Williams v. Com.

• Decision Date: 04 September 1987
• Docket Number: Nos. 870102,870103,s. 870102
• Citation: 360 S.E.2d 361,234 Va. 168
• Court: Virginia Supreme Court
• Parties: Terry WILLIAMS v. COMMONWEALTH of Virginia. Record

Page 361

360 S.E.2d 361

234 Va. 168

Terry WILLIAMS v. COMMONWEALTH of Virginia.

Record Nos. 870102, 870103.

Supreme Court of Virginia.

Sept. 4, 1987.

Robert J. Smitherman, E.L. Motley, Jr. (Meade, Tate & Daniel, P.C., Danville, on brief), for appellant.

Robert B. Condon, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Mary Sue Terry, Atty. Gen., on brief), for appellee.

Present: All the Justices.

WHITING, Justice.

Terry Williams (Williams) was indicted on July 7, 1986, for the capital murder of Harris Thomas Stone (Stone) on November 2, 1985, while in the commission of the armed robbery of Stone. Code § 18.2-31(d). A second count of the indictment charged Williams with the robbery of Stone during the course of the capital murder.

On September 30, 1986, a jury found Williams guilty of both charges, fixing his punishment for robbery at seven years imprisonment. In a separate proceeding mandated by Code § 19.2-264.4, after hearing evidence of Williams' history, including aggravating factors and mitigating evidence, the jury fixed Williams' sentence at death, based on his "future dangerousness." After considering the probation officer's report and other evidence in a further hearing, the trial court, by its order dated November 19, 1986, sentenced Williams to death for capital murder. Williams' appeal of the robbery conviction was certified to this Court, as authorized by Code § 17-116.06. We have consolidated that appeal and the automatic review of Williams' death sentence, Code § 17-110.1(A), with his appeal from his conviction of capital murder, Code § 17-110.1(F), and given both priority on our docket as required by Code § 17-110.2.

I. THE EVIDENCE

We must view the evidence in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth because it was the prevailing party in the trial court. Stone, an elderly man who resided on Henry Street in Danville, was found dead in his bed shortly before 2:00 a.m. Sunday, November 3, 1985. There was no sign of a struggle, no blood was observed on Stone's body, and he was fully clothed. Despite a diligent search, Stone's wallet, which he customarily kept fastened in the back pocket of his pants, was never found.

The local medical examiner, who examined the body about 9:30 that Sunday morning, noted an abrasion on the chest, but no bruising. Stone's history of heart disease and the police failure to report anything suspicious about the circumstances of Stone's death led the local medical examiner to conclude that Stone's death was due to heart failure. However, when Stone's blood alcohol content was later analyzed and was reported to be 0.41%, the regional medical examiner's office in Roanoke amended the finding of the cause of death to alcohol poisoning. Stone's daughter testified Stone looked "a little high" when she last saw him entering his house shortly after 6:00 p.m. on Saturday, November 2, 1985.

When the funeral director, Jack Miller, observed Stone's body on Monday morning, he called a bruise or abrasion over the left ribs to the attention of the police. The police told Miller that the local medical examiner believed the bruise was an old one. Though Miller disagreed with the local medical examiner, on instructions from the police he embalmed the body.

Almost six months later, the chief of police in Danville received an anonymous letter from an inmate of the local jail in which the author admitted killing "that man Who Die on Henry St." The police interviewed Williams, an inmate of the Danville jail at the time, who eventually admitted that he had written the letter and later gave multiple confessions to the murder and robbery of Stone. Williams said he had first struck Stone in the chest, and later on his back, with a mattock and had removed three dollars from Stone's wallet.

Stone's body was exhumed. On July 2, 1986 Dr. David Oxley, a forensic pathologist and Deputy Chief Medical Examiner for Western Virginia, performed an autopsy. When Dr. Oxley opened the body, he found Stone's fourth and fifth ribs on the left side had been fractured and displaced inward, puncturing the left lung and depositing a quantity of blood in the left chest cavity.

II. ADMISSIBILITY OF STATEMENTS MADE BY WILLIAMS TO THE POLICE

At trial the defendant moved to suppress his incriminating statements, contending that at the time he gave them he was emotionally confused, under duress, and not competent to give an accurate statement and thus unable knowingly and intelligently to waive his constitutional rights. The trial court denied the motion.

The burden is upon the Commonwealth to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Williams' statement was voluntary. See Rodgers v. Commonwealth, 227 Va. 605, 608, 318 S.E.2d 298, 300 (1984); Stockton v. Commonwealth, 227 Va. 124, 140, 314 S.E.2d 371, 381, cert. denied, 469 U.S. 873, 105 S.Ct. 229, 83 L.Ed.2d 158 (1984); Griggs v. Commonwealth, 220 Va. 46, 49, 255 S.E.2d 475, 477 (1979); McCoy v. Commonwealth, 206 Va. 470, 474, 144 S.E.2d 303, 307 (1965). Whether a statement is voluntary is ultimately a legal rather than a factual question, but subsidiary factual questions are entitled to a presumption of correctness. See Miller v. Fenton, 474 U.S. 104, 112, 106 S.Ct. 445, 450, 88 L.Ed.2d 405 (1985); Gray v. Commonwealth, 233 Va. 313, 324, 356 S.E.2d 157, 163 (1987). Moreover, Rodgers points out that following a trial court's finding of voluntariness, the scope of our appellate review is limited to determining whether the evidence supports the finding. The trial court's finding on this issue is entitled to the "same weight as a fact found by a jury, and that finding will not be disturbed on appeal unless plainly wrong." Rodgers, 227 Va. at 608-09, 318 S.E.2d at 300.

The defendant injected himself into this case by writing a letter to the chief of police in which he said:

I can't write or spell too good So Please bare with me. I know what I am saying and what I'm going to Do. I call Capt. Dose, back in Feb. of this year one night at 2:25 p.m. and told him about that man Who Die on Henry St. I said that I might have known what happen to him, but I didn't Leve my name. Well, I kill him myself. And all them cars That someone when in while Those pleople were at work, I when in those cars. Mills, Holetells, on the streets, Just about all over Danville, and also that Lady on W. Green St. I did it, but I am very sorry I did. I just can't hole all of this inside of me. It's getting to the pont that I don't know who I am anymore. I will only talk with you, please.

After that letter was received, two detectives interviewed the defendant, and he implicated himself in the crime, explaining to the detectives that his conscience was bothering him and he wanted to talk to somebody. In a taped statement Williams explained his reason for confessing by saying, "I couldn't live with myself no more with what I had done to these two people. And I just wish I could get some help from somebody." After having spoken with his relatives, Williams recanted the statements, claiming that he was having some kind of nightmares and dreams. However, he reaffirmed the statements a few days later.

A clinical psychologist found Williams to be of low intelligence but that he had a good understanding of court procedures and was capable of understanding his rights and making a knowing and voluntary waiver of them. He also concluded that Williams' claims of dreams and hallucinations were "malingered claims." A forensic psychiatrist who examined Williams did not believe he experienced hallucinations but that he had an unexplained "unusual power through dreams to visualize something that has happened in the past." The psychiatrist indicated Williams was not suffering from mental illness or defect and was competent to give statements to the police. This evidence convinces us that the trial judge had ample grounds to support his finding that Williams was competent to make the statements to the police.

Williams now attacks the voluntariness of his statements, asserting that they were induced by a promise of reward. It is true, as the defendant contends, that a "confession is inadmissible where it [is] induced by the hope of the gain of some advantage or to avoid some evil in reference to the proceeding against the declarant." Jackson v. Commonwealth, 116 Va. 1015, 1020, 81 S.E. 192, 194 (1914); see Brady v. United States, 397 U.S. 742, 753, 90 S.Ct. 1463, 1471, 25 L.Ed.2d 747 (1970).

However, the cases relied upon by Williams are inapposite on their facts. In Jackson, we said "the confession was induced by the hope, inspired by what [the sheriff's agent] had said to [Jackson], that he would thereby escape the extreme penalty of the law for this offense [of murder]." Jackson, 116 Va. at 1019, 81 S.E. at 193. In Macon v. Commonwealth, 187 Va. 363, 46 S.E.2d 396 (1948), we reversed a criminal conviction based solely on a confession which the defendant later repudiated and which was "itself ... based on supposed facts proven untrue and is incredible." ¹ Id. at 378, 46 S.E.2d at 403. In Belcher v. Commonwealth, 160 Va. 891, 168 S.E. 468 (1933), we found that a Commonwealth's Attorney had;

intentionally so conducted his conversations with [the accused's] brother and with [the accused], and so shaped his language as to raise in the mind [of the accused] the hope and belief that, if he told what he knew about this crime and testified in behalf of the commonwealth against others who were implicated by his statement, he would not be prosecuted.

Id. at 905, 168 S.E. at 473.

This brief recital of the facts in these cases is sufficient to show their inapplicability to this case. The most Williams can say is that "[t]he two police officers obtained [my] confession by raising [my] hopes of obtaining psychological and mental 'help.' " This falls far short of a confession induced by the hope of gaining some advantage or avoidance of some evil in reference to the proceeding against the defendant. See Townes v....