Ex parte Loggins

• Decision Date: 02 June 2000
• Citation: 771 So.2d 1093
• Parties: Ex parte Kenneth LOGGINS. Re Kenneth Loggins v. State.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

771 So.2d 1093

Ex parte Kenneth LOGGINS.

Re Kenneth Loggins v. State.

1981574.

Supreme Court of Alabama.

June 2, 2000.

L. Dan Turberville, Hoover, for petitioner.

Bill Pryor, atty. gen., and Michael B. Billingsley, asst. atty. gen., for respondent.

ENGLAND, Justice.

Kenneth Loggins was charged with two counts of capital murder. Count I of the indictment charged Loggins with the murder of Vicki Deblieux, a murder made capital because it occurred during a kidnapping in the first degree or an attempt thereof, Ala.Code 1975, § 13A-5-40(a)(1). Count II charged Loggins with the murder of Vicki Deblieux, made capital because it was committed during a robbery in the first degree or an attempt thereof, Ala. Code 1975, § 13A-5-40(a)(2). As to Count I, the jury found Loggins guilty of the capital murder charged; as to Count II, it found him guilty of intentional murder, a lesser-included offense as to the capital murder charged. The trial court entered a judgment of conviction on each verdict.

With regard to Loggins's conviction for capital murder, the jury recommended the death penalty, by a vote of 10 to 2. The trial court accepted the jury's recommendation and sentenced Loggins to death by electrocution. The trial court sentenced Loggins to life in prison for his conviction of intentional murder.

On April 30, 1999, the Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed Loggins's conviction for capital murder and his sentence of death. Loggins v. State, 771 So.2d 1070 (Ala.Crim. App.1999). The Court of Criminal Appeals also vacated Loggins's conviction for intentional murder, as a lesser offense included in the capital murder charged in Count II, on double-jeopardy grounds. Thereafter, the Court of Criminal Appeals denied Loggins's application for rehearing, without opinion.

This Court granted Loggins's petition for certiorari review, to review the opinion of the Court of Criminal Appeals and to search the record for plain error, pursuant to Rule 39(k), Ala. R.App. P. Loggins raised 10 issues in his petition; each of them was adequately addressed and properly decided by the Court of Criminal Appeals. However, we will address three of those issues—whether the prosecutor impermissibly commented on Loggins's failure to testify at trial; whether the trial court erred in admitting into evidence approximately 50 autopsy photographs of the victim; and whether, in light of the trial court's findings as to aggravating and mitigating circumstances, that court erred in sentencing Loggins to death. For the reasons we will discuss in detail in Parts I through III of this opinion, we affirm the judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeals.

The facts relating to this case are set out in considerable detail in the opinion of the Court of Criminal Appeals, 771 So.2d 1070. We will not restate them in detail here. However, we will outline the facts essential to a consideration of the three issues we address. Most of the facts relevant to these issues are set out in the trial court's sentencing order, which reads, in pertinent part:

"On the night of [February 21, 1994,] Vicki Deblieux, age 37, was dropped off by a friend on [Highway] I-59 near Chattanooga, Tennessee, to hitchhike to her mother's home in Louisiana.

"Four teenagers—the defendant [Loggins], Carey Dale Grayson, Trace Duncan and Louis Mangione—all [of whom] had been drinking alcohol and using drugs, saw her hitchhiking on I-59 at the Trussville exit in Jefferson County, Alabama. They offered to take her to Louisiana; instead they took her to a wooded area, on the pretense of picking up another vehicle.

"After arriving in this area, they all got out of the vehicle, and began to drink. [Loggins, along with the others, threw bottles at Ms. Deblieux, who began to run from them.] They tackled her to the ground and began to kick her repeatedly all over her body. When they noticed that she was still alive, the defendant stood on her throat, until she gurgled blood and said `Okay, I'll party,' then died.

"They then put her body in the back of a pickup truck and took her and her luggage to Bald Rock Mountain, after removing her clothing [and a ring,] and they played with her body and then threw her off a cliff.

"They then went to a car wash in Pell City to wash the blood out of the truck. [After rummaging through her luggage, they hid the luggage in the woods.]

"On their return to Birmingham they took Mangione home and then returned to Bald Rock Mountain, where they began to mutilate the body by stabbing and cutting her 180 times, removing part of a lung and removing her fingers and thumbs.

"The next morning, the defendant's girlfriend found the three of them in Birmingham asleep in the truck all covered in mud and blood. The defendant told her they got blood on them from a dog.

"On [February 26, 1994,] three rock climbers found the victim's body and called the police. Her body was taken to the medical examiner's office.

"The medical examiner found the following injuries: almost every bone in her skull was fractured, every bone in her face was fractured at least once, lacerations on the face over these fractures, a missing tooth, left eye was collapsed, right eye was hemorrhaged, tongue discolored, 180 stab wounds (postmortem), two large incisions in her chest, her left lung had been removed and all her fingers and both thumbs were cut off.

"The medical examiner opined that the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head and possible asphyxiation.

"All defendants were later arrested after Mangione began showing one of the victim's fingers to friends."

(Supplemental Record, C. 12-13.) See Loggins v. State, 771 So.2d at 1074-75.

Several of Loggins's friends and acquaintances testified during the State's case-in-chief that Loggins had bragged and even joked with them about killing a hitchhiker. Sonja Gray met Loggins while she was working at a Hardee's restaurant, and Gray was a friend of Amy White, who was Loggins's girlfriend. Gray also knew Duncan, Grayson, and Mangione, Loggins's codefendants. Gray testified about a morning in late February 1994, when she and Amy White went looking for Loggins. Gray testified that, as she and White were driving past the Hardee's restaurant at Chalkville, where she and Dale Grayson worked, they noticed Loggins's white pickup truck in the parking lot. The two girls stopped and looked inside the truck and saw Loggins, Grayson, and Duncan asleep. Gray testified that the three men were covered with mud and blood. When Gray asked the men about their appearance, one of them told her that they had killed a dog that was chasing the truck.

The subject of how the men came to be covered in mud and blood came up again in late March 1994, in Duncan's apartment. Gray and another girl, Danielle Boso, were listening to music with Duncan, Loggins, and Mangione, when Gray asked whether they had killed a dog or a hitchhiker. Mangione told her they had killed a hitchhiker. Mangione asked Gray who told her about the hitchhiker: Boso said that Amy White had told them. Loggins then told the girls that "Amy was dead, and if [they] breathed a word of it, [they] would be next." Loggins told the girls that they had picked up a hitchhiker, and that he had put his foot on her throat and said "hurry up and die."¹ Loggins told the girls that the hitchhiker "choked up blood" and that the men cut off the victim's fingers to prevent her from being identified. Then the men took her body to Bald Mountain and threw the body over a cliff.

Danielle Boso's testimony was essentially the same as the testimony given by Gray. Boso testified that she was with Gray in Duncan's apartment. She testified that Loggins was the person who related the story about the hitchhiker. Boso testified that Loggins said he and the others picked the victim up on the Trussville exit on I-59 and that they took her to Loggins's truck and then took her into the woods, where they killed her, and then threw her body over a cliff. Boso testified that Loggins said the men returned to Bald Mountain that night and that they "cut off her fingers, took out her teeth, took out her brain, her eye, and took out her heart and took a bite if it." (R. 473.) (The results of this mutilation are depicted in many of the crime-scene and autopsy photographs that Loggins would have preferred the jury not see.) Boso testified that one of the men said that they performed the postmortem mutilations to hinder identification of the victim.

Hope Hanson knew Loggins and the other codefendants because, she said, they "hung around" with Duncan, who was her brother's friend. Hanson testified that in late February 1994, she overheard Loggins and Grayson talking about "fingers behind Bruno's" (an apparent reference to a supermarket). Hanson testified that either Grayson or Loggins was talking about "fingers being thrown" and that one of the men joked about throwing someone's fingers in the front yard of her apartment complex. Finally, Hanson testified that she occasionally heard Loggins and the other men joke about picking up a hitchhiker.

Before trial, Loggins entered a plea of not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. Dr. Samuel E. Fleming III, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist, testified for the defense during the guilt phase of the trial. He testified that he gave Loggins two Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory ("MMPI") tests during his evaluation. Fleming testified that Loggins scored high on the scale used to indicate the presence of schizophrenia and antisocial behavior. Fleming did not "think there was any question" that when he killed Ms. Deblieux Loggins was suffering from a severe mental illness that caused him to be unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of his acts. Fleming testified that "there was a possibility" that Loggins was insane at that time and that there was "no question" that Loggins suffered from a diminished capacity.

The State offered the testimony of Dr. C.J. Rosecrans, a clinical psychologist, in...