Horton v. State
| Decision Date | 18 March 2016 |
| Docket Number | CR–12–0381. |
| Citation | 217 So.3d 27 |
| Parties | Derek Tyler HORTON v. STATE of Alabama. |
| Court | Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals |
Alabama Supreme Court 1150957.
Bryan A. Stevenson, Ryan C. Becker, and Angela Setzer, Montgomery; and Glenn L. Davidson, Mobile, for appellant.
Luther Strange, atty. gen., and Tina Coker Hammonds, asst. atty. gen., for appellee.
Derek Tyler Horton was convicted of three counts of capital murder for the murder of Jeannette "Nettie" Romprey. The murder was made capital: (1) because it was committed during the course of a robbery in the first degree, see § 13A–5–40(a)(2), Ala.Code 1975; (2) because it was committed during the course of an arson in the first degree, see § 13A–5–40(a)(9), Ala.Code 1975; and (3) because it was committed during the course of a burglary in the first degree, see § 13A–5–40(a)(4), Ala.Code 1975. By a vote of 10–2, the jury recommended that Horton be sentenced to death for his capital-murder convictions. The trial court followed the jury's recommendation and sentenced Horton to death.
The evidence adduced at trial indicated the following. On Friday, April 9, 2010, Romprey visited her friend, Deborah Ann Niven. The two shopped that afternoon and Niven cooked dinner for Romprey that evening. Romprey left Niven's house between 8:30 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. Niven testified that Romprey was "going straight home." (R. 827.)
At approximately 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, April 10, 2010, the Grand Bay Volunteer Fire Department received a report of a fire at 14250–A Old Highway 90. When firefighters arrived at the scene, they found a double-wide mobile home engulfed in flames. The fire was "fully involved" and the roof of the mobile home had collapsed. (R. 830.) Firefighters worked for three hours to extinguish the blaze. Once the fire was out, firefighters discovered badly charred human and canine remains in the north corner of the mobile home, in what appeared to have been a bedroom. Through DNA testing, the human remains were determined to be those of Jeannette Romprey.
Dr. Eugene Hart, a medical examiner with the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences ("DFS"), performed the autopsy on Romprey's remains and also examined the canine remains that had been found in the mobile home. Dr. Hart testified that Romprey's body had been badly burned in the fire and that her internal organs had been charred. Although all of Romprey's body had been badly burned, Dr. Hart stated that the right side of Romprey's body was more severely burned than her left side. The right side, Dr. Hart said, was so badly burned that all of Romprey's ribs on that side were missing. Romprey was also missing both of her forearms and hands. In contrast, Dr. Hart said, there was "some relative sparing of the skin on the left side of the body." (R. 1155.) Dr. Hart stated that Romprey's blood tested negative for carbon monoxide, which indicated that Romprey was already dead when the fire started. Dr. Hart testified that the cause of Romprey's death was two gunshot wounds
to the right side of her head. Both bullets, Dr. Hart said, followed a downward trajectory from the right side of Romprey's head toward the left side, penetrating Romprey's brain, and coming to rest near Romprey's brain stem. Dr. Hart said that either bullet would have been sufficient, by itself, to cause Romprey's death. Dr. Hart also stated that an X-ray of the canine remains found in the mobile home showed no bullets inside the dog's body. However, Dr. Hart said that he could not determine if a bullet had passed through the dog.
Deputy State Fire Marshals Ken Smith and Michael Tally investigated the fire at Romprey's mobile home. They examined the scene and what was left of the mobile home, contacted the company that had sold the mobile home to Romprey and that serviced the mobile home, and obtained weather reports for the time of the fire. Based on the fire patterns and the degree of destruction, Smith and Tally determined that the fire originated in the area where Romprey's remains were found.1 Weather reports indicated that there had been no inclement weather in the area at the time of the fire that could have caused the fire. An examination of debris at the scene and what little was left of the structure of the mobile home revealed no wiring or electrical problems, and it was determined that there had been no service calls for the mobile home, thus revealing no apparent accidental cause for the fire. The inability to find evidence of any accidental cause for the fire coupled with "the way the fire patterns were" led Smith and Tally to eliminate accident as a cause of the fire. (R. 881.) Smith and Tally also found no evidence of accelerants or ignitable liquids at the scene. However, both testified that accelerants are often completely consumed by fire and leave no trace, and Tally stated that this would be particularly true with a mobile home, which has a floor that is above ground. Smith and Tally also received information that Romprey had been shot twice, that her vehicle had been stolen, and that her mobile home had been burglarized. Absent an apparent accidental or weather-related cause, and given that Romprey had been shot, Smith and Tally both opined that the fire had been intentionally set.
Jerry Hurst, a crime-scene investigator with the Mobile County Sheriff's Department, arrived at the scene of the fire between 5:30 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. the morning of April 10, 2010. He took numerous photographs of the mobile home. As he was preparing to leave, Inv. Hurst noticed a power cord on the ground near the edge of an embankment. When he walked over to collect the cord, he saw at the bottom of the embankment numerous household items, including: two laptop computers; a desktop computer tower; a flat-screen television; several jewelry boxes with jewelry in them; a blue velvet tea-set box and several pieces of a tea set scattered about; a woman's wallet with Romprey's Alabama driver's license in it; and two watches. The items at the bottom of the embankment were collected and processed for fingerprints; no usable fingerprints were found on any of the items.2 The items were identified at trial as belonging to Romprey.
Around 3:20 a.m. the morning of April 10, 2010, the Conecuh County Sheriff's Department began receiving telephone calls from motorists reporting an automobile on the side of Interstate 65 northbound between mile markers 76 and 77 and reporting a man walking along the interstate in the same vicinity. Between 3:20 a.m. and 6:50 a.m. that morning, the Conecuh County Sheriff's Department received a total of five reports from motorists, and it relayed the information from the reports to the Alabama Department of Public Safety, now a division of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency. Chad Emmons, an investigator with the Conecuh County Sheriff's Department, testified that he later contacted the people who had telephoned the morning of April 10, 2010, obtained from them a description of the man they had seen walking along the interstate, and then relayed that description to the Mobile County Sheriff's Department. Inv. Emmons testified that he later went to a gasoline station at Exit 83 on Interstate 65 northbound and watched a surveillance video of the morning of Sunday, April 11, 2010. Inv. Emmons said that the video showed a man matching the description the motorists had provided; he stated that the man was Horton.
Around 8:00 a.m. the morning of April 10, 2010, Cameron Fillingim, a state trooper operating out of Evergreen, was notified of an abandoned automobile on Interstate 65 northbound near mile marker 76. Trooper Fillingim went to the area and found a Chrysler PT Cruiser automobile "resting against a tree" in a ditch off the interstate. (R. 901.) The vehicle had only "one very, very small dent on the front bumper" and no other body damage. (R. 901.) The keys were in the ignition, the ignition was on, and the vehicle was in drive, but the engine was not running. It was later determined that the vehicle was out of gasoline. Trooper Fillingim testified that there were clothes and jewelry in the vehicle. Trooper Fillingim notified his dispatcher to have a wrecker come tow the vehicle. A representative of Raap's Towing arrived and towed the vehicle to Brewton. Trooper Fillingim testified that, in the process of towing the vehicle, both he and the tow-truck driver touched the steering wheel of the vehicle.
Corporal David Tunink, an investigator with the major crimes division of the Mobile County Sheriff's Department in 2010 and the lead investigator in this case, went to the scene of the fire on Old Highway 90 the morning of April 10, 2010. He noticed a two-story house at the rear of the property on which the mobile home sat. The garage door to the house was partially open, and a Toyota Camry automobile was parked in the garage. No one was in the house. Cpl. Tunink ran the license plate of the Toyota Camry and found that it was registered to Samantha Alspaugh, who was later determined to be Romprey's daughter. Cpl. Tunink then entered Alspaugh's information into a computer database known as "ALACOP" and found that Romprey resided on the same property as Alspaugh. This was the first indication to law enforcement as to the identity of the human remains in the mobile home which, as noted above, were later confirmed through DNA testing to be those of Romprey. After finding Romprey's name, Cpl. Tunink searched records and discovered that Romprey owned a Chrysler PT Cruiser automobile; that vehicle was not at the scene of the fire. After contacting Alspaugh's husband, Romprey's son-in-law,3 and determining that the vehicle should have been at the mobile home, Cpl. Tunink entered the information regarding the PT Cruiser into the National Crime Information Center ("NCIC") database as a stolen vehicle. Within 15 minutes, the state trooper post in Evergreen contacted Cpl. Tunink and informed...
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