Com. v. Gribble

• Decision Date: 02 March 1998
• Citation: 550 Pa. 62,703 A.2d 426
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee, v. William R. GRIBBLE, Appellant.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Page 426

703 A.2d 426

550 Pa. 62

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee, v. William R. GRIBBLE, Appellant.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued Jan. 23, 1996.

Decided Nov. 20, 1997.

Reargument Denied March 2, 1998.

[550 Pa. 67] Charles P. Mirarchi, III, Isla A. Fruchter, Philadelphia, for W. Gribble.

Catherine Marshall, Karen A. Brancheau, Philadelphia, for the Commonwealth.

Robert A. Graci, Harrisburg, for Office of Atty. Gen.

Before NIX, C.J., and FLAHERTY, ZAPPALA, CAPPY, CASTILLE, NIGRO and NEWMAN, JJ.

OPINION

NEWMAN, Justice.

After a joint, nonjury trial, the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County (trial court) convicted Appellant, William R. Gribble (Gribble), and his co-defendant, Kelley O'Donnell (O'Donnell), of first degree murder ¹ for the death of Eleftherios Eleftheriou (Eleftheriou). The trial court also convicted Gribble of criminal conspiracy, ² possessing instruments of crime, ³ robbery, ⁴ theft by unlawful taking, ⁵ unauthorized use of automobiles, ⁶ arson, ⁷ risking a catastrophe, ⁸ forgery, ⁹ abuse of a corpse ¹⁰ and credit card fraud. ¹¹ Following the penalty phase, the trial court concluded that the one aggravating circumstance it found outweighed the two mitigating circumstances it found, and sentenced Gribble to death. ¹² The trial court denied Gribble's post-trial motions and formally imposed the sentence of death. ¹³ The trial court also imposed various prison sentences for the other crimes that Gribble committed. This case is now before us on direct appeal pursuant to 42 Pa.C.S. § 9711(h)(1). For the reasons discussed below, we affirm the judgment of sentence imposed by the trial court.

Sufficiency of the Evidence

In cases of first degree murder where the death penalty has been imposed, this Court performs an independent review of the sufficiency of the evidence supporting the conviction for first degree murder, regardless of whether the appellant seeks such review. 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). Here, Gribble specifically challenges the sufficiency of the evidence supporting his convictions for first degree murder and for robbery. When reviewing a sufficiency of the evidence claim, an appellate court must view all of the evidence, and the reasonable inferences to be drawn from that evidence, in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth as verdict winner and must determine if the evidence was sufficient to enable the fact finder to conclude that all of the elements of the offenses were established beyond a reasonable doubt. Commonwealth v. Burgos, 530 Pa. 473, 610 A.2d 11 (1992).

Viewed under this standard, the evidence establishes that in early November of 1992, Gribble, an admitted drug addict, and his girlfriend, O'Donnell, were staying in an apartment at 3123 Richmond Street in Philadelphia. The apartment belonged to Agnes McClinchey (McClinchey), who had given Gribble and O'Donnell permission to stay in the apartment while she traveled to western Pennsylvania. James Mathews (Mathews), an elderly friend of McClinchey who drank heavily, also resided in the apartment.

At approximately 10:00 p.m. on Wednesday, November 11, 1992, O'Donnell arrived at a pizza shop that Eleftheriou managed. O'Donnell offered to pawn a leather jacket to Eleftheriou in exchange for ten dollars. An employee of the pizza shop observed Eleftheriou remove a "whole lot of money" in a roll from his pocket to pay O'Donnell for the jacket. O'Donnell and Eleftheriou then made arrangements to meet later that evening. After closing the pizza shop at 1:00 a.m. on November 12, 1992, Eleftheriou left in his car to meet O'Donnell. He met O'Donnell on a street corner and accompanied her to the apartment at 3123 Richmond Street.

In a sworn confession later given to police, Gribble stated that he arrived at the apartment at approximately 2:00 a.m. and saw Eleftheriou and O'Donnell on the couch together. Mathews was asleep in a back room. According to Gribble, Eleftheriou "was feeling all over" O'Donnell. Gribble then "freaked." He hit Eleftheriou once with his fist, grabbed a hammer that was resting on a television, and beat Eleftheriou approximately ten or fifteen times with the hammer until Gribble "knew [Eleftheriou] was dead." Gribble claimed that O'Donnell left the apartment at some point during the attack on Eleftheriou. Next, Gribble dragged Eleftheriou's body behind the house, covered him with a piece of plywood, and returned to the house to decide what to do. A short time later, Gribble uncovered Eleftheriou's body, dropped him through an access hole into the basement, and began to dismember the body. While Gribble was carving apart the body, O'Donnell returned to the apartment and said she was sick. O'Donnell telephoned police, who dispatched a rescue squad to the apartment. After the rescue squad arrived and transported O'Donnell to the hospital, Gribble said he returned to the basement and finished dismembering Eleftheriou. Gribble also admitted that he cut off Eleftheriou's penis "for spite." He then bagged the body parts and cleaned the basement. O'Donnell came back from the hospital a few hours later and she and Gribble went to sleep.

According to Gribble's confession, they awoke early on the morning of Thursday, November 12, 1992, and he loaded the body into Eleftheriou's car. He drove to Delaware Avenue in Philadelphia and threw half of the bags from the car into a dump site. Gribble said he then took the remainder of the bags back to the apartment and he and O'Donnell went to sleep. Gribble also admitted that he took money and a credit card from Eleftheriou's wallet, and later that evening, he and O'Donnell drove to a children's clothing store in Philadelphia, where O'Donnell used Eleftheriou's credit card to purchase clothing for Gribble's children. ¹⁴

On the morning of Friday, November 13, 1992, Philadelphia police received a report that someone had found human body parts in a trash dump in the 3900 block of North Delaware Avenue. When they arrived on the scene, they found a blood stained quilt and a left arm next to a trash bag. Inside another nearby trash bag, they found a torso with the head missing. In a smaller bag there was a blood-covered head, with the left eye missing. A short distance away, police found a right arm inside another bag. These body parts were later identified as belonging to Eleftheriou. Among papers strewn around the site, police found a letter addressed to Agnes McClinchey, 3123 Richmond Street, Philadelphia.

Later on November 13, 1992, McClinchey returned to 3123 Richmond Street from western Pennsylvania. She found blood on the front door and a stain on the carpet. She also noticed that the walls were cleaner than when she left. O'Donnell told McClinchey that she and Gribble were involved in a murder and that the victim's head had been found on Delaware Avenue. McClinchey also heard O'Donnell tell Gribble to burn the car. When Gribble returned from this task, O'Donnell said to him "[t]hank God, you didn't get caught." That same evening, police received a report of a car fire on D Street. When police and fire fighters arrived on the scene, they found a car in flames. After extinguishing the fire, police examined the interior of the car and found two human legs and the lower portion of a male torso with its penis missing. The body parts were later identified as belonging to Eleftheriou.

McClinchey subsequently called the police, who interviewed her at a gas station near her apartment. The police then went to her apartment and arrested Gribble and O'Donnell. A search of the basement revealed, among other things, a serrated kitchen knife, a chisel, and a claw hammer, each containing traces of human tissue and blood. Stuffed inside a pipe, police found a pencil case containing a human eye and a penis. Police took Gribble and O'Donnell into custody for questioning. After waiving their rights, Gribble and O'Donnell gave their separate statements confessing to the murder of Eleftheriou.

At trial, an assistant medical examiner testified that there were numerous abrasions on Eleftheriou's head that were consistent with blows from a hammer. The injuries to Eleftheriou's head indicated that he was not moving when most of the blows were inflicted. The assistant medical examiner also testified that red abrasions at the site where the head and right arm were sawed off indicate that the heart was still beating when those body parts were severed. He further testified that it would have taken two people working together to dismember Eleftheriou's body in the estimated fifteen minutes before he bled to death.

To sustain a conviction for first degree murder, the Commonwealth must prove that a human being was unlawfully killed; that the accused did the killing; that the killing was done with malice aforethought; and that the killing was willful, deliberate and premeditated. Commonwealth v. Mitchell, 528 Pa. 546, 599 A.2d 624 (1991). The element that distinguishes first degree murder from all other degrees of murder is the presence of a willful, deliberate and premeditated intent to kill. Commonwealth v. Wilson, 543 Pa. 429, 672 A.2d 293, cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 117 S.Ct. 364, 136 L.Ed.2d 255 (1996). This specific intent to kill may be proven by circumstantial evidence. Id. Such circumstantial evidence may consist of the accused's use of a deadly weapon on a vital part of the victim's body. Commonwealth v. Rivers, 537 Pa. 394, 644 A.2d 710 (1994), cert. denied,516 U.S. 1175, 116 S.Ct. 1270, 134 L.Ed.2d 217 (1996).

Gribble argues that the evidence here was insufficient to prove that he had a specific intent to kill Eleftheriou. ¹⁵ Specifically, Gribble claims the trial court erroneously found that he used a deadly weapon on a vital part of the body by relying on the fact that Eleftheriou's heart was still beating when Gribble cut off...