FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
In April of 1987, Appellant was tried for the murders of Christopher Outterbridge (Outterbridge) and Tabatha Mitchell. The evidence submitted at trial, as summarized by this Court on direct review, demonstrated that:
On the evening of September 13, 1984, Christopher Outterbridge was engaged in a conversation with his girlfriend across the street from his house at 110 West Wyoming Avenue in Philadelphia. Appellant, Roger Judge, approached the couple and began taunting Christopher. Christopher informed appellant that he did not want to fight, and as he turned to walk away, appellant struck him in the face. In response, Christopher punched appellant, knocking him to the ground; Christopher then retreated to his home. Appellant chased Christopher into his home, where appellant was confronted by Christopher's older brother, Kenneth Outterbridge. After a brief scuffle with Kenneth, appellant left.
Several times that evening, appellant returned to the Outterbridge home. On one occasion appellant told Kia Outterbridge, Christopher's younger sister, that he would be back to kill Christopher. On another occasion, appellant returned to the Outterbridge home with a friend and both appeared to be concealing weapons. Afraid of a confrontation, Christopher sought assistance from his mother, who went out on the porch to confront the men. Appellant repeatedly ordered Ms. Outterbridge to send her son outside, but Ms. Outterbridge refused, and threatened to telephone the police. Appellant left, but informed Ms. Outterbridge that he intended to return.
On September 14, 1984, the following evening, at approximately 11:45 p.m., Christopher and his friends were returning home from a nearby sandwich shop, when one of his friends briefly saw the appellant near the Outterbridge home. When the group arrived at the Outterbridge home, they joined Christopher's sister Kia on the front porch. Moments later, appellant jumped out of the bushes, aimed his gun at Christopher, and fired five shots at the teenagers gathered on the porch. Christopher Outterbridge was shot in the back, and a friend of Christopher's sister, fifteen year old Tabatha Mitchell, was shot in the chest.
After emptying his handgun of ammunition, appellant fled on foot in the direction of Marvine Street, but reversed direction when he realized that police vehicles were arriving from that direction. As he passed back in front of the Outterbridge house, one of Christopher's friends, Calvin Whitaker, unsuccessfully attempted to apprehend appellant. Appellant fled down a back alley as Calvin repeatedly called out appellant's street name, "Dobe."
A police officer arrived on the scene moments later, after hearing gunshots from the direction of the Outterbridge house. Christopher ran down the steps bleeding profusely from his neck and mouth and begged to be taken to the hospital; Calvin stood on the porch waving his arms and shouting "It was Dobe"; and Tabatha lay on her back on the porch with a bullet hole in her chest.
The officer immediately called for police assistance and Christopher and Tabatha were transported to the hospital. While enroute to the hospital, Christopher, though barely alive, managed to tell police that "Dobe" had shot him. Soon after arriving at the hospital, both victims were pronounced dead. Christopher died from a single gunshot wound; the bullet entered the right side of his back, traveled through his right lung, through a large blood vessel, and then lodged in the soft tissue of the right side of his neck. Tabatha Mitchell's life was also ended by a single gunshot wound; the bullet entered her abdomen, traveled through her liver and pancreas, grazed her backbone, and damaged two major blood vessels. The bullet finally lodged in the soft tissue of her back. According to the Medical Examiner, the manner of both deaths was homicide.
Shortly after the shooting, officers established a crime scene and began an investigation. Two .32 caliber projectiles were recovered; one from the porch of the Outterbridge home, the other from a neighbor's property. The following day, several of Christopher's friends conducted an informal search of the back alley down which appellant had fled, and recovered the hooded jacket and sweat pants which appellant had discarded during his flight the night of the shooting.
An intensive search for appellant was conducted by the police, based upon the teenagers' eye-witness identifications of the assailant. Police apprehended appellant two and one-half weeks later with the help of Angela Smith. She had been with appellant the night of the shooting. She testified that sometime between 11:00 p.m. and 12:00 a.m. appellant left stating that he had something to do. (N.T. 4/9/87, pp. 96, 115, 128). When appellant returned approximately one hour later he was out of breath, wet and wearing different clothes. She overheard appellant discussing the incident with his friend. Later, while driving with some others to East Falls, Ms. Smith asked appellant why he had killed "those two people," and he responded that he would tell her after he finished smoking a joint. (N.T. 4/9/97, p. 98). Although appellant never provided her with the requested information, he did tell her that he had disposed of the gun at the house next door to where the murders took place. (N.T. 4/9/87, pp. 98-99).
Approximately two weeks later, Ms. Smith received a telephone call from appellant. He informed her that he was in New Jersey waiting for his friends to bring him some money so that he could purchase a car and a bullet-proof vest. She asked him if he planned on turning himself in and he told her that that would be a "dumb move." (N.T. 4/9/87, p. 102). Subsequent to this conversation, Ms. Smith was interviewed by the police. The homicide detectives instructed her to call them if she heard from appellant again. On October 2, 1984, Ms. Smith received three telephone calls from appellant informing her that he was on his way to see her and requested directions. She immediately contacted the police, enabling them to apprehend appellant as soon as he entered Ms. Smith's residence. Appellant was arrested, given his Miranda warnings, and then made an inculpatory statement to the investigating officer, that it "[d]on't matter if I tell you why I did it or not, I know I'm done." (N.T. 4/10/87, p. 48).
On November 23, 1984, detectives recovered a rusted .32 caliber Smith and Wesson five-shot revolver from deep in the bushes in front of a basement window at 1114 West Wyoming Avenue. A microscopic comparison of the markings on the revolver and the bullets previously recovered, led a firearms expert to positively conclude, that three of the four bullet specimens came from the revolver found in the neighbor's yard. [There were four bullets recovered; one from the porch of the Outterbridge home, one from the neighbor, and one from each of the victim's bodies. The fourth specimen was too mutilated to make a conclusive determination.]
At trial, appellant testified that he was with Angela Smith and five other people at the time the murders took place, and therefore could not have committed the murders which occurred at 11:49 p.m. However, appellant failed to produce any alibi witnesses, claiming that the District Attorney's office had intimidated them. (N.T. 4/13/87, pp. 49-51, 60, 70). Appellant admitted that he knew he was wanted by the police, even before the arrest and search warrants were issued, but hid from them in order to conduct his own investigation of the crime. His investigation failed to produce any exculpatory evidence and/or another suspect for the crime.
Commonwealth v. Judge, 530 Pa. 403, 609 A.2d 785, 787-89 (1992) (footnotes omitted).
The jury convicted Appellant on two counts of murder of the first degree2 and one count of possession of an instrument of a crime3 on April 15, 1987. Following the penalty hearing, the jury found the following aggravating circumstances with regard to the murders of both victims: (1) the Appellant knowingly created a grave risk of death to another person in addition to the victim of the offense,4 and (2) Appellant had a significant history of felony convictions involving the use or threat of violence to the person.5 Additionally, with regard to the murder of Outterbridge, the jury found as an aggravating circumstance that Appellant had been convicted of another Federal or State offense, committed either before or at the time of the offense at issue, for which a sentence of life imprisonment or death was imposable or Appellant was undergoing a sentence of life imprisonment for any reason at the time of the offense.6 The jury found one mitigating circumstance with regard to both murders, which was that Appellant was under the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance.7 After unanimously concluding that the aggravating circumstances outweighed the sole mitigating circumstance, the jury sentenced Appellant to death for each of the first degree murder convictions.
Appellant filed Post-Trial Motions, which the trial court denied on June 12, 1987. After denying these motions, the trial court formally sentenced Appellant to death for each of the two murders and a...
