Com. v. Hannibal

• Citation: 753 A.2d 1265,562 Pa. 132
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee, v. Sheldon HANNIBAL, Appellant.
• Decision Date: 20 June 2000
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

753 A.2d 1265

562 Pa. 132

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee, v. Sheldon HANNIBAL, Appellant.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued October 20, 1997.

Decided June 20, 2000.

Reargument Denied September 1, 2000.

David M. McGlaughlin, Philadelphia, for S. Hannibal.

Catherine Marshall, Mary L. Porto, Philadelphia, for Com.

Robert A. Graci, Harrisburg, for Attorney General's Office.

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

OPINION ANNOUNCING THE JUDGMENT OF THE COURT

FLAHERTY, Chief Justice.

This is an automatic direct appeal from the judgment of sentence of death imposed on appellant, Sheldon Hannibal, for first degree murder by the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County.¹,²

Appellant was charged in connection with the killing of Peter LaCourt. Following a jury trial, appellant was found guilty of criminal homicide (first degree murder);³ criminal conspiracy;⁴ and possessing instruments of crime.⁵ Appellant was tried jointly with his co-defendant, Larry Gregory.⁶ At trial, the evidence established that in the early morning hours of October 25, 1992, Peter. LaCourt and his friend, Barbara Halley, encountered appellant and Tanesha Robinson, who were sitting in a stairway at the Cambridge Mall housing project. LaCourt tried to sell appellant a gold chain. After looking at the chain, appellant started an argument with LaCourt concerning whether the chain was genuine. Appellant refused to return the chain to LaCourt, pulled out a gun, and began to beat LaCourt with it. Appellant then knocked on the door of Larry Gregory, who joined in the beating, using his own gun to pistolwhip LaCourt. As LaCourt pled for the beating to stop, Ms. Robinson ran up the stairway. Seconds after she left the scene of the beating, she heard approximately ten gunshots. Barbara Halley, meanwhile, had gone to the guard's station in the lobby to seek help and, thus, was not present when the shots were fired.

A Philadelphia Housing Authority police officer found LaCourt lying on the stairway and observed gunshot wounds to his head and back. Police found eleven 9 mm shell casings at the crime scene. Portions of the gold chain were also recovered from the stairway.

An autopsy revealed that LaCourt had suffered blunt force trauma injuries to the right front and top of his head, as well as injuries from falling. Six bullets struck LaCourt's body; two hit him from the front, resulting in a perforated gunshot wound of the lower left arm and a grazing gunshot wound to his fingers which were characterized as defensive wounds. The remaining four bullets struck LaCourt as he lay on the floor. The cause of death was ruled to be severance of LaCourt's brain stem by one of the bullets which struck him.

Ms. Robinson subsequently gave statements to police concerning the murder and testified on behalf of the Commonwealth at the preliminary hearings regarding appellant and Gregory. Following that testimony, she and two of her female friends were killed in Ms. Robinson's apartment in the presence of a six-month-old baby.

Appellant testified at trial that he did not know where he was on the night LaCourt was killed. Appellant further testified that he did not have an altercation with LaCourt; that he did not take LaCourt's chain; that he did not have a gun; and that he did not shoot LaCourt.

After the penalty phase hearing, the jury returned a sentence of death on appellant's first degree murder conviction. The jury concluded that there was one aggravating circumstance⁷ and no mitigating circumstances.⁸

Pursuant to Commonwealth v. Zettlemoyer, 500 Pa. 16, 454 A.2d 937 (1982), we are required to review all death penalty cases for the sufficiency of evidence to sustain the conviction for murder of the first degree.

In Commonwealth v. Koehler, 558 Pa. 334, 737 A.2d 225, 233-34 (1999) we held:

To sustain a conviction for first degree murder, the Commonwealth must prove that the defendant acted with a specific intent to kill, that a human being was unlawfully killed, that the accused did the killing, and that the killing was done with deliberation. It is the specific intent to kill which distinguishes murder in the first degree from lesser grades of murder. We have held that the use of a deadly weapon on a vital part of a human body is sufficient to establish the specific intent to kill. Finally, the Commonwealth can prove the specific intent to kill through circumstantial evidence.

The evidence presented at trial was that appellant and Greggory beat and shot LaCourt and robbed him of a gold chain. Two female witnesses fled the beating. Robinson heard shots seconds after she left the scene of the beating, where appellant and Greggory were pistol whipping LaCourt. Robinson ran to her cousin's apartment on the sixth floor, where she looked from a window and saw appellant and Greggory fleeing in a gray car moments after the shooting. Two other witnesses testified concerning a plot to murder Robinson in order to prevent her from testifying at trial. Terrance Richardson testified that he was present when he heard Greggory and his brother give two other men a .357 revolver and $2,000 in cash and the directions to "be fast about it" and to "leave no witnesses." The next day fifteen year old Robinson and two of Robinson's friends were shot to death in Robinson's apartment. James Buigi, a cellmate of appellant, testified that appellant told him that he had ordered a "couple of his boys" to kill Robinson.⁹ Appellant also admitted to Buigi that he killed LaCourt and indicated that the only way he could escape conviction was to kill Robinson. This evidence is sufficient to prove that appellant intentionally and unlawfully killed LaCourt.

Appellant contends that the trial court's instruction to the jury violated this court's holding in Commonwealth v. Huffman, 536 Pa. 196, 638 A.2d 961 (1994). Specifically, appellant submits that the trial court erroneously instructed the jury regarding the element of specific intent by stating that a defendant could be found guilty of first degree murder where either he, his accomplice or co-conspirator possessed the requisite specific intent.

The standard by which this court reviews a challenge to a jury instruction is as follows:

When evaluating jury instructions the charge must be read as a whole to determine whether it was fair or prejudicial. The trial court has broad discretion in phrasing its instructions, and may choose its own wording so long as the law is clearly, adequately, and accurately presented to the jury for its consideration.

* * * *

We will not rigidly inspect a jury charge, finding reversible error for every technical inaccuracy, but rather evaluate whether the charge sufficiently and accurately apprises a lay jury of the law it must consider in rendering its decision.

Commonwealth v. Prosdocimo, 525 Pa. 147, 578 A.2d 1273, 1274, 1276 (1990).

In Huffman, we addressed the propriety of the trial court's instruction on the issue of accomplice liability in a first degree murder case. That instruction provided as follows:

[I]n order to find a Defendant guilty of murder in the first degree, you must find that the Defendant caused the death of another person, or that an accomplice or co-conspirator caused the death of another person. That is, you must find that the Defendant's act or the act of an accomplice or co-conspirator is the legal cause of death of [the victim], and thereafter you must determine if the killing was intentional.

Huffman, 638 A.2d at 962.

This court found the charge in Huffman to be patently erroneous because it allowed the jury to reach a first degree murder verdict without a finding that the accomplice/appellant himself possessed the requisite specific intent to kill. We stated:

[t]o determine the kind of homicide of which the accomplice is guilty, it is necessary to look to his state of mind; the requisite mental state must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt to be one which the accomplice harbored and cannot depend upon proof of the intent to kill only in the principal.

Huffman, 638 A.2d at 962 (emphasis in original) (quoting Commonwealth v. Bachert, 499 Pa. 398, 453 A.2d 931, 935 (1982)). We recently reaffirmed the this critical rule of law in Commonwealth v. Wayne, 553 Pa. 614, 720 A.2d 456 (1998), cert. denied ___ U.S. ___, 120 S.Ct. 94, 145 L.Ed.2d 80 (1999) noting specifically that first degree murder is distinguished from all other degrees of murder by the existence of a specific premeditated intent to kill that is harbored by the accused. Before a conviction for first degree murder can be sustained, it must be shown that the accused possessed a fully formed intent to take a life. Id.

With this standard in mind, we now turn to the charge given in the instant matter. In relevant part, the trial court first charged the jury as follows:

You may find a defendant guilty of a crime without finding that he personally engaged in conduct required for committing that crime. A defendant is guilty of a crime if he is an accomplice of another person who commits that crime. A defendant does not become an accomplice merely by being present at the scene or knowing about the crime. He is an accomplice if with the intent of promotion [sic] or facilitating a commission of the crime he encourages, requests, solicits or commands the other person to commit it or he aids, agrees to aid or attempts to aid the other person in planning or committing it.

In considering accomplice, the least degree of concert or collusion is sufficient to sustain a finding of responsibility as an accomplice.

(N.T. 3/9/94 (Vol.11) at 132-133). The court then instructed on first degree murder stating the following:

First degree murder is murder in which the killer has the specific intent to kill. You may find a defendant guilty of first degree murder if you are satisfied of the following three elements:

That he, his accomplice or co-conspirator killed the...