Eggers v. State
| Decision Date | 24 November 2004 |
| Docket Number | CR-02-0170. |
| Citation | 914 So.2d 883 |
| Parties | Michael Wayne EGGERS v. STATE of Alabama. |
| Court | Alabama Supreme Court |
John G. Stokesberry, Jacksonville, for appellant.
William H. Pryor, Jr., and Troy King, attys. gen., and Jeremy W. McIntire, asst. atty. gen., for appellee.
On Application for Rehearing
The opinion issued on October 1, 2004, is withdrawn and the following opinion substituted therefor.
The appellant, Michael Wayne Eggers, was convicted of two counts of capital murder in connection with the murder of Bennie Francis Murray. The murder was made capital (1) because it was committed during the course of a kidnapping, see § 13A-5-40(a)(1), Ala.Code 1975, and (2) because it was committed during the course of a robbery, see § 13A-5-40(a)(2), Ala.Code 1975. By a vote of 11-1, the jury recommended that Eggers be sentenced to death for his convictions. The trial court accepted the jury's recommendation and sentenced Eggers to death.
The evidence adduced at trial indicated the following. Bennie Francis Murray ("Francis") and her husband, Frank, owned and operated a concession business that traveled around the southeast with a carnival. Francis hired Eggers to work concessions; he traveled with the carnival until September 2000, when the carnival arrived in Jasper, where Eggers met a woman. When the carnival left Jasper, Eggers stayed behind and found a job, but apparently lost the job at some point and was unable to find another one. On December 26, 2000, Eggers telephoned Francis, who, along with her husband, lived in Talladega when they were not traveling with the carnival, and asked for a job. Francis explained that the carnival would not begin traveling again until mid-March and that the Murrays' "bunkhouse," a trailer that had been converted into rooms for their employees, would not be available until mid-February. (R. 416.) On December 28, 2000, Eggers telephoned Francis again. He told Francis that he and his 15-year-old son were at the bus station in Birmingham, and asked Francis to come pick them up. Francis picked up Eggers and his son and brought them back to Talladega, where she tried to help Eggers find a temporary job, but was unable to do so. On December 30, 2000, Eggers asked Francis to take him and his son back to Jasper; she agreed.
According to Eggers's statements to police, on their way to Jasper, Eggers asked Francis to take him to his car, which was outside Jasper; he had driven it off the road in inclement weather the week before Christmas and had gotten stuck in a ditch. Francis agreed and, after dropping off Eggers's son at Eggers's apartment in Jasper, Francis and Eggers left in search of Eggers's car. After driving for some time in a rural area of Walker County, Francis stopped her pickup truck on the side of the road and indicated that she was unwilling to go any further and was going to turn around. Eggers then asked her if she was "joining everyone else on the fuck Mike bandwagon." (C. 404.) At that point, Eggers said, Francis "backhanded" him and he "let go ... [and] just started hitting her." (C. 404.) Eggers beat Francis with his fists until she was unconscious, at which point he pushed her as far against the driver's side door of the pickup truck as he could, and drove down a nearby dirt road. When Francis started to regain consciousness — "[s]he was making noises and stuff like that" (C. 406) — Eggers stopped the truck and pushed her out of the cab of the truck onto the road. Eggers got out of the truck and started cursing at Francis and kicked her several times in the head with the steel-toed boots he was wearing. Eggers then got back in the truck, drove toward the end of the road and turned around, but decided to stop where he had left Francis because he wanted to make sure she was dead and "wasn't going to stay out there suffering." (C. 406.) When Eggers stopped, Francis was starting to regain consciousness so he kicked her again and choked her with his hands "to make sure she was dead." (R. 406.) Eggers again said that he "didn't want to leave her out there suffering." (C. 406.) Eggers then dragged Francis into nearby woods where she could not be seen from the road and, because he believed she was still alive at that point, he put a tree limb on her throat and stood on it in an effort to kill her. Eggers then took Francis's truck to a car wash and washed Francis's blood out of the cab of the truck.1 He also went through Francis's purse, which was in the truck, and found cash and a debit card. Eggers said that the killing was not premeditated, but was spontaneous.
Following the murder, Eggers picked up his son in Francis's pickup truck and the two drove to Campbellsville, Kentucky, where Eggers's son stayed with a friend. While in Campbellsville, Eggers met a man named Scott Mason, and the two went to the Caesar's Riverboat Casino, docked at New Albany, Indiana, on January 1, 2001. According to Mason, Eggers insisted that they take the red Nissan pickup truck Mason was driving, and they used Francis's debit card to obtain $300 for use at the casino.2 On their way back to Campbellsville, while they were driving through Bardstown, Kentucky, the police stopped them. After determining that the red Nissan was stolen, the police searched the vehicle and found marijuana in the ashtray. Both Mason and Eggers were arrested. Francis's debit card was found under the passenger seat of the truck a few days later. Eggers posted bond the next day and took a cab back to Campbellsville, where he stayed for a couple of days. Eggers left Campbellsville on January 4, 2001, drove to Bowling Green, Kentucky, where he left Francis's truck at a truck stop near the interstate, and then hitchhiked to Kissimmee, Florida, where he was eventually arrested and admitted to law enforcement that he had murdered Francis.
Following his arrest in Florida, Eggers waived extradition; he was brought back to Alabama and took law-enforcement officers to the area where he had left Francis's body. Francis was found in the woods with a tree limb, approximately four feet long and two inches in diameter, over her neck. Dr. Stephen Pustilnik, who in 2001 was a medical examiner for the State of Alabama and who performed the autopsy on Francis, testified that Francis died from multiple blunt-force trauma and strangulation. Dr. Pustilnik stated that Francis had been "beaten very severely" (R. 778); that she had multiple facial fractures and a "tremendous amount" of swelling of her face (R. 778); that she had trauma to both sides of her head; and that she had hemorrhaging in her scalp and in her brain. Dr. Pustilnik also testified that Francis's hyoid bone, thyroid bone, and two laryngeal bones in her neck were fractured and had a small amount of hemorrhaging. Based on the amount of swelling in the face and hemorrhaging in the head, Dr. Pustilnik concluded that the blows to the face and head occurred first during the attack and that the injuries to the neck, which had little hemorrhaging, occurred toward the end of the attack. Dr. Pustilnik testified that the injuries to Francis's face would have been very painful but were not fatal, and that Francis lived for at least several minutes, but probably less than 20 minutes, after those injuries were inflicted.
Eggers's defense at trial was that the crime he committed was not capital murder. Although Eggers pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, and although the jury was charged on the defense of insanity, Eggers never claimed, or presented evidence indicating, that he did not kill Francis or that he was insane at the time of the crime. Rather, Eggers's claimed that he suffered from intermittent explosive disorder and personality disorder, that the initial attack on Francis in the truck was the result of blind rage precipitated by Francis slapping him, and that, therefore, the kidnapping and robbery were mere afterthoughts unrelated to Francis's murder.
On appeal, Eggers raises several issues, many of which he did not raise by objection in the trial court. Because Eggers was sentenced to death, his failure to object at trial does not bar our review of these issues; however, it does weigh against any claim of prejudice he now makes on appeal. See Dill v. State, 600 So.2d 343 (Ala.Crim.App.1991), aff'd, 600 So.2d 372 (Ala.1992); Kuenzel v. State, 577 So.2d 474 (Ala.Crim.App.1990), aff'd, 577 So.2d 531 (Ala.1991).
Rule 45A, Ala.R.App.P., provides:
"In all cases in which the death penalty has been imposed, the Court of Criminal Appeals shall notice any plain error or defect in the proceedings under review, whether or not brought to the attention of the trial court, and take appropriate appellate action by reason thereof, whenever such error has or probably has adversely affected the substantial right of the appellant."
"Plain error" has been defined as error "`so obvious that the failure to notice it would seriously affect the fairness or integrity of the judicial proceedings.'" Ex parte Womack, 435 So.2d 766, 769 (Ala. 1983), quoting United States v. Chaney, 662 F.2d 1148, 1152 (5th Cir.1981). "To rise to the level of plain error, the claimed error must not only seriously affect a defendant's `substantial rights,' but it must also have an unfair prejudicial impact on the jury's deliberations." Hyde v. State, 778 So.2d 199, 209 (Ala.Crim.App.1998), aff'd, 778 So.2d 237 (Ala.2000). This Court has recognized that the "`plain-error exception to the contemporaneous-objection rule is to be "used sparingly, solely in those circumstances in which a miscarriage of justice would otherwise result."'" Burton v. State, 651 So.2d 641, 645 (Ala.Crim.App.1993), aff'd, 651 So.2d 659 (Ala.1994), quoting United States v. Young, 470 U.S. 1, 15, ...
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