Williams v. Com.
| Decision Date | 04 November 1994 |
| Docket Number | No. 940445,940445 |
| Citation | 450 S.E.2d 365,248 Va. 528 |
| Parties | Michael Wayne WILLIAMS v. COMMONWEALTH of Virginia. Record |
| Court | Virginia Supreme Court |
R. Donald Ford, Jr. (Lucretia A. Carrico, Hayes & Carrico, on brief), for appellant.
Donald R. Curry, Sr. Asst. Atty. Gen. (James S. Gilmore, III, Atty. Gen., on brief), for appellee.
Present: COMPTON, STEPHENSON, WHITING, LACY, HASSELL and KEENAN, JJ., and HARRISON, Retired Justice.
Michael Wayne Williams was tried upon indictments charging him with 12 felonies arising out of the February 27, 1993, murders of Morris C. Keller, Jr., and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Keller, in Cumberland County. Five indictments charged Williams with the capital murders of Mr. and Mrs. Keller, two of which charged their murders in the course of a robbery while armed with a deadly weapon, Code § 18.2-31(4), two of which charged the Kellers' murders subsequent to the rape of Mrs. Keller, Code § 18.2-31(5), and the fifth indictment charged the killing of the Kellers as a part of the same act or transaction, Code § 18.2-31(7). The seven remaining indictments charged Williams with Mrs. Keller's rape, the burglary and arson of Mr. Keller's house, and the robberies and abductions of the Kellers.
In the first stage of a bifurcated trial conducted pursuant to Code §§ 19.2-264.3 and -264.4, a jury convicted Williams of all 12 charges and fixed his punishments on the non-capital convictions. In the second stage of the trial of the capital murder charges, the jury fixed Williams's punishments for the capital murder of Mrs. Keller at death and for the capital murder of Mr. Keller at death, based on its findings of "future dangerousness" and "vileness." The court then referred the matter to the probation officer for an investigation and report pursuant to the provisions of Code § 19.2-264.5. After considering the probation officer's report, the court imposed the jury sentences.
Williams appeals only his capital murder convictions. We have consolidated his appeal with our automatic review of his death sentence under Code § 17-110.1(A).
A substantial part of the Commonwealth's evidence comes from the testimony of Jeffrey Alan Cruse, Williams's confederate in these crimes. Pursuant to established principles of appellate review, we will view the evidence and all reasonable inferences arising therefrom in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, the prevailing party at trial.
Between 9:30 and 10:30 p.m., on Saturday, February 27, 1993, Verena Lozano James drove Williams and Cruse to a rural area in Cumberland County and left them approximately one-half mile from Bear Creek Market. Williams and Cruse planned to rob persons in the market with a .357 caliber Ruger Black Hawk revolver that Williams had given to Cruse.
The two men walked to the store, but found it closed. Williams suggested that "he knew a house where we can go; they'd have a couple thousand dollars." Cruse agreed, and they walked some distance to the Kellers' house. Upon arrival at the Kellers' house, Cruse returned the Black Hawk revolver to Williams and Cruse knocked on the door. When Mr. Keller opened the door, Williams pointed the gun at him and both men entered the house.
Williams ordered the Kellers to remove all their clothes, and he remained in the kitchen with them while Cruse began searching the house for money and other valuables. After Cruse found a fully loaded .38 caliber handgun, Williams decided "to tie [the Kellers] up," and Cruse did so. The Kellers were then placed, first in one closet and later in separate closets, and both men resumed their search.
After the two men had assembled some of the Kellers' property in the living room, at Williams's suggestion, first Williams, then Cruse, raped Mrs. Keller. Afterward, Williams ordered both Kellers to take showers and put on clean clothes, which they did. Williams then directed the Kellers to "take a walk" with them. Upon hearing that the two men planned to burn the house, Mrs. Keller took the Kellers' marriage certificate with her. As the Kellers, Williams, and Cruse left the house and walked "[d]own on a dirt road and into a thicket," Williams was carrying the .38 caliber handgun and Cruse was carrying the Black Hawk revolver.
When they were in the thicket with Williams standing behind Mr. Keller and Cruse standing behind Mrs. Keller, Williams said, "We'll shoot at the count of three." Upon Williams's count of three, he shot Mr. Keller with the .38 caliber handgun and Mr. Keller fell to the ground. However, Cruse did not shoot Mrs. Keller. Williams told Cruse to shoot Mrs. Keller because "he didn't want to leave no witnesses." Cruse then shot Mrs. Keller once with the Black Hawk revolver. After Mrs. Keller fell, Mr. Keller stood up and Williams shot him again with the .38 caliber handgun. As Cruse started to walk away, Williams said, "Wait ... [w]hat if they ain't dead?", and he shot each of the Kellers "a couple more times apiece" with the .38 caliber handgun.
The two men returned to the house, where they loaded a television set, microwave oven, shotgun, stereo set, and speakers into Mr. Keller's jeep, and, at Williams's suggestion, set fire to the house. Williams and Cruse then took the jeep to Fredericksburg, where they sold some of the stolen property the next day. They then threw the remaining stolen property and the Black Hawk revolver into the Rappahannock River and set fire to the jeep.
Upon hearing of the Keller fire on Monday morning, Verena James advised the police that she had taken Williams and Cruse to an area not far from the Keller house on the night of the fire. Consequently, the police sought to question the two men regarding the fire. Williams and Cruse had returned to Cumberland County the Monday following the murders and the police were able to question Cruse. Williams, however, fled to Florida.
At first, Cruse furnished no information of value to the police. However, after the police discovered the bodies of the Kellers on Tuesday, Cruse consulted counsel. His counsel obtained a conditional agreement from the Commonwealth that it would not seek the death penalty provided Cruse gave a truthful statement of his knowledge of the crimes. Cruse then furnished information that implicated both men in all of the crimes charged, except for Cruse's role in Mrs. Keller's rape. Because Cruse breached his agreement in failing to tell the police that he had raped Mrs. Keller, the Commonwealth also indicted him for the Kellers' capital murders.
Testifying in his own defense, Williams agreed with Cruse: (1) that Williams was the one who suggested robbing persons at the store; (2) that Williams was the first one to shoot Mr. Keller and that Cruse was the first one to shoot Mrs. Keller; and (3) that it was Williams's idea to burn the Keller house. However, Williams (1) denied that he raped Mrs. Keller, (2) claimed that Cruse fired all the subsequent shots into the Kellers' bodies, and (3) contradicted other details of Cruse's testimony about who had suggested some of their activities during and after the murders.
Lisa C. Schiermeier, a serologist, tested the seminal fluid recovered from Mrs. Keller's vagina as a part of the Physical Evidence Recovery Kit prepared by Dr. Deborah Kay, an assistant chief medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Mrs. Keller. Schiermeier compared that sample with the blood types of Cruse, Williams, and Mr. Keller. Schiermeier testified that her comparison indicated only Williams could have contributed a certain type of seminal fluid found in the sample. Dr. George C. Li, a DNA expert who performed a DNA test on the spermatozoa from the sample, testified that his test results were consistent with a conclusion that Cruse and Williams jointly contributed the seminal fluid.
Williams raises a number of issues that we have previously decided adversely to his contentions. Williams offers no persuasive reasons to modify our previous conclusions, and we perceive none. Hence, we will adhere to our previous rejections of those contentions and will not discuss them beyond citing representative cases expressly rejecting these contentions. The first group of contentions involves Williams's claims of the unconstitutionality of the capital murder and death penalty statutes for the following reasons:
A. The statutes do not give meaningful guidance to a jury because they do not require the jury to find that aggravating circumstances outweigh mitigating ones before fixing the death penalty. Rejected in Breard v. Commonwealth, 248 Va. 68, 74, 445 S.E.2d 670, 674-75 (1994), and Mickens v. Commonwealth, 247 Va. 395, 403, 442 S.E.2d 678, 684 (1994).
B. As written and administered, the statutes fail to adequately inform the jury that a death sentence may be imposed only upon a finding beyond a reasonable doubt that aggravating circumstances outweigh mitigating ones. Rejected in Watkins v. Commonwealth, 229 Va. 469, 490-91, 331 S.E.2d 422, 438 (1985), cert. denied, 475 U.S. 1099, 106 S.Ct. 1503, 89 L.Ed.2d 903 (1986).
C. The statutes fail to provide the sentencer with sufficient guidance as to aggravating factors to assure that the death penalty is not imposed in an arbitrary and capricious manner. Rejected in Mickens, 247 Va. at 402-403, 442 S.E.2d at 683-84.
D. The "future dangerousness" aggravating factor in the statutes is inherently misleading since it asks jurors to find a probability beyond a reasonable doubt. Rejected in Mickens, 247 Va. at 402-403, 442 S.E.2d at 684; M. Smith v. Commonwealth, 219 Va. 455, 477-78, 248 S.E.2d 135, 148-49 (1978), cert. denied, 441 U.S. 967, 99 S.Ct. 2419, 60 L.Ed.2d 1074 (1979).
E. That part of the statute, Code § 19.2-264.4(C), which allows the sentencer to find the "future dangerousness" predicate based on unadjudicated criminal conduct, violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. Additionally, if evidence of such...
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