Com. v. Uderra

• Decision Date: 20 April 1998
• Citation: 706 A.2d 334,550 Pa. 389
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee, v. Jose UDERRA, Appellant.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Page 334

706 A.2d 334

550 Pa. 389

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee, v. Jose UDERRA, Appellant.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued Oct. 17, 1996.

Decided Jan. 26, 1998.

Reargument Denied April 20, 1998.

[550 Pa. 393] Lee Mandell, for J. Uderra.

Catherine Marshall, Lawrence J. Goode, Philadelphia, Robert A. Graci, Harrisburg, for the Commonwealth.

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

OPINION

ZAPPALA, Justice.

This is a direct appeal pursuant to 42 Pa.C.S. §§ 722(4) and 9711(h). Appellant, Jose Uderra, was convicted by a jury of one count each of murder in the first degree, robbery, possession of an instrument of crime and criminal conspiracy. At the conclusion of the penalty phase of Appellant's trial, the jury returned a sentence of death.

The evidence of record, viewed in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth as verdict winner, discloses the following. At approximately 7:00 a.m. on October 18, 1991, the victim, Michael Sharpe, went to the 2900 block of North Orkney Street in Philadelphia to purchase drugs. There, Juan Perez sold Sharpe several vials purporting to contain crack cocaine, which in reality contained ordinary detergent. After discovering the ruse, Sharpe returned at approximately 8:00 a.m., and demanded his money back from Perez. As the two men argued, Appellant, armed with a twelve gauge single-barrelled sawed-off shotgun, approached to assist Perez.

When Sharpe refused to comply with Appellant's and Perez's subsequent demands for money, Appellant and Perez threw Sharpe to the ground, hit and kicked him, and went through his pockets. Perez forcibly removed Sharpe's shoes and coat, throwing the shoes toward the roof of a nearby house and the coat across the street. After unsuccessfully attempting to force Sharpe into an abandoned house, Appellant stood Sharpe up against a wall and shot him in the chest with the shotgun. ¹ The victim was shot at such close range that the shotgun shell wadding entered his body.

Immediately following the shooting, Appellant fled to a green station wagon parked on North Orkney Street. Before entering the station wagon, Appellant handed the shotgun to Joanne Rivera, who was standing beside the vehicle, and ordered her to hide it. The victim, although mortally wounded, somehow managed to cross the street and enter a vacant lot, where he collapsed.

Two eyewitnesses, Maria Martinez and Maria Carrasquillo, separately watched the events from windows of their respective homes on the 2900 block of North Orkney Street. Both eyewitnesses immediately called the police, who arrived at the scene within minutes and found the victim alive and bleeding profusely from his chest wound, unable to speak or respond to questions. The victim was transported to Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Having been informed by Martinez and Carrasquillo that the shooter had fled to a green station wagon parked on North Orkney Street, officers later discovered Appellant and an unidentified woman in a green 1973 AMC Hornet station wagon. Martinez and Carrasquillo identified Appellant as the killer. They each recognized Appellant because he had been living in the station wagon parked on North Orkney Street.

Later that afternoon, Joanne Rivera admitted that she had hidden the shotgun at the request of Appellant and directed officers to its hiding place under some debris about two blocks from the crime scene. Officers retrieved the shotgun and recovered a fired shell casing from it. Ballistics testing was conducted on the shotgun and the spent shell casing that was found in it and it was determined that the shell found in the shotgun had been fired by that shotgun to the exclusion of all others. Officers also found an unspent shotgun shell in the station wagon, which was consistent with the shell found in the shotgun and with the pellets recovered from the victim's body. The shell wadding recovered from the victim's body was also consistent with the type of shell found in the shotgun.

Following the denial of Appellant's motion to sever his trial from that of his co-defendant, Juan Perez, trial commenced on June 1, 1993. On June 4, 1993, the jury convicted Appellant of all charges. ² Appellant was sentenced to death for the murder conviction. ³ The jury found as an aggravating circumstance that Appellant committed the killing while in perpetration of a felony, 42 Pa.C.S. § 9711(d)(6). No mitigating circumstances were found.

Appellant contends that the evidence was insufficient to support his conviction for first degree murder. In reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence, we must determine whether the evidence admitted at trial and all reasonable inferences drawn therefrom, when viewed in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth as verdict winner, are sufficient to support all the elements of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt. Commonwealth v. Carpenter, 511 Pa. 429, 515 A.2d 531 (1986). In order to prove murder in the first degree, the Commonwealth must show that a human being was unlawfully killed, that the accused committed the killing and that the killing was done in an intentional, deliberate and premeditated manner. 18 Pa.C.S. § 2502(a); Commonwealth v. Mitchell, 528 Pa. 546, 599 A.2d 624 (1991). The element which distinguishes first degree murder from all other degrees of criminal homicide is the presence of a willful, premeditated and deliberate intent to kill. Commonwealth v. Paolello, 542 Pa. 47, 665 A.2d 439 (1995).

Appellant specifically alleges that the evidence was insufficient to support the verdict of first degree murder because the Commonwealth did not prove that Appellant had the requisite specific intent to kill. Appellant's disingenuous claim is belied by the fact that Appellant shot the victim in the chest with a sawed-off shotgun, which could only be fired after both cocking the hammer and pulling the trigger, at such close range that the shell wadding entered the victim's body. Specific intent to kill may be inferred from the use of a deadly weapon on a vital part of the victim's body. Commonwealth v. O'Searo, 466 Pa. 224, 352 A.2d 30 (1976). The eyewitness testimony and corroborating evidence are clearly sufficient to support Appellant's conviction for first degree murder.

Appellant next claims that the trial court erred in denying his motion to sever his trial from that of his co-defendant. After being arrested, Perez gave a statement admitting his participation with Appellant in the robbery of Michael Sharpe and implicating Appellant as Sharpe's killer. After Appellant's motion for severance was denied, Perez's statement was redacted and all references to Appellant were replaced with the moniker "X." The redacted statement was read into evidence at trial. That section of the redacted statement implicating Appellant was as follows:

He [Sharpe] asked for his money back and told me that my stuff was no good. I then pulled a good cap from my pocket and showed it to him. This was one of the caps that I had just gotten and I told him to taste it. That's when X walked up to where we were at. X had the sawed-off shotgun. X started to go into the guy's pockets. He got a couple of dollars out of his pockets, just something real small and stupid.

Before any of the shooting happened, we were both kicking this guy to keep him on the ground. By the time the shooting happened I was almost to the corner of Indiana and Orkney Streets. The guy got up and stumbled across the street and fell onto the muddy lot. I then went home.

N.T. 6/2/93 at 64.

The trial court gave a limiting instruction to the jury that Perez's redacted statement could be considered only against him and not in any way against Appellant. The limiting instruction was as follows:

[A] statement that is made before trial may be considered as evidence only against the defendant who made the statement. Thus you may consider the statement as only as [sic] evidence against Defendant Perez, if you believe he made the statement voluntarily. You must not consider the statement as evidence against the co-Defendant Uderra. You must not use the statement in any way against him.

N.T. 6/3/93 at 96.

Appellant argues that the trial court erred in denying his motion to sever on the grounds that Perez's redacted statement to police "powerfully incriminated" Appellant. Appellant goes on to argue in a related claim that the subsequent admission of Perez's redacted statement violated his constitutional right to confrontation.

The Commonwealth contends that the trial court was well within its discretion in denying Appellant's motion to sever and that a joint trial was particularly appropriate in this case. The Commonwealth points to the fact that Appellant and Perez were both charged with identical counts arising from the same incident; the same witnesses and virtually the same evidence, with the exception of Perez's redacted confession, formed the case against each defendant. With regard to Perez's redacted statement, the Commonwealth argues that any prejudice to Appellant was cured by the trial court's limiting instruction to the jury that the redacted statement could only be considered against Perez and not in any way against Appellant.

In Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968), the United States Supreme Court held that a defendant is deprived of his rights under the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment when a non-testifying co-defendant's confession naming the defendant as a participant in the underlying crime is introduced at their joint trial. The Court held that while a jury is ordinarily presumed capable of following a court's instruction regarding the limited use of evidence, the possibility of prejudice arising from the introduction of such a confession by a non-testifying co-defendant is so great that a new trial is required even where the court specifically instructs the jury that...