Patterson v. State

• Decision Date: 12 April 2002
• Docket Number: No. D-2000-291.,D-2000-291.
• Citation: 2002 OK CR 18,45 P.3d 925
• Parties: Oscar PATTERSON III, Appellant, v. STATE of Oklahoma, Appellee.
• Court: United States State Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma. Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma

45 P.3d 925

2002 OK CR 18

Oscar PATTERSON III, Appellant, v. STATE of Oklahoma, Appellee.

No. D-2000-291.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma.

April 12, 2002.

David C. Phillips III, Attorney at Law, Tulsa, OK, attorney for defendant at trial.

Steven L. Sewell, John Heil, Asst. District Attorneys, Tulsa County Courthouse, Tulsa, OK, attorneys for the state at trial.

William H. Luker, Michael D. Morehead, Indigent Defense System, Norman, OK, attorneys for appellant on appeal.

W.A. Drew Edmondson, Attorney General, Robert Whittaker, Asst. Attorney General, Oklahoma City, OK, attorneys for the state on appeal.

OPINION

JOHNSON, Vice-Presiding Judge.

¶ 1 Appellant, Oscar Patterson III, was charged in Tulsa County District Court Case No. CF-98-5967 with First Degree, Malice Aforethought Murder (21 O.S.1991, § 701.7(A)). The State filed a bill of particulars, alleging two aggravating circumstances in support of the death penalty: (1) that Appellant committed the murder in order to avoid or prevent lawful arrest or prosecution, and (2) that there existed a probability Appellant would constitute a continuing threat to society. 21 O.S.1991, § 701.12(5), (7). Jury trial was held January 19 through February 8, 2000, before the Honorable J. Michael Gassett, District Judge. The jury found Appellant guilty as charged, found the existence of both aggravating circumstances, and recommended punishment of death. The trial court sentenced Appellant accordingly on February 29, 2000, and this appeal followed.¹ ¶ 2 By order issued December 5, 2001, this Court remanded the case to the District Court of Tulsa County for an evidentiary hearing on issues raised in Appellant's motions regarding newly-discovered evidence and ineffective assistance of counsel. The hearing was held January 14, 2002, before the Honorable J. Michael Gassett, District Judge. The district court's findings of fact and conclusions of law were filed in this Court February 8, 2002, and the parties submitted supplemental briefs on the issues addressed at the hearing. Oral argument before this Court was held February 26, 2002, at the University of Oklahoma Law School.

¶ 3 Appellant raises sixteen propositions of error in his brief in chief, in addition to the issues addressed at the evidentiary hearing. Having reviewed the record on appeal, as well as the additional record made at the evidentiary hearing and the district court's findings and conclusions thereon, we conclude that Appellant's conviction must be REVERSED and the case REMANDED FOR A NEW TRIAL.

¶ 4 Because we reverse, only a brief summary of the evidence is necessary. Appellant was convicted of murdering his step-daughter, Tiffiany Beverly.² Appellant lived with his wife, Beatrice Patterson, and her two daughters from a prior marriage, thirteen-year-old Lakisha and fifteen-year-old Tiffiany. On May 27, 1997, the day of her disappearance, Tiffiany had received permission from her mother to go to a Tulsa mall to play video games and buy a birthday present for her sister. Beatrice Patterson was at work all day, and her two daughters were in Appellant's care. Appellant, a self-employed janitor, had a job scheduled that afternoon but agreed to take Tiffiany to the mall. That morning, Appellant had taken Lakisha to color guard practice, while Tiffiany remained at home. Around noon, Appellant picked up Lakisha from color guard practice and took her to percussion camp. Along the way, he told Lakisha he was going to take Tiffiany to the mall later that day.

¶ 5 Appellant arrived at the site of his afternoon cleaning job just after 1:00 p.m. Shortly before 3:00 p.m., Appellant called his wife and asked her to pick up Tiffiany from the mall, explaining that he was still working at the afternoon job. After finishing his cleaning job, Appellant picked up Lakisha from percussion camp at approximately 4:00 p.m. and went home, where he received a call from Beatrice, saying she had been unable to find Tiffiany at the mall. Tiffiany was never seen again by her family.

¶ 6 Police were notified of Tiffiany's disappearance, and an extensive investigation was soon underway. The story received local media attention, and even national exposure on a missing-persons television show. Yet, police had few if any developments in the case until early 1998, when Sebastian Smith, a convicted felon and inmate at the Tulsa County Jail, told police he had information concerning Tiffiany's disappearance. Smith was one of several men, including Appellant, who bred and fought pit bull terriers, and who occasionally socialized with one another. Smith claimed that another man in this group, Paul Bryan, had told him (Smith) that Appellant had confessed to killing Tiffiany.

¶ 7 Police arranged to meet with Bryan. After initial denials and lengthy questioning, Bryan eventually claimed that sometime in the summer of 1997, Appellant had confessed to murdering Tiffiany in his truck after sexually assaulting her. According to Bryan, Appellant claimed to have killed Tiffiany by hitting her several times in the head with a tire tool. (Bryan claimed he had withheld this information for almost a year because he did not want to "narc" on anyone.) Although Bryan claimed Appellant never disclosed where he left Tiffiany's body, Bryan suggested a rural area in Wagoner County where her body might be found.

¶ 8 Ten days after Paul Bryan first talked with police, Tiffiany's remains were found in a field in the general area Bryan described. The discovery was not, however, made as a result of Bryan's information; a landowner happened to see a human skull as he mowed the property. A search of the area led to the discovery of 37 of the 206 bones comprising a human skeleton. The remains were identified as Tiffiany's through forensic anthropology, forensic odontology, and DNA analysis. Based on Bryan's account, a search warrant was obtained for Appellant's truck. After a search and testing, nothing incriminating was found.

¶ 9 Appellant was arrested for the premeditated murder of Tiffiany Beverly in November 1998. At trial, Appellant's purported confession to Paul Bryan was the only direct evidence linking Appellant to the offense. Initially, the State's theory of the case appeared to be that, consistent with the confession purportedly made to Bryan, Appellant took Tiffiany out in his truck, sexually assaulted her, and then inflicted fatal blows to her head with a tire tool. However, Bryan's credibility was called into question when he vacillated on the details of the confession. At one point, Bryan retracted parts of the confession and claimed that the police, not Appellant, had supplied some of the details to him. In an effort to impeach its own best witness, the State called the detective who first interviewed Bryan to deny that the police had ever supplied details of the purported confession to Bryan. By the conclusion of the guilt stage of the trial, the State was advancing a second theory: that Appellant had in fact raped and suffocated Tiffiany in the home, rather than beating her to death in his truck, as Bryan had claimed. This theory was made by the prosecutor during closing argument, at a time when the defense could not attack such a charge.

¶ 10 Throughout the trial, Appellant maintained his innocence of any wrongdoing. As part of his defense, Appellant presented testimony from several people who claimed to have seen a girl resembling Tiffiany at various locales after her disappearance. The jury found Appellant guilty and, finding both of the aggravators alleged by the State, recommended a sentence of death.

¶ 11 As noted above, Appellant timely filed a motion for new trial, based on newly-discovered evidence, during the pendency of this appeal. He also requested an evidentiary hearing to address claims of ineffective assistance of counsel regarding evidence available at the time of trial but not utilized. We remanded the matter to the district court for an evidentiary hearing on these claims.

¶ 12 Although Appellant presented a number of witnesses and other evidence at the hearing, we address only the evidence material to the district court's recommendation that Appellant receive a new trial. First, Appellant presented testimony suggesting that the State's prime witness against Appellant, Paul Bryan, had made statements after Appellant's trial implicating himself in Tiffiany's murder. Jobanue Kinser³ testified that in late March 2001, she heard Bryan, during a violent domestic dispute, threaten to kill his wife "like [he] killed Tiffiany Beverly." Kinser recalled hearing Bryan make several such statements during the time she associated with him, and specifically recalled another in January 2000 (about the time of Appellant's trial) when Bryan allegedly said that Tiffiany "deserved to die" and "I don't care if another man pays for what I did."

¶ 13 Applying the four criteria for claims of newly-discovered evidence, see Hunter v. State, 1992 OK CR 19, ¶ 15, 829 P.2d 64, 67, the district court found that (1) Appellant's trial counsel could not have discovered Kinser's testimony prior to trial (as these statements would have been made after the trial); (2) Kinser's testimony would not have been cumulative to other testimony presented at trial; (3) Kinser's statements were material, as they were admissions of guilt by the only prosecution witness who claimed to have heard Appellant confess to the murder; and (4) had Kinser's testimony been introduced at Appellant's trial, there was a reasonable probability it would have changed the outcome.

¶ 14 The court further found that Kinser's testimony about Bryan's purported confessions was roughly as credible as Bryan's testimony about Appellant's purported confession. Although Bryan had consumed intoxicants when he made the statements, and Kinser did not report this information to police, the district court noted that the same could be said for the circumstances surrounding Appellant's...