Com. v. Chambers

• Decision Date: 30 September 2009
• Docket Number: No. 489 CAP,489 CAP
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee v. Jerry CHAMBERS, Appellant.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

980 A.2d 35

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee v. Jerry CHAMBERS, Appellant.

No. 489 CAP

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued October 20, 2008.

Decided September 30, 2009.

Jules Epstein, Esq., Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing & Feinberg, Philadelphia, for Jerry Chambers.

William George Young, Esq., Amy Zapp, Esq., Hugh J. Burns, Jr., Esq., Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, for Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

BEFORE: CASTILLE, C.J., and SAYLOR, EAKIN, BAER, TODD, MCCAFFERY and GREENSPAN, JJ.

OPINION

Chief Justice CASTILLE.

This is a direct appeal from a sentence of death imposed by the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County on May 26, 2005, for the murder of three-year-old P.B.¹ Appellant Jerry Chambers was convicted by a jury of first-degree murder, criminal conspiracy, aggravated assault, four counts of endangering the welfare of a child, four counts of conspiracy to endanger the welfare of a child, three counts of indecent assault, three counts of indecent exposure, three counts of corruption of a minor, and possession of an instrument of crime, following a capital murder trial that commenced on May 2, 2005. Because we find the issues raised by appellant either unreviewable or without merit, we affirm the convictions and judgment of sentence.

The myriad charges in this case arose out of the abuse of P.B. and her three sisters, which culminated on the night of August 16, 2003, when appellant caused the death of P.B. Evidence presented at trial established that in 2002, appellant was living in an apartment located at 1705 South 5th Street in the City of Philadelphia. Tiffany Bennett, the mother of four girls, P.B., age three, P.B.2., age four, A.B.2., age six, and A.B., age ten, knew appellant and his brother, Jason Chambers ("Jason") from the neighborhood. Bennett met appellant and Jason in 1999, when she moved into the neighborhood to live with her mother. Jason and appellant paid Bennett to braid their hair, and Bennett's daughters played with Jason's children. Notes of Testimony ("N.T."), 5/13/05, at 64-67. Bennett found appellant to be "a nice guy. I didn't see anything wrong with him." N.T. 5/13/05, at 67. Bennett initially asked Jason to babysit the girls, and he did so for some period of time. Precisely when appellant began babysitting the girls is unclear; however, the girls were in his care by the fall of 2002. Appellant babysat the girls during Bennett's work hours, from 4:00 p.m. until midnight.

The house at 1705 South 5th Street contained three apartments. Jason Chambers lived on the second floor with his two sons, Jayshawn and Jayshine. A woman named Jennifer and her son lived on the third floor, while appellant shared the first floor apartment with Ruth Leonard, whom he called his "godmother." Bennett's sister, Candice Geiger, was also living with appellant and Ruth on the first floor. When Bennett first began leaving her children with appellant she was unaware that her sister Candice was living with appellant; however, even after Bennett discovered that her sister was living in the house with her daughters, she never discussed their care or welfare with her.

Bennett initially paid appellant $60.00 per week to watch the girls. The girls were in appellant's apartment for approximately eight hours per day, from 4:00 p.m. until after midnight, when Bennett picked them up and took them to her home. Prior to Thanksgiving of 2002, however, appellant suggested that it would be better for the girls to stay the night at his apartment rather than go home at 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. Bennett agreed, and began to pay appellant $80.00 per week for babysitting. At this point, Bennett's interaction with the children became less frequent and she largely stopped visiting them at appellant's apartment or taking them home for weekends or special occasions. Someone from appellant's house would come to her work to get the babysitting money, or she would drop the money off during her lunch break. Bennett spent an hour or so with her children on Christmas Day; then, between Easter and August 17, 2003, she did not see her children at all. In June of 2003, appellant asked Bennett to take her children back, to which she replied, "I don't want the kids." N.T., 5/12/05, at 150.

The children lived in deplorable conditions. The apartment consisted of two bedrooms, a bathroom, a living area, and a kitchen. It was filthy and infested with flies and cockroaches. An overwhelming stench of urine permeated the dwelling. N.T., 5/3/05, at 15. The front bedroom was occupied by Ruth Leonard, while the girls shared the back bedroom with appellant and Geiger. There were two doors to the bedroom. One was nailed shut, and the other was stripped of its latch mechanism, and could only be opened by a key. The bedroom was furnished with two beds: one, next to the radiator, for the children; the other for appellant and Geiger. There was a child's potty overflowing with urine and feces on the floor. There was also feces on the floor around the room, particularly by the children's bed. The single window was covered with dark plastic, and on the wall were taped six pieces of paper listing "Rules for this room." Id., at 24. Rules one through six instructed the children in their daily chores, while rule seven mandated that everyone "[r]espect [appellant] at all times or every body [sic] gets their ass whooped." Id., at 25.

Appellant regularly beat the four girls with extension cords, belts, a metal pole, and a broomstick. N.T., 4/20/04, at 22-24, 39.² The girls were so severely bruised from the beatings that appellant did not permit them to leave the apartment, even to go to school. If anyone visited, appellant locked the girls in the bedroom or made the girls cover their faces and bodies. When P.B. wet the bed, appellant made A.B. put the three-year-old in a cold shower. To keep P.B. from getting too cold, A.B. would get into the shower with her. N.T., 4/22/04, at 26. The girls were also locked in the basement with appellant's two pit bulls as punishment, and were fed sporadically and inconsistently. At times, they were forced to eat "dog poop" out of the dogs' food bowls. N.T., 4/20/04, at 11-12, 25.

On the night of August 16, 2003, appellant beat P.B. with an extension cord while she was in the shower. Later, he locked A.B. in the basement, and he, Geiger, P.B., A.B.2, and P.B.2 went to bed. Some time after midnight, appellant and Geiger were having sex when appellant noticed P.B. looking at them. Appellant told her to stop watching, but, when she did not comply, appellant called her over to his bed, beat her with an extension cord, and struck her in the face several times with his hand. Geiger also beat P.B., then appellant picked her up by her feet and threw her across the room. P.B. struck her head on the cast-iron radiator and ended up lodged between the bed, radiator, and wall. She remained there, slowly suffocating, until the next day. Appellant did nothing to help the child; further, he instructed the other girls not to help her. N.T. 4/22/04, at 56.

Around 1:00 p.m. the next day, Jason called the police and told them that P.B. was not breathing. Firefighters dispatched to the apartment found P.B. laying face up on a sofa. Despite realizing that P.B. had been dead for some time, the EMTs attempted to resuscitate her. She was later pronounced dead on arrival at Methodist Hospital.

When police officers arrived at the scene, appellant and Geiger calmly falsified a story that they had put the children to bed at 9:00 p.m. the previous evening, and that when they awoke around 1:00 p.m. the next day, they found P.B. between the wall and the bed. They reported that P.B. was unresponsive when they found her. N.T. 5/10/05, at 75, 77, 81.

Later that day, police found A.B. hiding on the third floor of the building with her head wrapped in a towel. When the towel was removed, the officers found that her eyes were swollen shut and her face so badly beaten that they could not determine her sex. A.B., A.B.2, and P.B.2 were taken to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia for treatment. The girls were interviewed by police officers at Children's Hospital.

A.B.2 was interviewed at the hospital by Detective Richard Reinhold. She stated that appellant had beaten P.B. with an extension cord the night before and that, later that night, appellant again beat P.B. and threw her into the radiator for looking at him and Geiger in bed. She stated that after appellant threw P.B. into the radiator, he "took her off the radiator and threw her behind the bed." N.T., 5/3/05, at 174. A.B.2 also informed Detective Reinhold that Geiger had instructed her to tell the police that appellant "treated us right, but he didn't." N.T., 5/3/05, at 174. She maintained that appellant and Geiger frequently beat them and withheld food, and that on the night that P.B. died A.B. was locked in the basement after having been severely beaten the day before. N.T., 5/3/05, at 174.

A.B. was interviewed by Detective James Owens. A.B. told Detective Owens that "a man" came into the apartment and fought with appellant, and that P.B. fell behind the radiator during the fight and suffocated. A.B. also stated that her own injuries were inflicted by appellant, who beat her because "he thought I did something wrong to my sister." She also indicated that appellant regularly beat her, A.B.2, and P.B.2, but not P.B., and that the police were not called until 1:00 p.m. the next day because "the phone wasn't charged," and because Geiger "didn't have minutes on her cell phone." N.T., 5/4/05, at 86. A.B. later testified at trial that appellant had instructed her to lie about what happened to P.B., and to tell police that a strange man had broken into the apartment and fought with appellant. N.T. 4/20/05, at 20-21.

A.B. was interviewed at the hospital a second time, on August 19, by Detective Aaron Booker. During this interview, A.B. revealed that appellant frequently locked her in...