Com. v. Crews

• Decision Date: 31 May 1994
• Citation: 536 Pa. 508,640 A.2d 395
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee, v. Paul David CREWS, Appellant.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Page 395

640 A.2d 395

536 Pa. 508

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee, v. Paul David CREWS, Appellant.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued May 6, 1992.

Decided April 21, 1994.

Reargument Denied May 31, 1994.

Steven V. Manbeck, Mifflintown, Jerry Arthur Philpott, Duncannon, for appellant.

R. Scott Cramer, Dist. Atty., Daniel Stern, Asst. Dist. Atty., for appellee.

Before NIX, C.J., and FLAHERTY, ZAPPALA, McDERMOTT and CAPPY, JJ.

OPINION OF THE COURT

FLAHERTY, ¹ Justice.

This is an appeal pursuant to 42 Pa.C.S. § 9711(h) from a sentence of death imposed on Paul David Crews following a jury trial in which he was convicted of murdering two hikers on the Appalachian Trail in Perry County. The main issue is appellant's challenge to DNA evidence admitted against him at trial. We hold that evidence of DNA testing is admissible and that appellant has raised no other claims that merit relief.

In the morning of September 13, 1990, two hikers, Geoffrey Hood and Molly LaRue were killed at an overnight shelter on the Appalachian Trail in Perry County. Miss LaRue had been tied, raped, and stabbed, resulting in death approximately fifteen minutes after being stabbed in the neck. Mr. Hood, her boyfriend, had been shot three times with a revolver, and died five to eight minutes after receiving the fatal shot in the lower left chest. The victims had been southbound on the trail, and on the day before they were murdered, they had been seen by other hikers and employees in several stores in Duncannon where they had purchased supplies.

A week later, appellant Paul David Crews was arrested while crossing the Potomac River from Maryland to West Virginia. He was subsequently charged with the murders.

The evidence at trial was entirely circumstantial. Witnesses testified that two days before the murders, appellant had visited a library in East Berlin, Pennsylvania, seeking a map of the Appalachian Trail and had later sought directions of others nearer the trail. Witnesses remembered that he wore black military boots and had two red duffel bags with a "Marlboro" logo. Others observed him on the trail going south after the crime. He was wearing hiking gear that had belonged to the victims. When he was apprehended, he possessed numerous articles that had belonged to the victims. A ballistics expert testified that the handgun he possessed upon his arrest was the weapon which killed Mr. Hood. He also had a knife with blood on it which matched the blood type of Miss LaRue. Other witnesses identified objects found at the murder scene or along the trail south of the murders as being or resembling property of appellant.

An FBI DNA expert, Dr. Deadman, testified that appellant's DNA patterns in three of four genetic loci matched the DNA patterns obtained from semen samples from Miss LaRue's vagina. He did not state a statistical probability of such a match occurring by chance; the defense expert, Dr. Acton, criticized any conclusion reached without a statistical showing that the match was not simply coincidental.

Following jury verdicts of first degree murder, a sentencing hearing was held. A physician for the prosecution testified that there was medical evidence that Miss LaRue's hands had been tied before she was killed. The defense presented evidence that appellant had no prior convictions and the testimony of appellant's employer who described appellant's work and drinking habits. The defense also presented a psychiatrist who testified that appellant had a schizoid personality and suffered from an organic aggressive syndrome aggravated on the day of the killings by the consumption of alcohol and cocaine.

The jury was instructed that the potential aggravating circumstances pertaining to the Hood murder were that the killing occurred during the perpetration of a robbery, that there was a grave risk of death to another, and that appellant was convicted of another murder. In the LaRue murder, the aggravating circumstances submitted to the jury were that the killing occurred during the perpetration of a rape, that the killing was committed by torture, and that appellant was convicted of another murder. The mitigating circumstances submitted to the jury in both killings were: that there were no prior convictions; that appellant was under extreme mental or emotional disturbance; that appellant's capacity to appreciate or conform his conduct was substantially impaired; that he acted under extreme duress; and any other mitigating evidence concerning the character and record of appellant and the circumstances of his offenses.

The jury found all three aggravating circumstances in the LaRue murder, and two aggravating circumstances in the Hood murder: grave risk of death to another and conviction of another murder. In both murders, the jury found that aggravating circumstances outweighed any mitigating ones, and returned verdicts of death. The court immediately sentenced appellant to two consecutive death sentences. This appeal pursuant to 42 Pa.C.S. § 9711(h) followed.

Appellant raises a pretrial issue challenging the venue of the trial due to prejudicial publicity together with other issues pertaining to both the trial and penalty phases of the prosecution. We will review his claims as they arose in the proceeding: first pretrial, then trial, then penalty hearing.

We begin by examining the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain verdicts of murder of the first degree, as we do in every capital case, even when the issue is not raised by the appellant. Commonwealth v. Zettlemoyer, 500 Pa. 16, 26 n. 3, 454 A.2d 937, 942 n. 3 (1982), cert. denied, 461 U.S. 970, 103 S.Ct. 2444, 77 L.Ed.2d 1327 (1983), reh'g denied, 463 U.S. 1236, 104 S.Ct. 31, 77 L.Ed.2d 1452 (1983). The applicable standard of review is whether, viewing all the evidence in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth as verdict winner, a jury could find every element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Commonwealth v. Zook, 532 Pa. 79, 85, 615 A.2d 1, 4 (1992). In keeping with that standard, the evidence overwhelmingly established appellant's guilt.

Though circumstantial, the evidence wove a web tight enough to establish appellant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Appellant was observed near the scene of the crimes shortly before and shortly after the killings. Property identified as appellant's was found abandoned on the trail south of the corpses, and when he was arrested further south, he had in his possession numerous items positively identified as those of the victims and was even wearing some of their clothing. Appellant had in his possession both murder weapons: the revolver and the knife which killed Mr. Hood and Miss LaRue. DNA testing established a strong probability that the semen removed from the body of Miss LaRue was that of appellant, and the testing definitely eliminated the possibility that the semen was that of Mr. Hood or Mr. Reese, another suspect subject to investigation, who was later cleared of suspicion. The cumulative effect of this evidence, if believed by the jury, was sufficient to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

The first issue raised by appellant is his claim that the trial court erred by refusing to grant a change of venue in the face of overwhelming adverse pretrial publicity. He claims that the publicity in his case closely parallels that in the case of Commonwealth v. Breakiron, 524 Pa. 282, 571 A.2d 1035 (1990), cert. denied; Breakiron v. Pennsylvania, 498 U.S. 881, 111 S.Ct. 224, 112 L.Ed.2d 179 (1990) in which this court held that the publicity was inherently prejudicial, so that the accused need not demonstrate how he was prejudiced. Appellant states that press coverage a mere two months prior to his trial characterized the events as "grisly," revealed other crimes of which appellant stood accused (though he had no other convictions), and extensively credited "official sources" for sensational reporting about appellant. He argues that a cooling-off period of only two months was not sufficient to dissipate the prejudicial effect of the publicity, in contrast to the period of "almost a year" which significantly diluted the prejudice in Breakiron.

The Breakiron court summarized the law governing a decision whether pretrial publicity requires a new trial regardless of any showing of prejudice, previously set forth in Commonwealth v. Romeri, 504 Pa. 124, 470 A.2d 498 (1983). If the publicity was "inherently prejudicial," and if it saturated the community, and if there was insufficient time for the community to cool down from the effects of the publicity, then a new trial is required. Breakiron, 524 Pa. at 287, 571 A.2d at 1037. Factors in establishing whether pretrial publicity is inherently prejudicial include:

whether the pre-trial publicity was, on the one hand, factual and objective, or, on the other hand, consisted of sensational, inflammatory and "slanted articles demanding conviction" ...; whether the pre-trial publicity revealed the existence of the accused's prior criminal record; whether it referred to confessions, admissions or reenactments of the crime by the defendant; and whether such information is the product of reports by the police and prosecutorial officers.

Id., citing Commonwealth v. Romeri, supra. However,

[o]nce inherently prejudicial publicity is established, our next inquiry is "whether such publicity has been so extensive, so sustained and so pervasive that the community must be deemed to have been saturated with it." And finally, even if there has been inherently prejudicial publicity which has saturated the community, we must also consider whether there has been a cooling-off period which would significantly dilute the prejudicial effects of the publicity.

Id. (Citations and footnote omitted.)

Though the publicity in this case was not so sensational and inflammatory as that described in Breakiron, it did include reports which were objectionable. Assuming, arguendo, that the...