State v. Brown

• Decision Date: 09 May 2006
• Docket Number: No. 2001-539-C.A.,2001-539-C.A.
• Citation: 898 A.2d 69
• Parties: STATE v. James L. BROWN.
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court

Page 69

898 A.2d 69

STATE v. James L. BROWN.

No. 2001-539-C.A.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

May 9, 2006.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Lauren S. Zurier, Esq., Providence, for Plaintiff.

Paula Rosin, Esq., Providence, for Defendant.

Present: WILLIAMS, C.J., GOLDBERG, FLAHERTY, SUTTELL, and ROBINSON, JJ.

OPINION

Justice FLAHERTY, for the Court.

On March 8, 2001, a jury found the defendant, James Brown, guilty of first-degree murder, first-degree sexual assault, larceny under $500, and selling leased property over $500. After it deliberated further, as it is required to do under G.L. 1956 § 11-23-2(4) and G.L.1956 § 12-19.2-1,¹ the jury found that the murder of the victim, Pamela Plante, involved torture and/or aggravated battery. After he denied Brown's motion for a new trial, the trial justice sentenced him to life imprisonment without parole on the murder count. The trial justice also sentenced Brown to life imprisonment for sexual assault, one year's imprisonment for larceny, and ten years for selling leased property. All sentences were to be served consecutively.

Brown filed a timely notice of appeal and he challenges the judgment of conviction on four grounds. First, Brown argues that the trial justice erred when he denied his motion to suppress certain statements Brown made to the Woonsocket police, as well as a DNA sample he provided. Brown also contends that the trial justice erred when he declined to instruct the jury that the defense did not have the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt its theory that someone else committed the murder. In addition, defendant argues that the trial justice made a reversible error when he denied his request to instruct the jury about the lesser-included offense of second-degree murder. Finally, Brown maintains that it was error for the trial justice to impose a life sentence without the possibility of parole in the face of substantial mitigating circumstances. For the reasons set forth herein, we deny the defendant's appeal and affirm the judgment of conviction.

Facts

An unsettling story of addiction, crime, and violence serves as the backdrop of Pamela Plante's terrifying murder. A thirty-two-year-old mother of two young children, Pam lived in Woonsocket and worked at a nearby B.J.'s Warehouse store. She shared the upbringing of her youngest children with their father, Pam's ex-boyfriend Peter Guerard. She was close to her family and spoke with her parents and siblings on a regular basis. Beneath the veneer of this seemingly ordinary life, however, Pam suffered from an addiction that stole her away from her family. She sometimes disappeared for days with other drug users to get high.

The evening of April 2, 1998, began innocently. On that evening, Pam and her children went out to dinner with Constance Fregeau, Pam's mother. After dinner, Constance dropped Pam and the children at Pam's apartment. Pam told her mother that the children would be spending the night with their father and that she planned to stay home and relax. However, Pam did not remain at home. Instead, she, defendant, and a man named Bernie Williams went to the home of Eddie Burke to drink and smoke cocaine. At some point that night, Pam and Brown left Burke's house together. Brown returned alone about an hour later. At about 11 p.m., Brown and Williams left Burke's home. At that time, Brown told Williams that he wanted to sleep with Pam, and he asked Williams if he wished to accompany him. Williams declined and went his own way, but Brown headed in the direction of Pam's apartment.

A few days later, Constance began to worry because she had not heard from Pam. She drove by Pam's apartment a few times and noticed that the lights in the house were on, even though her daughter was not answering her phone and her car was not in the driveway. Growing more and more concerned, Constance borrowed a spare key from Peter Guerard and entered the apartment on Sunday morning, April 5, 1998. In the living room, Constance discovered the brutalized and lifeless body of her slain daughter on the floor, crammed between the coffee table and sofa. There was a large stain on the floor as well as shards of broken glass. Pam's shirt was bloody and there was a maroon place mat draped over her. Terrified, Constance ran to the kitchen to use the telephone to call for help. There was no dial tone, however, because someone had removed the cord.

Police later determined that Pam's hands and neck were bound with the telephone cord and tie backs from the living room curtains. The sofa and surrounding area were bloodstained. Pam's right breast was exposed and her bra pushed up. One leg of her black jeans had been cut from the ankle to the waist band and around the front to the crotch area. Her underwear appeared to have been partially cut or ripped off and her lower torso was nude. The sock on Pam's left foot had a used tampon stuffed inside it. Forensic tests confirmed the existence of seminal fluid in Pam's vagina, on the rug, and on the bottom of the inner right leg of the black jeans, which were cut and hanging from her.

A subsequent examination of Pam's remains illuminated even more fully the grim circumstances of her death. Strands of her own hair entwined in her bloody fingers indicated that she had struggled to remove the cord and ties from her neck. She also had defensive cuts on her hands suggesting that she tried to resist her attacker. Burst blood vessels in her eyes established that she had been strangled before she died. Pam was also stabbed several times in the neck, and a serrated kitchen knife consistent with these wounds was found in the bathroom sink. The assailant had plunged the blade four and one half inches into her neck, piercing her trachea, or breathing tube, and causing blood to enter her airway.

The medical examiner determined that Pam died late Thursday evening (April 2) or early Friday morning (April 3) as the result of both asphyxiation caused by strangulation and the stab wound that pierced her trachea. It was patently clear that her killer had left her to die a slow and agonizing death. According to the medical examiner, neither the stab wound nor the ligature around her neck would have killed her instantly. Rather, because the telephone cord was wrapped tightly around her neck and also attached to her hands (which were bound behind her back), only by keeping her hands high in an unnatural and uncomfortable position could Pam prevent her strangulation. As she struggled to free her hands, and as her muscles fatigued from trying to keep them in this abnormal position, Pam would have inevitably tightened the cord around her neck and thereby cut off the flow of blood to her brain. In this condition, the medical examiner concluded that Pam could have fallen in and out of consciousness as the pressure from the cord around her neck loosened and tightened, until she finally expired.

A little over eleven months after Constance Fregeau discovered her daughter's mangled body, the Woonsocket police received information that Brown was one of the last people who had been in Pam's company before she died. Detective Luke Simard testified that he contacted Brown after receiving this information and he asked him to come to the police station so the police might learn what he knew of the circumstances surrounding Pam's death. Brown expressed a desire to be helpful but he also told the detective that he could not come that evening because he was working in Worcester from 6 p.m. until 2 a.m. However, Det. Simard also called Joyce Roberson, Brown's then girlfriend, who contradicted Brown's story and informed him that she expected Brown to be home at around 9 o'clock that evening. Detective Simard asked Roberson to call him on his cell phone when Brown returned home. When Brown arrived, Roberson phoned Det. Simard. The detective spoke to Brown on the telephone, and Brown agreed to go to the police station. During this time, however, the vigilant Simard had been staked out on the street in front of Brown's home. When he observed Brown get into a car driven by Latoya Everett, Det. Simard and other detectives pulled the car over, informed Brown that there was an outstanding warrant for his arrest, and took him into custody on the authority of a District Court capias.

That capias, (or bench warrant), was issued on October 5, 1998, after Brown failed to appear at a hearing to review payments that he owed in three separate District Court criminal cases (case Nos. 61-98-07620, 61-98-12195, 61-98-13929). The warrant contained a pre-endorsed bail in the amount of $1,288.50² and instructed any authorized officer to arrest Brown and to present him to the District Court, or to commit him to the Adult Correctional Institution (ACI) until he posted bail.

Brown was taken to the Woonsocket police station and within approximately one half hour after being apprehended he waived his Miranda rights and consented to give a videotaped interview concerning the murder of Pamela Plante. Toward the end of this six-hour interview, Brown agreed to give the police a blood sample for DNA testing. Police transported Brown to Landmark Medical Center for that purpose at about 8:30 a.m. on March 6, 1999.³ He then was brought back to the station and eventually taken to the ACI.⁴

During Brown's initial interview at the police station on March 5, 1999, Brown said that he had last seen Pam on the Monday or Tuesday before she died. Brown explained that after work, he had gone to Eddie Burke's house, where he was joined by his friend, Bernie Williams. Pam arrived at Eddie's sometime later. Thereafter, Brown, Williams, and Pam went to Pam's home, where she made a few phone calls in an effort to scare up some money. He said that he and Williams stood around in the living room and waited for her. When Pam was finished with her phone calls, the three left; Brown and Pam went to a local bar for about an hour and a half, and Bernie returned...