State v. Coe

• Citation: 655 S.W.2d 903
• Parties: STATE of Tennessee, Appellee, v. Robert Glen COE, Appellant.
• Decision Date: 27 June 1983
• Court: Supreme Court of Tennessee

Page 903

655 S.W.2d 903

STATE of Tennessee, Appellee, v. Robert Glen COE, Appellant.

Supreme Court of Tennessee at Jackson.

June 27, 1983.

Opinion on Petition to Rehear

Sept. 6, 1983.

Walker Gwinn, Memphis, for appellant.

William M. Leech, Jr., Atty. Gen., Gordon W. Smith, Asst. Atty. Gen., Nashville, for appellee.

OPINION

FONES, Chief Justice.

This is a direct appeal of a death penalty case. Defendant was convicted of aggravated kidnapping, aggravated rape and murder in the first degree. The jury fixed his punishment at life on each of the first two offenses. After a bifurcated sentencing hearing, the jury found four aggravating circumstances and no mitigating circumstances and imposed the death penalty. The aggravating circumstances found were: (1) the murder was committed against a person less than twelve years of age and the defendant was over eighteen years of age; (2) the murder was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel in that it involved torture or depravity of mind; (3) the murder was committed for the purpose of avoiding prosecution of the defendant; and (4) the murder was committed while the defendant was engaged in committing and fleeing after committing rape and kidnapping.

I.

The victim, Cary Medlin, eight years of age, lived in Greenfield, Tennessee with her mother Charlotte Medlin Stout, her step-father Mickey Stout, and her step-brother Michael Stout, also eight years of age. On Saturday September 1, 1979, Labor Day Weekend, Cary and Michael went riding on their bicycles about 5:30 P.M.

Defendant was living in McKenzie, Tennessee, and working at a body shop. His wife and baby had gone to Dresden, approximately fifteen miles from McKenzie to visit his wife's sister, Vicky Box. When defendant got off work that Saturday afternoon he drove toward McKenzie to join his wife and baby. Because a bridge was out on the Liberty Road, his route to Dresden was through Greenfield.

When defendant arrived in Greenfield, he began looking around for someone to "flash" at because he "had had the urge to flash all day but could not find anyone to flash at." ¹

Defendant drove into the parking lot of a church in the neighborhood where the victim lived and parked. Soon he saw Cary and Michael on their bicycles, left the parking lot, pulled along side of them, and asked Cary to show him where her father lived. Margaret Stout, Mickey Stout's mother, lived on the street directly behind her son's house, and Cary and Michael had just paid her a visit, looking for some candy. Shortly thereafter she was looking out the window as she talked on the telephone and saw her grandson and Cary standing by their bicycles and talking to a man in a car she described as a two-toned brown four door, the top being darker than the bottom.

Defendant induced Cary and Michael to follow him, apparently from in front of Margaret Stout's house to the church parking lot. Cary got in the car with defendant and told Michael to watch her bicycle. Defendant drove around until he found a lonely, deserted gravel road that led nowhere and was well screened by trees with a fence row on each side.

Defendant's September 7, 1979 statement related that he stopped the car, exposed himself to Cary, fondled her, starting masturbating and got on top of her, but that he did not know if his penis went into her or not. Defendant stated that when he finished his sex act, Cary told him that Jesus loved him, and he got so upset he decided to kill her. First, he tried to choke her to death with his hands but although she got blue in the face, she would not die. He then stabbed her in the neck with his pocket knife. After watching her bleed, "struggle and jerk" for a while, he left her beside the road in a dense thicket and drove away.

Local and state police were notified early Saturday evening that Cary was missing, and at first they thought she might have been kidnapped for ransom, but after receiving no demand for ransom, on Sunday afternoon an intensive search of the area was conducted and her body discovered about 2:00 P.M., approximately two miles from the town of Greenfield.

According to Donald Box, defendant's brother-in-law, defendant arrived at the Box home in Dresden about 7:45 or 8:00 P.M. Saturday night. He was driving a 1972 Ford Torino, was not intoxicated or under the influence of drugs but was nervous, seemed to have something on his mind and said to his brother-in-law, "Donnie, I would be better off dead."

Defendant, his wife, and child, returned to McKenzie on Sunday, September 2, but they spent Sunday night and Monday night with friends, Janet and Darrell Ross who lived in the Big Buck community about ten miles from McKenzie. Janet Ross testified that after visiting earlier in the day they came back about 10:00 P.M. Defendant told them that he was in trouble with the law; that he and his cousin had gone to Camden to get some marijuana and some acid; that his cousin had shot a state trooper; and that defendant had stabbed one in the throat.

On Monday, Labor Day, at defendant's request, Janet Ross and defendant's wife bought some hair dye and that night dyed defendant's hair black. He had been described by witnesses as having dirty blond hair, shoulder length. On Tuesday morning, defendant went to a used car dealership in Gleason, Tennessee and traded his 1972 Ford Torino, silver gray with a brown vinyl top, for a 1972 blue Mustang. Later that day Margaret Stout and Michael Stout were driven to the premises of the Gleason dealer where they identified the Torino as the vehicle that had been in Greenfield on Saturday afternoon and that Cary had entered and departed the church parking lot.

Barry Jones, owner of Crestview Motors, the Gleason used car dealer, testified that he had sold the 1972 four-door Ford Torino, silver/gray with brown vinyl top, to defendant in June of 1979. His wife, Althea Jones, did all of the paperwork connected with her husband's used car business. She testified that she wrote up the June sale of the Ford Torino to defendant and that she remembered that he had dirty blond hair at that time; that she saw him again on the morning of September 4, and wrote up the trade of the Torino for the blue Mustang at approximately 10:00 A.M.; that she noticed that his hair had been dyed black; that there were black smudge marks on his forehead; and that it was an obviously sloppy dye job. She testified that her husband left while she was writing up the papers and that after defendant and his friend left, the chief-of-police of Gleason came by and asked if they had traded cars with anyone. She told him about the trade with defendant and showed him the Ford Torino. The police chief made a telephone call and then requested that the Ford Torino be locked up and not shown to anyone except law officers. Mrs. Jones testified that shortly thereafter the place was "covered up with law officers" looking at the car and that a lady and a little boy came by and were shown the car by the law officers.

Darrell Ross was with defendant when he traded the gray-brown Torino for the blue Mustang Tuesday morning, when defendant went to the bus station in Huntingdon to buy a bus ticket that afternoon and still later when defendant returned to the bus station to leave for Marietta, Georgia. Defendant was arrested at the Huntingdon bus station. Defendant had identification tags on his baggage and the name thereon was James Watson.

Agent Daniel and Inspector Blackwell transported defendant from Huntingdon to the Weakley County Jail in Dresden. Daniel testified that they did not question defendant during the trip; that when they arrived and turned defendant over to the sheriff, they went down the hall, spoke briefly to the District Attorney seeking to find out if defendant's wife had been interrogated, then returned to the sheriff's office where defendant asked to talk to Daniel in private. This occurred seven or eight minutes after their arrival at the Weakley County Jail. When Daniel and defendant were alone, defendant said, "I did it," and in response to the question, "You did what, Robert?" he said, "I am the one that killed that little girl." With Inspector Blackwell also present, defendant then consented to talk to Daniel on tape. The tape recording was played in open court in the presence and hearing of the jury and revealed that the questioning began at 7:49 P.M. on September 4, 1979, at the Weakley County Jail.

Defendant's responses to Daniel's questions revealed that he went to Greenfield, saw a little girl and a little boy on bicycles; that he stopped them and told her that he was looking for her daddy in order to lure her into the car with him, having been unsuccessful in several attempts at flashing; that he drove and that the little girl and boy rode their bicycles to a church where she left her bicycle and got in the car with him and they drove away from the church. Those details were identical to those related by little Michael Stout. In the taped statement he also told of driving around until he "found that gravel road;" that after he had raped the little girl and she told him that Jesus loved him, he choked her and stabbed her with his pocket knife.

The next day, September 5, 1979, Daniel and Blackwell went to the Weakley County Jail, read defendant his rights again, and he agreed to accompany them in a State car and show them what he did on the previous Saturday afternoon. Defendant directed the officers to the church in Greenfield where the victim got in his car and along the route he took from the church to the murder scene, that is, the gravel lane off Bean Switch Road. While on that route defendant pointed out a house that was close to the road that he had passed on Saturday with the victim in the car and that led to a ball park where he turned around and came back by the same house. He told Daniel that there was a man sitting on the porch that "will remember me or my car."

Herbert Clement, aged eighty-five,...