Rogers v. State, 2000-KA-01206-SCT.
| Decision Date | 27 September 2001 |
| Docket Number | No. 2000-KA-01206-SCT.,2000-KA-01206-SCT. |
| Citation | 796 So.2d 1022 |
| Parties | James ROGERS a/k/a James Walter Rodgers v. STATE of Mississippi. |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
John David Weddle, Tupelo, Angela Newsom Snyder, Attorneys for Appellant.
Office of the Attorney General by Deirdre McCrory, Attorneys for Appellee.
Before McRAE, P.J., MILLS and WALLER, JJ.
¶ 1. On February 17, 2000, a Lee County jury found James Rogers1 guilty of murder, and he was subsequently given a life sentence. Rogers appeals and raises five issues: whether the trial court erred by granting the State's motion in limine to prohibit all mention of the conviction of a State's witness; whether Rogers failed to receive a fair trial due to the State's improper remarks during its closing arguments; whether Rogers was prejudiced by the trial court's granting the State's motion in limine to prohibit all mention of Jessie Johnson's charge of capital murder; whether the trial court erred by refusing Rogers's proposed jury instruction D 6A, on malice aforethought; and whether the jury's verdict was against the overwhelming weight of the evidence. Finding no reversible error, we affirm the judgment of the trial court.
¶ 2. On September 21, 1998, James Rogers ("Rogers") accompanied his mother to buy a washing machine to replace an old one. Rogers lived with his mother, Edna Rogers ("Edna"). His nephew, Terry Rogers ("Terry") did not live far from his mother's house. Jessie Johnson ("Jessie") and his father, Arthur Danny "Doc" Johnson, had been at Terry's trailer the night before, and the three had been drinking beer, injecting crystal methamphetamine, smoking marijuana and eating sedatives, known as Valiums.
¶ 3. After arriving home from buying the washing machine, Rogers asked Jessie and Arthur to help him move the washer into his mother's home. The three men had to tear some of the trim off the door frame to get the washing machine into the back of the house. They rested and then sat in the living room, drinking beer and eating sandwiches. On the couch, Rogers had a gun which he moved so that Terry would not find it. Rogers feared what Terry would do if he found the gun because of Terry's drug use.
¶ 4. At this point, the stories diverge. Rogers claims that the deceased, Walter Stolz ("Stolz"), came up to his house. Rogers did not know Stolz, but had seen him two or three weeks before, when Johnson had brought him to his home to show his mother some jewelry. Stolz sat down on the couch next to Rogers. Next, Johnson and Stolz got into a violent argument. Johnson stated that he had told Stolz not to come there unless he was with him, and Stolz became angry at this. It was at this point that Rogers got his gun, which he claims slipped from under his grip, and accidentally fired and killed Stolz. Rogers stated, "[A]nd I was coming around, trying to back the hammer on it, my thumb slipped or the gun slipped or something slipped in my hand and `bam.'" Rogers claims that he picked up the gun because he feared for his life and for the life of his mother. Rogers was sixty-years-old at the time of trial, and his mother was eighty-three-years old. Rogers stated his intentions were to get the three men out of his mother's house because he did not want any trouble. Edna corroborated her son's testimony. Rogers further testified that the gun did not fit his hand and that it might have been a woman's gun. The murder weapon a .22 caliber EIG pistol, was introduced into evidence by the State, and it was marked and received.
¶ 5. Jessie and Johnson told a different story at trial. Jessie stated that Rogers told Stolz to come into the house. Jessie stated that Stolz said, "You remember me, he said we had some—a few beers together the other night at Lonnie's Lounge." Then, according to Jessie, Rogers replied, "You don't know me and here's what I've got for people like you." At that point, Rogers reached under "a pillow or blanket or whatever" and shot Stolz. Johnson corroborated his son's testimony and stated that Rogers said, "You don't know me and I don't know you." Jessie and Johnson agreed that they ran out of the house after the shooting.
¶ 6. An officer with the Lee County Sheriffs Department, Ronnie Burroughs, testified that when he arrived at the scene, Rogers was standing on the front porch; Stolz was sitting up against the couch; and the gun was also on the couch.
¶ 7. The defense called Petra Crisostomo, who met Stolz when she was the manager of the Lake and Park Inn. After she had known Stolz for about a year, she began selling rings for him and also purchased a gun from him. Petra testified that Stolz came to her house on the day of the 21st around 4:30 to 5:00 p.m. She stated that he was acting "totally different," and that he had come to purchase a pound of marijuana. When Petra refused, stating that she had changed and wanted to protect her little boy, Stolz became angry, brought out some marijuana of his own, and began rolling a joint. She asked him to leave when her little boy came into the room, and he angrily did so. Petra testified that about an hour after Stolz left her home she noticed police cars and ambulances going by her home, toward the Rogerses' home.
¶ 8. The State filed a motion in limine in which it requested the court to prohibit any mention of the convictions of its witness, Arthur Danny "Doc" Johnson. It was granted, and Rogers asserts that this motion violated his right to confront witnesses against him as set forth in the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article 3, Section 26, of the Mississippi Constitution.
¶ 9. Mississippi Rule of Evidence 609(a) states the rule relevant to this matter as follows:
(a) General Rule. For the purpose of attacking the credibility of a witness, evidence that he has been convicted of a crime shall be admitted if elicited from him or established by public record during cross-examination but only if the crime (1) was punishable by death or imprisonment in excess of one year under the law under which he was convicted, and the court determines that the probative value of admitting this evidence outweighs its prejudicial effect on a party or (2) involved dishonesty or false statement, regardless of the punishment.
¶ 10. Johnson was currently serving a sentence for a drug conviction, and because of this rule, Rogers intended to question him about this conviction when he testified.2 Rogers relies on Young v. State, 731 So.2d 1145, 1151 (Miss.1999), stating that the prejudicial effect of the evidence is not relevant to this matter because Johnson is only a witness, and not a party; and therefore, his testimony cannot be prejudiced by the introduction of this evidence. In Young, we held that it was an abuse of discretion for the trial judge to have excluded evidence of the witness's prior convictions under M.R.E. 609, because the witness was not a party to the case, and any prejudice to him was irrelevant. Id. at 1151. We should note that in White v. State, we followed Young by reversing White's conviction in the lower court and remanding for a new trial in order to allow for impeachment purposes the introduction of evidence of prior convictions of the State's chief witness. White v. State, 785 So.2d 1059, 1063 (Miss.2001). The matter before us is distinguishable from Young and White. The State's key witness in Young denied he had ever been convicted of a felony during the cross-examination. Johnson did not deny that he had used drugs and drank alcohol the night before and the day of the shooting. Further, Jessie testified that Johnson had been drinking beer and using crystal methamphetamine the night before the shooting. Johnson testified that he had not used the crystal meth, but that he had been drinking and "smoking pot" the previous night. He also testified that he drank five to six beers the day of the shooting. Terry testified that he, Jessie, and Johnson had been, "shooting crystal methamphetamine, smoking marijuana, eating Valiums, and they were drinking." Rogers's counsel also presented the use of drugs by Jessie, Johnson, and Terry to the jury during closing arguments. Although there may have been error in not allowing Rogers to introduce evidence of Johnson's prior convictions for impeachment, any such error is harmless since Rogers was able to use the testimony of Johnson and other witnesses to show Johnson's involvement with and use of drugs.
¶ 11. In a similar case, Hobson v. State, 730 So.2d 20, 25-26 (Miss.1998), we found that the trial court's error in not allowing a witness to be questioned about his prior felony convictions to be harmless error when the witness was questioned extensively about his drug use. The trial court did err by not allowing Rogers to question Johnson, since no prejudicial effect may be had by a witness who is not a party to the case. However, we find this error by the trial court to be harmless.
¶ 12. Rogers claims that during the closing arguments, the State made improper statements regarding the weapon that were unsupported by the record during trial. Rogers asserts that following statements to the jury were error.3
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