State v. Brown, No. M2007-00427-CCA-R3-CD (Tenn. Crim. App. 4/20/2009)
| Decision Date | 20 April 2009 |
| Docket Number | No. M2007-00427-CCA-R3-CD.,M2007-00427-CCA-R3-CD. |
| Parties | STATE OF TENNESSEE v. CYNTOIA DENISE BROWN |
| Court | Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals |
Appeal from the Criminal Court for Davidson County; No. 2005-A-215; J. Randall Wyatt, Jr., Judge.
Judgments of the Criminal Court Affirmed in Part and Reversed in Part; Case Remanded.
Wendy S. Tucker (at trial and on appeal) and Richard McGee (at trial), Nashville, Tennessee, for the. appellant, Cyntoia Denise Brown.
Robert E. Cooper, Jr., Attorney General and Reporter; Preston Shipp, Assistant Attorney General; Victor S. (Torry) Johnson, District Attorney General; and Jeffrey P. Burks and Lisa A. Naylor, Assistant District Attorneys General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee.
D. Kelly Thomas, Jr., J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which David H. Welles and Thomas T. Woodall, JJ., joined.
A Davidson County jury convicted the defendant, Cyntoia Denise Brown, of one count of first degree premeditated murder, one count of first degree felony murder, and one count of especially aggravated robbery, a Class A felony. The trial court merged the two first degree murder convictions and imposed a concurrent twenty-year sentence as a Range I, standard offender, for the defendant's especially aggravated robbery conviction. On appeal, the defendant asserts that: (1) the trial court erred by denying her motion to suppress her statement to police, which she argues was obtained in violation of her right against self-incrimination; (2) the trial court erred by denying her motions to exclude certain evidence, including: (a) testimony of witnesses from a mental health facility; (b) a "New Personality Profile" authored by the defendant; (c) testimony from a former fellow inmate; and (d) testimony by the defendant's mother regarding a conversation between her and the defendant, all of which she argues was irrelevant and prejudicial; (3) the trial court denied her the right to present a defense by excluding the testimony of a potential witness; (4) the trial court erred by allowing a State expert witness to testify beyond the scope of her expertise; (5) the trial court erred by admitting crime scene and autopsy photographs of the victim; (6) the trial court erred by ordering her to submit numerous handwriting and fingerprint samples to the State; (7) the evidence produced at trial was insufficient to support her convictions; and (8) the trial court improperly denied her motion to dismiss the case against her on double jeopardy grounds. After reviewing the record, we discern no error as to the defendant's stated issues. However, we conclude that the defendant's conviction for especially aggravated robbery must be reversed because she was not indicted for this offense but instead for aggravated robbery. Accordingly, we remand the case to the trial court for entry of a judgment of conviction for aggravated robbery and a sentencing hearing as to that offense. In all other respects, we affirm the judgments of the trial court.
Erin Dutton, the records custodian for Davidson County's 911 call center, testified regarding a 911 call that was placed at 7:19 p.m. on August 7, 2004. A recording of the call was played for the jury. The caller provided the operator with the address 2728 Mossdale Drive; when the operator asked "what's going on over there[,] ma'am," the caller replied "homicide." The operator attempted to ask the caller additional questions, but the caller hung up before responding to them.
Detective Scott Carter with the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department testified that he was sent to the Mossdale Drive residence on August 7, 2004, when he was still a patrol officer. He received no response when he knocked on the front door but he was able to open the house's garage door. He and his sergeant, Dhana Jones, who also arrived on the scene, went into the house. Upon entering a bedroom Detective Carter saw the victim, later identified as Johnny Allen, lying in a large pool of blood on the bed. Detective Carter said that the victim was lying "face down on the bed .. . his face was facing toward[] the wall" and that the victim's hands were beneath his face, his fingers "kind of partially interlocked." He said that some of the blood dripped onto the floor, forming a small pool. The officers called paramedics, who responded to the scene and checked the victim for a pulse, finding none. He said that the paramedics gave no other medical attention to the victim.
Detective Carter said that the police department's Identification Division, otherwise known as the "I.D. Unit," soon arrived and began searching for evidence at the scene. He testified that he saw a shell casing underneath the bed and "a bullet hole that went through . . . the wall that was next to the victim's head" on the left side of the bedroom. He said that the police found a bullet on a bed in the room on the other side of the wall. He also noted that the crime scene photographs introduced into evidence showed "some white residue on the pillow and to the back of his head," and while the photographs were taken after the paramedics checked for the victim's pulse, the position of the victim's body in the photographs was the same as when he and Sergeant Jones first discovered the victim.
On cross-examination, Detective Carter said that he arrived at the scene between 7:20 and 7:30 that evening, although he could not be sure of the exact time. He also said that he did not take the crime scene photographs, he was not present when all of the photographs were taken, and he was unsure how many officers came to the crime scene. He also admitted that he was not present when the paramedics worked on the victim's body. However, he insisted that he "believe[d]" that the victim's body was in the same position when he arrived on the scene as it was in the crime scene photographs.
Metropolitan Nashville Police Department Detective Charles Robinson testified that he and his partner, Detective Derry Baltimore,1 arrived at the victim's residence shortly after 11:00 p.m. on August 7, 2004. Around 1:20 the morning of August 8, the detectives left the crime scene and went to a convenience store, where they met with Samuel Humphrey and Humphrey's father. After talking with Humphrey, the detectives went to the Walmart on Hamilton Church Pike, where they found the victim's truck in the parking lot. The detectives and several patrol officers then went to room 302 of the InTown Suites, located on Murfreesboro Road near the Walmart, where they believed the defendant was staying. The officers knocked on the door and shouted "police." A short time later, a man, whom Detective Robinson said was later identified as Gary McGlothen, opened the door. The officer pulled McGlothen out the door, at which point the defendant ran out the door, shouting that "Cut," as she called McGlothen, 2
Detective Robinson then asked the defendant if any weapons were in the room. The defendant pointed the detectives to a closet, in which officers found a rifle and a shotgun. Detective Robinson found a notepad on which a handwritten three-page note entitled "new personality profile" had been written. He took the notepad and guns into evidence. He also looked through a handbag in the room to see if any weapons were inside. The detective found no weapon in the handbag but did find $172 in cash and a set of keys, including a key bearing a Ford emblem. He returned to the Walmart parking lot and used the Ford key to open the victim's truck. He then returned to the motel before returning to the Davidson County Criminal Justice Center, where Detectives Robinson and Baltimore interviewed the defendant, who had been taken into custody at the motel.
The detectives' interview of the defendant was recorded on videotape, and this recording was played for the jury at trial. At the beginning of the interview, the defendant gave her name as "Cyntoia Denise Mitchell" and her date of birth as January 29, 1985. Based on this information, the detectives had the defendant arraigned as an adult; however, once it was learned that she was actually sixteen years old, she was transferred to juvenile court.3 Before questioning the defendant, Detective Robinson informed her of her Miranda rights as listed on a Miranda waiver form used by the Metropolitan police. After the defendant signed the Miranda form, the detectives began questioning the defendant about the events which led to the victim's death. The defendant told police that at around 11:00 the night of Friday, August 6, she was walking near a Sonic Drive-In when the victim, a man whom the defendant had never met, pulled alongside her in a white Ford F-150 truck and asked her if she was hungry. The defendant then got into the victim's truck, and the two went to the drive-in. While the victim and the defendant waited for their food to arrive, the victim told the defendant that she did not need to be "stayin' on the streets" and, assuring the defendant that "he was a safe person," asked the defendant to spend the night at his house, to which the defendant agreed. According to the defendant, the carhop who brought them their food told the victim, "you back again," to which the victim replied, "yeah." The victim then drove the defendant to his house on Mossdale Road.
The defendant told the detectives that once she and the victim arrived at the victim's house, the victim showed her several guns, including two rifles. The defendant claimed that the victim also told her that he "was in the Army and that he was a sharp shooter or something like that." Eventually, the defendant and the victim got into bed together, with the victim on the left side of the bed and the defendant the right side. The defendant attempted to go to sleep, but the victim got up several times every five to ten minutes, going to the...
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