Harris v. State

• Decision Date: 07 January 2004
• Docket Number: No. D-2001-1268.,D-2001-1268.
• Parties: Jimmy Dean HARRIS, Appellant v. STATE of Oklahoma, Appellee.
• Court: United States State Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma. Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma

84 P.3d 731

2004 OK CR 1

Jimmy Dean HARRIS, Appellant v. STATE of Oklahoma, Appellee.

No. D-2001-1268.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma.

January 7, 2004.

As Corrected February 5, 2004.

Catherine Hammarsten, Mitch Solomon, Assistant Public Defenders, Oklahoma City, Ok, attorneys for defendant at trial.

Pattye High, Connie Pope, Assistant District Attorneys, Oklahoma City, Ok, attorneys for the state at trial.

Carolyn L. Merritt, Assistant Public Defender, Oklahoma City, Ok, attorney for appellant on appeal. W.A. Drew Edmondson, Attorney General of Oklahoma, Brant M. Elmore, Assistant Attorney General, Oklahoma City, Ok, attorneys for the state on appeal.

OPINION

JOHNSON, Presiding Judge:

¶ 1 Appellant, Jimmy Dean Harris, was charged in Oklahoma County District Court, Case No. CF-1999-5071, with Count 1: First-Degree Murder (21 O.S.Supp.1998, § 701.7(A)); Count 2: Shooting with Intent to Kill (21 O.S.Supp.1999, § 652); and Count 3: Assault and Battery with a Dangerous Weapon (21 O.S.Supp.1999, § 645). The State filed a Bill of Particulars seeking a sentence of death with regard to Count 1, alleging (1) that Appellant knowingly created a great risk of death to more than one person, and (2) that Appellant constituted a continuing threat to society. See 21 O.S.1991, § 701.7(2), (7). Jury trial was held August 22 through September 26, 2001, before the Honorable Virgil C. Black, District Judge. The jury found Appellant guilty as charged on all counts, found that Appellant knowingly created a great risk of death to more than one person, rejected the claim that Appellant posed a continuing threat to society, and recommended a sentence of death on Count 1, life in prison on Count 2, and ten years imprisonment on Count 3.¹ On October 23, 2001, the trial court sentenced Appellant in accordance with the jury's recommendation. Appellant timely lodged this appeal.

FACTS

¶ 2 The long-running domestic problems between Appellant and his wife, Pamela Harris,² culminated on the morning of September 1, 1999, when Appellant entered Mrs. Harris's workplace, shot and killed her employer, Merle Taylor, and seriously injured Mrs. Harris herself. The evidence at trial showed that Appellant and Mrs. Harris had been involved in a tumultuous relationship for about twenty years, and married for the last ten.

¶ 3 Both Appellant and his wife had years of experience in the automobile transmission business. Appellant was a transmission mechanic by trade, and Mrs. Harris had experience in dealing with customers and ordering parts. Through the years, the two often worked together at various transmission shops in several states. In 1998, Mrs. Harris obtained a job at an AAMCO transmission shop in Oklahoma City, owned and operated by Merle Taylor. Appellant was not able to obtain satisfactory employment in Oklahoma City, and worked for a time at a shop in Texas, driving home on the weekends. Although Appellant testified that he worked in Texas because he could make better money there than in Oklahoma City, other evidence suggested Appellant was angry that Taylor would not hire him. Mrs. Harris testified that Taylor did not want to hire Appellant. Taylor was not unsympathetic to the couple's problems, however; in mid-1999, he offered his lake home to the Harrises so they could get away and try to work out their difficulties.

¶ 4 During an argument in mid-August 1999, Appellant made serious and specific threats of violence to Mrs. Harris. Having lost his last transmission job in Texas several months before, and unable or unwilling to obtain a new job, Appellant became increasingly resentful that his wife's boss would not hire him. Appellant threatened to kill his wife, her parents, their daughter, Mrs. Harris's coworkers, and Merle Taylor. Mrs. Harris took the threat seriously, especially after noticing that a.38 caliber handgun that Appellant kept hidden in the garage was no longer there. On or about August 15, 1999, Mrs. Harris left the home with their daughter Kristina; she subsequently obtained a protective order directing Appellant to leave the family home and filed for divorce. Before leaving the home, Appellant vandalized it, removing most furnishings, cutting and burning Mrs. Harris's clothing, burning holes in the carpet with cigarettes, and writing "Miss AAMCO" on the carpet several times with steak sauce. He then broke the house keys off inside the door locks, requiring Mrs. Harris to break down a door to regain entry. Mrs. Harris testified that on August 31, 1999, Appellant called her at the transmission shop and told her he was coming to kill her. A witness observed Appellant driving by the shop later that day.

¶ 5 On the morning of September 1, 1999, Appellant called Mrs. Harris's workplace several times, sometimes demanding to talk to her, other times hanging up unless she answered the phone. Appellant demanded that she give him access to a storage unit containing personal property he claimed was his. Mrs. Harris told him to call her lawyer. During these repeated calls, Appellant asked his wife if she "wanted to live to see another day"; said "You tell Merle I'll get him"; and told his wife, "You just wait." A short time after the telephone calls, Appellant drove his van to the transmission shop, walked in, and demanded to see Mrs. Harris, who was in the break room with Taylor's daughter-in-law, Jessica. Merle Taylor stepped between Appellant and Mrs. Harris and calmly asked Appellant to leave. Appellant then pulled the revolver out of his pants, raised it up, pushed Taylor to the ground, lowered the gun, and shot Taylor twice at close range. Taylor died at the scene. Appellant then chased and shot at Mrs. Harris with the bullets remaining in the six-shot firearm. One bullet hit her hip and traveled through internal organs to her sternum. When the gun would no longer fire, Appellant pistol-whipped his wife repeatedly in the head. Appellant apparently tried to reload the gun, because the spent shells had been manually removed and left on the shop floor, along with extra bullets that Appellant had brought. Appellant then fled the scene, disposed of the gun, abandoned his van, and hid in a friend's garage where police found him the next day.

¶ 6 In addition to the testimony of Pam Harris and numerous co-workers who witnessed the shootings, the State presented evidence that Appellant had been physically and verbally abusive to his wife throughout their twenty-year relationship. In his defense, Appellant presented evidence that a combination of low intelligence, mental illness, and substance abuse prevented him, at the time of the shootings, from being able to form a specific intent to kill either Pam Harris or Merle Taylor. Appellant himself testified in the guilt phase of the trial. He and other witnesses presented testimony about his chronic use of marijuana, his occasional recreational use of Valium, and his depression and intoxication on beer and drugs in the two weeks between his wife leaving him and his taking a loaded firearm to the transmission shop. Appellant claimed that on the morning of the shootings, he had ingested approximately five beers and four or five tablets of Valium. Appellant also presented expert testimony about his general psychological makeup, including relatively low I.Q. scores and possible bipolar disorder. In rebuttal, the State presented its own expert psychological testimony about Appellant's personality disorders, essentially concluding that Appellant exhibited some psychopathic tendencies and appeared to be feigning mental and emotional problems since his arrest.

¶ 7 During the capital punishment phase of the trial, after incorporating all of the guilt-phase evidence, the State presented evidence that Appellant had resisted a prior arrest and that he had assaulted a jailer while awaiting trial in this case. The State also presented victim-impact testimony from Merle Taylor's widow and one of his sons. Besides testimony from Appellant's family, pleading that his life be spared, the defense presented evidence about Appellant's poor home environment as a child, certain experiences in his past that traumatized him, and evidence that his mental illness could be adequately controlled in prison. Additional facts will be presented as relevant to the propositions of error.

I. MOTION FOR MISTRIAL

¶ 8 Jury trial in this case began August 22, 2001. Ten days into the trial, on September 11, 2001, radical Muslim terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashed two of them into the World Trade Center in New York City, flew a third into the Pentagon, and crashed the fourth in Pennsylvania. Thousands of people were killed. The enormity of these attacks created a national emergency. In Proposition 1, Appellant contends that the trial court's refusal to adjourn for a few days or declare a mistrial when these events unfolded denied him a fair trial. We disagree.

¶ 9 Appellant contends that the seriousness of the terrorist events must have either distracted the jury from giving full attention to his case, or else prejudiced the jury against him. An accused is entitled to be tried by a jury free from outside influences which could affect the fairness of the proceeding. U.S. Const. Amends. VI, XIV; Okla. Const. art. II, § 20. Sheppard v. Maxwell, 384 U.S. 333, 86 S.Ct. 1507, 16 L.Ed.2d 600 (1966). He is not, however, entitled to jurors ignorant of the offense for which the defendant is on trial; and he is certainly not entitled to jurors ignorant of other events taking place in the world around them.

¶ 10 Appellant offers no evidence that the terrorist events either distracted the jurors from the evidence being presented in his trial, or prejudiced them in any way against the defense.³ Appellant's claim that the jurors likely identified his case with the terrorist acts because both involved "a sudden and unexpected attack on people in the workplace" is unconvincing. Even the sketchy...