Clanton v. Com., 810953

• Decision Date: 22 January 1982
• Docket Number: No. 810953,810953
• Parties: Earl CLANTON, Jr. v. COMMONWEALTH of Virginia. Record
• Court: Virginia Supreme Court

Page 172

286 S.E.2d 172

223 Va. 41

Earl CLANTON, Jr. v. COMMONWEALTH of Virginia.

Record No. 810953.

Supreme Court of Virginia.

Jan. 22, 1982.

Timothy J. Hauler, Colonial Heights (Elliott, DeBoer & Hauler, Ltd., Colonial Heights, on brief), for appellant.

Thomas D. Bagwell, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Marshall Coleman, Atty. Gen., on brief), for appellee.

Before CARRICO, C. J., COCHRAN, POFF, COMPTON, THOMPSON and STEPHENSON, JJ., and HARRISON, Retired Justice.

COCHRAN, Justice.

Tried by a jury on an indictment charging him with capital murder in the commission of robbery while armed with a deadly weapon in violation of Code § 18.2-31(d), the defendant, Earl Clanton, Jr., was found guilty as charged. In the second stage of the proceeding conducted in compliance with Code §§ 19.2-264.3 and -264.4, the same jury fixed Clanton's punishment at death. After considering the report of the probation officer required by Code § 19.2-264.5, the trial court sentenced Clanton to death in accordance with the jury verdict.

We have consolidated our automatic review of his sentence, mandated by Code § 17-110.1A, with Clanton's appeal of his conviction, as authorized by Code § 17-110.1F, and pursuant to the provisions of Code § 17-110.2 we have given them priority on our docket. Clanton seeks a reversal of his conviction and remand of the case for a new trial, or in the alternative commutation of his death sentence to imprisonment for life.

The victim, Wilhelmina Smith, resided in an apartment complex. On November 16, 1980, about 12:30 p. m., police officers, notified of suspicious noises coming from her apartment, entered and found Smith dead on the bedroom floor, with cuts on her throat and a belt tightly drawn around her neck. They also found Clanton hiding under the bed in another room.

At trial, the Commonwealth presented the testimony of two of Smith's neighbors, the testimony of the investigating officers, physical and scientific evidence, and photographs.

Vanessa Harris, a resident in the apartment directly beneath Smith's, testified that about 12:30 p. m. on November 16 she saw Smith's car drive up and heard Smith walk up the outside stairway to her apartment and say, "What have I done to you?" Harris said that Smith "started screaming" and a "lot of noise" came from her living room. Harris telephoned her grandmother twice, then the police, and then her mother. While Harris was on the telephone she heard noise coming from the back bedroom of the Smith apartment. After making her telephone calls, she looked and listened but before the police arrived she did not see or hear anyone go up or come down the stairway that Smith had used.

Willie L. Acox also lived in an apartment on the floor below the Smith apartment. He testified that about 12:30 p. m. on the day she was killed he saw Smith leave her car and walk upstairs. When she reached the top of the steps, Acox said, she "mumbled something like 'what have I ever done to you? Why this?' " Acox heard Smith's door slammed shut, after which Smith screamed twice. He opened his door and looked out but saw or heard no one on the stairway before the police arrived, and heard no doors open or close upstairs.

Patrol Officer Gary J. Chandler, of the Petersburg Bureau of Police, testified that he was operating his car near the apartment complex when he received a radio call about 12:30 p. m. on November 16 to proceed to that address. With Officer Michael Hess, he arrived within thirty or forty seconds. Finding the door to the apartment across the breezeway from Smith's apartment ajar, the officers entered but found no one inside. After calling police headquarters and receiving instructions to investigate the Smith apartment, they knocked repeatedly on the door and identified themselves as police officers. A woman inside the apartment called to them that she was in the shower and would take a few minutes to get dressed, but the officers continued to knock until the woman unlocked the door and admitted them. She was Natalie Lawrence, who lived in the apartment the officers had just left.

Chandler observed blood on a chair in the living room. Leaving Hess in charge of Lawrence, he walked through the apartment and found Smith lying dead on the floor in the back bedroom, with "an excessive amount of blood on her," a "cord-like" [belt] around her throat, and cuts on her throat. Radioing for additional help, Chandler searched the premises; in another bedroom he discovered Clanton hiding under the bed and arrested him. Clanton had a nylon stocking over his hair and was bare to the waist, but he held in his hands his bloody shirt, which he left under the bed. His torso and hands, and the jeans, tennis shoes, and socks that he was wearing also were bloody. Searching Clanton, Chandler seized a blood-stained wad of money, subsequently determined to be one five-dollar bill and three one-dollar bills, discovered in a pocket of the suspect's jeans. According to Chandler, there were a few marks on Clanton but he was not bleeding; there was no blood on Lawrence or on her clothes.

Hess corroborated Chandler's testimony and further testified that there was blood throughout the Smith apartment. Another officer testified that Clanton's fingerprint matched a bloody fingerprint on Smith's checkbook lying near her body.

Dr. Marcella Fierro, Deputy Chief Medical Examiner, gave the cause of Smith's death as strangulation caused by the ligature that was "wound tightly about her neck." Dr. Fierro also testified that Smith had on her face, in addition to bruises, cutting or stab wounds not more than one-half inch deep which did not penetrate any vital structures. Such wounds, Dr. Fierro said, were generally inflicted by someone holding the edge of a blade to a victim whose head was back. She identified and introduced in evidence photographs of Smith's body, showing the ligature, the bruises and the knife wounds.

A forensic scientist testified that the blood on Clanton's clothes and on objects in the Smith apartment was consistent with Smith's blood type and not Clanton's. The smeared stains on the money found in Clanton's pocket were inconclusive; they were consistent with either Smith's or Clanton's blood type.

Clanton, testifying in his own defense, denied any responsibility for Smith's murder. He asserted that he and Lawrence were in Lawrence's apartment when they heard screams coming from Smith's apartment. At the insistence of Lawrence, he entered that apartment, where he was attacked by a man with whom he struggled until the attacker ran out the door and disappeared.

Clanton said that he found Smith lying on the floor with a knife sticking in her throat. As he was bending over to assist her, he was attacked by another intruder. Clanton was covered with blood from Smith's wounds. Because he was versed in the martial arts, such as jujitsu and karate, he was able to drive off his assailant with blows and kicks. Clanton said that he was also experienced in defending himself because he "boxed light heavyweight for a while" and could box "very well." Clanton gave a graphic and detailed description of the struggle, during which he said his handprints appeared on the wall when he pushed off "to throw a kick" at his adversary. Clanton maintained that he was merely attempting to defend himself, that he did so effectively, that he could have apprehended the intruders but did not because that was not his "job" and he just wanted to protect his own life. The second man fled, according to Clanton, as Lawrence entered the apartment. Clanton looked through Smith's papers for an address of a relative to call; he recalled picking up her checkbook, thinking it might be an address book. When the police knocked on the door, he hid under a bed because he was a fugitive.

Lawrence testified in substantial corroboration of Clanton's testimony. She testified that Clanton was living with her at the time the crime was committed. She said she heard a scream in Smith's apartment, went to investigate, and found the key in Smith's door. Pushing the door open, she saw blood on a chair and heard noise in the apartment. She returned to her apartment and sent Clanton to help. Lawrence said she saw through the peephole in her door one of Clanton's unknown assailants run from the Smith apartment and escape by jumping over the railing of the stairwell. She was on her way into the Smith apartment when the second intruder ran out, pursued by Clanton.

Lawrence retracted a statement she had made to the police two days after the murder, and later repeated, that Clanton had told her before he left her apartment that he was going to "choke" Smith and rob her of her money. Lawrence explained that she made the statement because the police were harassing her and threatening to take her child from her. She acknowledged that when the police arrived at the Smith apartment she delayed opening the door, told Clanton to hide, and falsely informed the officers that she was alone.

In rebuttal, the Commonwealth presented evidence that Lawrence had not been harassed by the police when she made the statement incriminating Clanton, that she repeated the statement in the presence of her attorney, and that during her incarceration she had written a letter to three of the police officers thanking them for "helping" her to come to her senses, and for all that they "have done and are still trying to do" for her.

The jury found Clanton guilty of capital murder. Clanton's motion to set aside the verdict as contrary to the law and the evidence was denied by the trial court, and the sentencing phase of the bifurcated trial followed promptly. See Rule 3A:25A.

The Commonwealth presented evidence that Clanton was convicted of murder in New Jersey in 1972, on a "non vult" plea, ¹ and sentenced to prison for twenty-six to twenty-eight years, and convicted in Virginia in 1980 of unlawful injury of one Bruce Brown, for which he was sentenced to...