Alexander v. State, 89-KA-0948

• Decision Date: 10 September 1992
• Docket Number: No. 89-KA-0948,89-KA-0948
• Citation: 610 So.2d 320
• Parties: Stephanie Lynn ALEXANDER v. STATE of Mississippi.
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court

Page 320

610 So.2d 320

Stephanie Lynn ALEXANDER v. STATE of Mississippi.

No. 89-KA-0948.

Supreme Court of Mississippi.

Sept. 10, 1992.

Rehearing Denied Jan. 21, 1993.

Gerald W. Chatham, Sr., Hernando, for appellant.

Michael C. Moore, Atty. Gen., W. Glenn Watts, Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen., Jackson, for appellee.

Before DAN M. LEE, P.J., and PITTMAN, and BANKS, JJ.

PITTMAN, Justice, for the Court:

On January 25, 1988, Stephanie Lynn Alexander, a young college co-ed from Hernando Mississippi, was convicted of killing her dormitory suitemate, Stacey Dianne Pannell, who was from Ripley, Mississippi. Alexander appeals to this Court. We affirm the conviction and sentence of Alexander after a careful inquiry into the numerous challenges raised on appeal by Alexander, to wit: (1) the trial court's denial of a motion to suppress incriminating statements and allowing said statements into evidence even though Alexander claimed they were made after the use of hypnosis; (2) exclusion of defense questioning propounded to a witness about why the witness had refused to talk to the defense attorney prior to trial; (3) restriction of defense examination of the state medical examiner concerning an FBI profile; (4) restriction of defense examination of a law enforcement officer concerning a newspaper article about his involvement in the case; (5) the trial court's refusal to declare a particular witness as "hostile;" (6) admission into evidence of the fact that Alexander was pregnant at the time she was arrested; (7) the exclusion of certain testimony and tests of a witness, Alexander's psychologist after her arrest, such as a demonstration in the courtroom of how easily the defendant could be hypnotized and his personal opinion about the case, even though the court did allow a videotape of a hypnosis of Alexander; (8) the trial court's prohibition of defense counsel from calling a witness who was not on the witness list supplied to the state; (9) admission into evidence of a gruesome autopsy photograph depicting the victim's opened skull; and (10) the trial court's allowance of a prosecutorial comment during closing argument that could be construed to reflect on Alexander's right to remain silent.

I.

In the early morning hours of October 8, 1985, the body of eighteen-year-old freshman Stacey Dianne Pannell was found in her dormitory room at Northeast Mississippi Junior College in Booneville, Mississippi. Pannell's body was discovered by her roommate, Amy Wheeler. Wheeler arrived at her dormitory room and discovered that the door was locked and that Pannell did not answer her knocks. Since she didn't have her key with her, Wheeler knocked on the door of the next room where Alexander lived. Alexander sleepily answered Wheeler's knocks and let her into the room so that Wheeler could pass through the adjoining bathroom of the two rooms and get into her own dormitory room. Upon entering her own dormitory room, Wheeler saw Pannell's partially nude body on a bed. Wheeler approached the bed with Alexander a few inches behind her. Even in the dim light, Wheeler saw blood on the pillow and Pannell's panties pulled down around the knees of both legs. Upset, Wheeler ran out of the room through her own door and into the hallway in order to get help.

Another resident of the dormitory, Belinda Posey, went to check on Pannell at Wheeler's request. Posey found Pannell's door locked again and had to enter through Alexander's room. After seeing Pannell's body, Posey left to find the "dorm mother".

When the "dorm mother", Edna Snyder, went to check on Pannell, she found Pannell's door locked and got a security guard to unlock it for her. Snyder found Pannel's body with the panties around the calf of only one leg.

Investigators documented the scene. Pannell was lying with her back on the bed. She had her left leg resting on the bed and right foot resting on the floor. She was partially covered with bed linens and was nude from the waist down. A pair of panties was pulled down around her lower left leg. A pillow had been placed over her head. Pannell had severe injuries to the left side of her head and there was a great amount of blood on her head and on the pillow next to her head. There were blood splatters throughout the room on the walls and ceiling and as far away as nine (9) feet from the body of Pannell. A drill rifle was lying on the floor with a towel wrapped around the barrel end. There was blood on the stock or handle of the drill rifle. A hole, 8-10 inches long and 8-10 inches wide, had been cut out of the window screen.

The Mississippi Highway Patrol hunted almost a year for Pannell's killer. ¹ About 15 different investigators worked on the case. The detectives called in Steve Rhoads, the police chief of East Hazel Crest, Illinois, who often lectured at seminars for law enforcement personnel about a special interrogation technique known as Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

Rhoads questioned those around the crime scene. On September 18, 1986, Rhoads questioned Stephanie Lynn Alexander, a suitemate of Pannell. She confessed.

Alexander signed three statements confessing to the killing of Pannell. She signed one statement on September 18, 1986. She signed another statement on September 19 while in the Union County Sheriff's Office in New Albany, Mississippi, giving additional information. While being kept in the Lee County Jail on September 21, she signed a third statement similar to the first two.

On September 21, while in jail, Alexander wrote an eleven-page letter to Randy Price, a boy she had been dating for about a week, in which she confessed to the crime and described the circumstances surrounding the killing. Alexander told Price that she "didn't mean to do it.... It was an accident." She explained to Price that she had been heavily sedated and had had a mental block about the killing. She wrote that she hadn't been able to remember killing Pannell before but had had nightmares about the killing. Alexander told Price that she hadn't known what she was doing at the time.

The gravamen of Alexander's confession is that she was doing homework on October 7, 1985, in her room and took three (3) codeine tablets sometime between 9:00 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. because of pain from an ovary infection. Alexander had been out earlier in the evening playing cards and visiting friends, including Tommy Osborne. She walked back to her dorm room alone to do homework. Alexander dozed off after taking the codeine. She woke up around 12:30 a.m. when she heard Pannell and some other girls returning home, which was the adjacent room. The girls were helping Pannell get to her room because she had been drinking. She heard Pannell say, "Tommy O. is so fine I could ---- his brains out." Alexander asked them to be quiet, and the girls helping Pannell left. Alexander couldn't go back to sleep so she went back to Pannell's room to talk. Alexander asked Pannell if she had fun that night. Pannell said she did. They talked about Tommy Osborne whom Pannell had been dating. They talked about a boy Alexander had been dating. They talked about Tommy Osborne again. Pannell asked Alexander what she thought about Tommy Osborne. Alexander said she thought he was "fine." Pannell told Alexander, "You had better stay the hell away from him. I'm tired of you and your ----ing room." Pannell was standing in front of the mirror and pointed her finger in Alexander's face. Alexander mentioned Tommy Osborne again. Pannell slapped Alexander. Alexander called Pannell a "bitch" and slapped her. Pannell told Alexander, "I'd better not see you hanging around him. I'll kill you. Do you hear me?" Pannell slapped Alexander again. Pannell put her hands around Alexander's throat. Alexander kicked her to get her away. Pannell fell onto the bed and started to get up towards Alexander. Alexander had been twirling Pannell's drill rifle while they were talking and had laid it back down against Pannell's bed. Alexander picked up the drill rifle and hit Pannell. Pannell fell back onto the bed. Pannell started towards Alexander again and called her a "----ing bitch." Alexander hit her again with the drill rifle. When Pannell fell back on the bed, Alexander hit her three more times with the drill rifle.

The confession continued. Alexander was "out of it" because of the codeine and didn't know what to do. The rifle fell out of Alexander's hand, and she locked the door to the hall, washed her hands in the sink, and put a pillow over Pannell's head. Alexander got a steak knife that Pannell had borrowed from Alexander out of a drawer and cut the screen so the scene would look like someone had come through the window. She pulled Pannell's panties down so that it would appear as a rape and wiped off part of the drill rifle. Alexander then took a bath and burned the screen that she had cut out and the shirt she had been wearing in the commode of the bathroom adjoining the two rooms. Smoke was in the bathroom, so Alexander sprayed some of Amy Wheeler's perfume in the bathroom. Alexander went back to bed and slept.

Alexander was charged with Pannell's murder following her confession to the investigators.

Claiming innocence, Alexander contended that the confessions had been the product of hypnotic suggestion and were thus inadmissible. Alexander claimed that the authorities had been desperate to solve the case and planted the story in her mind that she had killed Pannell. Judge Thomas J. Gardner, III of the Prentiss County Circuit Court held a three-day hearing in June, 1987, to determine if the statements made by Alexander to the investigators and in a letter to Price were voluntary or if they were made due to coercion, threats, or promises of leniency, or hypnotic suggestion. During the suppression hearing, the court heard from everyone who was present when Alexander confessed.

The trial judge overruled Alexander's motion to suppress the statements given to law enforcement officers and the letter...