State v. Brewster, No. E2004-00533-CCA-R3-CD (TN 3/24/2005)
| Decision Date | 24 March 2005 |
| Docket Number | No. E2004-00533-CCA-R3-CD.,E2004-00533-CCA-R3-CD. |
| Parties | STATE OF TENNESSEE v. CARRIE ANN BREWSTER and WILLIAM JUSTIN BREWSTER. |
| Court | Tennessee Supreme Court |
Appeal from the Criminal Court for Knox County; Nos. 75681 and 75684; Mary Beth Leibowitz, Judge.
Judgments of the Criminal Court are Affirmed.
Russell T. Greene, Knoxville, Tennessee, for the Appellant, Carrie Ann Brewster; and Bruce E. Poston, Knoxville, Tennessee, for the Appellant, William Justin Brewster.
Paul G. Summers, Attorney General & Reporter; J. Ross Dyer, Assistant Attorney General; Randall E. Nichols, District Attorney General; and Leslie Nassios, Assistant District Attorney General, for the Appellee, State of Tennessee.
OPINION
The defendants, Carrie Ann Brewster and William Justin Brewster, appeal from their Knox County Criminal Court jury convictions of first degree felony murder, facilitation of first degree premeditated murder, especially aggravated robbery, and especially aggravated burglary. On appeal, the defendants claim that the convicting evidence was insufficient to support the convictions and that the trial court erred in denying the defendants' motions to suppress their pretrial confessions. Because the record supports the convictions and the trial court's ruling on the pretrial motions to suppress, we affirm.
At approximately ten o'clock on the evening of June 19, 2002, Michael Atteberry heard two gunshots at the residence of his neighbor, Bobby David Ervin, the victim. Mr. Atteberry saw a slender Caucasian male run out of the victim's house to a red Nissan truck, and a few seconds later, Mr. Atteberry heard three more gunshots. Then, a second person, Caucasian and heavier in build than the first person, ran from the house to the truck. The truck left with dispatch but not hastily. Mr. Atteberry called the police.
When police officers arrived, they found the body of the victim in a recliner chair in the living room. The victim had been beaten with a blunt object, stabbed numerous times with a sharp object, and shot three times with a .357 gun.
The officers found approximately $13,000 in cash in the victim's pants pockets. Behind the recliner, they found two handguns and a large quantity of marijuana and cocaine. The house was unkempt and in disarray; at trial, the parties differed about whether the house had been ransacked. The defendants maintained that the disarray was merely the result of the victim's customary untidiness. A blood smudge was found inside a dresser drawer in the master bedroom, and the locked door to a second bedroom had been kicked in by someone wearing shoes that apparently had tracked through the blood in the living room.
The officers' investigation caused them to look for the husband-and-wife defendants, Carrie Ann Brewster and William Justin Brewster.1 A detective left his number with JB's mother. Several hours later, a weeping CB called the detective and said, "You're not going to believe me; you're not going to believe me that I killed that man in self-defense." The detective suggested that CB and JB come to the police station.
The defendants arrived at the station in their automobile. The officers interviewed them separately, beginning with CB. She signed a written waiver of her Miranda rights and gave a tape-recorded statement in which she stated that she and JB had killed the victim. Likewise, after also waiving his Miranda rights, JB confessed that he and CB had killed the victim.2 He admitted that he took $150, a handgun, and some pills from the victim's home. The defendants told the officers that they could find the handgun used in the homicide beneath the front seat in the defendants' car. The officers retrieved the .357 revolver, which through forensic analysis proved to be the gun that fired bullets into the victim's neck, chest, and arm. In his pretrial statement, JB admitted that he had obtained the revolver from the rear bedroom in the victim's house.
Based upon the foregoing evidence, the jury convicted each defendant of felony first degree murder, facilitation of first degree premeditated murder, especially aggravated robbery, and especially aggravated burglary. The trial court merged each verdict of guilty of facilitation of first degree premeditated murder with the respective verdict of first degree felony murder. Each defendant received a life sentence for the felony murder conviction and 25-year and 12-year Department of Correction sentences, respectively, for the especially aggravated robbery and especially aggravated burglary convictions.
On appeal, each defendant challenges the sufficiency of the convicting evidence and the trial court's failure to suppress that defendant's pretrial statement.
When a defendant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence on appeal, the relevant question for the reviewing court is whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the state, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Tenn. R. App. P. 13(e); Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319, 99 S. Ct. 2781, 2789 (1979). Great weight is accorded the result reached by the jury in a criminal trial; a guilty verdict accredits the state's witnesses and resolves all factual conflicts in favor of the state. State v. Shropshire, 45 S.W.3d 64, 70 (Tenn. Crim. App. 2000). On appeal from a verdict of guilty, the state is entitled to the strongest legitimate view of the evidence and to all reasonable inferences which may be drawn from the evidence. State v. Cabbage, 571 S.W.2d 832, 835 (Tenn. 1978). The guilty verdict removes the presumption of innocence which the appellant enjoyed at trial and replaces it with a presumption of guilt on appeal, and the defendant, as the appellant, has the burden of overcoming this presumption of guilt. Shropshire, 45 S.W.3d at 70.
A person commits felony murder who kills another in the perpetration or attempt to perpetrate, inter alia, any robbery or burglary. Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-13-202(a)(2) (2003). A person commits premeditated first degree murder who kills another premeditatedly and intentionally. Id. § 39-13-202(a)(1).
"[P]remeditation" is an act done after the exercise of reflection and judgment. "Premeditation" means that the intent to kill must have been formed prior to the act itself. It is not necessary that the purpose to kill pre-exist in the mind of the accused for any definite period of time.
Id. § 39-13-202(d). "A person is criminally responsible for the facilitation of a felony if, knowing that another intends to commit a specific felony, but without the intent required for criminal responsibility under [section] 39-11-402(2), the person knowingly furnishes substantial assistance in the commission of the felony." Id. § 39-11-403(a). Facilitation of premeditated first degree murder is a lesser included offense of premeditated first degree murder. State v. Burns, 6 S.W.3d 453, 470 (Tenn. 1999).
A person commits especially aggravated robbery who knowingly or intentionally steals property from the person of another by violence or by putting the person in fear, id. § 39-13-401(a), a deadly weapon is used to accomplish the robbery, id. § 39-13-403(a)(1), and the victim suffers serious bodily injury, id. § 39-13-403(a)(2).
A person commits especially aggravated burglary who, without the effective consent of the owner, enters a building "not open to the public with intent to commit a felony, theft or assault," id. § 39-14-402(a)(1), and the victim suffers serious bodily injury, id. § 39-14-404(a).
In the light most favorable to the state, the evidence in the present case shows that, with CB's assistance, JB entered the victim's home without his consent for the purpose of robbing him. JB's pretrial statement reveals that he knew that the victim kept a large wad of money and a cache of drugs in the locked back bedroom, which JB entered by kicking down the door during the victim's assault. The victim clearly suffered serious bodily injury as a result of the beating, stabbing, and shooting inflicted by the defendants. Therefore, the evidence supports a verdict of guilty of especially aggravated burglary for both defendants.
Once both defendants were inside the house, the two of them assaulted the victim with multiple deadly weapons. JB beat the victim with a baseball bat, and CB beat him with a hammer. Apparently, at some point CB stabbed the victim with a knife, and after JB retrieved the victim's .357 handgun from the back bedroom, CB shot the victim three times. The victim died from his injuries. The defendants took about $ 150 in cash, some pills, and the handgun from the victim's house. Accordingly, the evidence supports the convictions of especially aggravated robbery.
Because the defendants killed the victim during their perpetration of a burglary and a robbery, the evidence supports the defendants' convictions of felony murder.
Also, we conclude that the evidence supports the guilty verdicts of facilitation of premeditated first degree murder. The totality of assaults committed against the victim were accomplished cooperatively by two people using at least four deadly weapons and, apparently, requiring an extended period of time to complete. The medical examiner opined that due to the various brain hemorrhages caused by the blows to the victim's head there existed a "great possibility" that he would have died from the "secondary brain edema" resulting from these blows, had his life not been extinguished preemptively by the gunshot wound through the chest. Nevertheless, after the initial assaults with the bat, hammer, and knife, JB broke into the rear bedroom, found the handgun, gave...
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