State of La. v. DRESSNER

• Citation: 45 So.3d 127
• Decision Date: 03 September 2010
• Docket Number: No. 2008-KA-1366.,2008-KA-1366.
• Parties: STATE of Louisiana v. Dustin DRESSNER.
• Court: Supreme Court of Louisiana

45 So.3d 127

STATE of Louisiana

v.Dustin DRESSNER.

No. 2008-KA-1366.

Supreme Court of Louisiana.

July 6, 2010.

Rehearing Denied Sept. 3, 2010.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED.

Capital Appeals Project, G. Benjamin Cohen, Bidish J. Sarma, Jones, Walker, Waechter, Poitevent, Carrere & Denegre, M. Richard Schroeder, New Orleans, for Appellant.

James D. Caldwell, Attorney General, Paul D. Connick, Jr., District Attorney, Juliet Lee Clark, Terry Michael Boudreaux, Cameron Matthew Mary, Asst. Dist. Attys., for Appellee.

KNOLL, Justice. ^*

On August 1, 2002, a Jefferson Parish grand jury indicted defendant, Dustin Dressner, (also known as “Shorty” ¹ ), with the June 6, 2002, first-degree murder of Paul Fasullo, a violation of La.Rev.Stat. § 14:30. During his arraignment on August 2, 2002, defendant entered a plea of not guilty. Defendant's jury trial commenced on May 20, 2004. ² During trial on the merits, the State presented testimony from eleven witnesses before resting its case-in-chief. Thereafter, the defense called two guilt phase witnesses ³ and then rested, concluding the presentation of evidence on May 23, 2004. After hearing closing arguments, receiving the district court's instructions, and deliberating defendant's guilt for two hours, the jury returned a unanimous verdict of guilty of first-degree murder. Trial on the penalty phase began on the morning of May 24, 2004. Following the presentation of evidence, the jury deliberated for eighty minutes before unanimously returning a verdict of death, finding the offense was committed in an especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel manner, and defendant knowingly created a risk of death or great bodily harm to more than one person. The district court denied defendant's motion for new trial on October 21, 2004, and sentenced defendant to death in accordance with the jury's verdict on November 18, 2004.

Under La. Const. art. V, § 5(D), defendant directly appeals his conviction and death sentence, raising twenty-six assignments of error. We will address the most significant errors in this opinion, and the remaining errors will be addressed in an unpublished appendix. After a thorough review of the law and the evidence, we affirm defendant's first-degree murder conviction and the imposition of the death sentence for the following reasons.

FACTS

The events of that tragic day of June 6, 2002, began with a phone call from Troy Arnaud ⁴ to defendant requesting a ride to a job interview. Defendant then left his home on 228 Jamie Boulevard in Avondale around 2:00 p.m. and picked up Troy from Billy Rumsfield's house located at 5313 Taffy Street in Marrero around 3:00 p.m. After first stopping by a store to purchase a fifth of vodka, a fifth of gin, and a jug of fruit punch, the two traveled to Westwego to visit a friend of the defendant. When Troy received a page from Kellen Parker, defendant and Troy returned to the Rumsfield house where Parker was waiting. ⁵ The three then drove around all afternoon, drinking the vodka, gin, and Cisco wine, listening to rap music, and smoking about half of a marijuana cigar or “blunt.” During this time, defendant kept up an continuous stream of tough talking, “talking a lot of mess” about “how bad he is” and how “he about whatever.”

At some point, the trio returned to the Westwego home of defendant's friend to play baseball and later traveled to the apartment complex of defendant's girlfriend, Ilis Gilbert, in Metairie. While defendant entered the apartment, Troy and Parker remained in the car. Some time later, defendant returned visibly upset. ⁶ The trio next went to retrieve money from the apartment of Amy Rome in Marrero. Rome was Troy's girlfriend at the time. Troy went inside, and defendant followed him to get “something flat” from the kitchen drawer, ostensibly to fix his car stereo amplifier, which had been “messing up” on the ride back across the river. Unknown to Troy, defendant actually took two knives, both of which Rome later identified as coming from her kitchen. After leaving her apartment, they drove to a nearby store, where Troy went inside to buy another bottle of Cisco wine. ⁷

According to Troy, ⁸ defendant then claimed he was going to a friend's house and asked “you-all ‘bout whatever.” Parker responded, “man, I'm ‘bout whatever.” Troy testified, while they had been drinking a lot, defendant did not appear so intoxicated he did not know what he was doing. In his statement, defendant explained he went to the victims' house for alcohol, which the victims had previously given him at parties in their home located at 5313 Tulip Court in the Oak Cove subdivision of Westwego. ⁹ Upon arriving at the victims' house, defendant and Parker proceeded to the front door, while Troy remained in the car.

According to Shannon Fasullo, at approximately 10:30 p.m., her husband, Paul Fasullo, and their two-year-old daughter, Samantha, were asleep in their king-size bed when she heard a knock on the door. When she answered the door, she saw a black male and defendant, who is a white male, known to Shannon from visiting her home on previous occasions with her nephew, Michael Fasullo. ¹⁰ Commenting upon the fact Michael's car was in the driveway, defendant asked if Michael was there and if he could come inside to buy drugs. Shannon answered no to both questions. ¹¹ When she then turned to go inside and close the door, she felt someone strike her “over the head” with something “like a rock,” immediately knocking her down and dislodging her eyeglasses.

Hearing glass break, Troy looked from his vantage point in the car to the doorway and saw defendant holding a broken Cisco wine bottle and Parker “swinging” at Shannon with a knife. Shannon stated the black male attacked her repeatedly while she called for Paul. Finally gaining her feet by using Parker's leg as leverage, Shannon ran towards the bedroom. Troy witnessed Parker running after her.

In her rush to the bedroom, Shannon noticed Paul in the doorway fighting with defendant over a knife. ¹² Upon reaching the bedroom, Shannon closed the door, picked her screaming daughter up from the bed, and called 911. She was only able to scream her address before defendant and Parker broke into the room, wielding knives to renew their attack on her. At that point, Shannon put her child down and tossed the cordless phone under her bed, while the 911 call was still engaged. The murderous mayhem was recorded on tape, including Shannon's screams, baby Samantha's frightened cries, and in places, defendant's own voice saying “this bitch won't die.”

During the attack in the bedroom, Shannon fell to the ground by the bedside table, under which she partially crawled. Defendant then straddled her and sliced her throat, cutting her three to four times in that area. In fending off defendant's attack, Shannon grabbed his hands, and defendant began bargaining with his victim, promising he would let her go if she let him go. In response, Shannon begged him not to hurt her or her daughter. At some point in this deathly struggle, defendant's watch was pulled off. Thereafter defendant broke loose of Shannon's hold, and the two men succeeded in pulling her from beneath the table. Shannon then climbed on the bed, and the attack continued, as defendant's knife slit Shannon's face open from her “forehead down [her] cheek over [her] left eye” down to her lip, which was gashed in two. Eventually, Shannon was able to get up and lock herself in the bathroom, using her feet pressed to the sink to keep the door closed; however, both defendant and Parker kicked on the door until the frame broke and stabbed Shannon two times in the arm before fleeing the house for fear the police were surely on the way.

Moments later, Parker ran from the house with a pink piggy bank under his shirt, and defendant followed with blood covering his chest and his white muscle shirt thrown over his shoulder. Troy testified defendant got into the front passenger seat, pointed a knife at him, and ordered him to “drive, drive, drive.” Troy drove them out of the neighborhood, but when two police cars passed them on the road, Troy became frightened and drove the car into a ditch. Initially, all three fled the vehicle running. ¹³ However, defendant went back for his car. Defendant claimed Parker tossed the knives from the moving car shortly after exiting the subdivision.

After waiting a few moments, Shannon pushed the bathroom door she had used as a shield off of her and called for her daughter and her husband. Receiving no response, she made several attempts to raise herself from the bathroom floor, but was seized with fits of vomiting as a result of her efforts.

Deputy Robert Pellegrin ¹⁴ responded to the dispatch regarding this incident at 5313 Tulip Court. Upon entering the residence, the deputy observed blood and broken glass at the doorway, a crying baby covered in blood, and what appeared to be a deceased body with multiple stab wounds in the hallway. Deputy Pellegrin proceeded to the master bedroom and noticed blood “everywhere,” on the bed, the doorway of the bathroom, and on the bedroom floor. He found Deputy Mendez in the bathroom attending to Shannon, who was lying on the floor in a pool of blood and vomit, suffering from more stab wounds than he could count. Fearing Shannon would not “make it,” he began to question her and was able to obtain a partial description of the perpetrators, including the fact one was a black male and one was a white male, and the name Michael. Deputy Pellegrin then contacted headquarters to request EMS and notified the Detective's Bureau.

EMT, Patrick Theriot, shortly arrived on the scene. He examined Paul lying in a “large, large pool of blood” and detected no vital signs. EMT Theriot then examined the “inconsolable” baby, who had a busted lip and was covered with blood, in an effort to determine if the blood was her own. ¹⁵ He was then called to the bathroom, where he found Shannon in a state of...