State Of Tenn. v. Henretta

• Decision Date: 30 September 2010
• Docket Number: No. E2007-01750-SC-DDT-DD.,E2007-01750-SC-DDT-DD.
• Citation: 325 S.W.3d 112
• Parties: STATE of Tennessee v. John Patrick HENRETTA.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

325 S.W.3d 112

STATE of Tennessee

v.John Patrick HENRETTA.

No. E2007-01750-SC-DDT-DD.

Supreme Court of Tennessee,at Knoxville.

May 4, 2010 Session.

Sept. 30, 2010.

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Charles G. Currier, Knoxville, Tennessee (on appeal and at trial); Steven B. Ward, Madisonville, Tennessee (on appeal); and Charles Corn, Cleveland, Tennessee, District Public Defender (at trial), for the appellant, John Patrick Henretta.

Robert E. Cooper, Jr., Attorney General and Reporter; Michael E. Moore, Solicitor General; Mark E. Davidson and James E. Gaylord, Senior Counsel; Jerry Estes, District Attorney General; and Sandra Donaghy, Assistant District Attorney General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee.

OPINION

SHARON G. LEE, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which JANICE M. HOLDER, C.J., CORNELIA A. CLARK, GARY R. WADE, and WILLIAM C. KOCH, JR., JJ., joined.

SHARON G. LEE, J.

This capital case involves the 1988 rape, murder, robbery, and kidnapping of a thrift store employee in Cleveland, Tennessee. A Bradley County jury convicted the defendant of premeditated murder, felony murder, two counts of robbery with a deadly weapon, two counts of aggravated rape, and two counts of aggravated kidnapping. The trial court merged the premeditated murder and felony murder convictions into a single conviction for which the jury imposed a sentence of death after hearing proof of aggravating and mitigating circumstances. The trial court merged the remaining convictions into a single conviction for each offense and imposed concurrent sentences of forty-five years for robbery with a deadly weapon, fifty years for aggravated kidnapping, and fifty years for aggravated rape, all concurrent with the sentence of death. The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the defendant's convictions and sentences. On automatic appeal pursuant to Tennessee Code Annotated section 39-13-206(a)(1), we have considered all issues raised by the defendant, including the following issues, which we designated for oral argument: (1) whether the trial court erred in having insufficient regard for the heightened standard of due process in capital cases by failing to grant a mistrial, by allowing prosecutorial argument on future dangerousness while not instructing the jury on the effect of their failure to agree or ensuring that the jury knew the defendant would never leave prison alive, and by not sua sponte instructing the jury on the defense of voluntary intoxication; (2) whether the defendant is entitled to relief for pre-indictment delay in filing the notice of intent to seek the death penalty and/or for the trial court's refusal to dismiss the indictment with prejudice because the State violated the anti-shuttling provisions of the Interstate Agreement on Detainers; (3) whether the search of the defendant at the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas was defective such that its fruits should have been suppressed; and (4) whether the sentence of death is disproportionate under the review mandated by Tennessee Code Annotated section 39-13-206(c)(1) (2006). We conclude that none of the issues presented entitle the defendant to relief and, therefore, we affirm the judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeals.

Background

On November 30, 1988, Frances Rose Crabtree, ¹ a thirty-two year old mother of two minor children, was working alone as a sales clerk at the Salvation Army Thrift Store in Cleveland, Tennessee. Between 4:30 and 5:00 p.m., Ms. Crabtree spoke with her sister by telephone from the store, and they made plans to meet at church at 7:00 that night. When Ms. Crabtree failed to meet her sister at church, her sister and some friends went to the store to search for her. Ms. Crabtree's car was still parked at the store, the front door of the store was locked, and her lunch box and coat were lying on the checkout counter in the front part of the store, but Ms. Crabtree was not located. The police were called, and in the middle section of the store, they discovered an empty cash register drawer, scattered receipts, an empty money bag, and one of Ms. Crabtree's shoes. In a cluttered storage room at the rear of the store, officers found Ms. Crabtree's body near a large pool of blood. She was partially covered by a bed cover and was clothed in a blouse, bra, and skirt. She had been stabbed three times in the neck-twice on the left side and once on the right. One of the wounds to the left side of her neck had not cut any large veins or arteries; however, the other wound to that side of the neck had severed the jugular vein. The wound to the right side of Ms. Crabtree's neck was fatal and had severed the carotid artery, the jugular vein, and cut through the ligaments holding the backbone together, exposing the spinal cord. Medical examination confirmed that Ms. Crabtree died from loss of blood as the result of these wounds. Ms. Crabtree's panties and purse containing $420 in cash were missing along with store proceeds in the amount of $189.60. No murder weapon was found. Subsequent Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (“TBI”) laboratory examination of vaginal swabs taken from Ms. Crabtree, her skirt, and the bed cover that had been draped over her body revealed the presence of sperm, suggesting that Ms. Crabtree may have been raped. This evidence, along with samples of her blood, saliva, and hair, was sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) for deoxyribonucleic acid (“DNA”) analysis.

Ms. Crabtree's murder remained unsolved for the next several years. Then, in early 1994, Lieutenant Danny Chastain of the Cleveland Police Department saw a National Crime Information Center teletype from police in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, directed to any Tennessee police agency having an unsolved November 1988 homicide involving a female store employee whose throat had been cut. Lieutenant Chastain learned that this teletype was prompted by a letter that had been received by a federal judge in Philadelphia from an individual identified as Michael Goodhart, who was then incarcerated in Bastrop County Federal Correctional Facility in Texas. Lieutenant Chastain telephoned Mr. Goodhart, who advised him that the murder he had witnessed had occurred between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. in a thrift store after the store had closed and that the murderer was presently incarcerated. Further investigation revealed that Mr. Goodhart and the defendant, John Patrick Henretta, had been traveling together at the time of the thrift store murder and that after the murder, on December 3, 1988, they had been arrested together outside of Little Rock, Arkansas. Mr. Goodhart and Mr. Henretta were wanted by the FBI for a kidnapping at knifepoint that had occurred on or about the day after Thanksgiving of 1988, and Mr. Henretta had previously been convicted of homicide and rape and was currently a suspect in yet another homicide.

In February of 1994, Lieutenant Chastain and TBI Agent Brooks Wilkins traveled to Texas to speak further with Mr. Goodhart and then went to Leavenworth, Kansas, where Mr. Henretta was incarcerated at the Leavenworth Federal Correctional Facility (“Leavenworth”). Upon presentation of their affidavit to a Leavenworth County judge, Lieutenant Chastain and Agent Wilkins were issued a search warrant to obtain samples of Mr. Henretta's blood, saliva, and hair.

Lieutenant Chastain and Agent Wilkins met with Mr. Henretta at Leavenworth on February 11, 1994, accompanied by an FBI agent assigned to the penitentiary, a forensic scientist with the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, and a corrections officer employed by the penitentiary. Agent Wilkins had a copy of the search warrant with him and advised Mr. Henretta that they were there to investigate a murder that had occurred in Tennessee in 1988 and explained that the purpose of the search warrant was to collect blood, hair, and saliva samples from him. Mr. Henretta was cooperative, and after the samples were taken, Agent Wilkins advised Mr. Henretta that the investigation concerned the murder of Frances Rose Crabtree in Cleveland, Tennessee, in November of 1988. Mr. Henretta expressed his willingness to talk and after signing a waiver of his Miranda rights, was interviewed by Agent Wilkins, providing the following signed sworn statement:

We (Michael Goodhart and myself) left Pennsylvania and we were on the run. I was on Parole out of Penn. We went to Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. We were coming back from Florida at this time. We stopped in Tennessee and I did not know the Town. We got there around noon or lunch time. We were still driving the stolen Toyota from Penn. We were drinking and stuff at some bar down the corner from the Salvation Army Store. We hung around about two hours or so and went back by the store and hung around till she closed at 4:30 or 5:00 PM. Goodhart opened up the back door after hiding in the store. I came in the back door. We went in and we both grabbed her back at the store room entrance. We told her to lay down and Goodhart st [sic] sex with her first and I went and got her purse. There was money in the purse. There was $300.00 to $340.00 dollars in the purse. There was another $100.00 in a money bag in one dollar bills. After I got her purse I went back and had sex with her. She was not putting up a struggle or screaming. We both had knifes [sic], there [sic] were about twelve inches long. The black handle knife found in the car when we were arrested was the knife that was used in this murder. I believe This [sic] was my knife. She got up right as I got done having sex with her and Goodhart wanted to take her with us. She said that we could not go out the back door because there was a police station right out the back door. So I asked Goodhart what he wanted to do-I said do you want me to kill her. He said yes. So I took my knife with my right hand and struck her one time in the neck....