Mazzan v. State
| Decision Date | 30 January 1984 |
| Docket Number | No. 12437,12437 |
| Citation | 100 Nev. 74,675 P.2d 409 |
| Parties | John Francis MAZZAN, Appellant, v. The STATE of Nevada, Respondent. |
| Court | Nevada Supreme Court |
David G. Parraguirre, Chief Deputy Public Defender, Jane G. McKenna, Deputy Public Defender, Reno, for appellant.
D. Brian McKay, Atty. Gen., Carson City, Mills Lane, Dist. Atty. and Gary H. Hatlestad, Deputy Dist. Atty., Reno, for respondent.
This is an appeal from a judgment of conviction upon a jury verdict of first degree murder and from imposition of the death penalty. For reasons set forth hereinafter, we affirm the conviction of first degree murder, vacate the imposition of the death penalty and remand the case for a new penalty hearing and sentencing.
Much of the last twenty-four hours of the life of the victim were spent with appellant. The victim and appellant were apparently friends, having been introduced because of a common denominator involving drugs. Four witnesses saw the victim and Mazzan together during the day preceding the occasion of the victim's death. The last of the four witnesses was with the victim at the latter's residence until approximately 12:20 a.m. on December 21, 1978. Later that morning, the victim's father came by to visit his son. The door was slightly ajar, despite the fact that the victim was in the habit of locking his door with a door-knob lock, a deadbolt lock and a latch. The victim's father entered the kitchen area of the small one-room residence and saw his son lying dead in a pool of blood.
Police investigating the scene found that the decedent had been stabbed fifteen times. Many of the chest wounds had the same depth and angle, suggesting that the victim was probably asleep at the time of the attack and did not immediately react. The pattern of holes in a bloody blanket near the victim which matched the stab wounds on the body, the blood surrounding those blanket holes and the blood on the couch also suggested that he was asleep on the couch when he was first assaulted. The attack apparently concluded in the kitchen area, just three or four strides from the couch. Footprints in the pool of blood surrounding the victim contained only one unaccounted for shoe pattern, a nobbed sole without a great deal of wear. No bloody footprints were found in the snow outside the residence. No sign of forced entry to the residence was detected. Investigators also found no money or narcotics on the premises, although the victim was known to have both shortly before his death.
Mazzan was contacted by investigators in Las Vegas and later in Reno concerning his knowledge of events surrounding the victim's death. Mazzan said he left the victim just after midnight. When police asked Mazzan about some blood on the inside of his car window, he admitted he was at the scene of the killing when the attack occurred.
Mazzan offered the following explanation of events leading up to the victim's violent demise. During the evening he and the victim had been smoking a considerable amount of high quality Hawaiian marijuana and taping records. When Mazzan went to leave around 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. his car wouldn't start so he asked if he could spend the night. The victim gave Mazzan a pillow and blanket and Mazzan went to sleep behind the couch. Mazzan next remembers being awakened at dawn by the sound of scuffling. He saw an unknown assailant struggle with the victim and run out the door. Mazzan then heard two people run away and drive off in a car. Mazzan thereupon panicked and drove home. He never reported the incident, purportedly because he was afraid of being mixed up in a drug-related killing. When Mazzan arrived at home, he cleaned his shoes and washed his hands "for a long time." He also had his clothes laundered. When police questioned Mazzan about some jogging shoes which he had purchased four months earlier, the pattern of which matched the nobbed sole footprint in the blood at the scene, Mazzan replied that he had thrown them out a month before because they had worn out.
The afternoon of the day of the killing Mazzan went to work and conducted business "as usual." Two days later while commenting about "coming into some money," he paid his delinquent rent of $100.00 from a two--or three-inch roll of bills. That same day he paid $139.90 in cash for a necklace for his wife. Soon thereafter he flew to Las Vegas. Later, three ounces of marijuana and some other narcotics were found at Mazzan's residence.
During the penalty stage of the trial, Mazzan's counsel had the opportunity and obligation to present any evidence of mitigating circumstances. He chose, instead, to harshly berate the jury for returning its guilty verdict during the prior phase. 1 Counsel neither presented any witnesses nor substantially argued any mitigating considerations on his client's behalf; instead, he displayed an open disdain for the jury and virtually invited the jurors to condemn his client to death. The transcript of defense counsel's unique presentation during the penalty phase covers only four pages.
Mazzan first assails his convictions in the guilt phase of his trial by contending that his due process rights were violated when the trial court excused a prospective juror for cause when she voiced objections to the death penalty. The touchstone case regarding this issue is Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 510, 88 S.Ct. 1770, 20 L.Ed.2d 776 (1968), where forty-seven potential jurors were summarily excluded without any effort to find out whether they would invariably vote against the death penalty. The Supreme Court held that "a sentence of death cannot be carried out if the jury that imposed or recommended it was chosen by excluding veniremen for cause simply because they voiced general objections to the death penalty or expressed conscientiousness or religious scruples against its infliction." Id. at 522, 88 S.Ct. at 1777. Explaining its holding, the Court stated:
We repeat, however, that nothing we say today bears upon the power of a State to execute a defendant sentenced to death by a jury from which the only veniremen who were in fact excluded for cause were those who made unmistakably clear (1) that they would automatically vote against the imposition of capital punishment without regard to any evidence that might be developed at the trial of the case before them, or (2) that their attitude toward the death penalty would prevent them from making an impartial decision as to the defendant's guilt.
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...introduced inappropriate and highly prejudicial expert psychological testimony during the penalty hearing. Relying on Mazzan v. State, 100 Nev. 74, 675 P.2d 409 (1984), and McCoy v. Louisiana, 584 U.S. ––––, 138 S. Ct. 1500, 200 L.Ed.2d 821 (2018), Belcher contends that counsel's ineffectiv......
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...§ 45, at 1231-32. 95. See, e.g., Feazell v. State, 111 Nev. 1446, 1449, 906 P.2d 727, 729 (1995). 96. See, e.g., Mazzan v. State, 100 Nev. 74, 80, 675 P.2d 409, 413 (1984). 97. Corbin v. State, 111 Nev. 378, 381, 892 P.2d 580, 582 98. See NRS 34.810(1)(b). 99. See NRS 178.602 ("Plain errors......
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...S.Ct. 1197, 1205, 1206, 51 L.Ed.2d 393 (1977). The penalty phase of a trial requires effective assistance of counsel, Mazzan v. State, 100 Nev. 74, 79, 675 P.2d 409 (1984), and to be effective, counsel needs the opportunity to present the client's case to the ...
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...blatantly obvious, such as when counsel makes sarcastic comments encouraging the jury to convict his client, see Mazzan v. State, 100 Nev. 74, 77-80, 675 P.2d 409, 411-13 (1984), we conclude that we need not sua sponte consider this issue.11 Sena argues that the allegations behind count 117......