Dutton v. State

• Decision Date: 11 January 1982
• Citation: 452 A.2d 127
• Parties: David A. DUTTON, Defendant Below, Appellant, v. STATE of Delaware, Plaintiff Below, Appellee. . Submitted:
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Delaware

Page 127

452 A.2d 127

David A. DUTTON, Defendant Below, Appellant, v. STATE of Delaware, Plaintiff Below, Appellee.

Supreme Court of Delaware.

Submitted: Jan. 11, 1982.

Decided: Sept. 10, 1982.

Upon appeal from Superior Court. Affirmed.

Edmund Hillis (argued), Nancy Jane Mullen and Eugene J. Maurer, Asst. Public Defenders, Wilmington, for defendant below, appellant.

Charles M. Oberly, III (argued), Deputy Atty. Gen., Wilmington, for plaintiff below, appellee.

Before HERRMANN, C.J., McNEILLY and QUILLEN, JJ.

QUILLEN, Justice:

On March 22, 1978, the defendant, David A. Dutton, was charged by indictment with Murder in the First Degree for intentionally causing the death of Susan Spahn, on or about November 6, 1976. ¹ Defendant was initially tried before a jury in the Superior Court in the fall of 1978. Due to the jury's inability to reach a verdict, however, a mistrial was declared. Defendant was subsequently retried before a jury in the Superior Court in early 1979. After several weeks of testimony, the jury convicted the defendant of the offense charged. From his conviction and subsequent sentencing to life imprisonment, the defendant appeals. We turn initially to the pertinent facts.

On Saturday, November 6, 1976, the victim, Susan Spahn, met her friend, Amy Barnes, at Miss Barnes' apartment. They went to a nightclub called "The Other Side" on Route 202 in New Castle County at approximately 11:30 p.m. Miss Barnes drove. The women, after entering the club, purchased drinks at the left-hand side bar and then found a table near the right-hand bar. ²

After a few minutes, Miss Barnes noticed that an individual, later identified as the defendant, approached them and asked Miss Spahn to dance. Someone then asked Miss Barnes to dance. After a dance or two, the defendant accompanied Miss Spahn back to the table where the women had left their drinks. When Miss Barnes returned to the table, Miss Spahn introduced the defendant as "Dave".

At the table, Miss Barnes overheard a portion of the conversation between Miss Spahn and the defendant. In part, the defendant talked about the fact that he had shared an apartment with his sister and brother-in-law, but that they had moved out, taking their furniture along with them. Because of this, the defendant stated that he was looking for some new furniture. After a few minutes, Miss Spahn and the defendant went back onto the dance floor.

Soon thereafter, a man named Steve Molin approached Miss Barnes and asked her to dance. While dancing, Miss Barnes observed Miss Spahn and the defendant leave the dance floor and head back towards the table. Miss Barnes never saw her friend, Miss Spahn, again.

Up until 1:00 a.m., when the nightclub closed, Miss Barnes and Mr. Molin danced on the dance floor and talked at the table. Although, from time to time, Miss Barnes scanned the nightclub for Miss Spahn, it was not until closing that she actually began searching for her friend. With Mr. Molin's help, Miss Barnes searched the club, the nearby parking areas, and checked with the doormen on duty, but to no avail. Miss Barnes finally left and went home. The next morning, she checked the area hospitals for Miss Spahn with negative results. Finally, Miss Barnes called the police.

November 6, 1976 was the last day any of Miss Spahn's acquaintances saw her. Mariam Alverson, a friend of Miss Spahn, testified that Miss Spahn failed to meet her for church on Sunday, November 7th, as they had planned. Mrs. Margaret Spahn, the mother of Miss Spahn, testified that although they usually spoke by phone every day, she never heard from or saw her daughter after November 6th.

On November 11, 1976, Miss Barnes was asked to participate in the preparation of a composite drawing. The composite drawing, based upon the information supplied by Miss Barnes to the police artist, turned out to be an exceptionally accurate portrait of the defendant. On November 15th and 16th, the composite drawing was shown on local television. The police received two calls in response to the television broadcast naming the defendant as the person portrayed in the drawing.

On November 17, 1976, two Delaware State Police officers, Detectives Chapman and Thompson, interviewed the defendant at his place of employment because he had possibly been the last person to have seen Miss Spahn. Although at this point the State Police were treating Miss Spahn's disappearance as a missing person case, Detective Chapman advised the defendant of his rights under Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966) prior to interviewing him.

Detective Chapman testified that the defendant seemed surprised at their presence, and at first denied knowing anything about the Other Side nightclub or Miss Spahn. When Detective Chapman informed the defendant that they knew he had been with Miss Spahn at the Other Side on the night in question, the defendant changed his story and admitted he had been there with her. The defendant then voluntarily consented to accompany them to Troop # 1 headquarters to give a more detailed statement as to the events of that night.

At Troop # 1, the defendant told Detective Chapman that he met Miss Spahn at the Other Side and danced with her. The defendant said they later went outside to his car to smoke some marijuana. At his car, however, Miss Spahn, declined to smoke marijuana; the defendant proceeded to do so. The defendant then stated that he and Miss Spahn went back into the nightclub after about twenty minutes, and he observed Miss Spahn reapproach the girlfriend with whom she had been earlier. This statement of the defendant was thus in direct conflict with that of Miss Barnes. The defendant stated that, once inside, he went to the left-hand side bar had a couple of drinks, danced with a girl with dark frizzy hair, and then left just before the nightclub's 1:00 a.m. closing. The defendant indicated that his roommate, one Marian Wagner, was asleep when he arrived home.

The November 17th interview at Troop # 1 lasted for approximately four hours, 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. The defendant allowed the police to take his photograph, and after receiving assurances from the police that he would not be prosecuted for any marijuana found in his car, allowed them to search it. According to Detective Chapman's testimony, during the search of the defendant's car, the defendant spontaneously made reference to a Florida case with which he was familiar and stated that "he could not be arrested unless there was a 'corpus delecti' ". The questioning of the defendant on November 17th was thereafter terminated. Apparently, the police found nothing of value in pursuit of their investigation in the defendant's car.

The police continued their investigation by questioning the bartender, Wayne Clark, who serviced the left-hand side bar in the Other Side nightclub. Mr. Clark worked on November 6, 1976. At trial, Mr. Clark testified that he remembered seeing the defendant with a frizzy-haired girl, not after midnight, as the defendant had told the police, but earlier in the evening around 11:00 p.m. The bartender also testified that after midnight he did not see the defendant at the lower portion of the left-hand side bar. This conflicted with the defendant's statement to the police that he had acquired drinks at that spot. Between midnight and 1:00 a.m., when the nightclub closed, Mr. Clark said he never left the bar.

Additionally, the police contacted Marian Wagner, the defendant's roommate at the time. She testified that she had gone to bed at 2:00 a.m. on the night in question, and was awakened approximately one-half hour later because the defendant bumped into a wall.

The police rounded out their investigation by contacting the defendant's family members, friends and neighbors, who were very cooperative in providing the police with information. One of the defendant's sisters, Sheila Eaton, and her husband, Gordon, had shared an apartment with the defendant during the summer of 1976, several months prior to Miss Spahn's disappearance. Mrs. Eaton contacted the police on her own initiative on February 14, 1977 to report that on that day the defendant had told her "Everyone knows I did it, so what makes a difference."

It was not until fourteen months after the disappearance of Miss Spahn, however, that the police found the evidence that broke open the case against the defendant. On January 1, 1978, a human skull was found in a heavily wooded area located on the property of the Hercules Country Club. The skull proved to be that of Miss Spahn. An extensive search of the area was made by the police on January 5th and 6th. The police found: (1) other human skeletal remains (2) fragments of clothing and shoes; (3) jewelry; (4) several pieces of electrical wire and wire connectors; (5) some lengths of electrical wire attached to a stick; and (6) three broken pieces of handgrips from a revolver. The pieces of jewelry were identified by Miss Spahn's mother as belonging to her daughter. Miss Barnes identified that the fragments of clothing and shoes were from the items Miss Spahn had worn on the night of November 6, 1976, when she disappeared.

The police were able to connect the electrical wire, wire connectors and pistol handgrips to the defendant. Gordon Eaton, the defendant's brother-in-law, testified that, in the summer of 1976, he had given some wire connectors, similar to those found near Miss Spahn's remains, to the defendant. The wire was very common and easy to obtain. A neighbor of the defendant's during the fall of 1976, Russell Keblen, testified that he had observed some wire similar to the wire found with Miss Spahn's remains, in the defendant's car. As for the pistol handgrips, due to some fine police work, the police were able to link them with a burglary committed by the defendant during the summer of 1976. Several items, including a .22 revolver, which had similar handgrips to those found near...