State Carolina v. Eric Glenn Lane.

Decision Date11 March 2011
Docket NumberNo. 606A05.,606A05.
Citation707 S.E.2d 210,365 N.C. 7
PartiesSTATE of North Carolinav.Eric Glenn LANE.
CourtNorth Carolina Supreme Court

OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE

Appeal as of right pursuant to N.C.G.S. § 7A–27(a) from a judgment imposing a sentence of death entered by Judge Gary E. Trawick on 11 July 2005 in Superior Court, Wayne County, upon a jury verdict finding defendant guilty of first-degree murder. On 20 March 2008, the Supreme Court allowed defendant's motion to bypass the Court of Appeals as to his appeal of additional judgments. After hearing oral argument on 17 November 2008, the Supreme Court issued an opinion on 12 December 2008, State v. Lane, 362 N.C. 667, 669 S.E.2d 321 (2008) (per curiam), as clarified by an order entered on 9 March 2009, remanding the case to the trial court for further hearings, findings of fact, and conclusions of law. Following entry of an order on remand by Judge D. Jack Hooks, Jr. on 22 June 2009 in Superior Court, Wayne County, the Court entered an order on 8 October 2009 allowing defendant's motion for supplemental briefing following the remand. Heard in the Supreme Court on the issues addressed in the supplemental briefs on 10 May 2010.

Roy Cooper, Attorney General, by Derrick C. Mertz, Assistant Attorney General, and Robert C. Montgomery, Special Deputy Attorney General, for the State.

Ann B. Petersen, Chapel Hill, and James R. Glover for defendant-appellant.

HUDSON, Justice.

Defendant Eric Glenn Lane appeals his conviction and sentence to death for the first-degree murder of five-year-old Precious Ebony Whitfield. Defendant was found guilty of first-degree murder based on jury findings of malice, premeditation, and deliberation and under the felony murder rule. Defendant was also convicted of related charges of first-degree statutory rape, first-degree statutory sex offense, indecent liberties, and first-degree kidnapping. We find no error in defendant's trial or sentencing, and we further determine that defendant's sentence of death is not disproportionate to his crimes.

PROCEDURAL AND FACTUAL BACKGROUND

At about 4:45 p.m. on 17 May 2002, Michelle Whitfield dropped off her five-year-old daughter Precious and her two younger children at the Goldsboro home of Gladys Johnson, who was Precious's step-grandmother. Because Michelle worked evenings, Mrs. Johnson and two of her sons often watched the children for her. That night, Mrs. Johnson planned to be home by 5:30, but stopped off on her way home to pick up some things for dinner. In the meantime, her younger son Travion had Precious do her homework before allowing Precious to play at a neighbor's house.

Precious and her friend Michael rode up and down his driveway on their bikes, with Precious on a borrowed red-and-white bicycle. The two saw defendant in his nearby yard and went over to see if they could play on his swing set. After swinging for awhile, with defendant helping to push Precious, the children went inside defendant's house for a few minutes to see the goldfish and eels defendant kept in a tank. Defendant gave Precious a soda, and she and Michael played on the swing set for several minutes longer before getting back on their bikes and returning to Michael's house.

Around 6:30 p.m., Michael's mother told Precious that it was time to go home, as Michael and his family were leaving for the evening. Precious left on the red-and-white bicycle, and Michael's mother assumed she had gone back to Mrs. Johnson's house. However, when Mrs. Johnson sent Travion to get Precious for dinner at about 7:00 p.m., he was unable to find her at Michael's house or elsewhere in the neighborhood. After repeated searches on their own, and under the mistaken belief that they could not file an official report until Precious had been missing for twenty-four hours, Precious's family called law enforcement the following morning, Saturday, 18 May 2002.

Deputies commenced a general search for Precious and questioned several people, including defendant, as part of a neighborhood canvass. Defendant told a detective that Precious and Michael had been at his house for about ten minutes late Friday afternoon, playing on his swing set and seeing his goldfish and eels. A brief search of defendant's house, with his consent, yielded no sign of Precious. Detectives returned twice more to defendant's house on Saturday, once checking a shed on his property. His story was consistent about his interactions with Precious and Michael on Friday, and law enforcement continued pursuing other leads.

Despite extensive efforts and manpower, law enforcement agencies were unable to find Precious. During the early afternoon of Sunday, 19 May 2002, local residents fishing in a nearby creek discovered Precious, with her upper body wrapped in a trash bag, her legs pulled up to her chest with duct tape, and duct tape also wrapped around her head such that her face and hair were not visible. The crotch of her shorts and panties had been jaggedly cut, and that area was bloody and red. Deputies responded within roughly thirty minutes of the residents' 911 call reporting the body, which was not touched in that interval. An autopsy later showed that Precious had suffered some blunt force trauma and also had several bruises and lacerations, and there was evidence of sexual assault. The official cause of death was “asphyxia secondary to suffocation”; the medical examiner concluded that Precious had been alive when she was put into the trash bag and died in part because she had vomited while struggling against the tape, then breathed some of the vomit back into her lungs. A red-and-white bicycle, later identified as the one Precious had been riding, was also recovered in the creek, and a blue tarp rolled up with duct tape at one end was found in a nearby ditch.

While law enforcement investigated the scene at the creek, Sammy Sasser passed by and learned that the body of a missing girl had been discovered there. He then went to the Sheriff's Department to tell them what he had seen while driving in that area on Friday evening. Mr. Sasser reported that he observed a man with a red scooter with a basket, on the left side of the bridge, along with a “raincoat or something wrapped up in a clump” with duct tape lying about eight to ten feet behind the scooter. He described the man as a small- to medium-framed person wearing a blue jacket and lighter shade helmet. Several other witnesses later corroborated Mr. Sasser's account, variously testifying at trial that they had seen a white male on a red scooter or red moped with a black basket in the area of the bridge going over the creek between 7:15 and 7:45 on Friday night. The witnesses reported seeing the man struggling with a large bundle wrapped in a blue tarp and with a small red-and-white bicycle.

Based on this information and their knowledge that defendant had a red scooter, Detectives Mike Kabler and Shawn Harris returned to defendant's house. Defendant agreed to be interviewed at the Sheriff's Department, where he essentially repeated the story he had told earlier: that Precious and Michael had been at his house for a brief period in the late afternoon or evening on Friday and then left. He said he did not see Precious again that night.

Defendant again consented to a search of his residence and storage sheds and went with detectives at approximately 10:45 p.m. on Sunday night to conduct the search, which took roughly two and a half hours. In defendant's storage sheds, deputies found a red scooter with a black basket and a white helmet, as well as rolls of duct tape and electrical tape, both of which held blue fibers consistent with the tarp found where Precious's body was discovered. Deputies also seized trash bags similar to the one wrapped around Precious's upper body, and a blue coat with a red spot on it. Defendant gave another, formal statement to detectives, confirming his earlier story that he had not seen Precious or Michael after they left his house early Friday evening.

That Tuesday morning, 21 May 2002, Detectives Kabler and Tony Morris picked defendant up at his home for a prearranged appointment to give a statement to a State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) agent at the agency's Greenville office. Special Agent Joseph Smith met with defendant and detected “no impairments,” although defendant had told Detectives Kabler and Morris that morning that he was an alcoholic, occasionally suffered from seizures, and was hung over and feeling sick from drinking the previous night. In the course of the interview, defendant initially implicated himself in Precious's death by stating that he had “wrapped the young'n in duct tape.” He ultimately gave the following full confession, first orally and then reduced to writing, corrected, and signed:

I, Eric Lane, came home from work on Friday, May 17, 2002, at about 3:00 p.m. or 3:30 p.m. I ... started drinking beer. Michael ... and Precious ... came over to my house at about ten or 15 minutes after I got home. I had drank about three beers before they got there. They [ ] were riding bicycles. I was lying in the backyard in front of the swing. They asked if they could swing. I said yes. They asked me to push them on the swing so I did.... Precious asked for something to drink. I went in the house and got some—got them some Pepsi. They came to the door and Precious stepped in the house.... I told them to go look at the eels which were in the living room. They then went to [defendant's son's] room to look at the goldfish. They stayed in the house about ten minutes. They then went back outside and played on the swing again. I went back out with them.

After about five minutes ... [they] left....

... I was still drinking. About 15 minutes later, Precious came back to the house riding a white and red bicycle. She asked if she could look at the eels again so we went in the house. At first I sat at the kitchen table while Precious played with [defendant's son's] toys in his room. She played...

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