State Of La. v. Blow
| Decision Date | 11 August 2010 |
| Docket Number | No. 269,708,No. 45,415-KA,45,415-KA,269,708 |
| Parties | STATE OF LOUISIANA Appellee. v. LYNETTE GAIL BLOW Appellant. |
| Court | Court of Appeal of Louisiana — District of US |
STATE OF LOUISIANA Appellee.
v.
LYNETTE GAIL BLOW Appellant.
No. 269, 708
Court Of Appeal Second Circuit
State Of Louisiana
Dated: August 11, 2010.
THE HARVILLE LAW FIRM, LLC By: Douglas Lee Harville, Counsel for Appellant.
CHARLES REX SCOTT, II, District Attorney;SUZANNE MORELOCK OWEN LAURA OWEN WINGATE FULCO JACOB P. BROUSSARD, Assistant District Attorneys, Counsel for Appellee.
Appealed from the First Judicial District Court for the Parish of Caddo, Louisiana.
Application for rehearing may be filed within the delay allowed by Art. 922, La. C.Cr.P.
John D. Mosely, Jr., J.
Before WILLIAMS, DREW and LOLLEY, JJ.
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DREW, J.:
Lynette Gail Blow was found guilty of two counts of solicitation for murder. La. R.S. 14:28.1. Ordered to serve 15 years at hard labor concurrently on each count, she filed a timely motion to reconsider sentence, which was denied.
She appeals. We affirm in all respects.
Shortly after midnight on June 14, 2008, a Shreveport 9-1-1 operator received a frantic call from an hysterical woman claiming someone was in her home. Initially, the operator had difficulty understanding the caller, but eventually she was able to determine that the caller was in Greenwood, Louisiana, at a home on Waterford Drive. The call was transferred to the Greenwood Police Department, whose officers quickly responded to the scene.
One officer made contact with Michael Blow, a bloodied man sitting on a sofa inside the home. The other officer went to the back of the home searching for the 9-1-1 caller, where he made contact with Lynette Blow, defendant, as she was standing in a rear bedroom, screaming, "They might still be in the house." The officer was able to get the defendant's attention and assist her in climbing out of the bedroom window. Meanwhile, the other officer was able to get Mr. Blow to unlock the front door. Mr. Blow was transported to LSU Hospital, where he was treated for shotgun wounds to his hip and back area.
Nothing had been taken, and the ransacked parts of the home appeared to have been staged. The victim had been telling others that he
believed his wife would attempt to kill him. The detectives subsequently found two men who testified that Mrs. Blow asked them to kill her husband or arrange the contract killing of him.
The defendant had an extramarital affair with Edward Glover in 2004 when she asked him if he or someone he knew would kill her husband for $10,000. Glover responded in the negative, and the defendant broke off contact with him.
In 2007, she made the exact same monetary proposal to a former coworker, when she asked him to find someone to kill Mr. Blow.
I. Sufficiency
Law
The defendant argues that the state presented insufficient evidence to validly convict her of the offenses, as there was testimony from only one fact witness in connection with each crime. We disagree. The evidence was overwhelming. Our law on review for sufficiency of the evidence is well settled.1
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La. R.S. 14:28.1, solicitation for murder, provides:
Solicitation for murder is the intentional solicitation by one person of another to commit or cause to be committed a first or second degree murder.
La. R.S. 14:10, criminal intent, provides:
Criminal intent may be specific or general: (1) Specific criminal intent is that state of mind which exists when the circumstances indicate that the offender actively desired the prescribed criminal consequences to follow his act or failure to act.
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(2) General criminal intent is present whenever there is specific intent, and also when the circumstances indicate that the offender, in the ordinary course of human experience, must have adverted to the prescribed criminal consequences as reasonably certain to result from his act or failure to act.
La. R.S. 14:11. Criminal intent; how expressed The definitions of some crimes require a specific criminal intent, while in others no intent is required. Some crimes consist merely of criminal negligence that produces criminal consequences. However, in the absence of qualifying provisions, the terms "intent" and "intentional" have reference to "general criminal intent."
Testimony
1. Officer Adam Scheen, now of the Shreveport Police Department, was working for the Greenwood Police Department on June 14, 2008. He was the first officer to respond to the call of a burglary in progress at 7464 Waterwood Drive in Greenwood. He estimated it took him less than a minute to get to the residence, and he passed no cars on the way.
He parked his vehicle and moved toward the home, taking cover behind a tree in the yard, at which time Officer Eaken arrived. Scheen directed Eaken toward the back of the house to look for the victim. Eaken made contact with the defendant, who gave her husband's name and a description of his clothing.
Once Scheen confirmed the person inside the home to be Mr. Blow, he yelled for the man to identify himself; he did so. Scheen told him the door was locked and he needed to get inside. Mr. Blow was quite bloody, but was able to crawl to the door and open it. Mr. Blow told Scheen that there had been two people in the home, but that he did not know if they were still present. Scheen radioed for a fire department EMT, and called for
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additional assistance at the scene. Scheen never spoke with the defendant that night, as she remained in the back with Eaken. Once sheriff's deputies arrived, Scheen turned the scene over to them.
2. Greenwood Police Department Officer Barry Eaken testified he was at the office working on a report when he answered a call from the Shreveport Police Department dispatch who had received the defendant's 9-1-1 call. He was the second officer to arrive. He parked at the end of the yard and approached the home. During the short trip to the scene, he was in constant contact with the dispatcher and Scheen. As he approached the home, he saw a bloody man sitting inside on a couch.
Eaken walked around the house, peering through the windows. He found an open gate and moved toward the back of the home searching for the caller. Noticing a dim light in a bedroom, Eaken shined his flashlight into the window and identified himself. The defendant was standing inside and was on the phone.
Eaken told the jury that he wore a video-audio recorder on the night he responded to the scene and the recording was preserved and turned over as evidence in the case. The recording was played for the jury.
The defendant's demeanor seemed unusual to Eaken, in that she seemed surprised that the victim was reported to be sitting on the couch. She would get very excited and hysterical and then become calm for a period. Eaken recalled that the defendant appeared to be crying at times, though he saw no tears. The defendant's cries, according to Eaken, were contrived. He helped her out through a window.
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Eaken acknowledged the fact that the defendant asked "quite a few" times about the victim's condition. As Eaken's video recording was played for the jury again, Eaken stated he did hear the defendant say "thank God" in response to being informed that the victim was sitting on the couch after the shooting. The defendant also responded "good, good" after being told that the victim was conscious and talking. Based on the recording, Eaken testified that the defendant seemed concerned about the victim's condition. After inquiries about her husband, she mentioned her leg burning, showing Eaken some white powder on her pants leg.
3. Sergeant Stacy Poarch of the Greenwood Police Department testified she was working dispatch on the night of the shooting and answered a call from the Shreveport Police Department. This was the second call, as the first call had been disconnected. During this second call, Poarch could hear the caller (defendant) screaming, calling for help, and advising that when she and her husband returned home and turned on a light, two men attacked her husband. The caller also said she ran into her daughter's bedroom and locked herself in a closet. This second call was disconnected as well, and Poarch was given the number by "Shreveport" so she called the defendant back. During this conversation, Poarch instructed the defendant to remain in the closet where she was hiding for safety reasons. Poarch recalled that the defendant told her that two men were still inside the house. Calls to the Greenwood Police Department were not recorded. The 9-1-1 tape from the Shreveport Police Department was introduced into evidence.
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4. James Sarrett, a fireman/EMT with Fire District 3, responded to the call of a home invasion at the defendant's residence and found the victim outside the home. He examined the defendant, because she was hysterical, anxious and hyperventilating, but not crying. After she calmed, she told him that when she and her husband came home, they entered through the garage door. Someone brushed against her and she heard a struggle, then she ran to the back bedroom of the house, where she locked the door, got into a closet, and called 9-1-1. Sarrett found the defendant's reactions to be strange, though he was treating her, not questioning her.
5. Sergeant Gary Baird, a crime scene investigator with the Caddo Parish Sheriff's Office, was accepted by the court as an expert in crime...
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