty she was, raised his fist and hit her across the face. When she stood up, he grabbed her by her blouse, ripping it off. He then proceeded to remove her bra and tied her hands behind her back with a nylon stocking. McCorquodale then removed his belt, which was fastened with a rather large buckle, and repeatedly struck Donna across the back with the buckle end of the belt. He then took off all her clothing and then bound her mouth with tape and a washcloth. Leroy then kicked Donna and she fell to the floor. McCorquodale took his cigarette and burned the victim on the breasts, the thigh, and the navel. He then bit one of Donna's nipples and she began to bleed. He asked for a razor blade and then sliced the other nipple. He then called for a box of salt and poured it into the wounds he had made on her breasts. At this point Linda, who was eight months pregnant, became ill and went into the bedroom and closed the door. McCorquodale then lit a candle and proceeded to drip hot wax over Donna's body. He held the candle about 1/2 inch from Donna's vagina and dripped the hot wax into this part of her body. He While bleeding from her nose and vagina, Leroy forced the victim to perform oral sex on him while McCorquodale had intercourse with her. Then Leroy had intercourse with the victim while McCorquodale forced his penis into the victim's mouth. McCorquodale then found a hard plastic bottle which was about 5 inches in height and placed an antiseptic solution within it, forcing this bottle into Donna's vagina and squirted the solution into her. The victim was then permitted to go to the bathroom to 'get cleaned up.' While she was in the bathroom, McCorquodale secured a piece of nylon rope and told Bonnie and her roommate that he was going 'to kill the girl.' He hid in a closet across the hall from the bathroom and when Donna came out of the bathroom he wrapped the nylon cord around her neck. Donna screamed, 'My God, you're killing me.' As McCorquodale tried to strangle her, the cord cut into his hands and Donna fell to the floor. He fell on top of her and began to strangle her with his bare hands. He removed his hands and the victim began to have convulsions. He again strangled her and then pulled her head up and forward to break her neck. He covered her lifeless body with a sheet and departed the apartment to search for a means of transporting her body from the scene. By this time, it was approximately 6:00 a.m. on the morning of January 17.

then used a pair of surgical seissors to cut around the victim's clitoris.

McCorquodale soon returned to the apartment and asked Bonnie for her trunk and Leroy and McCorquodale tried to place Donna's body in the trunk. Finding that the body was too large for the trunk McCorquodale proceeded to break Donna's arms and legs by holding them upright while he stomped on them with his foot. Donna's body was then placed in the trunk and the trunk was placed in the closet behind the curtains. McCorquodale and Leroy then went to sleep on the couch in the living room for the greater portion of the day, leaving the apartment sometime during the afternoon.

Because a strong odor began to emanate from the body, and her efforts to mask the smell with deodorant spray had been unsuccessful, Linda called Bonnie to request that McCorquodale remove the trunk from the apartment. Shortly after 8:00 p.m. McCorquodale arrived at the apartment with a person named Larry. As they attempted to move the trunk from the closet, blood began spilling from the trunk on to the living room floor. McCorquodale placed a towel under the trunk to absorb the blood as they carried the trunk to Larry's car. When McCorquodale and Larry returned to the apartment they told Linda that the body had been dumped out of the trunk into a road and that the trunk was placed under some boxes in a 'Dempsey Dumpster.' Donna's body was found about half a mile off Highway No. 42 in Clayton County.

II.

McCorquodale appeals to this court alleging some twenty-six enumerations of error, some of which are redundant and combined for consideration.

1. No further recitation of facts is necessary to establish that the general grounds are without merit. The aggravating circumstances found by the jury were that 'the offense of murder . . . was outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman in that it involved torture, depravity of mind, or an aggravated battery to the victim.' Ga.L.1973, pp. 159, 163 (Code Ann. § 27-2534.1(b)(7)). The appellant argues that the aggravating circumstances found by the jury were not connected with the actual homicide in that the victim did not protest the treatment and that the torture, if any, did not lead to the death in that there was a break between the mistreatment and killing of the victim.

As we view the factual setting the torture and killing were all one uninterrupted night of horror, the macabre affair ending with the appellant deliberately killing the victim to cover the heinous and senseless 2. In the absence of a request the court did not err in failing to charge the jury on voluntariness of a confession which was introduced into evidence and read to the jury following a full and complete Jackson-Denno type hearing.

crimes committed upon her. The finding of the jury was amply supported by the evidence and the verdict is not contrary [233 Ga. 373] to law. The trial court did not err in overruling the appellant's motion for new trial.

Appellant contends that his confession was involuntary in that it was induced by a detective's promise that he would not be able to see his girlfriend, Bonnie, until such time as he had made a confession. This contention is disputed by the testimony of the detective who stated that Bonnie was present in the room when Appellant requested to speak with the detective privately. The detective also testified that he did not promise appellant that he could see his girlfriend only after giving his statement. Code § 38-411 provides: 'To make a confession admissible, it must have been made voluntarily, without being induced by another, by the slightest hope of benefit or remotest fear of injury.'

The record indicates that the trial court held a full and complete hearing on the issue of voluntariness of the confession, meeting the requirements of Jackson v. Denno, 378 U.S. 368, 84 S.Ct. 1774, 12 L.Ed.2d 908. After this hearing the court determined that the confession was voluntary and admissible for the jury's consideration. His determination is supported by a preponderance of the evidence as required by High v. State, 233 Ga. 153, 210 S.E.2d 673, decided October 25, 1974.

In Thomas v. State, 233 Ga. 237, 210 S.E.2d 675, this court held that 'Under established Georgia law there is no necessity to give a charge on the subject of the voluntariness of a confession unless there is a specific request for it. Ivy v. State, 220 Ga. 699, 704, 141 S.E.2d 541; Harvey v. State, 216 Ga. 174, 177, 115 S.E.2d 345 (both cases approved in Curry v. State, 230 Ga. 221, 196 S.E.2d 443'.

In the absence of a request to charge or an objection to the court's omission to charge the jury on voluntariness of the confession, the trial court did not err. Although there is no burden on defense counsel in a criminal case to object to an instruction as a condition precedent to enumerating it as error, we note here that counsel in answer to an inquiry by the court affirmatively stated that his only objection related to the charge on voluntary manslaughter. See Gearin v. State, 127 Ga.App. 811, 813, 195 S.E.2d 211 and Thompkins v. State, 126 Ga.App. 683, 684, 191 S.E.2d 555.

We also note that there was ample evidence to support the conviction without the confession, including the testimony of two eyewitnesses to the crime. The Supreme Court of the United States has recently held that 'unless...