Miles v. State

• Decision Date: 18 September 2001
• Docket Number: No. 42,42
• Citation: 365 Md. 488,781 A.2d 787
• Parties: Jody Lee MILES v. STATE of Maryland.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

781 A.2d 787

365 Md. 488

Jody Lee MILES v. STATE of Maryland.

No. 42, Sept. Term, 1998.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

September 18, 2001.

Nancy S. Forster, Asst. Public Defender (Stephen E. Harris, Public Defender, Arthur A. DeLano, Jr. and Elisa A. Long, Asst. Public Defenders, on brief), Baltimore, for appellant.

Annabelle L. Lisc, Asst. Atty. Gen. (J. Joseph Curran, Jr., Atty. Gen. of Maryland, on brief), Baltimore, for appellee.

Argued Before BELL, C.J., and ELDRIDGE, RAKER, WILNER, CATHELL, HARRELL and BATTAGLIA, JJ.

BATTAGLIA, Judge.

On April 2, 1997, appellant Jody Lee Miles shot and killed Edward Atkinson during a robbery. Appellant was tried by a jury in the Circuit Court for Queen Anne's County from March 9 through March 12, 1998, after the case was removed from the Circuit Court for Wicomico County, and convicted of felony homicide, robbery with a deadly weapon, robbery and use of a handgun in the commission of a crime of violence. A sentencing hearing was conducted on March 17-18, 1998. Appellant was sentenced to death on March 19, 1998. This case is before this Court on automatic appeal pursuant to Maryland Code, Art. 27, § 414 (1957, 1996 Repl.Vol., 1999 Supp.) and Maryland Rule 8-306(c). We find no errors that tainted the proceedings. Accordingly, we affirm appellant's convictions and the sentence of death.

I. FACTS

On April 2, 1997, Edward Joseph Atkinson was shopping at the Structure Store and Small's Formal Wear located at a mall in Salisbury, Maryland. While arranging to pick up tuxedos at Small's for a musical theater production he was directing, he received a page. Atkinson immediately left the mall. Later that day, at approximately 5:30 p.m., Harry Hughes, Jr., a resident of Old Bradley Road in Mardela Springs, Maryland, saw Atkinson driving a black Toyota Camry down Old Bradley Road. Within fifteen minutes, Hughes heard a single gunshot.

On the same day, Atkinson failed to show up for dinner at his home with his parents and for his evening play rehearsal. His mother, Dorothy Atkinson, notified the Maryland State Police that her son was missing. The next day, April 3, 1997, at approximately 9:00 p.m., Maryland State Police officers located Atkinson's Toyota near Old Bradley Road and found a cowboy boot print in the area.

In the morning of April 4, 1997, Robert Wayne Atkinson, the victim's brother, and his friend who had joined the search, Sean Thomas Mooney, returned to Old Bradley Road to comb the area for additional information concerning Edward Atkinson's whereabouts. After following footprints on the ground, Robert Wayne Atkinson discovered his brother's body in a wooded area. Later that same day, Robert Wayne Atkinson and Sean Mooney also saw a gray colored car driven by the appellant heading towards the crime scene off of Old Bradley Road. The police arrived on the scene and determined that Edward Atkinson had been shot once in the back of the head and dragged to the location where his body was found. The police noticed several additional cowboy boot prints near the body matching the one found the night before by the victim's car, as well as scuff marks indicating a struggle at the side of the road. The police also discovered that Atkinson's pockets had been emptied, but a search of the wooded area surrounding the crime scene failed to produce the victim's wallet and keys.

In contacting his brother's credit card companies to report the theft, Robert Wayne Atkinson learned that the cards had been used after his brother had been reported missing. The cards had been used on April 3, 1997, at a Wal Mart ATM in Cambridge, Maryland, at the Tru Blu gas station in Harrington, Delaware, at the Structure and J.C. Penney stores in the Dover Mall, and at Shuckers Pier 13 Restaurant in Dover, Delaware. The personnel interviewed at these locations described the credit card holder as a white male, approximately 6'1" to 6'3" tall, having medium length dirty blonde to brown hair, and wearing white jeans or pants with a white shirt and cowboy boots. (Two of the Tru Blu gas station attendants subsequently identified appellant as the Atkinson card user.) Composite sketches of the suspect were drawn and circulated on local news stations. During the next two weeks, news reports specifically mentioned the sighting of the murder suspect at the Tru Blu gas station.

On April 15, 1997, James Towers (a resident of Caroline County) was in his home monitoring the police and fire department radio transmissions with his scanner. Towers' scanner was capable of picking up cellular phone conversations. At some point between 8:30 and 9:30 p.m., Towers overheard a conversation on his scanner where a male and female discussed the importance of staying away from the Tru Blu gas station in Harrington, Delaware. Because he thought this conversation might be related to the news story about the murder, Towers tape-recorded the conversation. Towers notified the Maryland State Police about the tape, who promptly picked up the tape from Towers' residence.

The tape of the phone conversation included a discussion of concealing evidence, as well as descriptions of the geographic area surrounding the couple's home. Deputy Ronald Russum of the Caroline County Sheriff's Department listened to the tape and identified the female voice as Jona Miles, who turned out to be appellant's wife. Detective James Fraley of the Delaware State Police identified the voices as Jody and Jona Miles, based on his previous contacts with both individuals.

By April 22, 1997, after locating Jona Miles's residence, the Maryland and Delaware State Police applied for search warrants for 292 Cole Britt Lane, Harrington, Delaware and 27880 Whiteleysburg Road, Greensboro, Maryland, properties owned by Jona Miles and her parents. The police executed the warrants on the same day. During the search of the properties, the police seized several items of clothing belonging to appellant and his 1996 W-2 tax statement as well as other papers, a razor, telephone bills, phone numbers from a caller identification box, and other pieces of note paper.

Later that day, the police placed Jona Miles under arrest and questioned her at the Caroline County Sheriff's Department. Jona Miles gave a statement to the police and assisted them in ascertaining her husband's whereabouts. She also signed a consent to search form authorizing Corporal Fisher of the Maryland State Police Force to search her trailer located on her parents' property at 27880 Whiteleysburg Road. Pursuant to the consent to search form, the police seized one pair of black men's jeans and one pair of tan Structure dress pants.

Jona Miles admitted that within a week after April 2, 1997, she had thrown two Structure shirts in a dumpster near Route 404 in Centreville, Maryland, and a few days later she had accompanied her husband as he disposed of his cowboy boots in a dumpster behind a shopping center in Milford, Delaware. Ms. Miles also dumped a handgun, holster and ammunition left by her husband in the Choptank River near Denton, Maryland. With the assistance of Ms. Miles, the State Police were able to recover the gun in its holster and the ammunition, but were not able to find the clothing. As a result of information given to them by Jona Miles, the police arrested appellant while he was driving a gray Chevrolet Cavalier on Carmichael Road near a farm where he had been working. The contents of the car, including a cellular phone and the vehicle registration card, were inventoried and seized.

During the evening of April 22, 1997, Corporal William V. Benton and Trooper John Psota began interviewing appellant, after he was advised of his Miranda rights. Within minutes of the beginning of the questioning, appellant admitted that on April 2, 1997, he met Edward Atkinson at a rest area near Old Bradley Road. Appellant claimed that he had been sent by a loan shark to collect a package from Atkinson, which the victim did not produce. He stated that he became scared when Atkinson, who, at appellant's direction, had his back to appellant the entire time, reached inside his jacket. Appellant, concerned that Atkinson had a gun, fired one shot striking the victim in the back of the head.¹ Afterwards, appellant found and removed Atkinson's wallet and two briefcases from the car. Although appellant returned to the scene on April 4, 1997 with the intention of burying Atkinson's body, he fled when he saw all of the police cars in the area.

On May 9, 1997, appellant was indicted and charged with felonious homicide, robbery with a deadly weapon, robbery, firstdegree assault, and use of a handgun in a crime of violence in Wicomico County. On July 29, 1997, the state filed a notice of its intention to seek a sentence of death pursuant to Maryland Code, Art. 27, § 412(b). On October 2, 1997, the case was transferred for trial to the Circuit Court for Queen Anne's County. The trial court heard pre-trial suppression motions pursuant to Rule 4-452 on January 28, 1998 and February 23-24, 1998, wherein appellant sought to suppress the contents of the taped cellular phone conversation with his wife, the items seized pursuant to the search warrant executed in the early afternoon of April 22, 1997, the items seized pursuant to Jona Miles's consent to search, the gun and its accessories, appellant's confession, and his cellular telephone seized pursuant to a post-arrest inventory of his vehicle.

Based on these motions, the trial court ruled to suppress the taped cellular phone conversation as well as evidence seized pursuant to a search warrant where the affidavit of probable cause made explicit reference to the facts contained in the cellular phone conversation as a violation of the Maryland Wiretapping Statute, Maryland Code, Section 10-401 et seq. of the Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article (1977, 1998 Repl.Vol., 2000 Supp.). The trial court refused to suppress the remaining evidence, reasoning that the language ...