Ledford v. State

• Decision Date: 16 March 1978
• Citation: 568 S.W.2d 113
• Parties: George Leonard LEDFORD, Appellant, v. STATE of Tennessee, Appellee.
• Court: Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals

Page 113

568 S.W.2d 113

George Leonard LEDFORD, Appellant, v. STATE of Tennessee, Appellee.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee.

March 16, 1978 Certiorari Denied by Supreme Court June 12, 1978.

Tyrus H. Cobb, Gerald R. Grizzell, Shelbyville, for appellant.

Brooks McLemore, Jr., Atty. Gen., Henry E. Hildebrand, III, Asst. Atty. Gen., Nashville, James S. Kidd, Dist. Atty. Gen., Fayetteville, Rondal T. Wilson, Asst. Dist. Atty. Gen., Shelbyville, William N. Lloyd, Special Prosecutor, Lewisburg, for appellee.

DAUGHTREY, Judge.

OPINION

The defendant-appellant, George Leonard Ledford, was indicted for second degree murder as the result of his wife's death at their rural Marshall County home on the night of May 26, 1976. Upon the defendant's motion, venue was transferred to Bedford County, where Ledford was subsequently tried and convicted by a jury of second degree murder and was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment. On appeal, the defendant raises multiple assignments of error, the most serious of which concern (1) the sufficiency of the evidence to support the verdict, (2) the trial court's failure to grant a mistrial following the prosecutor's comment during closing argument on the defendant's failure to take the stand, and (3) the exclusion of certain entries in the defendant's hospital records. For the reasons set out below, we conclude that the case must be remanded for a new trial.

The factual issues litigated at trial were sharply drawn. It was the State's theory that Ledford shot his wife and then set about to make it look as if the crime had been committed by an unknown intruder. The defense theory was that a burglar had forced open the kitchen door to the Ledford home, and, in some order, murdered Mrs. Ledford, beat Mr. Ledford senseless, and ransacked the house. Ledford, semi-conscious, bloodied and apparently beaten, was found in his kitchen the next morning by a tenant farmer. Whether his wounds were self-inflicted, as the State contended, or were sustained as the result of an assault by an unidentified assailant, as the defendant maintained, thus became the central issue of the trial.

The defendant was hospitalized as a result of his wounds, and, in a statement to police shortly after the homicide, he said that he and his wife had returned from an early evening visit and that he had gone to bed at 9:30 p. m., leaving his wife in the den watching television. He said that he was later awakened by a masked intruder who threatened him and beat him until he lost consciousness. He claimed that he could remember nothing until he came to in the hospital. (An ambulance attendant later testified that Ledford was not unconscious when transported to the hospital, because he was not completely limp; the attending physician, however, described Ledford as "comatose" on his arrival at the hospital.) Ledford maintained in his statement to police that he did not hear any shots fired. Medical testimony indicated that Mrs. Ledford died from two .38 caliber gunshot wounds to the head, either one of which was fatal, both entering near her left ear and exiting through her right ear canal. An autopsy performed on the victim also turned up a six inch laceration to her scalp, which she suffered prior to her death from the gunshot wounds.

The defendant's brother, Carl Ledford, had himself been indicted and acquitted of murdering his wife prior to the homicide in this case. During those proceedings, Leonard Ledford had been made his brother's conservator, and had subsequently been sued by his brother for an accounting. That lawsuit resulted in a $13,000 chancery judgment against the defendant, which remained unsatisfied at the time of the victim's death in this case. In his statement to police, Leonard Ledford said that before physically attacking him, his assailant demanded to know the whereabouts of the "Carl money". It was the defendant's additional theory that his wife had been killed because her interest in the farm property as a tenant by the entirety was an impediment to the successful execution of a lien against the property in satisfaction of the judgment secured by Carl Ledford.

Although there was no evidence whatever of any ill will between the defendant and his wife, the State made an unsuccessful attempt to show an improper relationship between the defendant and his middle-aged bookkeeper, and then argued to the jury that Ledford's motive in killing his wife was to secure clear title to the farm property.

The State also introduced proof that in early July, some six weeks after the murder and at about the same time the local grand jury was scheduled to meet, the defendant left Marshall County and went to Dayton, Ohio, where he registered at a motel under an assumed name. When no indictment was returned, the Marshall County Sheriff swore out an arrest warrant on July 17, and the defendant was arrested in Ohio and brought back to Tennessee. (An indictment was returned against him the following November.) The State insists that the defendant's conduct amounted to flight and that this circumstantial evidence, together with the fact that he was the only known witness to the murder, is sufficient to sustain the jury's verdict, assuming the jury accepted the State's theory that the defendant's wounds were self-inflicted. The defendant offered no explanation at trial for his so-called "trip to Ohio."

In addition, the State produced three expert witnesses from the F.B.I.'s laboratory in Washington, D. C., who testified concerning tests conducted on some 32 items of physical evidence submitted to them, including wood splinters, hair samples, fingernail scrapings, pillows and other items of furnishing, blood samples, floor scrapings, rug fibers, clothes taken from the victim and the defendant, a .38 caliber gun and six .38 caliber bullets found in the Ledford home, and bullet fragments and slugs involved in the shooting. The resulting testimony was a virtuoso demonstration of expertise, but it produced not a single item of direct evidence tending to inculpate the defendant and only one item of arguably incriminating circumstantial evidence: an expert testified that one of the two bullets which caused the victim's death had the same composition as one of the six bullets found in the Ledford home, from which the expert deduced that the two bullets were probably produced by the same manufacturer out of the same "batch." The manufacturer, however, produces some 16 million bullets a day, according to the expert's testimony.

The murder weapon was never identified.

It is clear that the State's case was built entirely on circumstantial evidence, and we know of no better way to describe it than to say it was an extremely close case at best. There was uncontroverted proof that the Ledfords' kitchen door had been forced open and that the house had been partially ransacked. The police testified that because some drawers had been rummaged while others were left unopened, and because the alleged ransacking in some instances appeared to have been done "neatly," they came to disbelieve the defendant's "mysterious intruder" story. They also concluded that the defendant's wounds were "probably" self-inflicted, theorizing that the defendant had used a twisted coathanger to flail himself on the shoulders and down his back, producing pronounced red welts so severe as to have the appearance of cuts. The coathanger was introduced into evidence, as was a picture of the defendant's wounds with the coathanger superimposed over one of the welts. While this photograph tends to establish that the wounds were inflicted with the coathanger, it sheds little or no light on the question of who inflicted the wounds. Indeed, although it appears possible that one might be able to hit oneself on the back with the coathanger in question, the very inflexibility of that object would likewise appear to preclude the infliction of wounds as severe and extensive as those depicted in photographs introduced by the State.

Nevertheless, the jury accepted the State's theory and returned a guilty verdict. A review of the evidence suggests to us that the State's circumstantial case probably was not sufficiently strong or cogent enough to rebut every reasonable theory other than the defendant's guilt, which is, of course, the applicable jury standard in a prosecution based solely on circumstantial evidence. But this court does not sit as a jury on appeal, and we must measure the evidence by a different standard, i. e. whether the proof preponderates against the verdict and in favor of the defendant's innocence. State v. Brown, 551 S.W.2d 329 (Tenn.1977). Measuring the proof against that standard, we are unable to hold that the judgment must be reversed on the insufficiency of the evidence alone.

However, we are concerned that the jury was influenced in reaching its verdict by certain other errors at trial, and given the relative weakness of the State's case, we are unable to say that these errors did not affect the outcome of the trial. The most serious error involved a comment by the prosecutor on the fact that the defendant did not testify in his own defense.

During the opening segment of the State's closing argument, the following colloquy occurred:

General Kidd: Also, that anything referring to the defendant's statement would be the defendant's statement, of course, that he gave our law enforcement officers here, at that time. And of course, not referring to his failure to testify. Then, or not testifying (Interrupted)

Mr. Cobb: Please the Court, we except to that statement, and move for a mistrial.

General Kidd: Certainly, anything I say (Interrupted)

The Court: One moment, please! Ladies and gentlemen of the Jury: Ignore the statement just made by the District Attorney General. It was an improper statement. He should have known better! No reference at all can be made to the failure of the defendant to testify. He has the Constitutional Right not...