Beavers v. Com.

• Decision Date: 26 February 1993
• Docket Number: Nos. 921544,921545,s. 921544
• Citation: 245 Va. 268,427 S.E.2d 411
• Court: Virginia Supreme Court
• Parties: Thomas H. BEAVERS, Jr. v. COMMONWEALTH of Virginia. Record

Page 411

427 S.E.2d 411

245 Va. 268

Thomas H. BEAVERS, Jr. v. COMMONWEALTH of Virginia.

Record Nos. 921544, 921545.

Supreme Court of Virginia.

Feb. 26, 1993.

Leslie P. Smith, Hampton (Timothy G. Clancy, Cumming, Hatchett, Moschel & Patrick, on brief), for appellant.

Katherine B. Toone, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Mary Sue Terry, Atty. Gen., on brief), for appellee.

Present: All the Justices.

LACY, Justice.

In this appeal we review the capital murder conviction and death penalty imposed upon Thomas H. Beavers, Jr., along with his convictions for rape, grand larceny, and arson arising from the same series of events.

I. Proceedings

Beavers was tried upon indictments charging capital murder, rape, grand larceny, and arson. Code §§ 18.2-31, -61, -95, and -81. At the conclusion of the first stage of a bifurcated jury trial conducted pursuant to Code §§ 19.2-264.3 and -264.4, the jury convicted Beavers of all offenses. The jury fixed his punishment as follows: life imprisonment for rape; ten years imprisonment for grand larceny; and eight years imprisonment for arson.

At the penalty phase of the capital murder trial, the jury heard evidence on aggravating and mitigating circumstances and fixed Beavers's punishment for capital murder at death. After the trial court considered the probation officer's report and conducted a sentencing hearing, it imposed all the sentences fixed by the jury.

We have consolidated Beavers's appeal of the capital murder conviction in Record No. 921544 with the automatic review of his death sentence to which he is entitled, Code §§ 17-110.1(A) and (F), and have given them priority on our docket, Code § 17-110.2. We have also certified Beavers's appeal of his non-capital murder convictions, Record No. 921545, from the Court of Appeals and have consolidated the two records for our consideration.

II. The Evidence

We review the evidence in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, the prevailing party below.

On the night of May 1, 1990, Beavers broke into the house of his neighbor, Marguerite Lowery, a 60-year-old widow who lived alone. She was awakened by a noise and, as she walked through the house, Beavers grabbed her, placed his hand over her mouth, and forced her back into her bedroom. Mrs. Lowery became hysterical and began to scream.

She continued to scream after Beavers forced her down onto the bed and ordered her to be quiet. After wrestling with her for about two minutes, Beavers covered her face with a pillow. Mrs. Lowery began kicking, and Beavers again ordered her to be quiet. When she quieted down, Beavers removed the pillow. Mrs. Lowery again began to scream and struggled with Beavers. During the struggle, her clothes were ripped. Beavers tore off her clothes, ripping her nightgown completely down the side seams and across the right shoulder in front, and ripping the entire front of her underpants. Beavers was nineteen years old, six feet tall, and weighed 205 pounds at the time of the attack. Mrs. Lowery was five feet, five and one-half inches tall, and weighed 175 pounds.

Beavers then raped Mrs. Lowery and when, once more, she started to scream, Beavers held a pillow over her face until she stopped screaming. When he removed the pillow, Mrs. Lowery made a few gasping noises, then stopped moving. According to the testimony of Dr. Faruk Presswalla, the deputy chief medical examiner for the region, Mrs. Lowery died as a result of cardiac arrhythmia caused by lack of oxygen.

After killing Mrs. Lowery, Beavers placed an open Bible on her chest, took a powdered kitchen cleanser from the bathroom and scattered it over the room and her body, and spread toothpaste on Mrs. Lowery's vagina and breasts. Beavers removed four rings from Mrs. Lowery's dresser, scattered pills around the kitchen, partially burned a photograph of Mrs. Lowery on the stove, and left the house in complete disarray, with one of the gas stove's burners still burning. When Beavers left Mrs. Lowery's house, he stole her car. After parking the car in a public place, Beavers set it afire by lighting newspapers on the interior floor.

A Hampton police officer found the burning car and traced it to Mrs. Lowery. Officer Banwell of the Hampton police department went to Mrs. Lowery's house in the early morning hours of May 2, 1990. Receiving no answer to his knock, he left. He returned to the home later that morning and, still receiving no answer, entered the home through a side door that was slightly ajar. Entering through the kitchen, the officer found the stove burner on, the burnt photograph, and the house in general disarray. He found Mrs. Lowery's nude body lying on the floor near her bed.

Approximately one year later, on May 14, 1991, and with the Lowery murder still unsolved, Beavers broke into the house of his next door neighbor, 50-year-old Shirley Hodges. He was still in the house when Mrs. Hodges returned home. Beavers grabbed her, covered her mouth with his hand, and ordered her to keep quiet. After stripping off her clothes, Beavers raped Mrs. Hodges. After Beavers had gone, Mrs. Hodges left her home, called her daughter from a pay phone, and drove to the police department where she reported the crime.

As a result of interviews with Mrs. Hodges, Detective Browning of the Hampton police department obtained an arrest warrant for Beavers and a search warrant for his home. The items specified in the search warrant included "bloodstained white medical gauze tape" that Mrs. Hodges said Beavers used to wrap around his hand that he cut while he was breaking into her home. At approximately 4:00 a.m., Detective Browning, along with four or five other police officers, arrived at Beavers's home, where he lived with his wife and his parents. Beavers was awakened, told of the charges against him, arrested, handcuffed, and placed in the rear seat of a patrol car in front of his home while the search warrant was executed.

While searching Beavers's home, Detective Davis found a small multi-colored pouch in Beavers's chest of drawers. Davis unzipped the pouch to search for the gauze tape. Inside the pouch Davis found some jewelry that fit the description of jewelry that had been stolen from Mrs. Lowery. In the course of his work in the Lowery investigation, Davis had written a police report that included a description of the stolen jewelry.

When the search of Beavers's house was completed, Beavers was taken to police headquarters and advised of his Miranda rights. Beavers acknowledged that he understood those rights. Browning told Beavers of Mrs. Hodges's allegations of burglary and rape, and Beavers immediately confessed to those crimes. Browning then questioned Beavers about the Lowery case, and Beavers "blurted out" that he had killed Mrs. Lowery. Beavers subsequently gave a recorded statement, and then was taken before a magistrate and charged with the offenses.

III. Issues Previously Decided

Beavers raises certain issues on appeal that have been decided adversely to his claims by previous decisions of this Court. We adhere to those rulings, and we will not discuss them further here. The issues previously resolved are:

A. Defendant should have been granted additional peremptory challenges during the jury selection. Quesinberry v. Commonwealth, 241 Va. 364, 371, 402 S.E.2d 218, 223, cert. denied, 502 U.S. 834, 112 S.Ct. 113, 116 L.Ed.2d 82 (1991); Buchanan v. Commonwealth, 238 Va. 389, 405, 384 S.E.2d 757, 767 (1989), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 1063, 110 S.Ct. 880, 107 L.Ed.2d 963 (1990).

B. The capital murder statute, Code §§ 19.2-264.2 through -264.5, violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of due process, and the Fifth Amendment's protection against double jeopardy. Satcher v. Commonwealth, 244 Va. 220, 227-28, 421 S.E.2d 821, 826 (1992); Yeatts v. Commonwealth, 242 Va. 121, 126, 410 S.E.2d 254, 258 (1991), cert. denied, 503 U.S. 946, 112 S.Ct. 1500, 117 L.Ed.2d 639 (1992); Stockton v. Commonwealth, 241 Va. 192, 215-16, 402 S.E.2d 196, 210, cert. denied, 502 U.S. 902, 112 S.Ct. 280, 116 L.Ed.2d 231 (1991); Quesinberry, 241 Va. at 370-71, 402 S.E.2d at 222-23.

C. The Commonwealth should have been required to provide the defendant with the names of all witnesses it intended to call at both the guilt and the sentencing phases of the trial. Watkins v. Commonwealth, 229 Va. 469, 478-79, 331 S.E.2d 422, 430-31 (1985), cert. denied, 475 U.S. 1099, 106 S.Ct. 1503, 89 L.Ed.2d 903 (1986).

IV. Pretrial Proceedings

A. The Confession

Beavers moved to suppress his confession, given to Detective Browning on the morning of May 15, 1991, arguing that he did not freely and voluntarily waive his constitutional right against self-incrimination. Beavers contends that his confession was involuntary because he had been kept handcuffed in a police car for approximately two hours after his arrest and before questioning. This circumstance, Beavers asserts, was an intentional maneuver of the police calculated to heighten his fears prior to questioning which, in turn, constituted an overbearing of his will resulting in statements that were not the product of a free and unconstrained decision. We disagree.

Detective Browning interviewed Mrs. Hodges concerning the rape at approximately 3:30 a.m., and immediately obtained an arrest warrant for Beavers and a search warrant for Beavers's home. With other members of the Hampton police department, he executed these warrants at that early hour of the morning because, until Beavers was taken into custody, Mrs. Hodges was unwilling to return to her home which was next to the Beavers residence. Beavers was allowed to dress and was taken to the police car where he sat, handcuffed, while the search warrant was executed. While he was in the police car, Beavers talked with his wife and with Officer Merchant. He was told he was not allowed to smoke in the car, but there were no circumstances which indicate that...