Mauppin v. State

• Decision Date: 04 May 1992
• Docket Number: No. CR,CR
• Parties: Gary MAUPPIN , Appellant, v. STATE of Arkansas, Appellee. 91-107.
• Court: Arkansas Supreme Court

Page 104

831 S.W.2d 104

309 Ark. 235

Gary MAUPPIN [Garry Mauppins], Appellant, v. STATE of Arkansas, Appellee.

No. CR 91-107.

Supreme Court of Arkansas.

May 4, 1992.

Paul N. Ford, Wynne, for appellant.

Kent G. Holt, Asst. Atty. Gen., Little Rock, for appellee.

DUDLEY, Justice.

Appellant was convicted of two counts of capital murder and two counts of attempted capital murder. He was sentenced to death by lethal injection on one of the counts of capital murder, life imprisonment without parole on the other count of capital murder, and thirty years imprisonment on each count of attempted capital murder. The four convictions are jointly appealed. We reverse and remand for a new trial.

Appellant, Gary Mauppin, and Kenneth Reed, a convicted felon, were both in the Cross County jail the day before the crimes were committed, and appellant told Reed: "Kenny, I am going to kill me two guys. One of them was named Dolphus Sams and another guy out in a trailer house." Early in the evening of August 10, 1985, appellant and Dolphus Sams were riding in Sams's truck when Sams scolded him for breaking into the house of his former girlfriend, Pat Lloyd. Appellant became angry when Sams scolded him and asked to be taken to his home in Colt. Sams took appellant home, where he remained until about 11 p.m., when he left on foot and found a car with the keys in it. He took the car, drove to his former girlfriend's house in Wynne, looked through a window, and saw her in bed with another man, Rick Stapler. He went to a liquor store, bought a six-pack of beer, went home, and got a .22 caliber rifle and a box of shells. He left his home and drove to the mobile home of Dolphus Sams near Fitzgerald Crossing. He opened the door with a key he had possessed for about four months and, once inside, found Dolphus Sams and Ervin Snyder asleep in separate bedrooms. He went into the living room area and, over a considerable period of time, drank the six-pack of beer plus eight or ten more cans of beer which he found in Sams's refrigerator. Sometime between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m., he put a shell in the chamber of the .22 and went into Sams's bedroom, where Sams was sleeping face down. Appellant put the .22 next to the back of Sams's head and shot him. The shot instantly killed Sams. He took $15.00 from Sams's pocket and went to Snyder's bedroom and shot him in the back of the head. Again, death was instantaneous. He said that the reason he shot Snyder was because he thought Snyder might have seen or heard him shoot Sams. He took $75.00 to $100.00 from the top of a chest-of-drawers that was next to Snyder's bed.

Appellant found the keys to Sams's truck and drove the truck to the home of his former girlfriend, Pat Lloyd. He hid outside her house for about an hour, cut her telephone line, and then around 3:30 a.m., climbed inside through a window. Pat Lloyd and Rick Stapler, who were on a mattress in the living room, heard him coming through the window. They saw him with the rifle and lay motionless. When appellant went into a bedroom, Rick Stapler ran toward a nearby house to call the police. As he was running he saw a newspaper deliveryman, Billy Neal, and his wife, Betty Neal. He asked one of them to call the police, and Betty Neal made the call. Wynne policeman Donald Hopper and Cross County Deputy Sheriff Jackie Clark immediately responded. They began to search the house and, by his flashlight beam, Deputy Clark saw a foot sticking out from under a bed. He first motioned to Officer Hopper and then commanded the intruder to "Come out." Officer Hopper joined him and said, "Get up from there." Suddenly, the appellant jumped up and started shooting at them. He hit Officer Hopper seven times and Deputy Clark once.

Appellant quickly left and tried to go to an aunt's house but saw a number of police cars around her house so he left there and, at about 6:30 a.m., went to the home of Mary Jane and David Franz. He told them he had gone to Pat Lloyd's house, cut the phone line with wire cutters and, while there, shot three or four policemen, killing at least two of them. He said, before going to Pat Lloyd's house, he had killed Dolphus Sams and another man who was staying at Sams's mobile home. He said he killed Sams and Snyder in self-defense. He tried to give David Franz the wire cutters and did give him a wristwatch that came from Pat Lloyd's home. The Franzes left and called the police.

The police responded and ordered appellant out of the house. He did not come out. They threw tear gas into the house, and Officer Elmer St. Clair rushed inside just in time to see appellant shoot himself in the head with the .22 caliber rifle. The appellant was transported by ambulance to a Memphis hospital where he underwent brain surgery. He was subsequently returned to Wynne and was confined in the Cross County Hospital where, on August 24, 1985, thirteen days after shooting himself in the head, he gave a confession. Expended cartridge cases found at Sams's mobile home and expended cartridge cases found at Lloyd's home were determined to have been ejected from the .22 caliber rifle which Officer St. Clair recovered from the appellant. The watch that appellant gave David Franz was determined to be Rick Stapler's watch that appellant had taken from Pat Lloyd's house. On August 23, 1985, the appellant was charged with the crimes. Over the next five years there were numerous proceedings involving appellant's mental condition. In October 1990, over five years after the crimes were committed, appellant was tried and convicted.

Appellant makes a number of arguments involving the trial court's orders directing the State Hospital to evaluate his mental condition. In one of the arguments he contends that, under the applicable statutes, the circuit court lost jurisdiction to try him, and therefore, his convictions are void. The factual predicate to his argument is as follows. On September 13, 1985, the circuit court ordered the State Hospital to evaluate the appellant to determine (1) his capacity to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law and (2) whether appellant was aware of the nature of the charges and capable of cooperating effectively with his attorney in the preparation of his defense. On December 10, 1985, Dr. Roy Ragsdill, the Director of Forensic Psychiatry Services of the State Hospital, responded that appellant was unaware of the nature of the charges and the proceedings against him and that he was unable to cooperate with his attorney. On the basis of that report, and the statute then in effect, Ark.Stat.Ann. § 41-607 (Supp.1985), the circuit court ordered appellant committed to the State Hospital for a period not to exceed one year. Exactly one year later, on December 10, 1986, Ruben Harris, a Staff Physician for the State Hospital reported to the trial court:

It is my opinion that Mr. Mauppin is still suffering from the mental defect, Dementia Secondary to Trauma to the head with residual aphasia, for which he was found not competent to stand trial for first degree murder in that he still can marginally communicate on any complex thought process and express himself in a limited way using short simple sentences only. His comprehension of what is said to him appears to be even more limited than his expressing himself.

On February 20, 1987, Dr. Ragsdill again gave the trial court a letter of evaluation. In it, Dr. Ragsdill wrote:

In my opinion, he continues to be unable to appreciate the charges and proceedings against him in any rational way and unable to assist effectively in the preparation of his own defense due to the neurological residuals of his self-inflicted head wound. He continues to have severe difficulties in comprehending language and in expressing his own thoughts. In my opinion, it is not likely that he is going to improve sufficiently ever to be able to be considered competent to stand trial.

Although the record does not give us the exact date, it was apparently just after this letter that appellant was returned to the Department of Correction as a parole violator to serve the remainder of a prior sentence. On January 25, 1988, while appellant was still in prison, the State asked for a re-evaluation. The trial court immediately ordered another evaluation. For some reason unknown to us, but agreed by the parties not to be the fault of either the State or the appellant, appellant was not taken to the State Hospital for the evaluation. Nine months later, on October 21, 1988, the trial court ordered the Sheriff of Cross County to go to the Department of Correction, get appellant, and take him to the State Hospital for a re-evaluation. On December 13, 1988, David A. Pritchard, a staff psychologist, not a psychiatrist as required by Ark.Code Ann. § 5-2-305, issued the report on behalf of the State Hospital which provided in part:

Diagnosis: Axis I--Dementia secondary to gunshot wound to head, Moderate; Axis II--Deferred; Axis III--Bilateral, mild to profound, sensorineural hearing loss, secondary to gunshot wound to head.

The defendant appears to be unaware of the nature of the charges and the proceedings taken against him. He is not capable of cooperating effectively with an attorney in the preparation of his defense.

At the time of the commission of the alleged offense, the defendant did not lack the capacity to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law.

The report did not state whether the appellant's condition was of a nature that would preclude fitness to proceed at some future date or whether the appellant presented a danger to himself or others.

By March 3, 1989, appellant had been released by the Department of Correction to the custody of the Sheriff of Cross County to be held on the charges filed in this case. The State, on March 3, again moved for another evaluation. The trial court immediately ordered a...