Hyde v. Com., 760732

• Decision Date: 22 April 1977
• Docket Number: No. 760732,760732
• Parties: James Taylor HYDE v. COMMONWEALTH of Virginia. Record
• Court: Virginia Supreme Court

Page 74

234 S.E.2d 74

217 Va. 950

James Taylor HYDE v. COMMONWEALTH of Virginia.

Record No. 760732.

Supreme Court of Virginia.

April 22, 1977.

Paul M. Shuford, Richmond (George H. Martin, Jr., Gilbert A. Bartlett, Smith, Athey, Phillips, Bartlett & Skinner, P. C., Williamsburg, on brief), for plaintiff in error.

Thomas D. Bagwell, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Andrew P. Miller, Atty. Gen., Burnett Miller, III, Asst. Atty. Gen., on brief), for defendant in error.

Before I'ANSON, C. J., and CARRICO, HARRISON, COCHRAN, HARMAN, POFF and COMPTON, JJ.

POFF, Justice.

Convicted in a bench trial, James Taylor Hyde was sentenced by orders entered February 9, 1976 to confinement in the penitentiary for 10 years for rape and 15 years for murder of the second degree. On the murder conviction, he was placed on probation without supervision, conditioned upon good behavior for life. Pre-trial psychiatric examinations showed that Hyde, a voluntary patient at Eastern State Hospital whose condition was diagnosed as schizophrenia, paranoid type, was competent to stand trial and assist in his own defense. Members of the commission who conducted post-conviction examinations found that Hyde was not insane but agreed that further psychiatric care was indicated.

The dispositive question is whether the evidence was sufficient to support the two convictions, and under familiar principles, we review the evidence in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth.

The victim, an adult female with a mental age of 10 years, was also a patient at the hospital. At about 3:30 p. m. on September 15, 1975, she appeared at Building 28, crying and upset. Her blouse was unbuttoned and her brassiere was torn. Her clothing was covered with wood debris, and there were signs of blood around her lips, on her brassiere, and on the cuff of her coat. Physical examination revealed contusions on her neck, chest, arms, and abdomen and two lacerations of the vagina. Analysis of a vaginal smear showed the presence of spermatozoa. The victim complained of pain in the abdominal area. Two days later, she died of peritonitis resulting from a ruptured intestine.

The victim told the hospital authorities that a man she described as "a tall, white man" who had offered her a cigarette had taken her into the woods and raped her. She said she did not know his identity. Asked if she were not simply trying to protect someone, she hung her head and cried. The record shows that Hyde was a tall, white man.

Several witnesses testified that they had seen Hyde and the victim together on September 15. Two hospital employees saw them between 1:00 p. m. and 2:00 p. m. in the lounge of Building 9 where Hyde lived. Hyde had his arm around the victim, and they were smoking cigarettes and talking. A third employee testified that she saw them between 1:00 p. m. and 1:30 p. m. walking hand-in-hand on the lawn, and that Hyde had kissed the victim "right in the mouth". A fifteen-year-old patient testified that sometime after the lunch period, which she fixed at 11:30 a. m. to noon, she saw Hyde and a man she did not recognize walking with the victim towards the woods located approximately 50 yards behind Building 27.

The testimony of the investigating officers concerning a series of interviews with Hyde shows that he made many contradictory statements. When first interrogated the day the victim died, he denied being in her company on September 15. Confronted with one of the witnesses who had seen them together, he admitted that he had talked with the victim and had placed his arm around her but denied that he had kissed her or given her cigarettes. Later, he admitted that he had kissed her and had given her cigarettes to which she had become "addicted". Hyde said that he had never had sexual relations with any of the patients, but he was expressly contradicted by a patient who said that she had engaged in sexual intercourse with him. Told that he had been seen in the basement of the administration building kissing a woman and placing his hand on her leg, he first denied the story but, in the presence of the witness, admitted it. At one point, he agreed to "tell everything" if allowed to talk with two doctors he knew but changed his mind before they arrived.

Initially, Hyde denied that he had gone into the woods with the victim. He said that after he gave her the cigarettes, she left Building 9 alone and he lay down and took a nap until 3:15 p. m. Later, he said that he and the victim left Building 9 together about 1:30 p. m. and he could remember nothing after that. Asked if he had gone into the woods with the victim, Hyde answered, "I may have done it, but my conscious won't let my subconscious make me say it."

Still later, in an interview conducted October 23, 1975, the officer asked Hyde where the rape and beating took place. Hyde replied, "In the woods area, behind Building 27." During this interview, Hyde also admitted that he had entered the woods with the victim. Asked who was present, he named the victim, Robert Foxworth, and Claude Tolbert.

Tolbert was never located, but an officer interviewed Foxworth, a patient at the hospital, and read his statement into the record:

"Around the 15th of last September, I left Building 24, to go to the canteen. Ate two donuts and drank a cup of coffee. Left there to go to the lobby. James Hyde and I met in the lobby. James Hyde went out the front door. (The victim) was 'setting' there on the steps, and Hyde sat beside her. He put his arm around her and kissed her. I heard I heard Hyde ask (her) to go in the woods with him. I started to walk off and Hyde called me back, and said 'Bob, I'm going to take (her) to the woods. Come on and go with me, and maybe she'll give you some.' We left to go to the woods behind Building 27. We were all holding hands. When we got into the woods, I asked her to take her clothes off, and she did. I dropped my pants and undershorts, and then had sex with her. After I finished having sex with her, she got up on her feet. I thought that she was going to tell on me, so I hit her in the stomach, and once in the face. She fell down, and I started beating her in the stomach again. I knocked her out, and in a little while she came to and jumped up, and started to run. Hyde was standing there watching me. He left me while I was screwing her."

Foxworth later retracted this statement. He explained that he had confessed because he wanted to "protect" Hyde. Foxworth repeated and retracted his confession "three or four times".

Called by the defense, a psychiatrist who had known Hyde for six years testified that "it is my clinical opinion that at no time during these six years has he ever shown the capacity to be able to show violence, or be involved in an interpersonal violent action." Other psychiatric testimony heard by the trial court before sentence was imposed described Hyde as intelligent, artistically gifted, docile, gentle, and self-critical.

The rape indictment was referenced to former Code § 18.1-44 (Repl.Vol. 1960). One of the classes of rape defined there was carnal knowledge of a female inmate of certain institutions. ^* At trial, the Commonwealth avowed that the victim had never been formally adjudged mentally ill, and Hyde was tried for rape of the first class defined in the statute, i. e., carnal knowledge of "a female of sixteen years of age or more against her will, by force", and the rape and homicide were treated as parts of a unitary course of criminal conduct. We consider the cases in the same posture. All agreed that the evidence was sufficient to establish the...