State v. Mason

• Decision Date: 17 June 1998
• Docket Number: No. 97-239,97-239
• Citation: 82 Ohio St.3d 144,694 N.E.2d 932
• Parties: The STATE of Ohio, Appellee, v. MASON, Appellant.
• Court: Ohio Supreme Court

Page 144

82 Ohio St.3d 144

694 N.E.2d 932

The STATE of Ohio, Appellee, v. MASON, Appellant.

No. 97-239.

Supreme Court of Ohio.

Submitted Feb. 17, 1998.

Decided June 17, 1998.

SYLLABUS BY THE COURT

Due process, as guaranteed by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and Section 16, Article I of the Ohio Constitution, requires that an indigent criminal defendant be provided funds to obtain expert assistance at state expense only where the trial court finds, in the exercise of a sound discretion, that the defendant has made a particularized showing (1) of a reasonable probability that the requested expert would aid in his defense, and (2) that denial of the requested expert assistance would result in an unfair trial. (State v. Broom [1988], 40 Ohio St.3d 277, 533 N.E.2d 682, approved and followed.)

On February 13, 1993, sheriff's deputies found the battered body of nineteen-year-old Robin Dennis inside an abandoned building in a rural area of Marion County near Pole Lane Road. Robin, lying face down, was wearing only a bra. Her jeans and panties were positioned around her ankles and lower leg. Eight feet from Robin's body detectives found her jacket, with burrs and debris on it. Her T-shirt and car keys were under the coat.

The apparent murder weapon, a blood-stained board with protruding nails, was lying some twenty feet from her body. Hair adhering to another piece of wood found at the scene matched Robin's hair.

After an autopsy, pathologist Dr. Keith Norton concluded that Robin died as a result of blunt force trauma causing multiple skull fractures. Dr. Norton found eight distinct lacerations on Robin's head. Robin also suffered a black eye and bruises on her head, face, and body. She had been strangled, possibly causing unconsciousness, but she did not die of strangulation. In Dr. Norton's view, the blood-stained board found at the scene could have caused her injuries, but some injuries may also have been caused by the butt of a revolver.

Dr. Norton found no trauma to the victim's genitalia, but he found sperm in her vagina. He testified that sperm can remain six to twelve hours after intercourse in the vagina of a woman doing normal activities.

According to DNA experts called by the state, material taken with vaginal swabs from the victim matched the DNA of appellant Maurice Mason. As to this material, a DNA match could be expected from only one in eight thousand three hundred people of the same race as Mason. DNA material from Robin's panties also matched Mason's DNA, and the odds against a similar DNA match among individuals of his race were four million to one. Roughly comparable odds existed as to other races. Experts did not find DNA from anyone other than the victim and Mason.

Dr. Richard Durbin, the coroner who examined the body at the scene, believed Robin had been killed at the scene and had been dead for several days. From her appearance and injuries, Dr. Durbin thought Robin had been raped or sexually molested.

Robin's body was found within eighteen minutes' walking distance of where her abandoned car had been found stuck in a farm field three days earlier. On the inside of the passenger door, a police technician found type B blood, Robin's blood type.

On the outside passenger car door and on the passenger's side of the dash, a forensic investigator found what appeared to be chevron style tennis shoe impressions. The state established that Mason owned shoes bearing similar chevron designs and that Robin Dennis's shoes with a similar chevron design were found at the crime scene. The prosecutor later argued that the location of the marks and blood inside the car were consistent with a struggle having taken place in and around the car.

A set of keys, including car keys that fit a 1981 Chrysler belonging to Mason's wife, were on the car's front passenger seat.

Thomas Forster, a farmer, testified that he saw a person fitting Mason's description walking in his fields towards Pole Lane Road around 4:10 p.m. on February 8, the date of Robin's disappearance. That location was a seven-to-nine-minute walk from the building where Robin's body was later found, and approximately a seventy-minute walk from where Mason lived. The man Forster observed was black, weighed about two hundred pounds, and was wearing jeans, a jacket, and a bandanna on his head. Mason is black, weighed two hundred fifteen pounds, and was wearing a bandanna earlier that day.

Around 4:15 p.m., Deputy Sheriff Jack Lautenslager noticed a black man walking along Pole Lane Road. The man was wearing a dark jacket and a blue bandanna with white specks. Lautenslager later identified Mason as the man he saw on February 8 by choosing his photo from a group of five or six photos.

Around 4:30 p.m. that same afternoon, Francis Forster, Jr., farmer Forster's brother, noticed a light-colored compact car in a field near New Road. Two days later, on February 10, Forster saw sheriff's deputies inspecting the same car, still in the field.

On February 15, detectives found a small blood-stained piece of metal at the crime scene. A firearms examiner concluded that this piece of metal was identical in size, shape, and design to a grip-frame from a Colt .22 caliber Frontier Scout Revolver and was consistent with having come from the handle of such a revolver. A similar weapon had been the subject of an agreement between Robin's husband and Mason under which the gun would be traded for Mason's television.

A technician found type B blood, Robin's blood type, on the side of a tennis shoe Mason was wearing on February 12. Approximately eleven percent of Caucasians and twenty percent of blacks have type B blood.

Trial testimony established Robin's activities prior to her death. On February 7, Robin and her husband, Chris Dennis, drove to the home of friends Mike and Carol Young in Marion and stayed overnight. Chris brought a Colt .22 caliber Frontier Scout revolver with him.

On February 8, Robin and Chris went to the Marion office of H & R Block. Later they stopped at the home of Rick McDuffie, whom Chris knew. Mason, who was acquainted with the victim's husband and was McDuffie's cousin, also was present at the McDuffie house. According to the testimony of several state witnesses, Robin, Chris and Mason later returned together to the Young house.

While there, Chris and Mason discussed trading Chris's Colt revolver for Mason's TV. State witnesses testified that Mason and Robin left the Youngs' house in Robin's car around 3:00 p.m. on February 8 to pick up Mason's television set. Before Robin and Mason left, Chris passed out intoxicated in the living room of the Youngs' house and did not awake until later that evening after they were gone.

Robin never returned, and Chris Dennis's gun was never seen again. Despite Mason's admission that he discussed trading his television for the gun with Chris, he claimed that the trade never occurred and that he never had the gun.

Mason's testimony as to his activities on the date of Robin's disappearance conflicted with that of the state's witnesses. Mason testified that he first met Robin in September 1992, and that they had spent a night together and engaged in consensual sex. He claimed that they had had sex a few times since then. He testified that on the date Robin disappeared, he had consensual sex with her around 10:30 a.m. at Rick McDuffie's house, and that later Chris and Robin dropped him off at his home around 3:00 p.m., after which he went walking, and that he never saw Robin after that.

Mason said that between 3:00 and 5:00 p.m. on that day, he visited Gerald Gorham at a laundromat, and drank with him at a park. Gorham corroborated Mason's visit, but did not know on which day it occurred.

Sandy Childers testified that she saw Mason after 5:00 p.m., when he was out walking, then picked him up around 5:20 p.m. and drove him to his home. Mason later walked over to Sandy's, where he spent the evening, and others confirmed that Mason arrived at Sandy's between 6:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.

Mason admitted that he had initially told police that he was home after 2:30 p.m. on February 8, and that when his wife came home at 4:15 p.m., they went to the YMCA. He also initially denied to police that he had ever been alone with Robin.

At trial Mason admitted that the keys discovered in Robin's abandoned vehicle were his, but claimed that police took them from him when he was taken into custody on February 12, 1993. Police inventory records, however, indicated that Mason had no keys with him on February 12.

Moreover, February 10 photos of the car's interior indicate that Mason's keys were the keys found in Robin's car that day. Also, on February 11, police towed the car to a city garage and, on February 12, disassembled the car (door, seats and dash removed). Since the car was never reassembled, the photos could not have been taken after the February 12 disassembly.

Mason claimed that he did not, on February 8, wear the tennis shoes introduced as evidence by the state. He testified that his brothers and father had also worn his shoes. He theorized that the blood found on his shoe might have come from his father. He testified that he had previously worked at a slaughterhouse, and he speculated that the blood may have come from coworkers at a slaughterhouse who had cut themselves and might have bled on his shoes.

Mason denied that he had been in the vicinity of the crime scene on February 8, and denied killing Robin. On cross-examination, Mason asserted, "I didn't kill her, and her husband [Chris Dennis] did. I know that. You know that, and everybody else knows that."

In 1984, Mason had been convicted of burglary and thus had a prior conviction for an offense of violence and could not legally possess firearms. In 1988, Mason was also convicted of drug trafficking.

Mason was indicted, tried by jury, and convicted of aggravated felony murder, rape, and having a weapon...