Moffett v. State Of Miss.
| Decision Date | 16 September 2010 |
| Docket Number | NO. 2008-DP-00541-SCT,2008-DP-00541-SCT |
| Parties | ERIC MOFFETT v. STATE OF MISSISSIPPI |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
ATTORNEY FOR APPELLANT: OFFICE OF CAPITAL DEFENSE COUNSEL BY: ANDRE DE GRUY
ATTORNEYS FOR APPELLEE: OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL BY: JASON LEWIS DAVIS MARVIN L. WHITE, JR.
EN BANC.
FOR THE COURT:
¶1 Eric Moffett was convicted of capital murder. Moffett was sentenced to death by lethal injection by a jury of his peers after the jury determined that the murder of a five-yearold child was: (1) committed while Moffett was engaged in felonious abuse and/or battery of a child; and (2) especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel. Finding no reversible error, we affirm his conviction and sentence.
¶2. Felicia Griffin was sexually abused, 1 battered, 2 and murdered during the early morning hours of December 31, 1994. Felicia lived in Jackson with her two sisters; mother, Pennie Griffin; and, Pennie's boyfriend, Moffett. On December 30, 1994, Moffett, Pennie, and the three girls were at home. Moffett left the house at approximately 9:45 p.m. while Pennie was preparing to go to work. Pennie expected Moffett's mother, Florence Moffett Powell, to arrive soon to take her to work. When Powell did not timely arrive, Pennie went to a nearby gas station to phone her employer and Powell. Pennie checked on the children before leaving, and locked the door and burglar bars as she departed. After going by Pennie's home, Powell picked up Pennie at the gas station and proceeded to take Pennie to work. It was disputed at trial whether Powell was alone when she arrived at the gas station, or whether she was accompanied by her daughter, Sheritha Moffett. Sheritha testified that she had accompanied Powell and had observed Powell enter the house looking for Pennie. Powell did not testify, as she died before trial. The jury heard evidence that Moffett returned to the house a few hours later, took Felicia into the bedroom he shared with Felicia's mother, abused Felicia, and savagely raped her with his fingers and fist.
¶3. Moffett reported Felicia's death via a 911 call and awaited the arrival of officers from the Jackson Police Department (JPD). After the police officers arrived, Moffett exhibited anger and began to behave strangely. His behavior escalated to the point that he was "out of control" and "throwing furniture," according to the testimony of police officers. Fourofficers subdued Moffett. He was handcuffed and arrested. From his arrest on December 31, 1994, Moffett remained incarcerated until September 7, 1995, when a grand jury returned no true bill. Moffett was released the same day. He had been in custody 250 days.
¶4. Years later, a JPD cold-case unit reviewed the file and submitted its findings to the district attorney. Moffett was indicted in April 2002. Moffett was tried, convicted, and received a death sentence in February 2006. Substantial evidence was presented at trial, including the live testimony of numerous witnesses. Witnesses included, but were not limited to, Pennie Griffin; LaQuandia Griffin, the victim's sister; Donald Davis, a prison inmate; Mary Esther Pearson, a nurse practitioner; Huma Nasir, a forensic DNA analyst for a private DNA laboratory; and Detective Rod Eriksen, a JPD officer.
¶5. LaQuandia testified that she was seven years old at the time of the murder. The night of the crime, Pennie helped her and her sisters, Jessica and Felicia, get ready for bed and checked on them before she left for work. The three girls were sleeping on a pallet in a room across the hall from the bedroom shared by Pennie and Moffett. Lights were on in the girls' bedroom, the hallway, and bathroom. LaQuandia woke up and saw Moffett standing in the doorway of the girls' bedroom. She saw Moffett pick up Felicia, who was sleeping closest to the door. He took Felicia to his bedroom. He did not close the doors all the way, so she could see him. He placed Felicia down on the bed and started touching and rubbing on her chest and stomach areas. She heard Felicia making "all kind of painful cries." She then dozed off, only to be awoken later. She saw someone3 in the hallway going into Pennie's bedroom. She remembered looking into the bedroom and seeing Felicia "laying in the bedand the covers were real bloody." After the police arrived, Moffett approached her, hugging and attempting to reassure her. She recalled seeing Moffett "throw a fit,... he was... yelling and screaming,... picking up chairs and... throwing things as if he cared." She saw the paramedics take Felicia away on a stretcher. She was not sure what she told the policeman who questioned her about the murder, but she did recall being afraid to tell him about Moffett, as he was still in the house at the time.
¶6. Donald Davis, an inmate with Moffett during the 1994-95 confinement, testified. During his testimony, he read a statement he had written on September 15, 1995, 4 when he was interviewed by a JPD officer at the Hinds County Detention Center. Moffett had confessed the crime to Donald Davis at a Bible study on September 3, 1995. The confession had included graphic details of the crime and Moffett's attempt to seek forgiveness by inflicting injury upon himself (smashing his hand in a steel door at the detention center).
¶7. Mary Esther Pearson testified that she was a nurse practitioner who provided medical services to inmates at the detention center where Moffett was incarcerated. She testified that she treated Moffett in March 1995 for an injury to the middle and ring fingers of his right hand. Moffett told her he had "mashed [his fingers] in a door."
¶8. Huma Nasir testified about DNA tests performed on laboratory samples taken at the emergency room, at autopsy, and at the murder scene, as well as known samples drawn from Moffett. She stated that the vaginal swab, vaginal wash, and anal swab were all positive for semen on the presumptive test, but were negative for sperm cells on the confirmatory test, indicating that there were no "physical sperm cells" remaining in the semen samples. Shetestified at length about DNA tests done on cuttings from the bath towel found in the bed where Felicia had been found by paramedics. The towel was positive for semen and epithelial cells, but was negative for blood. There were two stains on the towel. The first was a semen stain and the other was a mixed stain, including semen and epithelial cells.5 The semen stain was found to match Moffett's DNA on all fifteen markers. Nasir testified that there was less than one chance in five trillion, nine hundred billion (5, 900, 000, 000, 000)6 that the semen had come from anyone other than Moffett. As for the mixed stain, neither Moffett nor Felicia could be excluded as the source of the two sets of DNA found there. There were matches on four foci and six alleles, which Nasir described as "weak" alleles. She stated that, from this evidence, more than 99.9% of the population could be excluded as possible donors of the two components, thus, there was less than one chance in a thousand that anyone else contributed to the mixed stain.
¶9. Pennie testified that, on the morning of December 30, 1994, she and Moffett had an argument and that he hit her "upside the head." She stated that, at that point, she decided to end the relationship with Moffett and that she wrote him a letter telling him that it was over. Police Lieutenant Rod Eriksen testified that the letter, which he saw as establishing a possible motive, was found in the bedroom where Felicia was found. The jury viewed avideotape, taken as Eriksen and the crime-scene investigator carried out their investigation of the scene. The jury saw, inter alia, Eriksen discovering the letter at the scene.
¶10. Several other witnesses testified, including, but not limited to, an emergency room physician; an emergency medical technician; JPD officers, including detectives and crime scene investigators; and pathologists. Additional facts as relevant to each issue are provided infra.
¶11. We review convictions for capital murder under a heightened standard:
[C]onvictions upon indictments for capital murder and sentences of death must be subjected to "heightened scrutiny." Balfour v. State, 598 So. 2d 731, 739 (Miss. 1992). Under this method of review, all doubts are to be resolved in favor of the accused because "what may be harmless error in a case with less at stake becomes reversible error when the penalty is death." Id. (quoting Irving v. State, 361 So. 2d 1360, 1363 (Miss. 1978)).
Loden v. State, 971 So. 2d 548, 562 (Miss. 2007) (quoting Thorson v. State, 895 So. 2d 85, 97 (Miss. 2004)) (citations omitted).
¶12. Moffett raised the following nineteen assignments of error, verbatim et literatim.
To continue reading
Request your trial