Porter v. State, CR
| Decision Date | 27 January 1992 |
| Docket Number | No. CR,CR |
| Citation | 823 S.W.2d 846,308 Ark. 137 |
| Parties | Scott A. PORTER, Appellant, v. STATE of Arkansas, Appellee. 90-128. |
| Court | Arkansas Supreme Court |
Coy J. Rush, Paris, for appellant.
Sandy Moll, Asst. Atty. Gen., Little Rock, for appellee.
Appellant Scott Porter was sentenced to life in prison for the first degree murder of his eighteen-month-old stepson, Keith Richardson. The appellant assigns seven (7) of the trial court's rulings as error. We hold that no reversible error occurred and affirm the judgment of conviction.
Two (2) of appellant's assignments of error involve sufficiency of the evidence. As a result, we set out the facts. Appellant and Melanie Richardson met in June 1988, at the Booneville Human Development Center where they both were employed. They dated for a few months and were married on November 10, 1988. At the time of the marriage, Melanie had a young son, Keith, who lived with his great grandmother, Nettie Richardson. After their marriage, Keith continued to live with his great grandmother, although he did spend a few nights with the appellant and Melanie.
Young Keith spent the week prior to his death with his great grandmother, Nettie Richardson, at her home about seven (7) miles out of Booneville. About 2:30 in the afternoon on Friday, February 3, Keith's mother, Melanie, and her husband, the appellant, went to Nettie's home to get Nettie and take her to a doctor. Appellant, Melanie, Nettie, and Keith left Nettie's home and drove to the doctor's clinic. Melanie and Nettie got out at the clinic, and the appellant left with Keith to go to his home in Booneville. The two were alone. According to appellant's statements and testimony, he took Keith inside the home, let his dog out, and made a telephone call. When he finished the phone conversation he looked around the house for Keith but didn't see him. He looked outdoors and saw Keith's legs behind a pile of wood stacked in the carport. He ran out and found Keith lying on his back near the woodpile with a log on his chest. He was gasping for air.
Appellant immediately took Keith to the closest doctor's office, the one where he had left Melanie and Nettie. However, the doctor was at the Booneville hospital, so the three of them left the clinic and went to the hospital. En route there, Melanie administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to Keith. She said there was some blood on the outside of his nose.
Dr. Charles Parker treated Keith at the Booneville hospital. He testified it appeared that the child had been beaten. His face and neck were swollen and bruised. The back and right side of his head were "soft and mushy." The injury was consistent with a blunt trauma but was not consistent with a fall. He had fresh bruises on the right side of his forehead, and some older bruising under his jaw. He had an abrasion on his forehead. A surgeon was called in to perform a tracheotomy in preparation for transferring the child to St. Edwards Hospital in Fort Smith.
Before transferring the child, Dr. Parker spoke by phone with Dr. Albert McDade, a neurological surgeon in Fort Smith, to prepare him for Keith's arrival. Dr. Parker told Dr. McDade that Keith had a closed head injury and a lot of brain damage. In response to a question from Dr. McDade, he said he suspected child abuse because of the different ages and distribution of the bruises and the swelling around the child's neck.
Nurse Dorothy O'Bar was the emergency room nurse at the Booneville hospital. She observed bruises on the child's neck and head. The bruises on the neck were like finger marks, and there was a small amount of blood coming from the nose.
Dr. John Williams assisted in the treatment of Keith at the Booneville hospital and accompanied him on the ambulance trip to Fort Smith. He testified that Keith had multiple bruises on his head, and the back of his head felt "mushy" due to blood under his scalp. He stated that Keith suffered seizures because of brain damage or injury.
Nurse Gary Lem also attended Keith on the ambulance trip. He observed four (4) bruises on the right side of Keith's forehead that were consistent with an adult's knuckles. In addition, he noticed bruising in the soft tissue on each side of the neck.
Dr. Steven Graves attended Keith in the emergency room of St. Edwards. He testified that a computerized tomography scan of the brain showed both subarachnoid and subdural bleeding. Subarachnoid bleeding is below an inner layer of the cover of the brain. Subarachnoid bleeding alone is almost always due to severe shaking back and forth and the subdural bleeding suggested there had been a blow to the head by an adult.
Dr. Albert McDade also examined Keith at St. Edwards. He observed four (4) evenly distributed bruises on both the left and right sides of the forehead. The scalp was swollen on both sides, with the swelling being worse and more recent on the right side. There were hemorrhages in the eye grounds indicating acute and rapidly increased pressure on the brain which usually occurs from an impact or shaking.
Keith's condition was critical by the time he reached St. Edwards Hospital, and he was taken to surgery to drill holes in his skull to allow the blood to escape and thereby reduce the pressure. The next day, February 4, his condition had deteriorated to the point that he was essentially brain dead. His blood pressure had to be artificially supported to keep him alive. A second brain scan showed that both sides of the brain had bruising, and there was white matter injury (ruptured nerves from shearing stress) which is consistent with the rapid acceleration and deceleration motions involved in violently shaking a child. The doctors discussed Keith's condition with Melanie, and later she stated that she did not want Keith to be kept alive artificially. The doctors took Keith off the respirator at 3:10 p.m., and he was pronounced dead at 3:40 p.m.
Dr. Fahmy Malak, the State's Chief Medical Examiner, performed an autopsy on Keith's body. With the aid of photographs taken during the autopsy, he testified that Keith had an old bruise in the center of his chest and one above his nose. He had two (2) adjacent fresh bruises on the right side of his forehead. On the left side of his forehead there were multiple small round bruises. There was a small old bruise behind his left ear and an older one under his jaw. There was a similar bruise on the right side of his neck under his jaw. He had three (3) small old bruises on his buttocks. On the back of his head, he had a large bruise extending from behind the ears toward the crown of the head and a fresh bruise on the back of the skull. There were blood clots at the base of the skull which were consistent with vigorous shaking. The scalp was separated from the skull, and this was consistent with vigorous hair pulling. There was bleeding around the optic nerves which was consistent with savage shaking. Dr. Malak testified that Keith died from a head injury caused by swelling of the brain and increased intracranial pressure which caused the heart and lungs to stop functioning.
Various witnesses, including Dr. Malak, testified that there was no evidence on Keith's body to indicate that either of the two (2) logs found near the woodpile had fallen on him. The logs weighed thirty-four (34) and twenty-two (22) pounds, and yet, there was no external damage to Keith's skin or damage to his internal organs. The logs showed no evidence of blood or skin. Most importantly, the great grandmother, Nettie Richardson, testified that she bathed Keith on Friday afternoon, just before she, Melanie, the appellant, and Keith first went to the doctor's clinic. This bath would have been only about two (2) hours before the appellant brought a dying Keith back to the doctor's office. Her testimony is as follows:
Q. Okay. Had you bathed the child--
A. Yes, sir.
Q. --shortly before they arrived?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Now, at that time would you tell the jury, please, Ms. Richardson, what you observed about the child in the form of bruises? Did he have any bruises on him--
A. He--
Q. --at the time you bathed him?
A. The only bruises he had was on his forehead and those on his throat, and they were old; they wasn't new.
Q. All right. Did he have any bruises anywhere else?
A. No, sir; nowhere.
She additionally stated that a few days earlier the appellant had attempted to explain away the bruises on the forehead and throat by stating that the bruise on the forehead came from playing with another child and the bruises about the throat came from the child's play pen.
W.C. O'Neil testified that he saw Keith on January 23, which was eleven (11) days before his death, and at that time he had two black eyes, a swollen nose, and a skinned place between his eyes about the size of a half dollar. The appellant told O'Neil that Keith hurt himself while playing. O'Neil questioned the truthfulness of appellant's explanation and, on cross-examination, stated:
Q. And then you queried Scott about that?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. And basically his--he told you that the child jumped off the step, or dove off the step, or something--
A. He said he was running across their dining room and jumping into the den, and I happen not to agree with it.
Q. Pardon me?
A. And I did not agree with him. I stated to him that the step was padded, carpeted, and it was only like the width of a two-by.
Q. Okay. If that was a true statement that Mr. Scott Porter made to you, would that child have had a carpet burn up here?
A. It wasn't a carpet burn. A carpet burn, I would think would be skinned sideways. This was a perfect circle cut.
The foregoing is substantial circumstantial evidence of a cruel, malicious, and continued course of child abuse culminating in a violent act that caused the death of Keith. The evidence is sufficient to sustain the conviction for knowingly causing the death of a person fourteen (14) years of age or...
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