Glasper v. State
| Decision Date | 10 November 2005 |
| Docket Number | No. 2003-KA-00876-SCT.,2003-KA-00876-SCT. |
| Citation | 914 So.2d 708 |
| Parties | Oscar Lee GLASPER v. STATE of Mississippi. |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
Lydia Roberta Blackmon, attorney for appellant.
Office of the Attorney General by W. Daniel Hinchcliff, attorney for appellee.
Before WALLER, P.J., EASLEY and CARLSON, JJ.
¶ 1. Upon being indicted by the Humphreys County grand jury on the charges of capital murder, rape, sexual battery, house burglary and kidnapping, Oscar Lee Glasper went to trial and was found guilty by the jury on all five of the indicted charges. After a sentencing hearing on the capital murder conviction,1 the jury was unable to agree unanimously on the punishment, and the circuit judge imposed a life imprisonment without parole sentence as required by law. See Miss.Code Ann. §§ 99-19-101(1), -103 (Rev.2000); Miss.Code Ann. § 47-7-3(1)(e)(f) (Rev.2004). As to the remaining convictions, the circuit judge imposed respective fifteen-year sentences for the rape and sexual battery convictions, and respective ten-year sentences for the house burglary and kidnapping convictions, with each of the five sentences to run consecutively.2 After disposition of post-trial motions, the trial court granted Glasper's motion for an out-of-time appeal.
¶ 2. On Friday morning, May 26, 2000, Keith Crawford cut Flavis Sanders's lawn. Sanders, a 74-year-old single woman, was a retired Humphreys County deputy tax assessor. Crawford, who lived in Isola with his mother about two blocks from Sanders's home, had known Sanders all his life and had done work around her house for a long time. In addition to cutting the grass on this occasion, Crawford was to also replace the batteries in Sanders's doorbell and smoke alarms; however, since Sanders had failed to purchase the 9-volt batteries by the time Crawford finished cutting the lawn on Friday, Sanders and Crawford agreed that Crawford would simply return to Sanders's home around 10:00 a.m., Saturday, May 27, 2000, to complete his chores, at which time he would be paid.
¶ 3. When Crawford returned the next morning to complete his chores, he knocked on the front door of Sanders's house. When Sanders failed to respond to his knocks on the door, Crawford, who was familiar with Sanders's habits and her home, walked around the outside of the house to the living room and knocked on the window, but again received no response from Sanders. Crawford then looked down to Sanders's bedroom window and noticed "the blind hanging out the window between the top sash and the bottom sash." Crawford knocked on the bedroom window and once again received no response. He then pulled the window blind up and saw Sanders lying in her bed, facing the window. Suspecting that "something was wrong," Crawford ran to Mrs. Clarence Abels's house, and Pat Abels, along with Crawford, returned to the Sanders home, at which time Abels concluded that Sanders was dead.
¶ 4. Isola Police Chief J.D. Roseman was summoned to the scene by Pat Abels, and upon arriving at Sanders's home, Chief Roseman entered the home and went to the bedroom where he found Sanders, whom he believed to be dead, lying in the bed. Chief Roseman noticed blood on the bed sheets around the body in the buttocks area, and he also noticed that the bedside table had been knocked over and medicine bottles were scattered on the floor by the bed. Grady Lampkin, a Humphreys County deputy sheriff, arrived at the scene and secured the scene with police tape. Other law enforcement officials were dispatched to the scene, including Master Sergeant Tim Pyles, a criminal investigator with the Department of Public Safety, Mississippi Highway Patrol, Criminal Investigation Bureau, who photographed the scene. Personnel from the Mississippi Crime Laboratory were also summoned and they collected various items, including serological, fingerprint and hair samples.
¶ 5. Further investigation by law enforcement revealed information which began to point toward Oscar Lee "Skip" Glasper as the prime suspect in this homicide investigation. Markelia Ancreneka Ellzey, who knew both Glasper and Sanders, informed Chief Roseman that she had seen Glasper walking up and down the street close to Sanders's home around 2:00 a.m., Saturday, May 27, 2000. It was also learned that between 5:00 a.m. and 5:30 a.m., Saturday, May 27, 2000, an extremely intoxicated Glasper had approached Humphreys County deputy sheriff Randy Lee Blakely's vehicle outside the Belzoni Police Department and requested that Blakely "lock him up" for public drunkenness.3 Glasper said he knew he had drunk too much, that he had been on his feet all night, and that he needed a place to lie down and sleep. Deputy Blakely turned Glasper over to the Belzoni Police Department, and a city officer indeed locked him up until mid-afternoon that day.
¶ 6. By the evening of May 30, 2000, law enforcement decided to arrest Glasper on an outstanding "peeping Tom" warrant. See Miss.Code Ann. § 97-29-61 (Rev.2000), Mississippi's voyeurism statute. During the course of the day on Wednesday, May 31, 2000, Glasper gave three statements to law enforcement officials. The first statement was a tape-recorded statement which commenced at 10:40 a.m. The subsequently prepared transcript of this tape-recorded statement consists of 54 pages. A handwritten statement, consisting of one page, plus two lines on a second page, was taken at 1:25 p.m. The final statement was video-taped, and this statement commenced at 4:56 p.m. and concluded at 5:03 p.m. In both the handwritten statement and the video-taped statement, Glasper fully confessed to the crimes, but stated that he never intended "to do any of this." Glasper stated that at the time of the crimes, he was "out of my mind" due to extreme intoxication from drugs and alcohol.
¶ 7. In addition to witness statements and Glasper's statements, law enforcement officials requested and received various reports from the state pathologist, the Mississippi Crime Lab, and Reliagene Technologies, which is a nationally accredited private DNA testing facility based in New Orleans.
¶ 8. In due course, the Humphreys County grand jury handed down a five-count indictment against Glasper, charging him with capital murder, rape, sexual battery, house burglary and kidnapping. At the ensuing trial, in addition to the testimony of Crawford, Ellzey, Roseman, Blakely, Lampkin, and Pyles, the State also offered the testimony of Kenneth Winter, Elizabeth Howell, Paul Wilkerson, and Joe Andrews, all from the Mississippi Crime Lab, as well as Nikia Redmond of Reliagene Technologies, Dr. Steven Timothy Hayne, a pathologist, and Zellie Shaw, Chief Deputy Sheriff of Humphreys County.
¶ 9. Using the automated fingerprint identification system (AFIS), Wilkerson, a latent fingerprint examiner at the Mississippi Crime Lab, determined that of the seven latent fingerprints and palm prints lifted from Sanders's bedroom window, six of these prints belonged to Glasper. The DNA evidence and trace evidence were inconclusive as to identifying Glasper. Dr. Hayne, senior pathologist at both Rankin County Medical Center and Madison County Medical Center, as well as Medical Director of the Renal Laboratories, and state pathologist for the Department of Public Safety, testified that the manner of Sanders's death was homicide and the cause of her death was strangulation. Among other evidence also received at trial were the three statements given by Glasper to law enforcement officials on May 31, 2000. Chief Deputy Shaw was instrumental in the taking of these statements, and his trial testimony will be discussed later in this opinion.
¶ 10. At the conclusion of the guilt/innocence phase of the trial, the jury returned verdicts of guilty on all five counts of the indictment. At the conclusion of the sentencing phase of the trial, the jury was unable to unanimously agree on the punishment for capital murder, and the trial judge thus sentenced Glasper to serve a term of life imprisonment without parole. The trial judge also sentenced Glasper to serve separate fifteen-year sentences for rape and sexual battery and separate ten-year sentences for kidnapping and burglary of a dwelling, with all five sentences to be served consecutively. This appeal followed.
¶ 11. Glasper asserts that his three confessions were improperly admitted into evidence by the trial court; that his constitutional rights were violated because he was not provided an initial appearance before a magistrate; that his trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance; that the jury verdict was against the overwhelming weight of the evidence; and, that he was denied a fair trial based on the cumulative prejudicial effect of numerous errors committed at trial.
¶ 12. We combine and discuss together these two assignments of error. Glasper asserts that the State failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Glasper's confessions were intelligently, knowingly and voluntarily given; and, that the confessions were erroneously allowed into evidence since Glasper was arrested and initially interrogated on a peeping tom warrant. After a hearing, the trial court found that the motion to suppress should be denied, and that the 54-page transcript of Glasper's tape-recorded statement, his one page-plus hand written statement, and his video-taped confession, all given on May 31, 2000, should be allowed into evidence.
A. The Transcript of the Suppression Hearing.
¶ 13. The State asserts that the issue of the voluntariness of the confessions is procedurally barred since the record before us does not contain a certified copy of...
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Wilson v. State
...us, that report was not made a part of the record. ¶ 28. This Court was confronted with a similar factual situation in Glasper v. State, 914 So.2d 708, 714-16 (Miss.2005), where the defendant's pro se designation of the record included a transcript of a pretrial suppression hearing, which h......
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...given, we will only reverse the trial court's determination of this issue when such determination is manifestly wrong.” Glasper v. State, 914 So.2d 708, 716 (¶ 21) (Miss.2005). “[W]e will not disturb the trial court's determination on the admissibility of a confession unless the trial court......
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...given, we will only reverse the trial court's determination of this issue when such determination is manifestly wrong." Glasper v. State, 914 So. 2d 708, 716 (¶ 21) (Miss. 2005). "[W]e will not disturb the trial court's determination on the admissibility of a confession unless the trial cou......