Lockhart v. State, 45S00-8911-CR-851

• Decision Date: 08 March 1993
• Docket Number: No. 45S00-8911-CR-851,45S00-8911-CR-851
• Citation: 609 N.E.2d 1093
• Parties: Michael LOCKHART, Appellant (Defendant Below), v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee (Plaintiff Below).
• Court: Indiana Supreme Court

Page 1093

609 N.E.2d 1093

Michael LOCKHART, Appellant (Defendant Below), v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee (Plaintiff Below).

No. 45S00-8911-CR-851.

Supreme Court of Indiana.

March 8, 1993.

Daniel L. Bella, Crown Point, for Appellant.

Linley E. Pearson, Atty. Gen., Arthur Thaddeus Perry, Deputy Atty. Gen., Indianapolis, for Appellee.

SHEPARD, Chief Justice.

A Lake County jury convicted appellant Michael Lockhart of murdering a sixteen-year-old girl. Multiple deep stab wounds inflicted with a large knife left the victim mutilated to the point of being partially eviscerated. The trial court sentenced Lockhart to death. The aggravating circumstances were intentional murder during the commission of a robbery and a conviction in Texas for murdering a police officer. His case is before us on direct appeal. Ind. Appellate Rule 4(A)(7).

Lockhart alleges several specific errors which we summarize for purposes of introduction:

1) Evidence of other crimes admitted during the State's case-in-chief;

2) Expert testimony by a doctor who did not personally examine victims;

3) Admission of DNA test results;

4) Use of Lockhart's criminal history during the penalty phase;

5) Due process ramifications of evidence about an unrelated murder not reduced to conviction; and

6) Use of a Texas murder conviction as a statutory aggravating circumstance.

We affirm.

Facts

Lockhart was convicted of murdering Windy Gallagher on October 13, 1987, but a review of the evidence which led to his conviction and sentence is best framed in chronological order, beginning with his actions the day before, on October 12, 1987.

On Monday, October 12, Tammy Lair was walking in her north-side Chicago neighborhood when Lockhart attacked her at knifepoint and fled with her purse. He drove off in a blue Toyota Celica. Lair survived the attack.

The next evening, across the state line in Griffith, Indiana, Christy Gallagher came home to the apartment where she lived with her mother and sister Windy. She saw no signs of forced entry. After spending about thirty minutes in the apartment, Christy discovered Windy's body in the bedroom, nude from the waste down, hands tied behind her back, her bra pushed up above her breasts. There was a large pool of blood, and her intestines were hanging out. Windy had been stabbed four times in the neck and seventeen times in the abdomen. Among the items missing from the apartment were a picture of Windy, Windy's grey clutch purse, and a pocket calendar with Windy's name on it. Investigators discovered fingerprints on a water glass and a palm print on the wall of the bedroom. At trial, an expert testified that the prints matched Lockhart's.

Two days after the Gallagher murder, Tammy Lair learned that a man on the south side of Chicago had her purse. When she retrieved it, she discovered Windy Gallagher's grey clutch purse and calendar inside. At trial, Lair recognized a photograph of the blue Toyota and identified Lockhart as her attacker. Christy identified the calendar and grey purse as belonging to her sister.

In early November 1987, Lockhart and the blue Toyota spent several days at a motel in Toledo, Ohio. Lockhart told the motel manager that he had lost his keys and requested a ride to a local car dealer so he could get a new set. A motel employee drove Lockhart to a dealer, where Lockhart test-drove a red Chevrolet Corvette. During the test drive, Lockhart pulled a gun on the car salesman, robbed him of his wallet, pushed him out of the car and drove off. ¹ A few days later, Toledo police were called to the motel to tow the blue Toyota which Lockhart abandoned. The motel manager and employee identified Lockhart at trial.

Tina Walgenbach, a woman in Chicago who had dated Lockhart, testified that Lockhart missed her Halloween party in 1987, but that he came back to Chicago in a red Corvette a week or two later. He told her he planned to go to Florida.

Less than three months later, on January 20, 1988, fourteen-year-old Jennifer Colhouer was raped and stabbed to death in a bedroom of her parents' home in suburban Tampa, Florida. Eyewitnesses placed Lockhart and the red Corvette in the neighborhood on the day of the murder. A DNA comparison of semen found on the victim and blood drawn from Lockhart showed a match. There were several striking similarities to the Gallagher murder, so the trial judge admitted evidence of the Florida crime under the modus operandi rule to prove identity.

Lockhart's crime spree eventually took him to Texas, where he murdered a police officer in the city of Beaumont on March 22, 1988. A Texas jury found him guilty of capital murder on October 4, 1988. During jury selection, Lockhart tried to escape the courtroom by jumping through a third-story glass window. He was injured in the fall. While recuperating in the hospital, he volunteered a statement that he had killed between twenty and thirty people and inquired as to how that might compare with Ted Bundy. ² As with the armed robbery from Ohio, evidence about Lockhart's crime and statements in Texas were kept from the jury until the penalty phase.

I. Evidence of Other Crimes

Lockhart argues that the trial court erred by admitting evidence of the Chicago robbery and the Florida murder during the State's case-in-chief. We discuss the admissibility of these two incidents separately, turning first to the robbery of Tammy Lair in Chicago on October 12, 1987.

A. Chicago Robbery

Lockhart correctly contends that evidence of criminal acts other than those charged are generally inadmissible to prove a defendant's guilt. However, "such evidence may properly be introduced for the purpose of showing intent, motive, purpose, identity, or a common scheme or plan." Bedgood v. State (1985), Ind., 477 N.E.2d 869, 872. "That is, such evidence may be admissible despite its tendency to show bad character or criminal propensity, if it makes the existence of an element of the crime charged more probable than it would be without such evidence." Id.

The facts before the trial court clearly supported the trial judge's decision to admit the evidence: Lockhart robbed Lair of her purse on Monday, Gallagher was killed in an adjacent county and her purse taken on Tuesday, Lair retrieved her purse on Thursday and found Gallagher's purse and calendar inside. This is strong circumstantial evidence connecting Lockhart to the murder of Windy Gallagher. It is probative of identity and thus makes the existence of an element of the crime charged more probable than it would be without such evidence. The fact that Lair's purse passed through the hands of one or more persons before she recovered it goes to the weight of the evidence in this instance and not to its admissibility. There was no error in admitting Tammy Lair's testimony.

B. Florida Murder

We likewise affirm the trial court's decision to admit evidence about the killing of Jennifer Colhouer as a "signature crime" probative of identity.

As we said recently in Lannan v. State (1992), Ind., 600 N.E.2d 1334, in a review of the various theories under which evidence of other crimes may be admitted:

[T]he State may prove identity by showing that the similarities between the prior offense and the crime charged are so strong and the method so clearly unique that it is highly probable that the perpetrator of both is the same person. "However, the repeated commission of similar crimes is not enough to qualify for the exception to the general rule. The acts or methods employed must be so similar, unusual, and distinctive as to earmark them as the acts of the accused."

Id. at 1340 (citation omitted) (quoting Willis v. State (1978), 268 Ind. 269, 272, 374 N.E.2d 520, 522).

Comparison of the Colhouer and Gallagher murders shows them to be earmarked as acts of the accused. Indeed, had Lake County investigators been on the scene in Florida, they no doubt would have concluded that the killer of Windy Gallagher had struck again a thousand miles away. They would have observed that both victims were teenage girls, killed in their own homes in the late afternoon hours after school. Neither case showed any signs of forced entry, suggesting the modus operandi of a criminal who enters a dwelling more through guile than strength. Both victims were found with their bras pushed up around the breasts. Both had their pants and underwear removed. Photographs show that a cloth strap has been placed around Gallagher's lower face, causing abrasions just at the chin and below; Colhouer has similarly suffered abrasions just under the chin.

Both suffered large, deep abdominal wounds in the same area, inflicted with a large knife and with great force. Both suffered wounds with irregular edges caused by a horizontal cutting motion as the blade was removed, indicating particular ferocity and an intention to mutilate. Both suffered small, prickly puncture wounds about the breasts, not fatal in and of themselves, but a sign that the perpetrator tortured his victims. Both bodies were found in a bedroom; both had been moved after the stabbings. In each case, the killer fled with a picture of his victim.

As the prosecuting attorney told the jury in final argument, Lockhart left "a signature as it were with the point of a knife." (Record at 2306). There was no error in the admission of the Florida murder. It was truly a signature crime, highly probative of the identity of Windy Gallagher's killer.

II. Pathologist's Testimony

The prosecution called a Florida pathologist, Dr. Joan Wood, in order to establish that the Colhouer and Gallagher homicides were sufficiently similar to warrant admitting evidence about Florida crime. Wood was the chief medical examiner in the Florida county where Jennifer Colhouer was murdered. She compared the autopsy reports from the two murders and rendered an expert opinion about the similarities which we have noted above. She did not personally conduct either of the postmortem examinations. ³

Lockhart argues...