Hodges v State
| Decision Date | 20 October 2000 |
| Docket Number | 99-00516 |
| Parties | HENRY EUGENE HODGES v. STATE OF TENNESSEEIN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS OF TENNESSEE AT NASHVILLE |
| Court | Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals |
Direct Appeal from the Criminal Court for Davidson County No. 90-S-1418,
The appellant, Henry Eugene Hodges, seeks post-conviction relief from his 1992 first degree murder conviction and sentence of death. The Davidson County Criminal Court denied the appellant's petition and this appeal was taken. This court is presented with the following issues: (1) the effectiveness of trial counsel; (2) the post-conviction court's failure to provide funds for expert services; and (3) the post-conviction court's denial of a continuance and refusal to bifurcate the post-conviction evidentiary hearing. Following review of the record, we conclude (1) the appellant was not denied the effective assistance of counsel; (2) the post-conviction court properly denied the appellant's request for funds for additional expert services; and (3) the post-conviction court properly denied the appellant's request for a continuance of the evidentiary hearing. Accordingly, we affirm the post-conviction court's finding that the appellant is not entitled to post-conviction relief.
Tenn. R. App. P. 3; Judgment of the Criminal Court is affirmed.
Thomas F. Bloom and Patrick T. McNally, Nashville, Tennessee, for the appellant, Henry Eugene Hodges.
Paul G. Summers, Attorney General and Reporter, Michael Moore, Solicitor General, Kathy Morante, Assistant Attorney General, Victor S. (Torry) Johnson, III, District Attorney General, and Tom Thurman, Assistant District Attorney General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee.
OPINION
In this capital case, the appellant, Henry Eugene Hodges, appeals the judgment of the Davidson County Criminal Court denying his petition for post-conviction relief. In 1992, the appellant entered guilty pleas to first degree premeditated murder1 and especially aggravated robbery.2 At a subsequent sentencing hearing, the jury found the presence of three aggravating circumstances and imposed a sentence of death by electrocution3 for the first degree murder conviction.4 The appellant's conviction and sentence were affirmed on direct appeal by the Tennessee Supreme Court. See State v. Hodges, 944 S.W.2d 346 (Tenn.), cert. denied, 522 U.S. 999, 118 S.Ct. 567 (1997).
On December 11, 1997, the appellant filed a pro se petition for post-conviction relief. The court appointed counsel and amended petitions were filed on March 24, 1998, and on June 11, 1998. A hearing was held on January 20, 1999. On February 8, 1999, the post-conviction court entered an order denying the appellant post-conviction relief.
On appeal, the appellant raises the following issues:
I. Whether the appellant received the effective assistance of counsel;5
II. Whether the post-conviction court's denial of funds for expert services impinged upon the appellant's constitutional rights;
III. Whether the appellant's constitutional right to due process was violated by the post-conviction court's refusal to bifurcate the evidentiary hearing; and
IV. Whether the errors and omissions identified in claims 1 through 20 of the Verified Amended Petition for Post-Conviction, either individually or cumulatively, violated the appellant's constitutional rights.6
After review of the record before this court, we affirm the post-conviction court's denial of relief.
In 1990, the twenty-four-year old appellant and his fifteen-year-old girlfriend, Trina Brown, were living with the appellant's brother in Smyrna when they decided to move to Florida.7 In order to finance the move, the appellant, who on occasion engaged in homosexual prostitution advanced the plan, that he would rob and kill the next person who propositioned him. The appellant discussed with his girlfriend how the crimes would be carried out.
On the night of May 14, 1990, the appellant and Miss Brown went to Centennial Park in Nashville in furtherance of their plan. The victim, Ronald Bassett, approached the appellant and the two men agreed to go to the victim's residence. They left together in the victim's vehicle. Ten or fifteen minutes later, Hodges returned to the park on foot. Accompanied by his girlfriend, the appellant drove his car back to the victim's residence. Upon arriving at the victim's residence, the appellant advised his girlfriend to remain where she was as he exited the car. The appellant later returned to the vehicle wearing gloves and asked his girlfriend to come with him into the house.
Upon entering the residence, Miss Brown observed the victim, alive, laying face down on the bed in his bedroom with a pillow over his head. The appellant had bound the victim's feet together with duct tape and had handcuffed his hands. While the victim lay helplessly, the appellant and his girlfriend ransacked the house. After obtaining the "person identification number" of the victim's automated teller card, the couple took a break, drank a Coke, and discussed whether to kill the victim. The appellant's girlfriend told him to kill Bassett so they could not be identified. The appellant then went into the bedroom and, ignoring the victim's pleas not to kill him, strangled Bassett to death with a nylon rope. Miss Brown testified that she heard Bassett moan and make a choking sound. She stated that it took about five minutes for the victim to die.
After the killing, the appellant attempted to erase any evidence of his presence by wiping off various items in the residence. He then turned the air conditioner in the bedroom on high to prevent deterioration of the body. He and Miss Brown left the residence, taking the victim's automobile and several items of personal property, including jewelry, a gun and a VCR. After withdrawing four hundred dollars from the victim's bank account, the pair returned to the home of the appellant's brother and retired to bed.
The following day, the appellant learned that the victim's body had been discovered. He and his girlfriend abandoned the victim's car in rural Rutherford County and they drove to Georgia in their own vehicle. The couple were eventually arrested in North Carolina. Personal property belonging to the victim was found in their possession; the appellant's fingerprints were discovered inside the victim's residence; and Miss Brown had been video-taped withdrawing money with the victim's automated teller card.
While incarcerated in the Metro jail pending trial, the appellant provided interviews to a television reporter admitting to the murders of eight persons including that of Bassett. These interviews were aired in the Nashville area.
Testifying for the State at the sentencing hearing, Dr. Charles Harlan, the chief medical examiner for Metropolitan Nashville and Davidson County, confirmed that Bassett had died of ligature strangulation. Dr. Harlan opined that Bassett would have remained alive and conscious for at least three and perhaps as long as five minutes during the strangulation. Harlan also found abrasions on the victim's wrists consistent with handcuffs.
The State proved that the appellant was previously convicted of armed robbery, attempted kidnaping and robbery in Hamilton County in 1984. The State also established that the appellant was convicted of murder in Fulton County, Georgia, in July 1990. The record reveals that the Georgia homicide occurred when the appellant and Miss Brown traveled to Atlanta after murdering Bassett. After arriving in Georgia, Hodges made arrangements with a male to engage in homosexual acts for an agreed price. Hodges accompanied the man to his motel room, but when the man was unable to pay the agreed price, Hodges murdered him.
At the sentencing hearing the appellant, the appellant's mother, his brothers and Dr. Barry Nurcombe, a child psychiatrist, presented mitigating proof on behalf of the defense. This proof showed that the appellant was the next-to-youngest of his mother's five sons. His mother and father were not married. His father was actually married to another woman, but engaged in what one of the witnesses described as an "irregular union" with the appellant's mother for eighteen years. The appellant's father abused the appellant's mother and was strict with the appellant's brothers, three of whom were the children of another man. The appellant, however, was his father's favorite and was spoiled. Financial difficulties forced the family to move about frequently, and the appellant's father supported the family only sporadically.
The defense introduced proof to show that Hodges seemed normal until he was twelve years old. At that time, he began to associate with older boys, sniff glue and gasoline, be truant from school, and run away from home. He also engaged in sexual activities with his younger brother and attempted sexual activities with a female cousin. Due to his behavior, he was placed in a juvenile facility in Chattanooga.
A substantial portion of the mitigating proof focused upon the appellant's sexual abuse by a stranger when the appellant was twelve years old. According to the appellant, he accepted a stranger's offer of a ride home when he was playing a short distance from his home on Fessler's Lane in Nashville. Rather than driving Hodges home, the stranger drove Hodges to his home and raped him. Fearing rejection by his homophobic father and driven by guilt, the appellant told no one of this incident until he was arrested in 1990. The appellant contends that this victimization became the catalyst and major contributing cause of his delinquent and later criminal lifestyle.
Dr. Nurcombe testified that, while the appellant suffered from an antisocial personality disorder, low self_esteem, and substance (marijuana) abuse, the killing was motivated by a subconscious...
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