Com. v. Lester
| Decision Date | 22 December 1998 |
| Citation | 554 Pa. 644,722 A.2d 997 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee, v. Emanuel LESTER, Appellant. |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
Daniel Silverman, Philadelphia, for E. Lester, appellant.
Catherine Marshall, Philadelphia, Robert A. Graci, Office of the Atty. Gen., Marilyn F. Murray, Philadelphia, for the Com.
Before FLAHERTY, C.J., and ZAPPALA, CAPPY, CASTILLE, NIGRO and NEWMAN, JJ.
This is appellant's direct appeal from the judgment of sentence of death imposed by the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County.1 Following a jury trial, appellant was convicted of first degree murder,2 possession of an instrument of crime3 and aggravated assault.4 Following a penalty phase hearing, the jury found two aggravating circumstances and no mitigating circumstances and returned a sentence of death.5
Appellant has challenged the sufficiency of the evidence only as it relates to his conviction for possession of an instrument of crime; however, in all cases where the death penalty is imposed, this Court must conduct a review of the sufficiency of the evidence to support a conviction for first degree murder. Commonwealth v. Zettlemoyer, 500 Pa. 16, 26, 454 A.2d 937, 942 (1982), cert. denied, 461 U.S. 970, 103 S.Ct. 2444, 77 L.Ed.2d 1327, reh'g denied, 463 U.S. 1236, 104 S.Ct. 31, 77 L.Ed.2d 1452 (1983). In reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence, an appellate court must view all the evidence and all reasonable inferences therefrom in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth as the verdict winner, and determine whether the evidence was sufficient to enable the fact finder to find that all of the elements of the offenses were established beyond a reasonable doubt. Commonwealth v. Burgos, 530 Pa. 473, 476, 610 A.2d 11, 13 (1992). For the purposes of this Court's review, the record below establishes the following evidence:
In early 1990, the victim, Sheila Manigault, allowed appellant, an old friend, to stay in her apartment with her three children and herself. In April of 1990, after differences developed between appellant and the victim, appellant moved to another apartment in the same building and resided with Aaron Casper and Joan Walker. On April 5, 1990, Walker refused to allow appellant to enter the apartment because she was alone and did not want him there until Casper returned. Appellant returned to Casper's and Walker's apartment later that evening but did not stay. That same evening, Casper met the victim in the hallway of the building and accompanied her to her apartment. When Casper left the victim's apartment, he closed the door, which automatically locked behind him, leaving the victim and her sleeping children alone.
At 10:30 a.m. the next day, the victim's four-year-old daughter and her younger brother knocked on the door of a neighbor, Madeline Dickerson, and asked her to come with them. When Dickerson asked the little girl what was wrong, she answered: "Manny did it." As the children led Dickerson to their apartment, they also stated that, "She's in the bathroom."
When Dickerson entered the victim's apartment, she immediately observed blood on the walls and floor of the foyer, dining and kitchen areas. The children pulled her toward the bathroom where she found the victim in the bathtub with bloody water. Dickerson grabbed the two children and fled from the apartment. Dickerson then returned to the apartment to get the victim's infant daughter. Upon returning to her apartment, she summoned the police.
Police officers responding to the call found blood on the door, on the floor, and on the walls in the foyer, dining and living room areas. In the bathroom, they found the victim lying in the bathtub partially submerged in blood-soaked water. A homicide detective called to the scene noticed that the victim's older daughter had a swollen and bruised eye as well as bruise marks from what appeared to be finger or thumb prints on both sides of her neck. When he questioned the child regarding what had occurred, she stated: In response to questions about what happened to her eye, the little girl stated: "Manny punched me in the face and grabbed me around the neck and Manny kicked me in the side."
The detective and other police officers searched the victim's apartment and collected evidence including photographs, blood samples, pieces of a clothes iron and portions of hair braids similar to those on the victim's head. The detective observed that the victim had suffered scald burns to her face, right shoulder, chest, back and arm, extremely deep lacerations of her head revealing parts of her skull, and discoloration with small lacerations and punctures in the area of her left eye. The lacerations on her head were triangular in shape resembling the triangular shape of the front of a clothes iron. On April 19, 1990, Walker, who knew appellant was wanted for the victim's murder, telephoned the police to inform them that she had seen appellant. Police drove Walker to the area where she had last seen appellant and arrested him after she identified appellant. Upon initial questioning, appellant identified himself as Emanuel Ali but later stated that his name was Emanuel Lester.
At trial, the victim's oldest daughter testified that on the night of the murder, she was sleeping in the bedroom with her mother and younger brother when she heard a noise. She awoke to see appellant hitting her mother in the head with a radio and a clothes iron. When the little girl tried to stop appellant, he punched and choked her and placed a pillow over her face. Appellant then pulled the victim out of bed, pulled part of her hair out, hit her in the head and the face with the iron, and put her in the bathtub.
The medical examiner testified at trial that the victim died from being beaten, scalded and finally drowned. She suffered second and third degree scalding burns of the neck, head, right shoulder, arm and back. The medical examiner stated that the splashing, patchy nature of the burn wounds suggested intermittent contact with hot liquid. She also suffered multiple contusions and abrasions as well as multiple lacerations of the scalp consistent with being struck with an iron. He further testified that the victim suffered all of these injuries while she was alive and that she was alive when she was placed in the bathtub.
Evidence is sufficient to sustain a conviction for first degree murder if the Commonwealth establishes that appellant acted with a specific intent to kill, that a human being was unlawfully killed, and that the killing was done with deliberation. 18 Pa.C.S. § 2502(d); Commonwealth v. Mitchell, 528 Pa. 546, 550, 599 A.2d 624, 626 (1991). The evidence in this case amply demonstrates that appellant committed the murder with the requisite intent and deliberation to sustain his first degree murder conviction. Appellant complains that the evidence was insufficient to sustain his conviction for possession of an instrument of crime because the murder weapon was a clothes iron which does not meet the statutory definition of an instrument of crime under 18 Pa.C.S. § 907(d).6 Appellant here "specially adapted" the clothes iron for criminal use by breaking the plastic handle from the metal plate. He used the plate on the victim's head creating triangular lacerations matching the front of the metal piece. The victim also suffered small puncture wounds around her left eye corresponding to a piece of the broken plastic handle found at the crime scene. Hence, the evidence was sufficient to convict appellant of possession of an instrument of crime.
Appellant makes eight separate allegations of trial court error. First, he claims that the trial court erred in failing to give a cautionary instruction to the jury regarding the graphic nature of the crime scene photographs introduced at trial and shown to the jury. The black and white photographs of the crime scene and of the victim were admitted for the purpose of demonstrating to the jury the progression of appellant's attack on the victim and his pursuit of her through her apartment. These photos were clearly relevant and admissible to prove that appellant acted with specific intent to kill and with deliberation. The trial court cautioned the jurors during his charge to the jury that they were not to allow any type of emotional response to the photographs to affect their deliberations, but that they were to decide the case based upon the facts without regard to any emotions or sympathy connected to the photographs.7 This claim is meritless. Appellant's second claim of error is that the trial court erred in admitting hearsay testimony of two witnesses regarding statements made to them by the victim's four year old daughter. Both the investigating homicide detective and a physician at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where the daughter was taken for treatment after the discovery of the murder, testified at trial that she told them that appellant murdered her mother.
The admissibility of evidence is a matter which lies within the discretion of the trial court, and, absent an abuse of discretion, the trial court's decision will not be disturbed. Commonwealth v. Bronshtein, 547 Pa. 460, 480, 691 A.2d 907, 916 (1997). Here, the trial court determined that the testimony of the two witnesses, while hearsay, was admissible under the excited utterance exception. In Commonwealth v. Penn, 497 Pa. 232, 242, 439 A.2d 1154, 1159 (1982), this Court held that a statement made to police and in response to police questioning by a child who witnessed his mother's murder fell within the excited utterance exception even though the statement was not made immediately after the murder. Thus, the trial court did not...
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