Saunders v. Com.

• Decision Date: 07 June 1991
• Docket Number: No. 901488,901488
• Citation: 406 S.E.2d 39,242 Va. 107
• Parties: William Ira SAUNDERS v. COMMONWEALTH of Virginia. Record
• Court: Virginia Supreme Court

Page 39

406 S.E.2d 39

242 Va. 107

William Ira SAUNDERS v. COMMONWEALTH of Virginia.

Record No. 901488.

Supreme Court of Virginia.

June 7, 1991.

Edward M. Stowe (William H. Smith, Smith & Stowe, on brief), Danville, for appellant.

Robert H. Anderson, III, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Mary Sue Terry, Atty. Gen. and Oliver L. Norrell, III, Asst. Atty. Gen., on brief), for appellee.

Present: CARRICO, C.J., COMPTON, STEPHENSON, RUSSELL, WHITING and HASSELL, JJ., and POFF, Senior Justice.

POFF, Senior Justice.

In this appeal, we review a capital murder conviction and a judgment imposing a death penalty upon William Ira Saunders.

I. PROCEEDINGS

Upon his motion, the Commonwealth and the court concurring, Saunders was tried by the court without a jury upon indictments charging capital murder, robbery, and use of a firearm in the commission of capital murder. Invoking the grounds defined in Code § 18.2-31(4), the capital murder indictment charged that the murder was accomplished "in the commission of robbery, while armed with a deadly weapon".

At the first stage of a bifurcated trial conducted pursuant to Code § 19.2-264.4(A), Saunders was found guilty as charged in the indictments. The court sentenced him to life imprisonment for robbery and to two years' imprisonment for the firearm offense. At the penalty phase of the capital murder trial, the court heard evidence in aggravation and mitigation and considered the probation report as required by Code § 19.2-264.5. Resting its decision upon the "future dangerousness" predicate, Code § 19.2-264.4(C), the court sentenced Saunders to death for capital murder.

We have consolidated Saunders' appeal of the capital murder conviction with the automatic review of his death sentence accorded him by statute, Code § 17-110.1(A) and (F), and have given them priority on our docket as required by Code § 17-110.2.

II. FACTS IN EVIDENCE

Under familiar principles, we view the evidence and the reasonable inferences it raises in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth. On the afternoon of July 17, 1989, Dale Guill withdrew five one-hundred dollar bills and five twenty dollar bills from his bank account and drove to an apartment occupied by Lacy Johnson and Katrina Wilson. ¹ At Guill's request, Lacy accompanied him on a ride through the neighborhood in search of a cocaine dealer. While Guill and Lacy were searching for cocaine, defendant Saunders and Levi Poole arrived at the apartment. As on previous visits, Saunders was carrying a leather pouch containing a pistol described of record as a .22 caliber "F. I. E. revolver" with a long, gold-colored barrel.

Lacy had taken the apartment keys, and Katrina, accompanied by Saunders and Poole, walked to a nearby market to get some beer. As they were leaving, Lacy and Guill arrived in Guill's car. They reported that their search had been unsuccessful. Out of Guill's hearing, Saunders exclaimed to Lacy, "I should rob this white [expletive deleted], but you know him."

With Guill in the driver's seat, Lacy beside him, Saunders in the back seat behind Guill, and Katrina in the back seat behind Lacy, the party resumed the search for narcotics. Guill parked the car near a car wash on Memorial Drive and waited for a drug dealer to appear. Katrina decided to leave the group, got the apartment keys from Lacy, and began the walk back to their apartment. At this point, Guill was showing Lacy a warrant he had received charging nonsupport of a child. Lacy testified that he heard a "bang", that Guill "lunged forward like he was heavy hit in the back and I looked back ... it was a gold gun stuck in my face and Saunders tell me, 'Don't say nothing.' " Lacy asked him why he had shot Guill, and Saunders replied, "He's white."

Continuing, Lacy testified that Saunders put the gun in its leather pouch, got out of the car, opened the driver's door and, "leaning over in the car", spoke to the lifeless body before him, "Move [expletive deleted], get the hell off me". Lacy watched as Saunders "[w]ent to searching Dale's pockets", "snatched his chain off" his neck, raised his arm and "took his ring off his hand." As Saunders continued "cussing [Guill] out", Lacy stated, Saunders "brushed" away the hair, "looked at the wound on his head", and then "covered it back."

Saunders started to leave "and then he stopped and came back and snatched [Guill's] shirt off", "[s]tuffed it in the gas tank", and was "trying to light it with some matches." Running from the scene of the crime, Saunders and Lacy overtook Katrina on her way home. "I heard a noise," Katrina said, "It sound like a shot." Saunders replied, "Don't worry about it. I just killed that man."

Saunders offered Guill's wallet to Lacy. When Lacy refused, Saunders removed the contents, discarded the documents in a sewer, and threw the wallet in bushes along High Street. Lacy testified that "[t]hen he started counting, 'Hundreds, hundreds, hundreds' ", inspecting the money taken from Guill's "wallet or his pockets, or wherever he got it." In her testimony, Katrina described the same event, quoting the same language. When they reached the Johnson apartment, Saunders "went upstairs and washed his hands" in order "[t]o get the blood off of them."

In a conversation with Saunders the next day, Katrina told Saunders that she and Lacy were so upset they "couldn't sleep". Katrina testified that Saunders replied, " 'Don't let that bother ya'll. I slept like a baby. Every time I think about it, I smell gunpowder.' " Lacy confirmed that testimony.

On July 19, 1989, Lacy reported the homicide to the police and assisted them in the recovery of Guill's wallet and the cards it contained. Saunders was arrested and imprisoned awaiting indictment.

Bernard Smith, a convicted felon confined to the same prison, testified that Saunders told him that he had "[s]hot [Guill] in the back of the head" with a ".22" caliber gun "down by the car wash on Memorial Drive." Asked what Saunders had "said about the shooting", Smith replied, "He just said he wouldn't give him the money so he shot him and then he ... after he shot him, he got his jewelry and his money, and left." Smith added that Saunders had told him that "Lacy snitched on him ... and that he wanted somebody to knock Lacy off."

The forensic pathologist who performed an autopsy on Guill's body testified that Guill had suffered "almost an instantaneous death" resulting from "a contact gunshot wound to the back of the head" with the bullet passing through "the most vital area of the brain which we call the brain stem". The bullet, removed from "one of the sinuses in the front of the face ... above the right eye", was identified by the firearms expert as "a .22 caliber coated lead bullet".

Having made an unsuccessful motion to strike the Commonwealth's evidence, the defense called Betty Brandon as a witness. Brandon testified that, during a party held in her apartment the night of the murder, Lacy had told her that he, in company with Saunders and Poole, "had followed this dude and they robbed him" and that he Lacy, "was the one that got the money". On cross-examination, Brandon said that Lacy had been "doing drugs" during their conversation, and she acknowledged that she and Saunders "grew up together" and that she was "a friend of the defendant". Anthony Martin, a friend of Saunders' brother, testified that Lacy told him that he had "spent the dead man's money" but that he had not shot the man.

The defense introduced two other witnesses in the guilt phase. Saunders' mother testified that she had never seen her son with a gun. Sandra Mease testified that she had "dated" both Saunders and Guill, but not both during the same period of time. Mease said she knew nothing about the killing.

In rebuttal, the Commonwealth recalled Lacy who expressly denied engaging in the conversation Martin described. Concerning Brandon's testimony, Lacy said that Brandon was a drug addict, that he had not attended the party in her apartment, that he had not made the statement attributed to him, and that Saunders had never given him any of the money taken from Guill.

Upon consideration of the evidence and argument by counsel, the trial court convicted Saunders of the crimes charged in the indictment, ordered a pre-sentence report, and continued the case to hear further evidence in the penalty phase. We will detail later further facts relevant to particular issues addressed in this opinion.

III. THE GUILT PHASE

On appeal, Saunders contends that the evidence was insufficient to support his conviction of capital murder in the commission of robbery. First, we review the proof of criminal agency.

Lacy Johnson, an eyewitness to the crime, testified that Saunders shot Guill in the head with a .22 caliber revolver, a weapon he and Katrina Wilson had seen him carrying on prior occasions. Moments after the shooting, Saunders told Katrina that he had "just killed that man" and began counting the hundred-dollar bills his victim had withdrawn from his bank account earlier that day. Later, at the Johnson apartment, Saunders washed blood off his hands. Awaiting trial in jail, Saunders told Bernard Smith, a fellow inmate, that he had shot Guill in the back of the head with a .22 caliber gun. The firearms experts identified the bullet removed from Guill's face as "a .22 caliber coated lead bullet".

On brief, Saunders charges that "the court did not give adequate weight to the prior criminal records of Lacy Johnson or Bernard Smith" and "did not place adequate emphasis on the marriage of Lacy Johnson and Katrina Wilson very shortly after the crime." For those reasons, he suggests, the testimony of those witnesses was unworthy of belief. But the credibility of witnesses and the weight to be accorded their testimony are questions for the fact finder, and "[w]hen the sufficiency of the evidence is attacked, the judgment of the trial court sitting without a jury is entitled to the same weight as a jury...