Jones v. State

• Decision Date: 16 August 2007
• Docket Number: No. 2006-KA-00343-SCT.,2006-KA-00343-SCT.
• Citation: 962 So.2d 1263
• Parties: Danny JONES v. STATE of Mississippi.
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court

962 So.2d 1263

Danny JONES v. STATE of Mississippi.

No. 2006-KA-00343-SCT.

Supreme Court of Mississippi.

August 16, 2007.

Richard A. Rehfeldt, Jackson, attorney for appellant.

Office of Attorney General, by Jeffrey A. Klingfuss, attorney for appellee.

EN BANC.

EASLEY, Justice, for the Court.

¶ 1. Danny Jones (Jones) was indicted by the grand jury of Jones County, Second Judicial District, for wilfully and feloniously killing Delores Knight (Knight), without authority of law, with malice aforethought and deliberate design to effect the death of Knight, by shooting her with a shotgun, in violation of Mississippi Code Annotated Section 97-3-19 (Rev.2006). Jones was tried and convicted by a jury for Knight's murder.

¶ 2. The trial court sentenced Jones to serve a term of life in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections, to complete the 18th District Circuit Court's Community Service Program if released before the full sentence is served, and to pay the court costs of $250.50. Jones filed a post-trial motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict (J.N.O.V.), or in the alternative, motion for new trial. The trial court denied said post-trial motions. Jones now appeals his conviction and sentence to this Court.

FACTS

¶ 3. On the evening of January 13, 2001, Knight was shot with buckshot as she walked from an outdoor utility room back into her mother's house located in Soso, Jones County, Mississippi. Knight's mother, Gloria Knight (Gloria), testified that, while Knight was outside carrying the trash to the utility room, she heard "a loud sound like a gunshot." One pellet hit Knight, piercing several vital organs and rupturing both her aorta and inferior vena cava. Once inside the house, Knight walked over to a chair, sat down, breathed three breaths, fell to the floor, and died without uttering a word. Gloria called the sheriff's office. Deputies responded to the call and processed the scene.

¶ 4. Gloria testified that Jones had been involved in a relationship with Knight for approximately two years. She stated that Knight had previously lived with Jones, but Knight had moved in with her sometime in October 2000. Gloria testified that Jones lived about three or four miles down the road from her house, but his mother lived about five hundred feet from her house. Gloria described the relationship between her daughter and Jones as "real troublesome."

¶ 5. Gloria testified that she was aware that Knight had filed misdemeanor charges against Jones in October 2000. As a result, Knight ended the tumultuous relationship with Jones. She testified that Knight was set to go to court on those charges on January 25, 2001. Gloria testified that the charges involved Jones beating Knight, creating a family disturbance, and cutting the phone line.

¶ 6. Before Knight was shot and killed, the three misdemeanor charges filed against Jones in the Jones County Justice Court were as follows: (1) sworn to and filed by Scott Sims on October 19, 2000, for leaving visible signs of abuse on Knight's lip, right arm, lower back, by hitting her with a fist, in violation of Mississippi Code Annotated Section 97-3-7(3) (Rev.2006); (2) sworn to and filed by Knight on October 18, 2000, for causing willful, unlawful, and malicious damage to the phone lines outside the residence by cutting the phone lines in violation of Mississippi Code Annotated Section 97-17-67 (Rev.2006); and (3) sworn to and filed by Knight on October 18, 2000, on behalf of her minor son age seventeen, Phillip Knight, for willfully and unlawfully disturbing the peace by banging on the door of Phillip's dwelling and blowing a car's horn in violation of Mississippi Code Annotated Section 97-35-11 (Rev.2006).

¶ 7. Jones was found guilty on all three misdemeanor charges in justice court and appealed the convictions de novo to county court. By the time Jones went to court on January 25, 2001, on the de novo appeal to the county court, Knight was dead. On appeal, the conviction for domestic violence involving Knight was reversed, but the other two misdemeanors were affirmed. The State contended that the pending charges against Jones provided a motive to murder Knight. The State also argued that Knight's death resulted in the reversal as to the domestic violence conviction received in justice court, since Knight was unavailable to testify at the de novo proceedings on January 25, 2001.

¶ 8. Matt Ishee, investigator for the Jones County Sheriff's Office, testified that when he arrived on the scene, Knight was dead, lying on the floor. The lead investigator, Carl Monk, assigned the case to Investigator Ishee. Investigator Ishee was assigned to process the evidence such as the bullet holes in the framing of the doorway and in the eave of the house. Investigator Ishee testified they recovered double-aught buckshot, .32 caliber pellets. He observed eight shots in the house. He testified, that from his experience with buckshot that size, a shell would contain nine buckshot.

¶ 9. Investigator Ishee discovered shotgun wadding. He "lined up the wadding from where the entrance was made into the carport area where the buckshot had made entry into the frame of the house in the doorway and basically walked straight backwards across from the road and into this brush area across the ditch."

¶ 10. Investigator Ishee discovered three beer cans across the road near some bushes. The beer cans were a yard or two from each other. Two of the beer cans were lying down, one was empty and one was full and unopened. The third beer can was standing up and one-half full. Photographs were taken of the cans, super glue was applied to preserve any prints, and the cans were bagged. From where the beer can was discovered, there was a clear view of Knight's carport.

¶ 11. The cans were sent to the crime lab to be analyzed for latent prints. Jamie Bush, forensic section chief in charge of the latent print section for the Mississippi Crime Laboratory, examined the cans for the presence or absence of latent prints. The prints found on the half-full can were compared with Jones's known print exemplars furnished by the Jones County Sheriff's department. The prints matched. The State rested.

¶ 12. The defense called George Powell, a close friend of Jones, to testify. Powell testified that on the evening of January 13, 2001, Jones was with him in Waynesboro, Mississippi, from approximately 6:30 p.m. until the next day. He testified that they rode around together that evening, drinking. He testified that even though they had several drinks, he could recall what happened that evening. He testified that they had no particular reason to "party" that night. Jones just showed up, and they decided to party.

¶ 13. On cross-examination by the State, Powell was questioned about whether he remembered the time that Jones showed up at his house. He stated that he remembered because he stopped working on cars at his house at the same time every day, sometimes seven days a week. He testified that the time depended on the work, but he usually stopped around 5:00 p.m.

¶ 14. Powell further testified on cross-examination that his former girlfriend, Fanny Loper, was living there with him in January 2001, but she was not there when Jones came over because she was out of town. Powell testified before January 13, 2001, it had been a few years since he had last seen Jones. He testified that they went to a club called "In the Corn Field" together that evening, rode around, and drank. When questioned as to who ran the club, Powell testified that they did not go inside the club. He stated: "I did not go inside. We were sitting outside drinking."

¶ 15. He testified that they sat outside the club from about 8:00 or 9:00 p.m. until 11:00 or 11:30 p.m. They then went back to Powell's place, and Powell talked Jones into spending the night because they had been drinking. Powell could not recall what they talked about that evening. Powell testified that no one saw them together at Powell's house or at the club who could place Jones there.

¶ 16. O.D. Bruce testified that he had been good friends with Jones for approximately nine years. Bruce testified that he drank "quite a bit" of beer, and that he had consumed beer with Jones on many occasions across the road from Jones's mother's house near the house where Knight lived. He testified that it was common to find cans over there. On cross-examination, Bruce said that he had no knowledge of where the beer cans in this case were discovered. Bruce testified from his experience drinking beer that he could not recall a tossed, half-full beer can landing upright.

¶ 17. Jones did not testify. The record reflects that Jones was advised that he had a right to testify or not testify and also that Jones informed the trial court that he did not want his attorney to submit a "lesser-included" instruction.

¶ 18. Sheriff Larry Drake was called as a rebuttal witness. Sheriff Drake, who had been sheriff for approximately twenty-seven years, testified that they patrolled that area where Bruce had said that he and Jones frequently sat around and drank beer. He stated that he had never personally observed anyone sitting out there in that area drinking beer.

DISCUSSION

I. Whether the trial court erred in allowing the introduction of the misdemeanor charges affidavits.

¶ 19. Jones filed a pretrial motion in limine to exclude any testimony relating to several incidents involving Jones which were reported to the Jones County Sheriff Department in October and November 2000. The trial court conducted a hearing outside the presence of the potential jury on whether to admit the evidence of these charges. The defense argued that the evidence was inadmissible as a prior bad act. The prosecutor directed the trial court to consider this Court's holding in Simmons v. State, 813 So.2d 710, 716 (Miss.2002), arguing that, as in Simmons, the evidence established motive. The prosecutor stated in...