Guilmette v. State
| Decision Date | 27 June 2013 |
| Docket Number | No. 71A04–1205–CR–250.,71A04–1205–CR–250. |
| Citation | 986 N.E.2d 335 |
| Parties | Douglas A. GUILMETTE, Appellant–Defendant, v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee–Plaintiff. |
| Court | Indiana Appellate Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Philip R. Skodinski, South Bend, IN, Attorney for Appellant.
Gregory F. Zoeller, Attorney General of Indiana, Karl M. Scharnberg, Deputy Attorney General, Indianapolis, IN, Attorneys for Appellee.
Douglas Guilmette appeals his conviction for murder. We affirm.
Guilmette raises three issues, which we reorder and restate as:
I. Whether the trial court erred by admitting evidence.
II. Whether the trial court abused its discretion by instructing the jury on accomplice liability.
III. Whether the evidence is sufficient to sustain the conviction.
Guilmette and the victim, Greg Piechocki, worked for Kevin Rieder's moving company and sometimes stayed at Rieder's home on South Walnut Street in South Bend. Rieder kept several baseball bats in his home for protection.
Guilmette did not get along with Piechocki, who was like a “little brother” to Rieder. Tr. p. 227. Guilmette thought that Piechocki was “an a* *hole” and that Rieder let Piechocki “get away with all kinds of sh*t.” Id. at 660.
On the evening of September 13, 2010, Rieder and Piechocki arrived at Rieder's home and found Guilmette on the front porch. They all went inside and watched Monday Night Football. While they were all in the living room, Rieder paid Piechocki approximately $300 in cash for a couple of jobs. Around 12:30 a.m., Rieder took a sleeping pill, turned the fan in his bedroom on high, closed his door, and went to bed. Piechocki later went to bed in the spare bedroom.
At 5:25 a.m., surveillance videos showed Guilmette driving Piechocki's car into a Walmart parking lot. Guilmette went into the store, picked out a cell phone and some movies, concealed them in his clothing, and paid for a box of doughnuts with a large wad of cash. Just after 6 a.m., Guilmette went into the Meijer store just across the street from Walmart, picked out two liquor bottles, concealed them in his clothing, and paid for a box of doughnuts.
Later that morning, Rieder's neighbor Kyle Bowerman saw Guilmette driving Piechocki's car at about 7 a.m. Bowerman had backed his car out of his garage into an alley to take his wife to work, but stopped in the middle of the alley when the car started to whine. As he started to put some power steering fluid in, he heard a car approaching. From the sound of the motor, he could tell “it was coming pretty fast.” Id. at 192. Bowerman looked up and saw Guilmette driving Piechocki's car. He put his hand up to say he was almost finished, but Guilmette “all of the sudden” backed out quickly, drove around the block, and parked on South Walnut across the street from Rieder's home. Id.
When Rieder woke up around 8 a.m., he noticed that a door to the home was open with the screen door propped open and that a blue tarp that usually covered a dirt pile in the backyard was missing. Rieder spoke with Guilmette on the phone about what he had observed, but Guilmette denied knowing anything about the door or the tarp.
Rieder tried calling Piechocki in the afternoon because they were scheduled to play in a pool league that night, but Piechocki did not answer. Later in the day, Rieder noticed that Piechocki's car was outside on the street and figured he might be in the home. He opened the door to the spare bedroom, turned on the light, and saw Piechocki's body partly covered by a pink comforter. There was blood on the walls and blood pooled near Piechocki's head. Rieder called 911. The blood spatter evidence indicated that the spare bedroom door was open at the time of the murder. The blood spatter evidence also indicated that Piechocki was leaning up with his head level with the top of the headboard for some of the strikes and that he was lying down for other strikes.
Later that evening, on September 14, 2010, Detective David Wells picked up Guilmette at a Motel 6 and interviewed him at the St. Joseph County Metro Homicide Unit. Guilmette said Piechocki was a “fricking a* *hole” to him. Id. at 661. However, he denied any involvement in the murder and claimed he left Rieder's home in the morning on a bicycle with just six dollars to shoplift at Walmart and Meijer.
Detective Wells interviewed Guilmette at the Metro Homicide Unit a second time on September 16, 2010. Guilmette again stated he had ridden a bicycle to Walmart and Meijer on the morning of the crime, but when he was told surveillance videos showed him driving Piechocki's car, he admitted lying about the bicycle and said he had stolen Piechocki's keys from the bedroom after Piechocki had fallen asleep. He repeatedly denied taking Piechocki's money. However, when he was told surveillance videos showed him with a wad of cash, he admitted stealing Piechocki's money as well.
On September 16, 2010, at the conclusion of the second interview, Guilmette was arrested for the Walmart and Meijer thefts. Officer Thomas Cameron collected Guilmette's clothing and shoes, took them to an in-house lab area, and saw what he believed to be spots of blood on the shoes. Guilmette was given other clothes to wear and then transported to the jail, where he was given jail clothing.
Without a search warrant, Guilmette's shoes and several other items were transported to the Indiana State Police Lab on September 30, 2010, for blood and DNA analysis. A red stain on one of the shoelaces tested presumptively for blood. Because the stain was so small and a sample needed to be retained for DNA testing, no confirmatory test for blood was done. DNA testing of the stain gave a mixture from which Piechocki and Guilmette could not be excluded.
Later, multiple people came forward with information and testified at trial that Guilmette had confessed to the murder. Guilmette's cousin Cynthia Gyuriak contacted the police on October 14, 2010, and informed them that Guilmette told her he “couldn't stand [Piechocki]” and that he “wanted to f*ck [Piechocki] up.” Id. at 350. In another conversation after the murder, Guilmette further told Gyuriak that he “beat [Piechocki's] head in with a f*cking baseball bat,” and that he “Louisvilled him with a bat.” Id. at 352. Guilmette also told her that he wrapped the bat in a tarp from Rieder's home and put it somewhere in the woods in Rum Village and that he stole movies and got doughnuts from Walmart and Meijer to be caught on camera for an alibi.
Kenneth Fox, Shawn Fox, and Edward Russell were each housed in the St. Joseph County Jail with Guilmette at different times pending trial. Guilmette told Kenneth that: (1) he had been living at a home with Rieder and Piechocki, (2) there were lots of bats in the home including one behind the couch, (3) Piechocki had been beaten with a bat while he was sleeping, (4) Piechocki was “missing like half his face,” and there was blood everywhere in the room, id. at 390, (5) he might have gotten DNA on his shoes when he walked through the bedroom, and (6) he washed his clothes two or three times before he gave them to the police to eliminate any DNA evidence. During one of their conversations, Kenneth said that if he had committed a murder, the body would never be found. Guilmette responded that “his problem is, is his body was found.” Id. at 391. Guilmette also said that if he was found guilty, he would get a tattoo of a “little batman” holding a baseball bat in its feet. Id. at 385, 392.
Guilmette told Shawn that he and Piechocki got into a big fight one night. In the late hours of the night, Guilmette grabbed a bat from Rieder's room, went into Piechocki's room, stood over him, “snapped out,” id. at 401, and started hitting him with the bat. He told Shawn he lost track of how many blows he dealt after twenty. After the murder, he showered, changed clothes, and drove to Walmart and Meijer to establish an alibi through video surveillance. He then went to a friend's house, and the friend put him up in a hotel. Guilmette further told Shawn that he had told his cousin what had happened and was worried she would turn him in, but that he would have his Aunt Judy say his cousin was lying, did drugs, and could not be believed.
Guilmette told Russell that he was at Rieder's home when he “beat [Piechocki] upside the head with a baseball bat.” Id. at 458. Guilmette said “blood went everywhere” and explained that he “just kept beating him and beating him” to prevent Piechocki from getting up. Id. Guilmette took Piechocki's keys and $280 from his pocket, wrapped the bat and his clothes in a tarp, drove somewhere and dumped everything in a garbage bin, went to a Motel 6, and “got a [n] 8 ball of crack cocaine and a hooker.” Id. at 466.
In November 2010, Guilmette learned from a jail inmate that Rieder was telling everyone that Guilmette had killed Piechocki. Hoping the police would focus more on Rieder, Guilmette asked for a third police interview in which he stated that Rieder was not asleep but awake the whole time and knew Guilmette took Piechocki's car. He explained that he initially lied about Rieder being asleep because Id. at 706–07.
On December 21, 2010, the State charged Guilmette with murder, two counts of theft, and being an habitual offender. Guilmette filed a motion to suppress the DNA evidence found on his shoe, which the trial court denied after a hearing.
At a jury trial, Rieder, Bowerman, Wells, Cameron, Gyuriak, Kenneth Fox, Shawn Fox, Russell, and others testified for the State. Forensic pathologist Joseph Prahlow also testified, determining that Piechocki died of multiple blunt force trauma and that his injuries could be consistent with being struck with a baseball bat. Prahlow conservatively estimated Piechocki suffered...
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Guilmette v. State
...DNA evidence found on his shoe. In a published opinion, a panel of our Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court. Guilmette v. State, 986 N.E.2d 335, 343 (Ind.Ct.App.2013). As to the DNA evidence from Guilmette's shoe, the panel stated it should not have been admitted but found the error ha......
- Guilmette v. State