Beck v. Com.
| Decision Date | 18 April 1997 |
| Docket Number | No. 962431,962431 |
| Citation | 253 Va. 373,484 S.E.2d 898 |
| Parties | Christopher BECK v. COMMONWEALTH of Virginia. Record |
| Court | Virginia Supreme Court |
Richard J. McCue, Falls Church; Robert L. Tomlinson, II, Arlington, for appellant.
Robert Q. Harris, Assistant Attorney General (James S. Gilmore, III, Attorney General, on the brief), for appellee.
Present: All the Justices.
In this appeal, we review the capital murder convictions and the death sentences imposed by the trial court, sitting without a jury, on Christopher Beck. The principal issues presented are whether the trial court erred in receiving "victim impact evidence" from persons other than family members of the victims and in receiving "recommendations" concerning the imposition of the death penalty from the victims' friends and family members.
Beck was charged with multiple offenses including capital murder, burglary, rape, robbery, and use of a firearm in the commission of these offenses. Prior to trial, Beck filed a motion to suppress the introduction of all statements made by him to the police and any evidence obtained as a result. After reviewing the statements, receiving additional evidence, and hearing argument of counsel, the trial court denied this motion. Beck does not assign error to this action of the trial court.
Beck also filed a motion challenging the constitutionality of Virginia's capital murder statute and the attendant statutes governing trial and appellate procedures in death penalty cases. The trial court denied this motion without comment.
At trial, Beck pled guilty to the capital murder of his cousin Florence Marie Marks during or subsequent to rape or in the commission of robbery while armed with a deadly weapon, Code § 18.2-31(4) and (5), the capital murder of William Miller in the commission of robbery while armed with a deadly weapon, Code § 18.2-31(4), the capital murder of David Stuart Kaplan in the commission of robbery while armed with a deadly weapon, Code § 18.2-31(4), as well as statutory burglary, rape, three offenses of robbery, and seven offenses of the use of a firearm. 1 At the time the pleas were taken, the Commonwealth, at the trial court's direction, made a proffer of the evidence of Beck's guilt. This proffer referred the trial court principally to statements made by Beck to the police which the trial court had reviewed during the suppression hearing. On the basis of this proffer, the trial court accepted the pleas and found Beck guilty.
Following the acceptance of Beck's pleas, the trial court granted a continuance prior to beginning the sentencing phase of the trial. During the continuance, the trial court received a large number of letters from family members and friends of the victims which contained statements concerning the impact of Beck's crimes and "recommendations" concerning the imposition of the death penalty.
During the sentencing phase, the trial court heard evidence in aggravation and in mitigation and fixed punishment for each of the three capital murders at death premised upon findings of both "vileness" and "future dangerousness." The trial court sentenced Beck to four life terms plus a total 53 years' imprisonment for the remaining offenses.
The critical facts are not in dispute and may be fairly summarized as follows:
A. Beck's Statements to Police
Beck told police that several days before the murders he formulated a plan to kill Miller, Beck's former employer. On Monday, June 5, 1995, Beck traveled by bus from his home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Washington, D.C., arriving there at 6 p.m. The following morning Beck went to Arlington to the house shared by Marks, Miller, and Kaplan. He arrived at the house at 11 a.m., "walked around the perimeter," and then broke in through a basement window under the porch.
Wrapping a sledge hammer he found in the basement with a cloth to "muffle the sound," he used the sledge hammer to batter a hole in a door to the first floor of the house. Beck then went to Miller's apartment and chose a .22 caliber semi-automatic pistol from several loaded guns Miller kept in the house; he rejected another larger caliber weapon because its report would be too loud. After loading a spare magazine for the pistol, Beck went to the basement and waited for Miller to return home. As Beck waited he became "nervous," but finally concluded, "I guess I'll go through [with] it."
Later that afternoon, Beck heard the sound of someone entering the basement. Beck raised the pistol to "arm level," and, as the door opened, he closed his eyes and fired two shots. When Beck opened his eyes, he saw Marks on the basement floor. Beck said, "you stupid bitch, why did you have to come home?" In an attempt to make it appear that Marks had been raped and robbed, Beck cut off most of her clothes and stabbed her in the right buttock. He threw a condom he had found in the washer onto the floor and, in a further effort to make it appear that Marks had been sexually assaulted, he kicked her and penetrated her vagina with a hammer. Beck reasoned that sexual assault evidence would lead the police to believe that the crime had been committed by a stranger and not by a family member. Beck then went back upstairs to the first floor.
About one hour later, Miller returned home. Beck was on the stairs leading to the second floor and hid behind the bannister. Miller remained downstairs for a while and then started up the stairs. Beck shot Miller in the face as he mounted the stairs. Miller fell down the stairs as Beck continued to shoot him, firing a total of five rounds at him. Beck put Miller's body in Kaplan's apartment and threw a blanket over the body, "because I got sick and tired looking" at it.
Later that evening, but while it was still light outside, Kaplan returned home to find Miller's body lying in his room, Beck with a gun in his hand, and blood "all over." As Kaplan stared at the scene, Beck shot Kaplan in the back of the head. Beck fired "several times and [Kaplan] just wouldn't die." As Kaplan lay on the floor, he talked to Beck, saying, "hello, I'm awake, hello." Beck fired what he believed was a full magazine at Kaplan and then stabbed him in the head. Beck stated that he "just wanted [Kaplan] to stop having the pain." After he was stabbed, Kaplan appeared to have a "seizure" and then died.
Beck went back through the house taking several guns and two bicycles. He also took cash from each of the victims. He took the keys to Miller's car, changed his clothes, loaded the car with the guns and bicycles, and drove to Washington, D.C., to see a girl. As he left the house, Beck waved to the next door neighbor.
After a parking mishap in the District of Columbia in which Beck parked the car but neglected to engage the parking brake, and the car rolled into another vehicle, Beck drove home to Pennsylvania. Once there he hid the guns and "stashed" the bicycles with a friend. He "cleaned the car of all prints[,] wiped it all down," and abandoned it after covering the license plates.
Beck was initially interviewed by Arlington County Police officers at his mother's home in Philadelphia. Beck at first claimed to have been transporting bicycles from Tennessee at the time of the murders. When a friend failed to corroborate Beck's alibi, Beck admitted to police that he had killed Marks, Miller and Kaplan. After his arrest, Beck was returned to Arlington, where he gave a full statement concerning the murders to police. During his statement to the police, Beck was given a chance to say something for himself; he said:
That ah I know what is like to kill somebody, its one of the worst feelings you can live with that I don't know that it is pretty painful that is one of those things that you can't go to sleep and I'm so sorry that I did, I'm so sorry that I had all that anger built up, I should had went to a counselor or something could have prevented it. I don't know, I'm sorry but I know this is going to be pretty hard for people to believe what happened.
In addition to giving that statement, Beck assisted the police in the recovery of the stolen car, guns, and bicycles.
B. Additional Evidence
Autopsies of the three victims revealed that each had suffered multiple gunshot wounds to the head which had resulted in rapid, if not immediate death. Dr. Frances Patricia Field, an assistant chief medical examiner, testified that Marks had sustained two gunshot wounds to the head. Dr. Field concluded that either of these gunshot wounds could have been lethal. In addition, the autopsy revealed that Marks had sustained multiple bruises on her body, a stab wound in the right buttock, and "hyperemia or redness in the left back part of the entrance to the vagina."
Miller's autopsy revealed bruises and abrasions of the lower extremities and several gunshot wounds to the face. Dr. Field concluded that the bullet which entered the left side of the head would have caused death "relatively quick[ly] if not instantaneously."
Kaplan's autopsy revealed the presence of seven gunshot wounds. Kaplan had sustained wounds to the left side of the head, the left and right sides of the face, the left side of the chin, the top and right side of the nose, and the left upper chest. In the medical examiner's opinion, only the bullets which entered the chest and the head below the ear would have been immediately or rapidly fatal. Dr. Field was unable to determine the order in which the wounds had been inflicted.
At the time the plea was taken, in addition to referring the trial court to Beck's statements, the Commonwealth made the proffer that a used condom found in the house was analyzed and that genetic material of both Marks and Beck was found. This evidence was in direct conflict with Beck's statement concerning the rape of Marks.
At sentencing, the trial court received evidence of Beck's prior criminal history. Beck, at the age of 14 years, was charged...
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