People v. Clayton
| Citation | 108 N.Y.S.3d 94,175 A.D.3d 963 |
| Decision Date | 22 August 2019 |
| Docket Number | 548,KA 18-01340 |
| Parties | The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Thomas S. CLAYTON, Defendant–Appellant. |
| Court | New York Supreme Court — Appellate Division |
175 A.D.3d 963
108 N.Y.S.3d 94
The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent,
v.
Thomas S. CLAYTON, Defendant–Appellant.
548
KA 18-01340
Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Fourth Department, New York.
Entered: August 22, 2019
MEMORANDUM AND ORDER
It is hereby ORDERED that the judgment so appealed from is modified on the law by reversing that part convicting defendant of murder in the second degree and dismissing count two of the indictment and as modified the judgment is affirmed.
Memorandum: Defendant appeals from a judgment convicting him upon a jury verdict of murder in the first degree ( Penal Law § 125.27[1][a][vi] ; [b] ) and murder in the second degree (§§ 20.00, 125.25[1] ).
Shortly after midnight on Tuesday, September 29, 2015, defendant returned home from a poker game to find his wife dead on the kitchen floor. An investigation led the police to suspect that defendant's former employee and tenant (principal) had bludgeoned her to death with a maul handle. Defendant was charged with, inter alia, murder in the first degree on the ground that he "procured commission of the killing pursuant to an agreement" with the principal to commit the killing "for the receipt, or in expectation of the receipt, of" a thing of "pecuniary value" ( Penal Law § 125.27[1][a][vi] ).
Several women testified at trial that they were having sex
with defendant while he and the victim were married. Defendant made disparaging remarks about the victim to some of those women, and he told at least one of them that "he couldn't divorce [the victim] because she would take everything." Approximately one year before the murder, defendant increased the limit on the victim's life insurance policy from $500,000 to $1,000,000. A few weeks after that, he told the victim's niece: "[T]his [is] going to be the last Christmas with [me] around and us being together as a family."
Defendant had employed the principal at his businesses for years, during which time the principal often performed work around the home where defendant and the victim lived with their children. The principal was thus familiar with that property. The principal did not own a vehicle and did not have a driver's license. Twelve days before the murder, defendant's business partner terminated the principal's employment with the company. At the time of the principal's termination, he was living in an apartment in Elmira that was co-owned by defendant but, after the loss of his job, the principal could no longer afford to pay the rent. Over the next 12 days, defendant referred the principal to employers and bought the principal a bicycle, ostensibly to use as a mode of transportation to and from potential jobs. During that time, defendant and the principal had frequent telephone contact, the extent of which was detailed exhaustively at trial using cell phone records.
Six days before the murder, someone from defendant's company called the storage facility located next door and asked whether the company's property was within range of the storage facility's surveillance cameras. In fact, the company's parking lot was within range of the cameras, and surveillance footage from the night of the murder was played for the jury at trial.
Three days before the murder, defendant called an acquaintance and asked him whether there were surveillance cameras outside a certain inn located in Elmira. The acquaintance was not aware of any cameras, but offered to check. Defendant declined that offer.
On the night of the murder, defendant drove one of the company's trucks to his weekly poker game. Defendant's personal truck was not in his possession because he and one of his employees had temporarily exchanged trucks earlier that day, ostensibly to facilitate the unloading of an all-terrain vehicle (ATV) the employee had borrowed from defendant over the weekend. Surveillance footage showed defendant's personal truck leaving the parking lot around noon, presumably driven
by the employee. The employee's maroon truck left the lot at 3:09 p.m. with the ATV in the back. When the maroon truck returned at 6:04 p.m., the ATV was no longer in the back, presumably having been unloaded by defendant. A few minutes later, a company truck and the maroon truck left the lot.
Defendant arrived at his poker game in the company truck around 8:00 p.m. During the poker game, he used his cell phone to look at social media. Sometime after 10:00 p.m., he asked his host's wife if he could use her cell phone to call a worker, claiming that he had left his cell phone in his truck. Defendant took the borrowed phone into an adjacent hallway, placed a call to the principal, engaged him in hushed conversation, and then deleted the call from the phone before returning it to its owner.
The principal picked a witness up that night in a maroon truck. They drove to the outskirts of Corning before pulling the truck to the side of the road. The witness stayed inside the truck as a lookout while the principal took an object from the bed of the truck and walked off. Approximately 15 minutes later, the principal returned, breathless, sweating, and carrying a stick. On the way back to Elmira, the principal stopped the truck and threw the stick off to the side of the road. They drove a bit farther, and, when they came to a bridge near water, the principal slowed the truck so the lookout could throw a bag of clothes into the water. Surveillance footage showed a truck returning to the company's parking lot at 12:55 a.m. A few minutes later, someone rode away on a bicycle.
Defendant left the poker game around midnight, found the victim's lifeless body, and summoned the police. Observing no sign of forced entry, investigators immediately suspected defendant of committing the murder and took him to the police station for questioning around 4:30 a.m. Before the patrol car had left the driveway, defendant told investigators: "[W]ell, you'll know where I am because my vehicle has GPS on it."
A few weeks after the murder, investigators recovered a bag from a swampy area located approximately 40 feet from the inn in Elmira with respect to which defendant had previously inquired about the presence of surveillance cameras. The bag contained clothes, and genetic testing determined that the principal's DNA was on the clothes.
We reject defendant's contention that the evidence is legally insufficient to establish that he "procured commission of the killing pursuant to an agreement" with the principal ( Penal Law § 125.27[1][a][vi] ). Although the case against defendant is circumstantial, the standard of review for determining
whether a conviction is supported by legally sufficient evidence "is the same for circumstantial and non-circumstantial cases—whether after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could
have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt" ( People v. Grassi, 92 N.Y.2d 695, 697, 685 N.Y.S.2d 903, 708 N.E.2d 976 [1999], rearg. denied 94 N.Y.2d 900, 707 N.Y.S.2d 145, 728 N.E.2d 341 [2000] ; see People v. Marvin, 162 A.D.3d 1744, 1745, 80 N.Y.S.3d 787 [4th Dept. 2018], lv denied 32 N.Y.3d 1066, 89 N.Y.S.3d 120, 113 N.E.3d 954 [2018] ). Here, there was ample evidence from which a jury could have inferred that the principal killed the victim at the behest of defendant, who provided the principal with key logistical support. Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the People (see People v. Contes, 60 N.Y.2d 620, 621, 467 N.Y.S.2d 349, 454 N.E.2d 932 [1983] ), we conclude that there is " ‘a valid line of reasoning and permissible inferences from which a rational jury’ " could have found the existence of such an agreement ( People v. Danielson, 9 N.Y.3d 342, 349, 849 N.Y.S.2d 480, 880 N.E.2d 1 [2007] ; see § 125.27[1][a][vi] ). For the same reasons, we conclude that there...
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