State v. Benn
| Citation | 120 Wn.2d 631,845 P.2d 289 |
| Decision Date | 11 February 1993 |
| Docket Number | No. 57272-1,57272-1 |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court of Washington |
| Parties | The STATE of Washington, Respondent, v. Gary Michael BENN, Appellant. |
John W. Ladenburg, Pros. Atty., Kyron Huigens, Deputy Pros. Atty., Tacoma, for respondent.
On February 10, 1988, Gary Michael Benn made a 911 call to the Pierce County Sheriff's Department and reported finding two bodies at a residential address he gave in Puyallup, Washington. Officer Junge of the Pierce County Sheriff's Department responded, arriving at the scene at 4:35 p.m. There was no one outside the residence, and Officer Junge requested through his radio that the 911 caller come outside the house. Gary Benn came outside and met Officer Junge.
Inside the residence, Officer Junge found the bodies of two adult males: Jack Dethlefsen (Benn's half-brother) and Michael Nelson (a friend of Jack Dethlefsen's). Officer Junge checked for vital signs and found none. He then checked for wounds on the bodies. He found a blood patch on the back of Jack Dethlefsen's shirt and a bullet wound in Mike Nelson's jacket. Officer Junge also noticed head wounds on each victim. Officer Junge also noticed a .45 caliber handgun lying on the floor between the elbow and knee of Mike Nelson. The gun was in a half-cocked position. No one else was found in the house. Officer Junge took fifteen photographs of the crime scene, including photos depicting the position of the bodies with their wounds. He noted a baseball bat and a gun cabinet near where Jack Dethlefsen lay. Officer Junge checked the vehicles located in front of the house and found that Benn's Cadillac had no engine heat and little, if any, radiator warmth.
Deputy Jones of the Pierce County Sheriff's office arrived shortly after Officer Junge and observed shell casings around both victims. He also noticed that the gun cabinet nearest to victim Dethlefsen had been broken and that glass from the cabinet was lying next to Dethlefsen's right elbow.
Deputy Jones compared a tread pattern of a shoe or boot from the glass shard to the sole of Benn's boot and concluded they were the same pattern. Deputy Hilding Johnson of the Pierce County Sheriff's office also made a similar comparison of the footprint and Benn's boots
Dr. John Howard, a Pierce County pathologist, performed autopsies on both the bodies of Dethlefsen and Nelson. He found similar wounds to both bodies. Each had a gunshot wound entering the chest and exiting the back, and each had a gunshot wound to the back of the head or neck entering from the rear and exiting from the front. Dr. Howard determined that either shot to each victim would have been fatal. It was his opinion that the shot to the chest would have occurred first in each case, and that after such a shot to the chest it would be possible for the victims to have walked, crawled or moved for several seconds.
Police investigation disclosed that earlier on the afternoon of February 10, 1988, three boys met to play football in the street in front of the crime scene. These boys saw a man they later identified as Gary Benn enter the house at about 3:15 p.m. They saw no one leave the house between 3 and 4:10 p.m.
Other trial testimony established that Gary Benn had been at a barber shop owned by his friend, Larry Kilen, from about 1:30 in the afternoon until just before 3 p.m. Benn made several telephone calls during this time. One telephone call provoked Benn's concern regarding events at Jack Dethlefsen's house, and Benn left soon after. Larry Kilen believed Benn was intending to travel directly to Dethlefsen's house.
On May 9, 1988, after several weeks of investigation into the killings, Gary Benn was arraigned on two counts of aggravated first degree murder. After his arraignment, Benn told several persons that he had shot and killed Dethlefsen and Nelson. Roy Patrick, a jailhouse informant who had previously worked as an informant regarding narcotics investigations with Tacoma police, testified that Benn asked him if Patrick testified that Benn said he had been arguing with Dethlefsen and Nelson when Dethlefsen leaned for a gun on a nearby table. Benn said he reached the weapon first and shot Nelson and then Dethlefsen. Benn explained that he shot both men in the back of the head to assure they were dead. Patrick testified that Benn admitted that he, Dethlefsen, and Nelson had created phony insurance claims, with Dethlefsen and Nelson faking a burglary of Benn's mobile home and burning it to create the loss. Benn did not give a share of the insurance proceeds to Dethlefsen or Nelson, spending the insurance money on a Cadillac and a mobile home park. Benn indicated to Patrick that Dethlefsen and Nelson were about to go to the police to expose Benn in their frustration.
he knew anyone who liked life in jail better than life in the outside world. Although Patrick had no intention of helping Benn find a person willing to take responsibility for the murders, he told Benn he did know such a person. According to Patrick, Benn then offered to bail Patrick out of jail if Patrick would find a person who would agree to volunteer to confess to Benn's crimes. As part of this plan, Benn gave Patrick details of the murder incident that only the murderer would know. Benn drew diagrams for Patrick showing the positions of Dethlefsen and Nelson at the moment they were shot. One of the diagrams Benn had given Patrick had Benn's fingerprints on it. After receiving the diagrams, Patrick contacted authorities with the information Benn had given him and offered to make a deal to testify for the State
Benn's brother, Monte Benn, also testified that Benn had confessed to the killings. Monte stated that Benn told him Dethlefsen made harassing and threatening phone calls to Benn's ex-girl friend, and Benn and Dethlefsen were arguing about the calls just before Benn killed Dethlefsen and Nelson. Benn initially told Monte that on the afternoon of the murders he had left Larry's Barber Shop, waited for a prospective tenant at his trailer park, and then proceeded to Dethlefsen's house. He later changed the story, saying he Denver Carter, a friend and former business associate of Benn's, testified that Benn confessed to the killings of Dethlefsen and Nelson some 6 or 7 months after the murders. Denver Carter met Benn in February 1988, the month of the murders, when Benn began work at the same sales office as Carter. Carter moved into Benn's home in May 1988 and lived with Benn until October 1988. Carter testified that during a camping trip in August or September 1988, after Carter had brought up the subject of the killings many times, Benn admitted to the murders: "Just said he went over to the house and he just did it." Report of Proceedings, at 1905.
had gone to South Tacoma Way to pick up a prostitute before going to Dethlefsen's. He claimed, variously, that he picked her up for himself, that he picked her up for Dethlefsen, and that he returned her to South Tacoma Way because Dethlefsen was too drunk. Benn also told Monte that as he entered Dethlefsen's house, someone put a gun to his head and threatened to kill his children if he ever mentioned the murders. Later Benn claimed someone he never saw put a gun to his head and made him kill Dethlefsen and Nelson. Monte testified that Benn told "quite a few" different versions of his activities on the day of the murders. Finally, however, on May 20, 1989, during a visit by Monte to Benn while Benn was in custody, Benn admitted killing Dethlefsen and Nelson
There was a substantial amount of circumstantial evidence linking Benn to the two murders. Benn's left boot was spattered with 13 or 14 drops of blood. The samples were too small for species analysis. According to police experts, however, the pattern of spatter itself was sufficiently singular to prove the blood came from Mike Nelson's head wound. A footprint found on a piece of broken glass from the gun cabinet indicated that when Nelson was shot in the head, the murderer was standing directly over Nelson with his foot near Nelson's head. The experts testified that the muzzle of the gun was in such proximity to the back of Nelson's A newspaper found on the couch where Benn told Patrick Dethlefsen was sitting had a bullet hole in it and was soaked with blood. The blood was of Dethlefsen's type. Benn had told Patrick that he had had a fight with Dethlefsen the night before the murder, which left blood all over the kitchen. There was blood found in the kitchen which was of Dethlefsen's type.
head that gases penetrated the scalp and built up between the skull and scalp "causing a ballooning effect". Blood between the scalp and skull then spattered out in tiny droplets in a phenomenon unique to such contact wounds known as "blowback". The blood on Gary Benn's boot was identified by Pierce County investigators as high speed blood spatter that is a "blowback" from a contact wound
While officers conducting the initial investigation of the scene had observed that the boot print on the glass near Nelson's head matched the boots worn by Benn at the time, Benn denied to them that he had been near the bodies. Benn had claimed that he discovered the bodies and...
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