State v. Richardson
| Citation | 47 A.3d 305 |
| Decision Date | 12 July 2012 |
| Docket Number | No. 2010–216–C.A.,2010–216–C.A. |
| Parties | STATE v. James S. RICHARDSON. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court of Rhode Island |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Virginia M. McGinn, Department of Attorney General, for State.
Robert J. Caron, Esq., for Defendant.
Present: SUTTELL, C.J., GOLDBERG, FLAHERTY, and ROBINSON, JJ.
The defendant, James S. Richardson, appeals to this Court after he was convicted by a jury of first-degree murder and burglary. After the jury returned its verdict, the trial justice sentenced the defendant to a prison term of life without the possibility of parole. Before us, the defendant argues that his conviction should be vacated because the trial justice impermissibly allowed an expert witness called by the state to bolster the testimony of another of the state's expert witnesses. He also argues that the trial justice erred when he denied his motions for judgment of acquittal and for a new trial. We affirm the judgment of conviction.
The victim in this case, Margaret Duffy–Stephenson (Margaret), joined with other members of her family at her younger brother's wedding in Florida on November 12, 2005. The day after the wedding, Margaret returned home with her parents and another brother while her husband and her three-year-old son remained in Florida.1 On Sunday evening, Margaret's family dropped her off at her Warwick home and watched her until she safely entered the house.
During the next week, Margaret dutifully showed up at work on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. She also attended a banquet for school support staff on Wednesday evening with a coworker. However, when Margaret did not arrive at work on Thursday, the teacher for whom she was an assistant tried to contact her; it was not in keeping with her conscientious nature for her to fail to show up without calling in to inform her employer that she would be absent. The teacher was unable to reach Margaret on that Thursday, and concern was heightened when she failed to appear at work on Friday, as well.2
Those concerns prompted Margaret's husband, who was still in Florida, to telephone her parents. After receiving his son-in-law's call, John Duffy drove to Cole Junior High School in East Greenwich to look for his daughter's vehicle. When he was unable to locate Margaret's car, the worried father drove directly to her home. Mr. Duffy saw her vehicle in the driveway; he approached her home and proceeded to the back of the house, where the main entrance was located. Out of the corner of his eye, Mr. Duffy noticed that both of the bulkhead doors were open.
Mr. Duffy knocked on the locked door and called out his daughter's name, but there was no response. He then entered the house through the open bulkhead doors and walked through the basement. At the basement stairs, he looked up and saw that the door to the ground floor was open. As he walked up the stairs, he heard an alarm clock ringing and the dog barking. When he arrived upstairs, Mr. Duffy was horrified to see his oldest child and only daughter lying at the bottom of a set of stairs that led up to the second floor. Margaret's body was face up, her throat was slashed, and she was soaked in blood.
About six years earlier, Margaret's husband had begun a residential landscaping and gardening business. At first, he worked alone, but in the spring of 2000, due to the growth of his business, he contacted a company from which he hired temporary employees. One of those temporary workers was defendant. By the year 2000, Mr. Stephenson had hired defendant to work for him on a regular basis, five days a week. Mr. Stephenson often paid defendant with cash that was withdrawn from a safe in the basement of the Stephenson home. The defendant knew where the safe was because he had helped Mr. Stephenson move it after the basement had flooded.3
In the early spring of 2001, defendant had become part of Mr. Stephenson's payroll and worked for him in some capacity, often full-time, up until the spring of 2005. But, over time and as a result of a newly hired employee, defendant's hours were drastically reduced, and he worked only a total of eight to ten days during the spring and summer of 2005. In August 2005, defendant traveled to the Philippines to marry his girlfriend, whom he had met online, and he remained in that country until the beginning of October 2005. After he returned from the Philippines, defendant told Mr. Stephenson that he had “spent all of his money on his trip,” so he began to perform “handyman work” around the Stephenson home to earn extra income.
The defendant told Mr. Stephenson that he was planning on returning to the Philippines in early November to live with his new wife. To commemorate his departure, the Stephensons treated defendant to a meal at a Chinese restaurant on November 8. However, at dinner that night, defendant informed the couple that he was deferring his trip to the Philippines because of insufficient funds; as a result, he planned to remain in Rhode Island until he could earn enough money to return. After learning that defendant would not be leaving, Mr. Stephenson asked defendant to do some work inside and outside the house while the family was in Florida attending the wedding.
Because the couple had arranged for a woman who worked at their son's daycare to stay at their home to care for their animals,4 Mr. Stephenson instructed defendant to call ahead or knock on the door if he was going to come into the house so that he would not frighten her.
The house sitter later testified at trial that on November 12, defendant had knocked on the door, entered the house and gone to the basement. She said that defendant stayed for about a half hour, and that while he was in the basement, she heard him using some type of power tool. The house sitter further explained that before she left the house to get something to eat that day, she put the dog in his cage, secured the cat in the basement, and locked all the doors to the house. When she returned a half-hour later, she noticed that the cat was outside; in an effort to determine how the cat could have gotten out, she looked through the house and noticed that the bulkhead doors were open. She closed the bulkhead doors and locked them from the inside.
On the morning of Sunday, November 13, the house sitter was awakened by the sound of a leaf blower. She looked out the window and saw defendant working in the yard; later in the day, he entered the house and went down into the basement area for approximately ten minutes. At 8 p.m. on Sunday night, the house sitter, knowing that Margaret would be returning, left a note for her, locked up the house, and left.
Detective Barbara Frazier, a Warwick police detective who was a member of the crime scene investigation unit, described the condition of the house after Margaret's body was discovered. After putting up a crime-scene tape around the perimeter of the house and securing the scene, the detective observed that the only damage to the property was to the outside frame of the bulkhead doors that led to the basement. She also observed that there were no signs that the house had been burglarized,5 and that a large screen television and jewelry were undisturbed. Blood transfer stains also were discovered in the downstairs bathroom and the basement of the house.6
Detective Frazier also testified that she contacted the medical examiner's office and observed Margaret's body as it was being prepared for transport. She said that she watched an agent from the medicalexaminer's office place Margaret's body in a “pouch” and position two brown paper bags under Margaret's hands and tape the bags around her wrists to protect any evidence.7 She said that she was present during the autopsy of Margaret's body, and she saw the medical examiner remove the bags from Margaret's hands and then clip and bag Margaret's fingernails. The detective also testified that trace evidence was found on Margaret's body and in the pouch into which her body had been placed. In the pouch, the detective discovered hair samples. Significantly, after the autopsy, the lab found biological evidence underneath the fingernails of Margaret's hands.
Detective Timothy Grant described the ransacked basement office and the open safe, its contents emptied but for a few papers. He soon concluded that the crime was not a random act. Based on the hidden nature of the office and the safe, the presence of a dog in the house, and the lack of any evidence of forced entry, the police determined that the perpetrator was familiar with the house. On November 18, the police spoke with Mr. Stephenson and asked him who might have known where the safe was. As a result of the conversation with Mr. Stephenson, defendant became a person of interest in the case. At approximately 6 p.m. on November 18, defendant voluntarily came into police headquarters where he was advised that he was a potential suspect in a crime and he was read his Miranda rights.8
During the interview, detectives asked defendant about his connection with the Philippines. He told the detectives that he had planned to return to the Philippines to be with his new bride, but that he could not afford the airfare. He said that his wife had become pregnant during his last visit, and that she recently had become ill. Therefore, he explained that on November 18 he had purchased a plane ticket for a flight that was scheduled to leave on November 19 so that he could be with his wife during her illness. He told the police that the cost of the airplane ticket was $2,600. The defendant explained that because he did not have a bank account or a credit card, he had given his daughter $2,600 in cash, and that she purchased the airplane ticket with her credit card.
The detectives became suspicious about defendant's means to pay for the ticket and asked him how he suddenly was able to afford a very expensive plane ticket that a week earlier he could not afford. The defendant...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
State v. Brown
......Although the facts of Cline are not analogous to the present case, we did discuss in that case that the “connected together” scenario for joinder applied when evidence of one event would overlap for a second event. Id.; see also United States v. Richardson, 161 F.3d 728, 734 (D.C.Cir.1998) (“Where there is substantial overlap in evidence between two offenses, joinder ‘eliminate[s] the need to prove substantially the same evidence twice over, thus realizing precisely the kind of economy envisaged by Rule 8(a).’ ” (quoting Blunt v. United ......
-
State v. Mendez
...(stating that this Court reviews a motion for a new trial before reviewing a motion for a judgment of acquittal); State v. Richardson, 47 A.3d 305, 317 (R.I.2012) ; see also Clark, 974 A.2d at 570 (“The difference in nomenclature of a motion for a new trial based on the insufficiency of the......
-
State v. Ceppi
...opinion concerning the credibility of another witness but his or her testimony would have the same substantive import.” State v. Richardson, 47 A.3d 305, 315 (R.I.2012) (internal quotation marks omitted). We recognize that a police officer's testimony may be given more credence by some juro......
- Guerrero v. State