Com. v. Dougherty

• Decision Date: 20 October 2004
• Citation: 860 A.2d 31,580 Pa. 183
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee v. Daniel DOUGHERTY, Appellant.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

860 A.2d 31

580 Pa. 183

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee v. Daniel DOUGHERTY, Appellant.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued April 7, 2003.

Decided October 20, 2004.

Reargument Denied December 9, 2004.

Bernard L. Siegel, Philadelphia, for Daniel Dougherty, Appellant.

Hugh J. Burns, Philadelphia, Amy Zapp, Harrisburg, Lorie K. Dakessian, for the Com. of PA, Appellee.

BEFORE: CAPPY, C.J., CASTILLE, NIGRO, NEWMAN, SAYLOR, EAKIN and LAMB, JJ.

OPINION

Justice CASTILLE.

This is a direct appeal from sentences of death imposed by the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas. On October 5, 2000, following a capital jury trial, appellant was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder¹ and one count of arson² arising from an August 24, 1985 house fire in which appellant's two young sons, John (age 3) and Daniel, Jr. (age 4) were killed. At the penalty phase, the jury found three aggravating circumstances and one mitigating circumstance.³ The jury found that the aggravating circumstances outweighed the mitigating circumstance, and accordingly, imposed sentences of death for appellant's first-degree murder convictions. On October 6, 2000, the trial court formally imposed the death sentences and, in addition, imposed a concurrent term of ten to twenty years' incarceration for appellant's arson conviction. Appellant did not file post-sentence motions. This appeal followed.⁴ For the reasons set forth below, we affirm the verdict and sentences of death.

We begin, as we do in all death penalty direct appeals, by independently reviewing the evidence to ensure that it is sufficient to support the first-degree murder convictions. Commonwealth v. Zettlemoyer, 500 Pa. 16, 454 A.2d 937, 942 n. 3 (1982),cert. denied, 461 U.S. 970, 103 S.Ct. 2444, 77 L.Ed.2d 1327 (1983). When reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence, this Court must determine whether the evidence at trial, and all reasonable inferences derived therefrom, when viewed in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth as verdict winner, are sufficient to establish all elements of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt. Commonwealth v. Bridges, 563 Pa. 1, 757 A.2d 859, 864 (2000). A person is guilty of first-degree murder where the Commonwealth proves that (1) a human being was unlawfully killed; (2) the person accused is responsible for the killing; and (3) the accused acted with specific intent to kill. 18 Pa. C.S. § 2502(d); Commonwealth v. Spotz, 563 Pa. 269, 759 A.2d 1280, 1283 (2000). An intentional killing is a "[k]illing by means of poison, or by lying in wait, or by any other kind of willful, deliberate and premeditated killing." 18 Pa.C.S. § 2502(d). Moreover, the Crimes Code provides that a person who commits arson endangering persons is guilty of first-degree murder "if the fire or explosion causes the death of any person and was set with the purpose of causing the death of another person." 18 Pa.C.S. § 3301(a)(2). To prove the underlying arson in a murder prosecution, the Commonwealth must establish that (1) there was a fire of incendiary origin; (2) the accused deliberately caused the fire; and (3) the fire was the cause of death. Commonwealth v. Pierce, 537 Pa. 514, 645 A.2d 189, 194 (1994).

The evidence adduced at trial established the following facts. On August 24, 1985, at approximately 11:30 p.m., appellant was at a bar with a friend when his live-in girlfriend, Kathleen Schuler,⁵ angrily confronted him. Schuler testified that appellant was supposed to have attended an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting that night. When she instead found him at a bar, she told him to "get the fuck home with his kids because [she] was leaving him." N.T. 10/3/00, at 101. Schuler then returned to her house—a row-home that she shared with appellant in the Oxford Circle section of Philadelphia—packed her clothes and left appellant's two boys alone with a teenage babysitter, Dianne Carpenter. At 1:30 a.m., Carpenter, tired of waiting for appellant to arrive, returned to her home next-door and left the children, who were sleeping upstairs.

On his way home from the bar, meanwhile, appellant visited his estranged wife, Kathleen Dipple⁶ —the mother of his children. Appellant told Dipple that Schuler wanted him out of the house and he persuaded her to accompany him to the Oxford Circle home so that she could take custody of their children. When the two arrived, appellant found a note from Schuler demanding that appellant leave her house. Appellant showed Dipple the note and pleaded with her to stay with him. Dipple declined and asked appellant to bring the children downstairs. When appellant told Dipple to go upstairs instead, she refused because she was afraid that appellant would try to "come on" to her. N.T. 10/04/00, at 28. Finally, tired of appellant's sexual advances, Dipple left the house, promising that she would return the next morning for her scheduled visitation with the children. Thereafter, appellant was the only adult in the house.

At approximately 3:57 a.m., police responded to reports of a fire at the Oxford Circle home. By the time the first officer arrived at the scene, the house was fully engulfed in flames. Appellant was standing outside, bare-chested. When police asked appellant for his name, he replied, "My name is mud. I should die for what I did." N.T. 10/2/00, at 102. Appellant's two children were subsequently found dead in their bedroom. A medical examiner concluded that they died from smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide poisoning, and may have been burned by the fire while they were still alive.

Appellant told police that he had fallen asleep on the sofa after Dipple's departure and that he later awoke to see the nearby curtains on fire. He conceded that he had not called the fire department, but instead immediately ran out of the house. Appellant claimed, however, that he then unsuccessfully attempted to extinguish the fire and rescue his sons.

John Quinn, a Philadelphia Fire Department fire marshal, who testified as an arson expert, testified to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty that the fire was of incendiary origin, i.e., it was intentionally set. He noted that the fire had three separate ignition points: a love seat, a sofa and a dining room table. Quinn testified that appellant's claim to have been on the sofa when he noticed that the curtains were ablaze was not credible because, based upon the ignition points and the fire patterns, the sofa would have been fully consumed in flames before the curtains caught fire. Quinn further testified that a person on the sofa at the time the curtains initially ignited would have been "severely burned or a fatality." Id. at 169-70. According to Quinn, the person who started the fire would in all likelihood have been the only person who could have had enough time to escape the burning home without injury. Id. at 179. Notably, appellant had not suffered any burns nor did his body bear any mark of exposure to smoke or fire.

Two men who were incarcerated with appellant prior to his trial testified that he admitted to them that he had murdered his sons. Daniel Allen, a cellmate, testified that appellant had tearfully confessed that "he murdered his kids" in a fire because "he was jealous of his girlfriend or his wife." Id. at 151-52. Similarly, Robert Amoroso, who shared a cell with appellant at another jail facility, testified that, on one occasion, he heard appellant crying. Amoroso said that when he asked appellant what was wrong, appellant replied, "I burned my two babies up." Id. at 185. Amoroso also testified that appellant conveyed his regret that he had not killed his wife instead, because she was amorously involved with another man and because he "was paying all the bills and she wasn't taking care of the kids." Id. at 186.

This evidence, and all reasonable inferences derived therefrom, when viewed in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth as verdict winner, supports appellant's first-degree murder convictions. The evidence established that the fire was of incendiary origin, that appellant deliberately set the fire, and that he did so with the specific intent to kill his sons, while they were upstairs sleeping.⁷ Further, the evidence established that the fire was the cause of the boys' death. Accordingly, the evidence was sufficient to sustain appellant's convictions for murder in the first degree.

In addition to the record review of evidentiary sufficiency that this Court undertakes sua sponte, we are presented with a specific claim from appellant which challenges the sufficiency of the evidence. Appellant claims that the evidence was insufficient to support the two counts of first degree murder or the arson count because there was no "credible" evidence to suggest that he had any motive to hurt his sons; his mere presence in the house at the time of the fire was insufficient to establish his guilt; and his efforts to stem the fire after first running from the house support the conclusion that the deaths of his sons were unintentional. Essentially, appellant disputes the evidence that demonstrates his responsibility for setting the fire.

Aspects of appellant's sufficiency claim in fact challenge only the weight, not the sufficiency, of the evidence. The weight of the evidence is exclusively for the finder of fact, who is free to believe all, part, or none of the evidence, and to assess the credibility of the witnesses. Commonwealth v. Johnson, 542 Pa. 384, 668 A.2d 97, 101 (1995). This Court cannot substitute its judgment for that of the jury on issues of credibility. Commonwealth v. Pronkoskie, 498 Pa. 245, 445 A.2d 1203, 1206 (1982). Here, the jury heard expert testimony from the fire marshal which raised the strong inference that appellant had intentionally started the fire, i.e., the fire was intentionally set and appellant, who was the only adult present, escaped without injury even though he claimed to have been in the house well after the fire had...