Commonwealth v. Arrington

• Decision Date: 28 February 2014
• Citation: 86 A.3d 831
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee v. Lance ARRINGTON, Appellant.

86 A.3d 831

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee

v.Lance ARRINGTON, Appellant.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued March 10, 2010.

Submitted Nov. 4, 2013.

Decided Feb. 28, 2014.

Jack L. Gruenstein, Marshall, Dennehey, Warner, Coleman & Goggin, for Lance Arrington.

Hugh J. Burns, William George Young, Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, Amy Zapp, PA Office of Attorney General, for Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

BEFORE: CASTILLE, C.J., SAYLOR, EAKIN, BAER, TODD, McCAFFERY, STEVENS, JJ.

OPINION

Justice BAER.¹

Appellant Lance Arrington appeals from the sentence of death imposed by the Philadelphia County Common Pleas Court after a jury convicted him of first-degree murder and violating the Uniform Firearms Act. For the reasons stated herein, we affirm Appellant's conviction and judgment of sentence.²

The record indicates that Appellant began dating the victim, Tondra Dennis, after he moved to Philadelphia in July, 1993. As the relationship progressed, Tondra's friends observed bruises, scars, and bite marks on her body that she attributed to Appellant, whom she described as abusive. In the spring of 1995, Tondra met a man named Cleveland English and secretly began spending time with him. As she grew closer to English, they discussed marriage, but Tondra was concerned about leaving Appellant. When English visited her at a street festival in June, 1995, Tondra was “horrified” and ordered English to stay away from her because Appellant carried a gun, and would shoot English without hesitation. Notes of Testimony (“N.T.”), Feb. 10, 2000, at 124. English obeyed Tondra's command and avoided her for the remainder of the day. One of Tondra's closest friends, Fay Millner, testified that during the time that she and Tondra occupied a vendor booth at the street festival, and presumably after English's departure, Appellant hid behind a tree and stared at Tondra for approximately one hour. See N.T., Feb. 11, 2000, at 31.

On October 3, 1995, Tondra filed a complaint against Appellant with Philadelphia Detective Jacqueline Hart and reported several instances of physical and emotional abuse including beatings, death threats, and a break-in at her parents' home. To support her claims, she produced photographs of her injuries and an audiotape that contained a recorded telephone message in which Appellant threatened to kill her and her family. The photographs were consistent with Tondra's physical appearance at the time of the interview; DetectiveHart observed numerous signs of physical abuse on Tondra's body including facial bruising, a black eye, and a bite mark on Tondra's left arm. At the conclusion of the interview, Detective Hart charged Appellant with multiple crimes.

Tondra also contacted Maureen Welsh, a parole officer who had been supervising Appellant since July, 1993.³ Tondra gave a statement to Officer Welsh, provided a copy of the audiotaped death threats, and allowed the officer to photograph her injuries. Upon listening to the audiotape, from which she was able to positively identify Appellant's voice, Officer Welsh advised Tondra to avoid her parents' home and stay at a secure location. The following day, as Officer Welsh was discussing the matter with her supervisor, she received a frantic telephone call from Tondra's father informing her that Appellant was pacing back and forth in front of the Dennis residence. Based on that information, Officer Welsh accompanied a team of parole agents to the house with orders to detain Appellant. Shortly thereafter, when the agents arrested Appellant on a nearby street, he was carrying a black gym bag that contained a bolt cutter and a dead bolt that had been removed surreptitiously from the rear entrance to the Dennis residence.

Following his arrest, Appellant was transported to the state of New York for parole revocation proceedings. A hearing was scheduled for January 25, 1996, and New York parole revocation specialist Darcella Jones telephoned Tondra numerous times to secure her attendance. Based on their telephone conversations, Jones assumed that Tondra would testify against Appellant at the hearing; however, on January 2, 1996, Jones received a notarized letter from Tondra indicating that Appellant was innocent and that Tondra fabricated all of the allegations to punish Appellant after he informed her that he had been unfaithful to her. Jones wrote a letter to Tondra imploring her to testify against Appellant and received a second letter from Tondra, on January 22, 1996, reiterating that the charges were false and that she would not be attending the hearing. When Officer Welsh intervened on Jones's behalf, Tondra explained that if she testified against Appellant, she would be killed. See N.T., Feb. 9, 2000, at 88. Unable to persuade Tondra to attend the parole revocation hearing, Jones could not sustain the charges against Appellant, and he was released from custody on January 30, 1996.

Tondra Dennis was murdered at 11:30 p.m. on February 9, 1996, ten days after Appellant was released from jail. Lucille Fauntleroy testified that on the night in question, she was making coffee in her Philadelphia home when she heard a commotion at the rear of the house. She extinguished the lights and walked to the kitchen window, which overlooks 54th Street, and she observed a man and a woman arguing near the curb. Although she had a clear view of the couple, Fauntleroy could not see the man's face because he was standing with his back to the window.⁴ As Fauntleroy turned to walk away, she heard a “pow” sound. N.T., Feb. 11, 2000, at 12. When she returned her gaze to the window, the woman was no longer visible, and the man was running along 54th Street. Fauntleroy never saw the man's face, and no one else witnessed the incident.

Philadelphia Police Officer Crystal White was patrolling nearby when she received a radio dispatch indicating that an individual had been shot at the intersection of 54th and Upland Streets. She drove to the intersection and found Tondra's lifeless body lying in the street approximately 357 feet from the residence Appellant previously shared with his mother. Two nine-millimeter cartridge casings were recovered near the body, but no weapons were found. An autopsy revealed that Tondra had been shot once in the neck with a nine-millimeter handgun, and the bullet severed her spinal cord, which caused her to suffocate. The medical examiner opined that the manner of death was homicide.

The ensuing investigation stalled when the lead investigator, Detective William Egenlauf, broke his leg and took an extended leave of absence followed by six months of restricted duty. As a result, the case was re-assigned to Philadelphia Homicide Detective Thomas Kane in January, 1998. After speaking with numerous individuals in Philadelphia and New York who were acquainted with Appellant, Detective Kane obtained an arrest warrant charging Appellant with the murder of Tondra Dennis. The arrest warrant was forwarded to New York authorities who believed Appellant was living in an apartment building located in the Bronx, and, on April 3, 1998, four detectives from New York City's 44th Precinct proceeded to that address to execute the warrant. When no one answered the door, one of the detectives peered through a window and saw an individual who matched Appellant's description. As Appellant was wanted for murder, the detectives summoned an emergency response team that surrounded the building and initiated contact with Appellant through a hostage negotiator. Approximately two hours and fifteen minutes later, Appellant surrendered peacefully to law enforcement officers.

Appellant maintained his innocence and requested a jury trial. Over the course of the eight-day trial, the Commonwealth sought to prove Appellant's guilt by documenting his abusive relationship with Tondra, establishing that he was in Philadelphia on the night of the murder, and showing that he harassed other girlfriends in a similar manner. To accomplish the second and third objectives, the Commonwealth presented testimony that Appellant patronized a Philadelphia pizzeria hours before Tondra was killed, notwithstanding that he contended that he was in New York at the time, and that Appellant attempted to control three other female partners through acts of violence and intimidation that prompted criminal charges and resulted in convictions for arson and assault. N.T., Feb. 2, 2000, at 56–58. Appellant downplayed the significance of his prior convictions, claimed that he and Tondra reconciled shortly before her death, and called an alibi witness, Esperita Granville, who testified that Appellant continuously resided in New York City from February through mid-March, 1996. According to Granville, Appellant moved into her Bronx apartment prior to the murder, and he returned home each night by 9:00 p.m. to comply with a curfew imposed by the New York State Board of Parole.

Appellant was convicted of first-degree murder and persons not to possess firearms on February 17, 2000.⁵ Following the penalty hearing, the jury found that the single aggravating factor—that Appellant had a significant history of violent felony convictions, 42 Pa.C.S. § 9711(d)(9), outweighed the mitigation evidence of Appellant's “fatherhood,” which the jury found pursuant to the catchall mitigating circumstance codified at 42 Pa.C.S. § 9711(e)(8) (relating to “any other evidence of mitigation concerning the character and record of the defendant and the circumstances of his offense”). Sentencing Verdict Slip, Feb. 22, 2000, at 1.⁶ Accordingly, the jury rendered a verdict of death. On February 22, 2000, the trial court sentenced Appellant to death for the murder conviction and imposed no further penalty for the firearm offense. Appellant obtained new counsel and filed post-sentence motions, which were denied. This direct appeal followed.

I. Sufficiency of the Evidence

We begin, as we must in every capital case, by reviewing the evidence...