Stanley v. State

• Decision Date: 22 November 2013
• Docket Number: CR–06–2236.
• Citation: 143 So.3d 230
• Parties: Anthony Lee STANLEY v. STATE of Alabama.
• Court: Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals

143 So.3d 230

Anthony Lee STANLEY

v.STATE of Alabama.

CR–06–2236.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama.

April 29, 2011.

Opinion on Return to Remand Aug. 26, 2011.

Rehearing Denied Dec. 2, 2011.

Opinion on Remand from the Alabama Supreme Court Feb. 15, 2013.

As Modified on Denial of Rehearing May 3, 2013.

Certiorari Denied Nov. 22, 2013

Alabama Supreme Court 1120946.

Alicia A. D'Addario and Randall S. Susskind, Montgomery; and B.T. Gardner, Jr., Tuscumbia, for appellant.

Troy King and Luther Strange, attys. gen., and Thomas R. Govan, Jr., asst. atty. gen., for appellee.

JOINER, Judge.¹

Anthony Lee (“Tony”) Stanley was convicted of capital murder for the intentional murder of Henry Smith by stabbing him during the course of a first-degree robbery, see§ 13A–5–40(a)(2), Ala.Code 1975. During the penalty phase of Stanley's trial, the jury, by a vote of 8 to 4, recommended that Stanley be sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. After receiving a presentence-investigation report and conducting a sentencing hearing, the trial court overrode the jury's recommendation, finding that the aggravating circumstances outweighed the mitigating circumstances, and sentenced Stanley to death. Stanley filed a motion for a new trial, which the court denied. Stanley appeals his capital-murder conviction and sentence of death.

The evidence introduced at trial showed the following. On Saturday, June 18, 2005, Henry Smith was stabbed to death in an apartment in Tuscumbia that Stanley shared with his wife, Shelly. The crime was discovered the following Monday, June 20, 2005, when the landlord's son, Ronald Berryhill, cut the padlock on the apartment door. He accessed the apartment because his mother, Swanie Berryhill, the landlord, had been told by Dorothy (“Dot”) Stanley, who actually leased the apartment from Swanie, that her son, Stanley, and his wife, Shelly, had left town and that several dogs remained inside the apartment. The medical examiner and forensic pathologist, Dr. Emily Ward, testifiedthat Smith died as a result of multiple stab wounds and severe head injuries.

Shelly Stanley testified that she and Stanley had been using illegal narcotics, including crack cocaine and OxyContin, for several days, including Friday evening into the early morning hours of Saturday, June 18, 2005. When they exhausted their supply of money and drugs, Stanley directed her to telephone Smith, an individual they knew to carry cash and pills. She called Smith under the guise that she was going to pay him for the pills she and Stanley had obtained from him that Friday night.² Stanley told her that he planned to rob and kill Smith. When Smith arrived at the Stanleys' apartment, Shelly, while standing away from the door, called for Smith to come inside. As Smith entered the apartment, Stanley attacked him with an aluminum baseball bat, striking him in the face, the leg, and other parts of his body numerous times.³ Stanley knocked Smith to the floor, took a steak knife from the top of a china cabinet, straddled Smith with his knees on the floor, and repeatedly stabbed him in the back, while Smith begged for his life. ⁴ When the steak knife bent, Stanley got another steak knife and continued to stab Smith.

Shelly testified that, while Stanley was stabbing Smith, she moved Smith's truck, which Smith had left running outside the Stanleys' apartment, behind the laundromat so that it was not visible from the road. When she returned to the apartment, she and Stanley searched Smith's pockets and wallet. Because they found no cash or drugs, Stanley changed clothes, padlocked the apartment door, and left to search Smith's apartment for money and pills. They ransacked Smith's apartment, taking cash, change jars, and OxyContin pills, and returned to their apartment to get a 1987 maroon Toyota pick-up truck, which had been loaned to them by another acquaintance, Jonathan Patterson, who testified at trial that he was addicted to drugs and that he often purchased pills from the Stanleys.

Around 9:00 a.m. on Saturday morning, Stanley took Smith's pick-up truck into the Colbert Heights area of Tuscumbia and abandoned it.⁵ Shelly followed him in their borrowed pick-up truck. After abandoning Smith's truck, they drove to Muscle Shoals and checked into a room at the Best Western hotel. They also purchased supplies from a nearby K–Mart discount store with the proceeds from the sale of the stolen OxyContin pills. Sometime that day, Shelly returned to their apartment in Tuscumbia and put a comforter over Smith's body to prevent the several dogs that were in the apartment from disturbing it. Around noon that day, Shelly visited her daughter, Jenna Mitchell, and told her that she was going to be gone for awhile and needed to tell her and her granddaughter goodbye before she left.⁶According to Mitchell, Stanley was not with her mother that afternoon, and her mother was visibly upset and crying.⁷

The next morning, Sunday, June 19, 2005, Stanley and Shelly checked out of the hotel and returned to their apartment to pack their belongings. While there, they moved Smith's body to the floor on the other side of their bed and covered the bloodstained floor with another carpet. Jonathan Patterson knocked on the door to retrieve the pick-up truck he had loaned to the Stanleys. When they did not answer the door, Patterson, using his extra set of keys, took his truck. They now were without transportation, and Stanley, who, according to Shelly, panicked, telephoned his mother, Dot, to come pick them up. Dot picked them up and drove them to Stanley's sister's house. They stayed there until Monday morning, June 20, 2005. According to Shelly, they used drugs throughout Sunday evening.

On Monday morning, Dot drove Stanley and Shelly to the Colbert Heights area near where they had left Smith's truck on Saturday. Stanley and Shelly drove Smith's truck to a friend's house in Russellville, where they left their duffel bags they had packed on Sunday. While driving back to Muscle Shoals that afternoon, Stanley telephoned his mother, and she informed him that the Berryhills planned to enter their apartment that afternoon because they believed the Stanleys had left town and they were concerned about the dogs that had been left in the apartment. The Stanleys drove back to the Colbert Heights area, abandoned the truck a second time, and spent the next several days hiding in the woods with only a cooler containing their cellular telephones, wallets, and toothbrushes.⁸

Christie Smith, the victim's daughter, testified that she tried to locate her father on Saturday and Sunday without success. When she drove by her father's apartment early Sunday morning, she noticed that neither he nor his truck was there. She realized something was wrong. She returned a second time later that day and noticed the door to the apartment ajar. While Christie waited outside, Janice Berryhill, a family friend who had dated Smith, went into the apartment and discovered that the place had been ransacked.

On Sunday evening, Christie filed a missing-person report with the Tuscumbia Police Department. At the police station, Christie encountered Patterson, who was also filing a police report because his house had been burglarized on or around June 16, 2005, and a shotgun, among other things, had been stolen. Patterson told Christie that he believed Shelly had sold her father, Smith, the shotgun taken from his house. Patterson also told Christie that he last saw Christie's father on Friday night around 11:00 p.m. when he dropped him off at his apartment.

Patterson, who worked out of town as an engineer for the Tennessee Valley Authority (“TVA”), testified at trial that he believed Shelly had broken into his house sometime earlier, during the week of the murder, because she had done so once before when he was away. In addition, Patterson's neighbor told him that he had seen the truck Patterson had loaned the Stanleys at his house during the week he was away. When Patterson confronted Shelly on or around Friday, June 17, 2005, she denied that she had stolen the shotgun and other items. Later that evening, Patterson spoke to Smith on the telephone around 9:00 p.m. and Smith had agreed to help him locate the Stanleys because, during their conversation, Patterson and Smith realized that Shelly had sold Patterson's missing shotgun to Smith for $50. Smith rode with him to look for the Stanleys until around 11:00 p.m., when Patterson dropped Smith off at his apartment.⁹

On Monday morning, Christie met and talked with Capt. Jim Heffernan of the Tuscumbia Police Department at her father's apartment regarding the missing-person report. Doug Hendon, also a family friend, accompanied her. Later that day, Capt. Heffernan had a roll-call meeting with the on-duty police officers and informed the officers of the missing-person report regarding Smith. Capt. Heffernan also told the police officers that he was looking for Shelly for questioning concerning a separate incident involving a shotgun and other items that had been stolen from Patterson's house. He told the officers that Smith and the Stanleys were acquaintances. Capt. Heffernan issued a BOLO ¹⁰ for the Stanleys.

Around 5:30 p.m. on Monday, one of the officers on a routine patrol, Stuart Setliff, who had taken the missing-person report on Smith from his daughter, saw three people gathered outside the Stanleys' apartment. Thinking that one of the individuals might be one of the Stanleys or Smith, Officer Setliff stopped, approached the apartment, and learned that the three people there were Swanie Berryhill, the owner of the apartment, her son Ronald Berryhill, and Dot, Stanley's mother. As noted, the Berryhills had called Dot because they wanted to get into the apartment based on their concern that Stanley and Shelly had left dogs unattended in the apartment. Officer Setliff called Capt. Heffernan, informing him that the landlord was going to cut the...