Com. v. Hall

• Decision Date: 27 January 2005
• Citation: 867 A.2d 619
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee, v. Robert HALL, Appellant.
• Court: Pennsylvania Superior Court

867 A.2d 619

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee, v. Robert HALL, Appellant.

Superior Court of Pennsylvania.

Submitted November 8, 2004.

Filed January 27, 2005.

Robert Hall, Frackville, for appellant.

Hugh J. Burns, Jr., Assistant District Attorney, Philadelphia, for Commonwealth.

BEFORE: LALLY-GREEN, OLSZEWSKI, and TAMILIA, JJ.

OPINION BY OLSZEWSKI, J.:

¶ 1 The trial judge denied Robert Hall's Post-Conviction Relief Act petition and appellant has appealed. We must therefore revisit the gruesome beating and murder of Edward Williams which, a jury found, was done by appellant's hands.

Facts

¶ 2 On March 29, 1997, in between the hours of 2 a.m. and 4 a.m., Edward Williams left his house, holding a "wad of money" worth $1,400. A short time later, Williams was beaten and then, with a shotgun blast to the back of his head, murdered in a home owned by Robert Hall.

¶ 3 The day after this terrible event occurred was Easter Sunday and, as appellant's neighbor testified, "I was in my kitchen cooking at four o'clock in the afternoon when my five year old [son] Frank told me there was a man sleeping with a blanket in the alleyway. I didn't believe him. I only glanced out and didn't see anything. The next day he told me the man with the blanket was dead. Again I didn't believe him. He told me every day about the man and I didn't believe him." N.T. Trial, 4/2/98, at 107-08. It was not until Thursday, April 3, 1997, that the police were informed of the situation and investigated; there, lying in the same place young Frank saw for days, was the body of Edward Williams, stripped to his underpants, wrapped in a blanket and tied with rope.

¶ 4 A police canvass of the neighborhood led them to Jose Miller, another neighbor of appellant's, and a man who had known appellant for about 15 years. In a signed, written statement, Miller told the police that he entered appellant's house on Saturday, March 29, 1997, went upstairs and "saw the body. They [Robert Hall and co-defendant, Keith Brown] had taken his clothes off except for his underpants which were still on him, and there was blood on the floor and on the walls, and Rob and Keith were cleaning up the blood." Miller further told the police that appellant, Robert Hall, confessed to shooting Edward Williams and that Miller watched as appellant and Brown tied the body up in blanket and "threw it out in the back alley." N.T. Trial, 4/2/98, at 118.

¶ 5 After Miller gave his statement, the police drove him home. It just so happened that the next day was garbage day and, looking across the street, the police could see garbage bags piled in front of appellant's house. An inventory of this garbage revealed: two differently sized pairs of bloodied shoes, three shotgun shells (two of which were fired, one still live), a letter and bank statement for Edward Williams and various other blood-stained objects. On the ground underneath all of the trash was a metal knife blade and a blood-stained customer receipt for a person with the last name of "Williams," from a "Doctor Rogers." A search warrant for appellant's home was then obtained.

¶ 6 The search warrant was executed around 12:30 on the afternoon of April 9, 1997. Suffice it to say, the police entered to a rather macabre scene: on the second floor of the home, in the "middle bedroom," appellant was spackling over "what appeared to be red stains ... The spackle was being placed on the wall, the red stains were coming through." N.T. Trial, 4/2/98, at 216. Blood was found splattered throughout the entire bedroom, a bloody palm print was found on the doorframe and there was a shotgun blast through the floorboards. Among the other things the police found within the house were: a duffel bag that contained eleven pieces of bloody clothing; Williams' blood-stained coat; Williams' wallet with photo-identification; and "a floral pillow case, it was a patterned pillow case of pink, green, like a sea green almost, and white. And that was identical to the quilt or sheet that the decedent was wrapped in the day that he was found in the alley." N.T. Trial, 4/2/98, at 219.

¶ 7 Appellant was arrested and, along with Keith Brown, was tried before a jury of his peers. The Commonwealth theorized that Williams was killed for his money, and attempted to prove this by first introducing the testimony of Jose Miller. At trial, however, Miller testified inconsistently with both the prior statement he gave to the police and his prior testimony at a preliminary hearing. According to Miller's in-court testimony, he walked into appellant's house on Saturday, March 29, 1997, saw blood and a body lying on the first floor, but then just ignored the sight and talked to appellant about something else. This strange testimony allowed the Commonwealth to read to the jury the prior statements Miller made regarding appellant's: blood-soaked second floor; murder admission; attempts to clean the blood and disposal of the corpse.

¶ 8 Kaciena Anderson, a friend of appellant's, also testified for the prosecution. She told the jury that she visited appellant's home over Easter weekend and was apparently able to enter every room in the house except for the "middle bedroom:" this bedroom was guarded by both appellant (who was wearing a bloody shirt) and a man named Elwood Quillen.

¶ 9 A few days later appellant asked Ms. Anderson to return to the house and "clean [the place] up before the work people came. Rob told me to go in and make everything cool." N.T. Trial, 4/6/98, at 101. While Ms. Anderson cleaned, a friend of hers found a sawed-off pump action shotgun under a mattress. Further, appellant told Ms. Anderson that Keith Brown: "got me in this shit ... I had to wrap the motherfucker up." N.T. Trial, 4/6/98, at 98. When Ms. Anderson asked him what had happened, appellant did not answer. Jose Miller, however, had told Ms. Anderson that

[Keith Brown] shot the guy. It was over some money, and the argument started in the front bedroom. [Keith Brown] started everything, and [appellant] had to go along with it. Before they shot him, they made him take off his clothes. They were going to cut off his legs and put them in a plastic bag. Instead, they placed him in a sheet and tied him up with a rope. They dragged him into the alley. His clothes were at the other end of the alley. They put him in the other end of the alley first, and then they moved him.

N.T. Trial, 4/6/98, at 96.

¶ 10 Also damning to appellant was the testimony of Mary Elizabeth Graham, Keith Brown's girlfriend at the time of the murder. She told the jury that sometime around 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. on Easter Sunday, appellant walked up to her car and just handed Brown $100. N.T. Trial, 4/3/98, at 174. Further, Ms. Graham was told by Brown that, on the day before Easter, Brown arrived at appellant's home only to see appellant, holding a rifle, and pacing around a bleeding body. N.T. Trial, 4/3/98, at 181.

¶ 11 With respect to forensics, there were too many bloodied objects to DNA-test everything. The selected nine objects, however, showed interesting results. Two blood-stained tee-shirts from the duffel bag were tested: one had DNA matching appellant, the other had the victim's DNA. There was also a blood-stained mini-blind from appellant's home which had a mixture of both appellant's and the victim's DNA covering it; a blood-stained leather jacket, hung on appellant's door-hook, that matched the victim's DNA and a blood-stained pillowcase, paper bag, and shoe all which tested a match for the victim's DNA. N.T. Trial, 4/6/98, at 157-160.

¶ 12 Appellant declared he was innocent of all crimes. According to appellant, at the time of the murder Elwood Quillen was living in his house. Appellant testified that on Easter Sunday, he went to his house "to see if Elwood wanted to come to church with me." N.T. Trial, 4/7/98, at 37. When appellant arrived, he saw a body lying on the living room floor and Quillen with a shotgun in his hand. He then got scared and called his lawyer to tell the lawyer that there was a body in his house. As appellant testified, he went back to the house the following Wednesday and saw neither the body nor any blood on the walls. N.T. Trial, 4/7/98, at 41.

¶ 13 The Commonwealth rebutted appellant's testimony with Mary Elizabeth Graham. Ms. Graham recounted the conversation she had with her boyfriend, Keith Brown, but added that Brown also told her how he got involved in the murder. She testified:

[Brown] told me that Rob came up to him and told him he has two friends in Ardmore, and he's going to call them down there. He's going to call them down there, and they was going to take their money because they have a lot of money and drugs on them.

N.T. Trial, 4/7/98, at 123.

¶ 14 Further, she told of both appellant's and Brown's attempts to get Elwood Quillen to take their fall. She testified that in May, Brown told her that he:

[s]hould be out in August, they don't have anything on him. It's a young boy that's there with him and Rob, where he was, and he's there on other charges, but he's going to say that he did it. He's going to say that he did it because they're trying to pin it on Keith and Rob. They already have Rob, so Rob is not going to turn his back on him. They already have him because they have him with the rifle. But this guy is going to say that he did it so Keith, they wouldn't, you know, have anything on him. And when it came time for me to testify, that when they asked me did — was that the weapon, all I have to do is say that I don't remember, I don't recall what it looked like, and I was under stress.

N.T. Trial, 4/7/98, at 125.

¶ 15 The jury found appellant guilty of second-degree murder, robbery, criminal conspiracy and abuse of a corpse; on December 13, 1999, we affirmed his judgment of sentence and, on June 13, 2000, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied allocatur. Appellant's first attempt at post-conviction collateral relief has proceeded as follows:

On June

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