Alexander v. State, No. 98-KA-00577-SCT.
| Decision Date | 27 April 2000 |
| Docket Number | No. 98-KA-00577-SCT. |
| Citation | 759 So.2d 411 |
| Parties | Norris Crawford ALEXANDER v. STATE of Mississippi. |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
Joe VanDyke, Sardis, William F. Travis, Southaven, Attorneys for Appellant.
Office of the Attorney General by Charles W. Maris, Jr., Attorney for Appellee.
BEFORE PITTMAN AND BANKS, P.JJ., AND MILLS, J.
MILLS, Justice, for the Court:
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
¶ 1. Catherine Diane Blevin was stabbed in her Panola County, Mississippi, home on July 23, 1993 and died two days later. Her son-in-law, Norris Crawford Alexander, was convicted of capital murder as an habitual offender in the Circuit Court of the Second Judicial District of Panola County. Alexander was sentenced to life imprisonment without eligibility for parole. Aggrieved by the verdict, Alexander appeals. We consider the following issues:
FACTS
¶ 2. On July 23, 1993, someone stabbed Catherine Diane Blevin in her Panola County, Mississippi home, resulting in her death two days later. Authorities suspected her son-in-law, Norris Crawford Alexander, whom she had kicked out of her home some two or three months earlier, along with her daughter, after she discovered marijuana growing in their bedroom. However, no evidence linking him to the crime was found until he made a series of statements.
¶ 3. During a trip to Memphis, Tennessee, Alexander told an acquaintance, Misty Dawn Carpenter, that he had stabbed his mother-in-law. Later, while he was in jail on unrelated charges, he told three other inmates about the killing. Thereafter, certain letters Alexander had written while in jail were obtained by authorities. The letters described how Alexander had killed Blevin. Additional facts necessary for a just determination of this appeal are fully detailed in the discussion of the following issues.
¶ 4. Following the State's case-in-chief, Alexander chose not to testify and did not present any other evidence. After a short deliberation, the jury convicted him of capital murder. The trial court subsequently found that Alexander was an habitual offender within the meaning of Miss.Code Ann. § 99-19-81 (1994). The State declined to seek the death penalty, and the trial court imposed a sentence of life imprisonment without parole.
DISCUSSION
FAIR TRIAL WHERE THE STATE WAS ALLOWED TO ELICIT INADMISSIBLE HEARSAY TESTIMONY WHICH BOLSTERED TESTIMONY REGARDING AN ADMISSION BY THE DEFENDANT.
¶ 5. Misty Dawn Carpenter was called by the State as a witness in its case-in-chief. Carpenter testified about a conversation she had with Alexander on August 13, 1993, as they drove to Memphis with her boyfriend, Jay Weaver. The pertinent testimony is as follows:
We was on our way to Memphis and Bugger [Alexander] looked over at Jay and was talking about a knife that had been thrown into some water. I don't know what water, but it was just some water. Jay told Bugger to shut up, to shut up, shut up. Bugger said, "What are you talking about?" And Jay told him just to shut his mouth. And I asked him what was going on. Bugger said, And I said, "Do what?" And Jay said, And I said, "Why did you do that?" I think this is what, this is what was said: It was late at night, toward the morning hours. He went into his mother-in-law's house, and it was some pills or something there that he had wanted, and as he approached in the house she woke up. He put a pillow over her face, and he said he stabbed the bitch. And Jay was just steady telling him to shut up, shut up, shut up.
Immediately before the preceding testimony, Alexander objected "to any potential hearsay," but that objection was overruled. Alexander complains that Carpenter's statements as set forth above were inadmissible and prejudicial hearsay. Alexander is wrong.
¶ 6. Hearsay is defined as "a statement, other than one made by the declarant while testifying at the trial or hearing, offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted." M.R.E. 801(c). We have held that, "[w]here the fact that a particular statement was made is of itself a relevant fact, regardless of the truth or falsity of such statement, the statement is admissible in evidence as an independently relevant fact." Jackson v. State, 527 So.2d 654, 656 (Miss.1988) (quoting Tolbert v. State, 407 So.2d 815, 821 (Miss.1981)). "Generally, words which accompany and give character to a transaction are not considered hearsay." Gayten v. State, 595 So.2d 409, 414 (Miss.1992). A statement is not considered hearsay if it is offered merely to show its effect on someone. Knight v. State, 601 So.2d 403, 406 (Miss.1992). In Knight, the trial court excluded as hearsay the statement of a witness that another person had warned the defendant that he had better leave the scene. We held that Id. at 406.
¶ 7. The testimony regarding Jay Weaver's repeated admonitions to "shut up" does not fit the definition of hearsay because there were no assertions of fact. For the same reason, Weaver's testimony regarding her own part of the conversation is also not hearsay. Carpenter testified that after Alexander began his revelations, she asked him 1) "what was going on"; 2) "Do what?"; and 3) "Why did you do that?" These three statements are questions which were not offered to prove the truth of any matter asserted and are therefore not hearsay.
¶ 8. Carpenter's testimony regarding Alexander's statements was not hearsay because they were admissions by a party-opponent under M.R.E. 801(d)(2)(A). Such admissions, by definition, are not hearsay. We need not determine whether the statements are exceptions to the hearsay rule since the statements at issue are not hearsay. ¶ 9. We have consistently held that "[t]he relevancy and admissibility of evidence are largely within the discretion of the trial court and reversal may be had only where that discretion has been abused." Johnston v. State, 567 So.2d 237, 238 (Miss.1990). In the instant case, no abuse of discretion has been shown. Rather, Alexander argues that "[t]he rules of evidence make no provision for testimony of this nature." The pertinent question is whether the rules of evidence provide for the exclusion of such relevant evidence. Alexander has not shown that they do. This issue fails.
¶ 10. Alexander next argues that the trial court committed reversible error in allowing the testimony of State witnesses Michael Taylor, Jeffrey Ruffin and Anthony Sims. Taylor, Ruffin and Sims were all incarcerated with Alexander in the same Panola County Jail cell block while Alexander was being held on drug charges unrelated to this case. Feeling the need to get the matter off his chest, Alexander confided to Taylor that he stabbed his mother-in-law to death and provided significant details about the stabbing.
¶ 11. This statement was buttressed by letters that Alexander sent to Taylor describing how he killed Blevin. Ruffin corroborated Taylor by testifying that he overheard Alexander describing the murder to Taylor. Sims testified that Alexander confessed the stabbing to him while in jail. Alexander submits that these statements are not "admissions" since no other facts prove his guilt. We disagree.
¶ 12. An admission is "a statement by the accused, ... of facts pertinent to the issue and tending, in connection with other facts, to prove his guilt." Edwards v. State, 615 So.2d 590, 597 (Miss.1993)(quoting Reed v. State, 229 Miss. 440, 446, 91 So.2d 269, 272 (1956)). A statement offered against a party and made by a declarant, either in the declarant's individual or representative capacity, is an admission of a party-opponent. M.R.E. 801(d)(2)(A). The Mississippi Rules of Evidence clearly reflect that an admission by a party-opponent, by definition, is not hearsay.
¶ 13. In Sudduth v. State, 562 So.2d 67 (Miss.1990), the defendant made a confession to several inmates and others persons. On appeal he argued that the testimony of the inmates should not have been admitted. We rejected that argument, holding:
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Walker v. State
...was allowed to testify as to statements made by a forensic anthropologist confirming pathologist's findings). In Alexander v. State, 759 So.2d 411, 420 (Miss.2000), this Court noted that the comment to Mississippi Rule of Evidence 703 "expressly states that an expert witness may use data th......
-
People v. Ervine
...from the jury box. (See People v. Strickland (2006) 363 Ill.App.3d 598, 605 [300 Ill.Dec. 297, 843 N.E.2d 897, 903]; Alexander v. State (Miss. 2001) 759 So.2d 411, 418.) As defendant concedes, courts typically find unjustified shackling of a defendant to be harmless where the restraints wer......
-
Randolph v. State
...ruling on objections. Instead, Randolph broadly refers to each and every objection in the record. ¶ 29. This Court in Alexander v. State, 759 So.2d 411, 418 (Miss.2000), held the There is a presumption that the judgment of the trial court is correct, and the burden is on the appellant to de......
-
East Mississippi State Hosp. v. Callens
...scant, we readily acknowledge that a trial court judgment is presumptively correct, absent evidence to the contrary, Alexander v. State, 759 So.2d 411, 418 (Miss.2000); Pierre v. State, 607 So.2d 43, 48 (Miss.1992), and here, the defendants offer nothing to indicate that the trial court was......