Mu'Min v. Com.

• Citation: 389 S.E.2d 886,239 Va. 433
• Decision Date: 02 March 1990
• Docket Number: No. 890899,890899
• Parties: Dawud Majid MU'MIN a/k/a David Michael Allen v. COMMONWEALTH of Virginia. Record
• Court: Supreme Court of Virginia

Page 886

389 S.E.2d 886

239 Va. 433

Dawud Majid MU'MIN a/k/a David Michael Allen v. COMMONWEALTH of Virginia.

Record No. 890899.

Supreme Court of Virginia.

March 2, 1990.

Ronald Wayne Fahy, Lawrie R. Rollison, Steven D. Benjamin, for appellant.

David A. Rosenberg, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Mary Sue Terry, Atty. Gen., on brief), for appellee.

Present: CARRICO, C.J., COMPTON, STEPHENSON, RUSSELL, WHITING, and HASSELL, JJ., and POFF, Senior Justice.

POFF, Senior Justice.

Dawud Majid Mu'Min, also known as David Michael Allen, was tried by a jury on an indictment charging capital murder. Invoking the three grounds defined in subsections (c), (d), and (e) of Code § 18.2-31 (Repl.Vol.1988) (now, subsections (3), (4), and (5) of § 18.2-31), the indictment alleged that the killing had been committed while the accused "was a prisoner confined in a State or local correctional facility or while in the custody of an employee thereof, or while in the commission of robbery, while armed with a deadly weapon, or during the commission of or subsequent to rape".

The verdict form submitted to the jury in the first phase of the bifurcated trial quoted the three grounds alleged in the indictment and instructed the jury to "strike out" any ground "that you do not find beyond a reasonable doubt." The jury marked through the third ground and returned a guilty verdict based upon the first and second grounds.

The verdict form submitted to the jury in the penalty phase of the trial quoted the language of Code § 19.2-264.4(C) defining the "dangerousness" and the "vileness" predicates and instructed the jury to strike out the language of either predicate "if either you do not unanimously find." The jury, "having considered the evidence in mitigation of the offense," returned the form unaltered and "unanimously fix[ed] ... punishment at death." After reviewing the probation report required by Code § 19.2-264.5, the trial court entered judgment confirming the conviction and imposing the penalty fixed by the jury. We have consolidated the defendant's appeal of the conviction with the automatic review of the sentence, Code § 17-110.1(A) and (F), and accorded both priority on our docket, Code § 17-110.2.

I. THE EVIDENCE

Most of the facts and circumstances related to the attack which led to the victim's death are drawn from the defendant's testimony at trial. Convicted in 1973 of first degree murder and sentenced to a term of 48 years, the defendant was an inmate at Haymarket Field Unit # 26. On the morning of September 22, 1988, he and five other prisoners were transported to the Virginia Department of Transportation's Dale City Headquarters (VDOT) where they were assigned to a work detail supervised by a VDOT employee.

During the course of his work that morning, the defendant damaged the point of a screwdriver which he repaired with the use of a bench grinder. At the same time he used the grinder to sharpen a short piece of metal (sometimes referred to as a "highway spike") into the shape of a screwdriver, added a wooden handle, and attached the device to his shirt pocket with a holder fashioned from a paper clip. When the work crew suspended operations for lunch, the defendant crossed the perimeter fence and walked along Interstate Route 95 a distance of approximately a mile to Ashdale Plaza, a shopping center. There, he entered Dale City Floors, a retail carpet store, and inquired of the operator, Mrs. Gladys Napwasky, about oriental carpets.

The defendant challenged the prices she quoted, and a heated argument ensued. ¹ According to the defendant, she "started screaming ... nigger this and nigger that" and "spit in [his] face." The defendant slapped her with his open hand, and she kicked him in the genitals. As the defendant fell to the floor, he "caught the top part of her pants" and pulled them "down right ... by the thighs." Mrs. Napwasky "slashed" at him with a steak knife. The defendant "pushed her off and ... went straight for the shirt pocket and ... came up and hit her in the chest and hit her up in the neck." "Blood was coming from the nose and mouth and ... a trickle of blood ... from the neck." The defendant "checked her pulse to make sure she was okay", placed a wet washcloth on the neck wound, and "took the sleeve of [his] shirt and ... wiped her face." While searching for a first aid kit, the defendant found four dollars in coins. He explained that he left the store intending to use the coins to purchase ice from a vending machine located in the shopping center to apply to his victim's wounds. Changing his mind, he re-entered the store and "started wiping all the things that [he] could remember that [he] had touched." When he returned to the VDOT, he washed blood from his shoes, took off his bloody shirt, "put it in the trash bag and threw it in the trash can." He discarded the weapon used in the attack along the highway. The defendant testified that he had not raped his victim.

A customer of the carpet store found Mrs. Napwasky lying on the floor and called a rescue squad. A paramedic testified that he had found her "face up on her back on the floor in a pool of blood that was around her head and upper body"; that she was naked below the waist and her blouse and brassiere had been pulled above her breasts; that although her heart was beating, "she was breathless and pulseless" because there was "no ... fluid for it to actually pump." The autopsy report identified 16 cuts and puncture wounds on the face, neck, chest, and left arm. A neck wound, three inches deep, severed the jugular vein. A wound four inches deep in the left chest cavity penetrated the left lung. Evidence of numerous "blunt-force trauma injuries" was found on her face and forehead. The victim's genital area was undisturbed.

The Commonwealth introduced the testimony of several of the defendant's fellow inmates concerning his conduct following arrest. One witness testified that the defendant had fallen to his knees, crying and saying that he had killed somebody. Another said that the defendant had told him that he had murdered and robbed his victim. A third prisoner testified that the defendant had conceived an escape plan involving the use of violence. In a search of the defendant's cell while he was awaiting trial, the authorities found a piece of metal taken from a typewriter page stand and an ear bracket from a pair of spectacles. Both appeared to have been sharpened.

II. PRE-TRIAL ISSUES

A. Constitutional Challenges

The defendant filed a motion to dismiss the indictment on the ground that the capital murder statutes are unconstitutional. The trial court rejected the several challenges articulated in a detailed memorandum. The defendant incorporated the memorandum in his brief filed in this Court. All the arguments urged by the defendant have been considered and rejected. See the decisions cited in Spencer v. Commonwealth, 238 Va. 563, 568-69, 385 S.E.2d 850, 853-54 (1989); Watkins v Commonwealth, 238 Va. 341, ----, 385 S.E.2d 50, 56-7 (1989); Buchanan v. Commonwealth, 238 Va. 389, 412-13, 384 S.E.2d 757, 771 (1989), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 110 S.Ct. 880, 107 L.Ed.2d 963 (1990); and Pope v. Commonwealth, 234 Va. 114, 121-22, 360 S.E.2d 352, 357 (1987), cert. denied, 485 U.S. 1015, 108 S.Ct. 1489, 99 L.Ed.2d 716 (1988). We reaffirm our decisions in those cases.

B. Motion to Suppress

The trial court overruled the defendant's motion to suppress statements he had made to an officer in two interviews conducted prior to his arrest. Initially, he stated that, upon hearing a scream, he had entered the carpet store to find "a white guy" with "long blond hair" who was "bending over" with "his pants pulled down" and a "lady ... laying on the floor" alive but "bleeding through her mouth [and] nose". The white man fled, Mu'Min said, and the defendant "went out the [back] door." Abandoning that account later, the defendant acknowledged that he had entered the store to inquire about an oriental rug and had struck Mrs. Napwasky twice during a bitter quarrel over prices. In significant respects, Mu'Min's two statements were irreconcilably inconsistent. They were no more incriminating than his testimony at trial.

Attacking the trial court's ruling permitting selective portions of his extra-judicial statements to be read into evidence, the defendant contends that his statements were not voluntary because, he says, they were made while he was "incarcerated on a prior charge", while he "was tired and scared", and at a time when he was given no "opportunity to speak with legal counsel." He declares on brief that he "merely said what the Investigator wanted him to say in the misguided belief that the Investigator was going to help him."

Admissibility of a defendant's statements is an issue to be decided by the [trial] court, which evaluates the credibility of the witnesses, resolves any conflicts in the testimony, and weighs the evidence as a whole. The court must decide whether the defendant knowingly and intelligently relinquished and abandoned his rights. The court's determination is a question of fact based upon the totality of the circumstances. This factual finding will not be disturbed on appeal unless plainly wrong.

Watkins v. Commonwealth, 229 Va. 469, 477, 331 S.E.2d 422, 429-30 (1985) (citations omitted), cert. denied, 475 U.S. 1099, 106 S.Ct. 1503, 89 L.Ed.2d 903 (1986).

A review of the transcript of a tape recording of the testimony at the suppression hearing discloses no evidence of coercion. The two interviews were conducted at appropriate hours by a single investigator, the officer fully, definitively, and repeatedly advised Mu'Min of each of his Miranda rights, and the defendant expressly waived those rights.

The defendant was qualified, both by training and experience, to make a knowing and voluntary waiver. Mu'Min, a graduate of a private "prep" school, had earned a college degree in business administration and was literate in...