McCarty v. State
| Decision Date | 06 November 1998 |
| Docket Number | No. F-96-503,F-96-503 |
| Citation | 977 P.2d 1116,1998 OK CR 61 |
| Parties | 1998 OK CR 61, 1999 OK CR 18 Curtis Edward McCARTY, Appellant, v. STATE of Oklahoma, Appellee. |
| Court | United States State Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma. Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma |
¶1 In the early morning hours of December 10, 1982, eighteen year old Pamela Willis was brutally murdered. Over three years later, Appellant Curtis Edward McCarty was tried for Ms. Willis' murder by a jury in the District Court of Oklahoma County, Case No. CRF-85-2637. Appellant was convicted of First Degree Murder and sentenced to death. He appealed his conviction to this Court in Case No. F-86-343. We reversed and remanded for a new trial, finding the record "replete with error committed during both stages of the trial...." McCarty v. State, 1988 OK CR 271, 765 P.2d 1215, 1222.
¶2 Appellant was retried in September of 1989. For a second time, Appellant was convicted of First Degree Murder and sentenced to death. For a second time, Appellant appealed. On this occasion, we affirmed Appellant's murder conviction. McCarty v. State, 1995 OK CR 48, 904 P.2d 110 (Lumpkin, J., concurring in part, dissenting in part). However, we reversed Appellant's death sentence and remanded for a new sentencing stage proceeding because the trial court had refused to instruct the jury on the requested alternative sentencing option of life imprisonment without parole.
¶3 Appellant's resentencing proceeding was held in April of 1996 as a jury trial. For the third time, Appellant's jury recommended death. The trial court sentenced Appellant accordingly. Appellant has now perfected his third appeal with respect to his death sentence. 1
¶4 The facts relevant to Appellant's conviction for First Degree Murder are thoroughly discussed in McCarty v. State, 904 P.2d 110. We will not restate them here, except as may be necessary in our review of Appellant's twenty propositions of error relating to the resentencing proceeding.
¶5 In his first and ninth propositions of error, Appellant claims his constitutional rights 2 were violated when the trial court limited his resentencing jury from hearing evidence regarding Appellant's personal culpability for Pamela Willis' death. Appellant argues the trial court operated his resentencing trial under the erroneous assumption that his guilt stage jury had determined Appellant personally stabbed, suffocated, and raped Pamela Willis. 3 He also claims the trial court in the resentencing stage "built an evidentiary blockade that both insulated the State's case from attack and pushed aside powerful mitigating circumstances relevant to Mr. McCarty's death eligibility."
¶6 In addressing these issues, we begin by reviewing important rulings made by the trial court in response to Appellant's pretrial motions. These rulings indicate the "evidentiary blockade" of which Appellant now complains appears to have been due in large part to Appellant's own trial strategy.
¶7 On March 29, 1996, Appellant filed a motion in limine. 4 Therein, Appellant argued, During a pretrial motion hearing regarding this motion, defense counsel stated Appellant Defense counsel later explained the motion sought to exclude evidence "strictly pertaining to guilt, and not to any issue in the second stage." The State responded as follows:
[A]ll of the evidence that we tend to introduce will go to one of the listed aggravating circumstances. Now it may have also been used to determine guilt in the first stage, but albeit, we're certainly not prohibited in any trial ... at least any two stage trial in which the death penalty is being sought, from using evidence in both stages.
Nevertheless, the motion in limine was sustained by agreement after defense counsel offered the following:
If the evidence came from the first stage, but it's also related to some second stage aggravator, I have no objection. But if it came from the first stage and has no relevance to an aggravator, then I would object. Such as evidence of identification, stuff like that. I would object to that. Confessions.
¶8 After reviewing the context of the motion in limine and the arguments presented by both sides concerning its meaning, the record reflects defense counsel, as a matter of trial strategy, sought exclusion of any first stage evidence which did not relate to a statutory aggravator. As defense counsel put it, evidence relating to guilt, innocence, identification, or confessions would be irrelevant.
¶9 First stage evidence may be incorporated into the sentencing stage. Cleary v. State, 1997 OK CR 35, 942 P.2d 736, 751, cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 118 S.Ct. 1528, 140 L.Ed.2d 679 (1998); see also McCracken v. State, 1994 OK CR 68, 887 P.2d 323, 331, cert. denied, 516 U.S. 859, 116 S.Ct. 166, 133 L.Ed.2d 108 (1995); Parks v. State, 1982 OK CR 132, 651 P.2d 686, 694, cert. denied, 459 U.S. 1155, 103 S.Ct. 800, 74 L.Ed.2d 1003 (1983). Indeed, this is the preferred practice. Oklahoma law provides that "[a]ll exhibits and a transcript of all testimony and other evidence properly admitted in the prior trial and sentencing shall be admissible in the new sentencing proceeding." 21 O.S.Supp.1993, § 701.10a(4) In Parks, this Court held that the receiving of first stage evidence into the second stage conforms fully to the mandate of Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 57 L.Ed.2d 973 (1978), that the sentencer consider not only the defendant's record and character but any circumstances of the offense. Parks, 651 P.2d at 694. Thus, our statutes and jurisprudence clearly recognize the sentencing phase of trial "in no way excludes from consideration ... matters heard on the issue of guilt or innocence." Stout v. State, 1984 OK CR 94, 693 P.2d 617, 628, cert. denied 472 U.S. 1022, 105 S.Ct. 3489, 87 L.Ed.2d 623 (1985) (citation omitted).
¶10 Here, however, only part of the first stage evidence and testimony was admitted in the sentencing trial. 5 We cannot say what defense counsel's precise reasons were for seeking to limit the introduction of first stage evidence to the sentencing jury. 6 Whatever the reason, this Court will not second-guess matters concerning trial strategy if there is a reasonable basis for counsel's actions. Roberts v. State, 1996 OK CR 7, 910 P.2d 1071, 1080; Robinson v. State, 1995 OK CR 25, 900 P.2d 389, 405.
¶11 With respect to Appellant's resentencing proceeding, the allegation of an "evidentiary blockade" primarily concerned Appellant's cross-examination of Oklahoma City police officer Bob Horn. Officer Horn was called as a witness for the State. 7 He testified regarding his investigation of the crime scene, including evidence of a forced entry through a window, evidence found at the crime scene, and stab wounds received by Ms. Willis. He also identified several photographs of the victim and crime scene which were admitted into evidence.
¶12 During cross-examination, Appellant's counsel asked Officer Horn if he was aware a John Doe had also been charged in the case. Horn said his personal recollection was that only one person had been charged. Horn could not say who wielded the knife. Appellant's counsel then began questioning Horn about fingerprint evidence in relation to a crime scene window which had been forced open. Specifically, Appellant's counsel asked whether anything "ever came up, then, as far as John Doe's prints." The State objected, and a bench conference was held.
¶13 The State claimed defense counsel was "trying to prove identity". The State argued, In response, defense counsel offered the following:
I never said Mr. McCarty is not guilty. What we are dealing with is aggravators.... The Information reads John Doe. I have a duty to bring up the inference that these aggravators that they're trying to prove could be someone else. Whether Mr. McCarty was involved, that has been decided, but as to actually choking the woman and finding fingerprint evidence, I have every right to ask as far as fingerprints.
The State then argued, "The jury has convicted him of killing her by stabbing her, not by John Doe stabbing her .... the State objects to [this] line of questioning, trying to imply that someone else had done it while the jury has found not once, but twice that he did it himself." Thereafter, the trial court sustained the State's objection based on relevance. The trial court found the issue of whether or not the State had proven Mr. McCarty was the person who stabbed or murdered Ms. Willis had "been made by a jury prior to this date, by finding him guilty of malice aforethought murder."
¶14 Appellant claims this ruling was both a denial of due process and his right to confront the State's...
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