State v. Blank

• Decision Date: 11 April 2007
• Docket Number: No. 2004-KA-0204.,2004-KA-0204.
• Citation: 955 So.2d 90
• Parties: STATE of Louisiana v. Daniel Joseph BLANK.
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court

955 So.2d 90

STATE of Louisiana v. Daniel Joseph BLANK.

No. 2004-KA-0204.

Supreme Court of Louisiana.

April 11, 2007.

Rehearing Denied June 1, 2007.

Capital Appeals Project. Jelpi P. Picou, Jr., G. Benjamin Cohen, Aneel L. Chablani, R. Neal Walker, for Appellant.

Charles C. Foti, Jr., Attorney General, Anthony G. Falterman, District Attorney, Donald D. Candell, Charles S. Long, Assistant District Attorneys, for appellee.

VICTORY, J.

This is a direct appeal under Louisiana Constitution article V, § 5(D) by the defendant, Daniel Blank. On December 11, 1997, an Ascension Parish grand jury indicted defendant for first-degree murder in violation of La. R.S. 14:30. On August 14, 1998, the state filed its notice of intent to seek the death penalty. On December 16, 1998, the district court granted a defense motion for a change of venue and moved the trial to Terrebonne Parish. After a trial by jury, defendant was found guilty as charged on September 2, 1999. At the conclusion of the penalty phase of the trial, the jury unanimously returned a verdict of death, finding the aggravating circumstances that defendant was engaged in the perpetration or attempted perpetration of an aggravated burglary and that the victim was aged 65 years or older. The trial court sentenced defendant to death in accordance with that recommendation. Defendant now appeals his conviction and sentence, raising 72 assignments of error. After a thorough review of the law and the evidence, we find no merit in any of the assignments of error urged by defendant. Therefore, we affirm his conviction and sentence.

FACTS

On the morning of April 10, 1997, Viola Breaux Philippe was waiting for her sister-in-law, 71-year-old Lillian Philippe, to pick her up at home and drive the two women to catch a bus to a religious retreat in Chatawa, Mississippi. When Lillian had not arrived by 8 a.m. and could not be reached by telephone, Viola called her brother-in-law, Dr. Doyle Philippe, and requested that he check on her.

Dr. Philippe arrived at the victim's house at approximately 8:30 a.m. and found her vehicle in the driveway, the door to the house unlocked, and the alarm system deactivated. Finding the circumstances suspicious, Dr. Philippe walked into the hallway, and after briefly surveying the immediate area, went back outside and called the authorities. Gonzales police officer Dowell Brenn arrived at the scene, and Dr. Phillipe accompanied him into the house where they found the victim on the floor at the foot of her bed, covered in blood. Brenn also observed a broken trophy near the victim's head and a bloody "butcher-type" knife next to the bed.

Officer Brenn exited the house, called for back-up, and secured the crime scene. A visual survey of the outside of the residence revealed a hole on the rooftop where an attic vent had been removed. Brenn also saw that a wrought iron chair had been placed atop an air-conditioning unit on the front porch of the residence, presumably to facilitate access to the roof.

Detective Mike Toney was among the officers who participated in the investigation of the Philippe homicide and testified that the victim's family members and friends were ruled out as viable suspects. In the meantime, officials from the Sheriffs' Offices of Ascension, St. John the Baptist, and St. James Parish joined forces with officers from the Gonzales Police Department and agents from the New Orleans Office of the FBI and formed a task force to investigate the murder as among a series of homicides that occurred during home invasions in the river parishes that they believed were related.¹ Defendant, Daniel Blank, became implicated as a possible perpetrator of the crimes after an aggravated burglary that occurred at the residence of Leonce and Joyce Millet on July 6, 1997. Following that incident, a composite sketch of the suspect was composed pursuant to the Millets' recollection of the suspect and released to the media. Both an anonymous informant and Elton Cloutare, a security guard at the Square Deal Casino in Sorrento, Louisiana, identified defendant as resembling the individual depicted in the sketch.²

On September 25, 1997, Detective Toney proceeded to defendant's last known address in Sorrento, where he encountered Dorothy Recher, the mother of defendant's girlfriend, Cynthia Bellard. Recher told the officer that defendant did not live there anymore but indicated that she would try to get a message to him. Defendant called the detective at his office approximately 15 minutes later and the officer advised defendant that he wanted to question him concerning some murders that had occurred in Ascension Parish. Toney explained that defendant's name had come up as a result of an observed change in his spending habits at the casino. Defendant agreed to come and meet with the officer the following weekend and to bring with him proof of his gambling winnings.

Defendant apparently returned to Louisiana from his new home in Texas and left documentation concerning his winnings at the casino with Ms. Recher. Detective Toney collected the documents and conducted a background check on defendant to determine whether his income could support his gaming activity at various area casinos. Subpoenas issued to local gambling establishments revealed that defendant had run a total of $269,000 at three casinos, cashing out a total of $220,216, resulting in a net loss of approximately $49,000. Managers at the Treasure Chest Casino indicated that based on defendant's wagering history, he had a player profile of a corporate executive with annual earnings of over $200,000. In contrast, Louisiana Department of Labor records revealed that defendant had no reported earnings for 1997 and annual earnings of only $13,767 in 1996 and $5,410 in 1995. Department of Motor Vehicles records demonstrated that defendant and Bellard had purchased a pick-up truck, a station wagon, a motorcycle and a utility trailer in 1997. The task force also learned that on July 15, 1997, defendant had purchased a mobile home for $22,000 in Onalaska, Texas. Defendant became the prime suspect in the multiple murders as a result of his unusual spending habits after the commission of the crimes, as well as his past association with three of the victims.

In a subsequent telephone conversation with Detective Toney, defendant agreed to travel to Louisiana to meet with the officer on November 10, 1997, but ultimately did not show up as promised. Consequently, Toney, accompanied by other members of the task force, including Officer Brenn, Lieutenant Benny DeLaune, Detective Todd Hymel, and FBI Agent David Sparks, proceeded to Onalaska to interview him, armed with search warrants for his home and business.

The task force encountered defendant on November 13, 1997, when they arrived at his place of business, Daniel's Automotive, and he readily agreed to accompany the officers to the Onalaska Courthouse Annex. For the next 12 hours, Detective Toney and other members of the task force questioned defendant, first about his spending habits, and later about his participation in the various murders.

After three hours of initial questioning by Detectives Hymel and Toney, during which defendant denied any involvement in the murders, defendant agreed to submit to a polygraph examination. At that time, FBI Agent Sparks proceeded to interview defendant for approximately two-and-one-half hours and conducted the polygraph examination, which related only to the murder of Joan Brock on May 14, 1997, in St. John the Baptist Parish. During this interview, defendant continued to deny any involvement in the crimes, although the polygraph suggested that he was being untruthful in his responses to questions about the murder of Mrs. Brock. After Sparks concluded his interview and defendant had taken a bathroom break, Detective Hymel entered the room and, in a long and solemn speech frequently referencing defendant's recently deceased mother, calmly appealed to defendant to confess. In response, defendant became somewhat emotional and slowly began to confess, first to the Brock homicide, and then to each of the other multiple homicides³, including the murder of Lillian Philippe.⁴ These confessions were very detailed. A video tape of this interrogation and confession, along with a transcript, was introduced into evidence and played for the jury. However, the two-and-one-half hour portion of the interview where defendant was questioned by David Sparks and given a polygraph test was edited out and not seen or considered by the jury. The state could not produce any forensic evidence placing him at the various crime scenes, so it relied almost entirely on the confession to prove defendant's guilt at trial.⁵ Throughout this confession, the jury heard evidence that large amounts of cash were stolen from most of these residences, that defendant was gambling large amounts of cash at area casinos in vast excess of his actual income, that defendant knew most of the victims⁶, and appeared to have motives in addition to robbery for some of them⁷, and that he knew the specific details of all the crimes.

DISCUSSION OF ASSIGNMENTS OF ERROR⁸

I. Motion to suppress.

Defendant filed a motion to suppress in which he claimed that his videotaped confession should be excluded from evidence because it had been obtained in violation of Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966) and had been illegally coerced by the interrogating officers. After entertaining considerable evidence on the issue, the court denied the motion in a lengthy ruling dated April 12, 1999.

In his first argument on appeal, defendant claims that the court erred when it denied his motion and admitted the majority of the inculpatory statement⁹ in which he admitted to committing the instant offense and several other aggravated burglaries and homicides. Specifically, defendant maintains that the "harsh circumstances of the lengthy interrogation,...