McBride v. State

• Decision Date: 18 April 1983
• Citation: 477 A.2d 174
• Parties: Judith McBRIDE, Defendant-Appellant, v. STATE of Delaware, Plaintiff-Appellee, and Gannett Co., Inc. and Jane Brooks, Intervening Appellees. . Submitted:
• Court: Supreme Court of Delaware

Page 174

477 A.2d 174

Judith McBRIDE, Defendant-Appellant, v. STATE of Delaware, Plaintiff-Appellee and Gannett Co., Inc. and Jane Brooks, Intervening Appellees.

Supreme Court of Delaware.

Submitted: April 18, 1983.

Decided: March 2, 1984.

Upon appeal from Superior Court. Affirmed.

Gerald I. Street (argued) and Henry duPont Ridgely (argued), Dover, for appellant.

Gary A. Myers (argued), Deputy Atty. Gen., Georgetown, and James E. Liguori, Deputy Atty. Gen., Dover, for appellee.

Richard G. Elliott, Jr. (argued) and L. Susan Faw, Richards, Layton & Finger, Wilmington, for intervening appellees Gannett Co., Inc. and Jane Brooks.

Before HORSEY, MOORE and CHRISTIE, JJ.

HORSEY, Justice:

Defendant, Judith A. McBride, seeks reversal of her convictions in a jury trial of Murder in the First Degree (11 Del.C. § 636(a)(1)) and of Conspiracy in the First Degree (11 Del.C. § 513(2)) in the death of her husband, William A. McBride, Jr. In a separate punishment hearing under 11 Del.C. § 4209, the same jury declined to impose the death penalty upon defendant. As a result, defendant received a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without benefit of probation or parole. For the conspiracy conviction, defendant was sentenced to a consecutive term of ten years' incarceration. On appeal, defendant asserts multiple grounds for reversal, all but one of which involve claims of denial of procedural due process or fair trial. We find no reversible error and therefore affirm.

* * *

The State's evidence presented at trial was as follows: On April 14, 1980, William A. McBride, Jr. was stabbed to death in his "bachelor's" apartment near Dover. His naked body was found floating face down in a bathtub half-filled with water. He had been stabbed 27 times--10 times in the face and 17 times in the body. There was evidence of a violent and bloody struggle but no evidence of a forced entry.

At time of death, McBride, 45 years old, and defendant, 34 years old, had been separated for three months. Defendant had also filed for divorce. The parties had been married only two years. Each had prior marriages and children by them. There was one child of their marriage, a handicapped boy suffering from cerebral palsy and confined to a wheelchair.

McBride was killed by Frank L. Ross. ¹ Ross, 23 years old, had recently arrived in Dover via Florida in search of work. Ross came to Dover at the urging of Robert Kreider, age 37, of Dover. Kreider told Ross he could live with him; but when they returned to Dover in January, 1980, Kreider found his house uninhabitable. Kreider then turned to defendant for assistance. Kreider had known defendant for several months and the two of them had dated while McBride and defendant were still living together.

Early in January, McBride and defendant had separated; and defendant had been heard to say, "I will see that son-of-a-bitch [McBride] dead." Shortly thereafter, Kreider moved in with defendant and Ross joined them, as "roomers." A third roomer was June Davis, a close friend of defendant. The household also included defendant's two children by a previous marriage and her handicapped son by McBride. The principal topic of conversation between defendant and her roomers was defendant's hatred of her estranged husband. Kreider and Davis were already well aware of defendant's animosity for her husband and of her desire to see him dead. According to Davis, McBride had repeatedly said she wanted her husband killed and she would ask anyone to do so. Defendant had previously asked Kreider to help her kill her husband; but Kreider had been noncommittal before his trip to Florida.

Defendant had been similarly rebuffed in her efforts to solicit others to kill her husband. The previous summer, defendant had made two abortive attempts to secure a hired killer. One involved an offer by defendant to pay the son of one of her female friends $1,200 of insurance proceeds if he would kill her husband. Defendant had also informed the spouse of a co-worker that if he "knocked off" her husband, she would make it worth his while by paying him. When asked if defendant wasn't joking, defendant replied, "She was serious, she wasn't kidding."

More recently, and before their separation, defendant had attempted to carry out the deed with the assistance of her friend, Davis. The plan, as conceived by them, involved defendant's putting Valium and sleeping pills in her husband's food while Davis hid in the attic of McBride's house. After her husband became unconscious, they would place McBride in a filled bathtub to drown under circumstances that would look like an accident. The plan was carried out but backfired when McBride, even though drugged, failed to lose consciousness. After that plan failed and while Kreider was in Florida, defendant approached a local bar owner whom she knew and asked him if he knew of anyone who would kill for money.

From defendant, Ross heard lurid tales charging her husband with wife-beating and sexual abuse as well as cruel or inhuman treatment of their handicapped child. Ross became incensed ("hyper") over McBride's mistreatment of his wife and family; and defendant, aware of the impression she had made upon Ross, turned to him to do the deed. By then, Ross and Kreider had learned of defendant's previously bungled attempt to drug her husband and drown him in a bathtub.

Over a three month period, defendant and her "roomers", primarily Ross and Kreider, considered six or seven different schemes for killing McBride under circumstances that would make his death appear to be an accident. After two efforts to stage an assault by an unknown assailant (Ross) upon McBride failed, they then decided to re-enact defendant's first attempt on her husband's life.

On April 14, 1980, defendant drove to her estranged husband's apartment with a macaroni salad, her husband's favorite, laced with Valium. After eating the macaroni and having sexual intercourse with defendant, McBride fell asleep. Defendant then telephoned Ross to come to McBride's. On Ross' arrival, defendant let him in the apartment and filled the bathtub with water. Defendant then placed an empty Valium bottle on her husband's nightstand and wrote a note to indicate that when she left her husband had fallen asleep. As defendant went out of the apartment, she heard her husband scream.

Defendant, unable to get her car started, waited until Ross left the apartment. When Ross came out, he told her, "It's over." Defendant drove home while Ross chose to walk. When Ross later arrived home, defendant asked Ross whether her husband was dead and in the bathtub. Ross answered that he was. The next day, before McBride's body was discovered, defendant twice telephoned a friend of her husband to inquire as to his whereabouts. The following day, after McBride's body was discovered by the police, defendant suggested that her husband's son or his former wife should be considered suspects. Defendant professed ignorance as to the cause of her husband's death.

Two weeks later, Judith McBride and Frank L. Ross were arrested and charged with the death of McBride's husband. After waiving preliminary hearings, McBride and Ross, in June, 1980, were each indicted for Murder in the First Degree as well as other offenses. In September, 1981, Ross was separately tried before a jury in Superior Court, Kent County, found guilty as charged, and ultimately sentenced to life imprisonment without benefit of parole. In March, 1982, nearly two years after arrest, Judith McBride's case went to trial before a jury in Superior Court, Kent County, and after a 12-day trial, she, too, was convicted of first degree murder as well as the above-mentioned offenses.

* * *

Defendant asserts seven grounds for reversible error. We take them up in essentially the order in which they occurred at trial.

I

On September, 1980, the News-Journal, a Gannett-owned paper (hereafter "Gannett"), published an interview of co-defendant Frank Ross by reporter Jane Brooks entitled, "Bathtub Murder Began As A Game, Suspect Says." The article recited Ross' role in the murder of McBride and implicated both defendant and Kreider. Two weeks later, defendant moved under Superior Court Rule 17(c) that a subpoena duces tecum be issued requiring Brooks and the News-Journal to produce within 30 days for inspection by defendant "all notes, letters, recordings, documents or any other evidence of any other statements made by Frank L. Ross." Defendant's sole ground for so moving was: that inspection of the requested documents was needed to permit defendant to attack at trial the credibility of Ross; that there were serious inconsistencies between what Ross had previously told the police and what he had apparently told Brooks concerning the role of the defendant and Kreider in the slaying; and that Ross' credibility was "crucial and perhaps determinative" of the outcome of defendant's trial. Defendant's motion, being unopposed, was granted and subpoenas were served upon Brooks and the News-Journal Papers.

Gannett and Brooks promptly moved to quash the subpoena on the ground that the unpublished materials, though not confidential, were protected from compulsory production under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article I, § 5 of the Constitution of the State of Delaware. Following briefing and oral argument, the Trial Court ordered the subpoena quashed for failure of defendant to show that the requested material was not "readily available from other sources." The order to quash was entered in May, 1981.

At defendant's trial in March, 1982, co-defendant Ross was called as a prosecution witness and, after answering two preliminary questions, ² refused to respond further, claiming his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. The Trial Court ruled that Ross had waived his privilege by testifying in his own defense at his trial. However, Ross refused to give any further testimony; defen...