Brown v. State

• Decision Date: 12 December 1996
• Docket Number: No. 95-DP-00407-SCT,95-DP-00407-SCT
• Parties: Sherwood BROWN a/k/a Sherwood Dywane Brown v. STATE of Mississippi.
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court

Page 276

690 So.2d 276

Sherwood BROWN a/k/a Sherwood Dywane Brown v. STATE of Mississippi.

No. 95-DP-00407-SCT.

Supreme Court of Mississippi.

Dec. 12, 1996.

Jack R. Jones, III, Taylor Jones Alexander & Sorrell, Susan M. Brewer, Brewer McReynolds & Ball, Southaven, for appellant.

Michael C. Moore, Attorney General, Marvin L. White, Jr., Assistant Attorney General, Leslie S. Lee, Special Assistant Attorney General, Jackson, for appellee.

En Banc.

McRAE, Justice, for the Court:

Sherwood Dywane Brown was convicted and sentenced to death by a jury of the Lafayette County Circuit Court, sitting in DeSoto County, on one count of capital murder for the death of thirteen year old Evangela Boyd while committing felonious abuse and/or battery of a child. He further was found guilty and sentenced to serve two consecutive sentences of life imprisonment for the murders of Verline and Betty Boyd, the child's mother and grandmother. Finding no merit to his assignments of error raised in this appeal, we affirm the decision of the court below.

FACTS

Early Thursday morning, January 7, 1993, five year old Yoichi Boyd went down the road to her grandmother's house to wait for the school bus. Upon entering the house, she discovered the bodies of her aunt and grandmother, Verline and Betty Boyd. When the school bus arrived, she told the bus driver what she had found. The bus driver went back to the house with the child and saw the body of Verline Boyd in the doorway.

The DeSoto County Sheriff's Department received a dispatch at 7:50 a.m. that morning advising them of a murder on Boyd Road in the Eudora Community. Captain Janet Taylor and Lieutenant Tim Roberts arrived at the scene at 8:08 a.m. The front door was open when they arrived, and the house was "totally ransacked." Verline Boyd was lying on the floor in the doorway leading from the porch to the dining room. Upon discovering Betty Boyd's body in the living room, Taylor determined that additional assistance was needed and radioed for backup support. Sheriff James Riley and Captain Johnie Combes soon arrived and they completed their search of the house. It was then that they found the nude body of Evangela Boyd in the laundry room.

Eighty-two year old Betty Boyd died from "multiple chop wounds to the head." Dr. Steven Hayne, the forensic pathologist who performed postmortem examinations on all three victims, testified that the largest of these extended "from the forehead to the chin coursing through the nose and mouth area" and measured nineteen centimeters or approximately seven and one half to eight inches long, and was roughly four inches deep. She also suffered a horizontally-oriented chop wound to the back of the skull, measuring some eight centimeters or nearly four inches wide. Dr. Hayne described some Verline Boyd, who was found face-down by the front door, died from multiple chop wounds to the forehead and right posterior aspect of her head, which caused lacerations to her brain. The largest of the head wounds was some five and one half inches long. She suffered injuries to her hands which Dr. Hayne described as "supportive of the concept of a defensive posturing injury; that is, a person who is trying to ward off a blow, in this case a chop wound, by raising one's hand, forearm as well as digits, either right or left or both, usually trying to protect the face as well as the neck and the upper part of the chest."

twelve "traumatic findings" or chop wounds to her face, skull and brain, as well as bruises to her head, eyes, chin and hand, and a fractured jaw. He opined that a considerable amount of force was required to produce the injuries she sustained.

Thirteen year old Evangela Boyd, like her mother and grandmother, died from multiple chop wounds to her head. The primary wound, to the back of her head, was approximately seven inches long. In addition to the fatal head injuries, Dr. Hayne identified chop wounds as long as four inches on her left shoulder; chop and stab wounds as well as large scrapes on her back; scrapes and abrasions on the right hip; multiple abrasions and lacerations near the right knee; multiple chop wounds to the right forearm and fracture in the ulna and radius of that arm; chop wounds on her right hand, one of which nearly severed her thumb; and lacerations to the fingers on her right had which had nearly cut the fingers in two. Although the girl's nude body was discovered with her bra pulled behind her head, Dr. Hayne found no evidence of sexual assault.

There was a ten to twelve inch long gash in the ceiling of the laundry room where Evangela Boyd was killed. Further, Dr. Hayne testified that the wounds sustained by all three victims could have been caused by "a machete, a hatchet, an ax, a kizer blade or similar type weapons, weapons that would have a relatively sharp edge, would have some significant weight and would provide a broad cutting surface."

Verline Boyd had left her shift as a salad maker at the Piccadilly Cafeteria in the Southland Mall in Whitehaven, Tennessee, at some time between 8:45 and 8:50 p.m. on the night of January 6, 1993. The drive from Whitehaven to Boyd Road was approximately twenty-two-and-one-half miles and took about twenty-five minutes. She was found by the front door, with her keys still in her hand and wearing a jacket.

At the crime scene, investigators focused on bloody shoeprints found on the porch and front door threshold. Mississippi State Highway Patrol Criminal Investigator, Lieutenant Bill Ellis and Scotty Wood, Chief Investigator for the DeSoto County Sheriff's Department, made a periphery examination of the Boyd property. They identified shoeprints consistent with those found on the porch and threshold near Verline Boyd's car and traveling to and from the Boyd residence along a dirt field road leading to Barbee Road, about a quarter of a mile away. Officer Wood testified that they found a print about twenty yards from the Boyd residence, near the road, as well as additional prints going both directions along the dirt path. The shoeprints ultimately led authorities to the home of twenty-four year old Sherwood Brown, where he had been staying with his parents. It was raining at the time and, as Wood testified, it was a race against time to take photographs and make plaster casts of several prints before the heavy rains began.

That afternoon, Sheriff Riley talked by telephone with Brown, who was at work at Enco Materials on Highway 78 in the vicinity of Olive Branch, Mississippi, and told him that authorities wanted to speak with him. When Officers Wood and Ellis arrived at the business a few minutes after 5 p.m., Brown had left. The warehouse manager had given him a ride to the bus station at Shelby Drive and Elvis Presley Boulevard in Memphis. Wood spotted a shoe print in some dust on the floor of the warehouse where he worked that appeared to match those they had seen at the Boyd house, as well as along the footpath. He later received a phone call from a pawnshop owner that Brown had purchased a gun that day. Lieutenant Ellis testified that they made several fruitless attempts After Wood and Ellis' unsuccessful efforts to locate Brown, and friends and relatives in the Eudora Community were unable to find him there, DeSoto County authorities contacted the Memphis Police Department, since Brown had more relatives and contacts in Memphis. They met with the city's Homicide Bureau and Tactical Unit on Friday, January 8, 1993, and advised them that Brown was wanted in connection with a triple homicide, that he was armed and had a history of violent behavior, and that because of shoeprints and the large quantity of blood at the scene, his shoes and clothes had possible evidentiary value.

                to locate Brown at his wife's house on Shadowline Road in Memphis as well as at his girlfriend's home in Coldwater, Mississippi.  He later learned that Brown had gone to the Villa Inn Motel on Highway 61 in South Memphis.  Along with Memphis detectives, he went to the motel and "found that a person identified as Sherwood Brown had checked into that motel under the name of Sherwood Jones and gave the Shadowline address."   Brown was no longer there
                

Brown called his friend, James Coleman "Chick" Jones around 6:00 p.m. on Friday afternoon, January 8, 1993. He asked Jones to meet him at the Villa Inn Motel. Jones testified that when he arrived, Brown was not in his room, but hiding around the corner, and explained to him that he had wanted to make sure that Jones wasn't being followed. Jones further stated that Brown told him that he was running from the police. At Brown's request, the two went to pick up Brown's wife, Angela, with Brown hiding in the backseat of the car. After they brought Angela Brown back to her home, Jones and Brown went back to the motel for several hours. He then testified that Brown told him that he had knocked on the door of Mrs. Boyd's house, and when Evangela answered the door, "[t]hey go into another room, start talking and flaunting around and feeling on her or whatever," ¹ Betty Boyd was supposed to have been at church, but she was at home and when she saw Brown, they argued and he grabbed "something similar as he described a joe blade" and hit her. Jones recalled that Brown told him:

After that, he continues to flaunt with the little girl. He said he fucked her. She was trying to fight back, so he just beat her some so she was temporarily unconscious, and as she was in the midst of fighting back she was getting cut at the same time.

He then told Jones that he heard a door shut and thought it was one of the Boyd boys. He went to the front door, stood behind it, and when Verline Boyd came in, hit her on the back of the head. After that, he said, Evangela was trying to leave, and he had to stop her, so he just grabbed "whatever he grabbed and just stopped her, cut, her, hatchet or whatever, just he stopped her." He told Jones that he walked home along the path. Jones...