Doepel v. United States
| Decision Date | 13 August 1981 |
| Docket Number | No. 14184.,No. 9079.,9079.,14184. |
| Citation | 434 A.2d 449 |
| Parties | Thomas G. DOEPEL, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, Appellee. |
| Court | D.C. Court of Appeals |
Michael J. Madigan, Washington, D. C., with whom Leslie K. Dellon, Washington, D. C., was on the brief in No. 14184; Wayne S. Bishop, Washington, D. C., with whom Robert Milbank, Jr., Dallas, Tex., was on the brief in No. 9079, for appellant.
Genevieve Holm, Asst. U. S. Atty., Washington, D. C., in No. 14184, and William J. O'Malley, Jr., Asst. U. S. Atty., Washington, D. C., in No. 9079, with whom Earl J. Silbert, U. S. Atty., Washington, D. C., at the time the briefs were filed, John A. Terry, John P. Hume and Henry H. Kennedy, Jr., Asst. U. S. Attys., Washington, D. C., were on the briefs, for appellee.
Before KELLY, Associate Judge, REILLY, Chief Judge, Retired, and PAIR, Associate Judge, Retired.
This is the second time that this case has been argued in our court. After a three-week trial in 1974 on indictments charging appellant with first-degree murder, felony murder, and rape,1 a jury found him guilty as charged. He was sentenced to concurrent terms of imprisonment for 20 years to life on the murder counts, and 15 years to life on the rape count, and appealed. After the case was argued, but before any opinion was released, we were informed in a letter by appellant's counsel that the United States Attorney had disclosed to him that a government witness had testified falsely, and that a motion for a new trial had been filed in the Superior Court on the ground of newly discovered evidence. Accordingly, we deferred decision to ascertain whether that court was inclined to grant the motion. See Smith v. Pollin, 90 U.S.App.D.C. 178, 194 F.2d 349 (1952). The trial court permitted the parties to present testimony on the motion, conducted hearings on four different days, and ultimately denied the motion in a 19-page memorandum order. As the appeals from this order and from the conviction present some overlapping issues and are to some extent interdependent, we dispose of both in this opinion and affirm.
The investigation which eventually resulted in the challenged conviction began late one evening when the police received a report that a man who had the key to the apartment of a Mrs. Florence Gillis had found her lying dead on the floor, her body half-naked, and the cord of an electric iron twisted around her neck.2 A medical examiner, who arrived on the scene about midnight, estimated that death had occurred some three to twelve hours before.
Police learned from neighbors in the apartment building that the victim had been visited by an unidentified repairman in the early afternoon, that he had departed briefly and returned, that subsequently sounds of laughter and conversation emanated from the Gillis apartment, and that at approximately four o'clock, the visitor left the apartment building and drove off in a white panel truck. Detectives eventually traced the stranger to his place of employment, a company which had sold a refrigerator to Mrs. Gillis a few months before her death. They discovered that he — Thomas Doepel, appellant — was one of two repairmen who had made service calls on the day of the murder. They then asked appellant to accompany them to the office of the homicide squad, where he was advised of his rights and told that he was not under arrest.
While an interview was in progress, his questioners were informed that one of appellant's fingerprints matched the print on a beer can taken from the Gillis apartment. Appellant was placed under arrest and again advised of his rights. He requested the police to let him summon his roommate, Gilbert Frazier, a student at Howard University. When the latter appeared, the detectives who were still in the room heard appellant blurt out that he had killed a woman. Frazier asked the police to step out, and the two men were left alone for about 10 or 15 minutes.
After Frazier had gone, the detectives resumed their questioning. Appellant then admitted that he had strangled Mrs. Gillis and gave the detectives an account of his visit to her apartment. What appears to be a verbatim statement was typed, signed by appellant, and ultimately admitted at trial as a voluntary confession after the defense had unsuccessfully moved to suppress it.3
According to this document, appellant had met Mrs. Gillis the previous summer through a chance encounter in a restaurant, and had seen her briefly on another occasion. Their acquaintanceship was not an intimate one, and appellant had not even connected her name with the schedule of service visits assigned to him on the particular day, until she opened the door of her apartment and they recognized each other. After fixing the refrigerator, he chatted and drank beer with her. At her suggestion he then went out to replenish her liquor supply, buying six cans of beer and a bottle of rum at a neighborhood store. When he returned they conversed some more, drank for awhile, played a phonograph, and danced. Then they "had sex" and he "choked her." This portion of the statement reads:
I choked her first with my hand, and then I checked to see if she was still alive, and I got the iron from the dining room table and wrapped the cord around her neck and choked her some more. She was dead now, so I took a towel from the bathroom and tried to wipe my fingerprints from the door knob, and I wiped the records off and I just threw it down.
After that I just walked down the stairs, and got in the truck and left. I went back to the shop and turned my tickets in and left. This must have been about 5:00 p. m., maybe about 4:30 p. m.
The admissibility of this statement into evidence was challenged on a defense motion to suppress. Once that motion had been denied4 and the statement received, it is apparent that appellant himself supplied sufficient evidence to justify the verdict of guilty on the court's charging him with first-degree murder — a crime defined in D.C.Code 1973, § 22-2401, as killing "another purposely . . . of deliberate and premeditated malice." We refer to his admission that he had not only choked his victim with his hand, but had also made sure that in advance of leaving the premises, she was dead — an objective attained by going to another room, bringing back an electric cord and wrapping it around her neck until he was certain of fatal strangulation.
While some appreciable time for reflection is required to demonstrate the element of premeditation, such interval need not be long, if the circumstances reveal that the killing was the product of some deliberation rather than the senseless act of a mind abandoned to "impulse, passion, or frenzy." Parman v. United States, 130 U.S. App.D.C. 188, 197-98, 399 F.2d 559, 568-69, cert. denied, 393 U.S. 858, 89 S.Ct. 109, 21 L.Ed.2d 126 (1968).
The written confession, however, contained nothing which incriminated appellant of rape or attempted rape. Indeed, appellant's version of events carries the contrary implication, for his description of decedent's hospitality, the extended afternoon of dancing and drinking, plainly suggests that she was not averse to an amorous interlude, including sexual intercourse. In returning a bill of indictment which included charges of rape and felony murder, however, the Grand Jury apparently concluded that the only rational explanation of appellant's homicidal conduct was that his hostess ultimately resisted his sexual advances and consequently her death was necessary to prevent any outcry or complaint to the police.
To sustain these counts of the indictment, the government presented extensive testimony to demonstrate that appellant had resorted to force in accomplishing his sexual purposes. Some of this evidence was gruesome. It included not only photographs, but physical descriptions of the decedent's body, with blood coming from the mouth, and of a liquid substance medically analyzed as sperm or prostate gland secretion in the vagina, anus, and mouth. Also introduced as exhibits were decedent's dentures, pubic hair samples, and appellant's under-shorts containing a stain, identified by an expert witness as congealed human blood.
Having failed at the pretrial hearing to obtain an order suppressing the confession as involuntary, resourceful defense counsel, after the government rested its case, did not call appellant to the stand. Without conceding or denying the charges, appellant relied upon an insanity defense. A Dr. Wedge, a psychiatrist who had interviewed appellant on separate occasions while he was awaiting trial, testified that he had concluded that at the time of the homicide appellant was suffering from pathological intoxication. He described it as a temporary insanity "associated with drinking." Elaborating further, the witness defined "pathological intoxication" as a rare form of mental disorder, likely to manifest itself after drinking even small amounts of alcohol. In this mental state, the person afflicted by such illness engages in acts completely at odds with his normal character and remembers nothing about his aberrant behavior after regaining sobriety.
According to Dr. Wedge, a recurrence of this disorder happened on the fatal afternoon. The witness based his opinion on appellant's account to him of his personal history, which included recollections of headaches, dizzy spells, and lapses of memory, as well as his version of what had transpired during his visit to decedent's apartment.5 Had the jury accepted the opinion of Dr. Wedge, appellant would have been entitled to an acquittal on the ground that he lacked the mens rea requisite to such intentional crimes as deliberate murder and rape.
To reinforce the psychiatrist's opinion, the defense placed appellant's roommate, Gilbert Frazier, on the stand. He testified that on...
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