State v. Butler

• Decision Date: 22 April 2020
• Docket Number: No. 53,360-KA,53,360-KA
• Citation: 293 So.3d 808
• Court: Court of Appeal of Louisiana — District of US
• Parties: STATE of Louisiana, Appellee v. Brandon S. BUTLER, Appellant

293 So.3d 808

STATE of Louisiana, Appellee

v.Brandon S. BUTLER, Appellant

No. 53,360-KA

Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Second Circuit.

Judgment rendered April 22, 2020.

LOUISIANA APPELLATE PROJECT By: Douglas Lee Harville, Counsel for Appellant

J. SCHUYLER MARVIN, District Attorney, ANDREW JACOBS, JOHN MICHAEL LAWRENCE, DOUG STINSON, Assistant District Attorneys, Counsel for Appellee

Before MOORE, GARRETT, and THOMPSON, JJ.

GARRETT, J.

Following a bench trial, the defendant, Brandon S. Butler, was convicted as charged of two counts of first degree murder. He received consecutive sentences of life imprisonment without benefit of parole, probation, or suspension of sentence. The defendant appealed. We affirm the defendant’s convictions and sentences.

FACTS

In May 2014, Jacqueline Beadle and Karyl Cox were roommates who shared a one-story, three-bedroom house in the 3000 block of Bragg Street in Bossier City. Ms. Beadle, who had a young son, had lived there for about a year; for seven to eight months of that time, her boyfriend, Shawn Washington, lived with her until they broke up in early 2014. Ms. Cox had resided in the Bragg Street house for approximately a month; she had a young daughter, whose custody she shared with the child’s father.

On Friday, May 9, 2014, Ms. Beadle dropped her son off at the home of her mother, Joanna Hanson, where he spent the night. On Saturday, May 10, 2014, Ms. Hanson tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to contact Ms. Beadle by phone and text message. According to Ms. Hanson, it was highly unusual for Ms. Beadle not to call to check on her son and talk to him when he spent the night with his grandmother. Ms. Hanson called several of her daughter’s friends, including Mr. Washington, to see if they had heard from her. On Sunday, May 11, 2014, which was Mother’s Day, Ms. Hanson went to the Bragg Street house at about 6:30 a. m. because she was worried about her daughter. When she arrived, she noticed that her daughter’s car was there, but Ms. Cox’s blue, four-door Chevy Cruze sedan was not. She entered the locked residence with a key and found the dog confined in its crate in the kitchen and "going crazy." After letting the dog go outside, Ms. Hanson went into her daughter’s bedroom, where she discovered Ms. Beadle’s body on the floor under a comforter. She had been stabbed several times and shot in the forehead. Ms. Hanson then went into Ms. Cox’s bedroom, where she discovered her body in bed under the covers. She too had been shot in the forehead; she also had several other gunshot wounds.¹ Ms. Hanson went outside and called 911.

Law enforcement officers arrived and cordoned off the house with crime scene tape. At some point that day, the defendant approached an officer outside the house and asked to speak to a detective. Detective Jeffery Humphrey of the Bossier City Police Department ("BCPD") talked to the defendant, who said that Ms. Cox was his best friend. Thereafter, Detective Humphrey took the defendant to the police station for an interview in which he answered general questions about the victims.

By the following day, Monday, May 12, examination of the crime scene had disclosed the defendant’s fingerprint on the door of Ms. Beadle’s bedroom in a red substance that appeared to be blood.² The defendant was asked to give a second interview. During the first part of this interview, the defendant spoke to Detective Michael Hardesty for about 33 minutes. He described Ms. Cox as his best friend, stated that they spoke almost daily, and said that he was at her house about four days a week. However, he informed the detective that he had not been at the Bragg Street house or in Ms. Cox’s car since Tuesday, May 6. He claimed that he had been with Sekeona Campbell, a former girlfriend who was visiting family in Shreveport, from about 11 p.m. Friday night until 7:30 or 8:00 Saturday morning. He stated that, because he did not have a car, his friend, Terrell Stewart, had given him a ride to where Sekeona was staying. This portion of the interview ended shortly after Detective Hardesty confronted the defendant about the bloody fingerprint. The defendant vehemently denied being in the house on Friday night and maintained that his fingerprint could not be on the door in blood.

When the interview resumed after a brief break, Detective Humphrey took over questioning the defendant, who admitted being in the house Friday night. He stated that, after Ms. Cox retired to her bedroom for the night, he was with Ms. Beadle in her bedroom when her former boyfriend, Shawn Washington, appeared at her partially open window. He said Ms. Beadle jumped up, tripped on a cover, fell, and busted her nose on a dresser or nightstand. The defendant said he helped her get up, and she told him to leave, which he did. According to the defendant, Mr. Washington, who had come through the window, was threatening to "fuck up" Ms. Beadle and kill her. The defendant said he walked to the Orchard Apartments where he was living, took a shower, and called Mr. Stewart for a ride. He revised his arrival time at the place where Sekeona Campbell was staying to 1:30 or 2:00 a.m. Saturday morning. However, according to Sekeona, the defendant did not arrive until about 4 a.m. Saturday morning and he was driving a dark, four-door car which he said belonged to a female friend. She observed a picture of a child in the area of the car’s speedometer.

After the victims’ bodies were found on Sunday morning, the police utilized the GPS technology in Ms. Cox’s missing car to locate it in the driveway of a vacant house in the 4000 block of Sheryl Street, which was not far from the Orchard Apartments. There appeared to be blood on the door and the driver’s seat. Forensic examination determined that the defendant’s fingerprint was on the driver’s door handle and the blood on the driver’s seat belonged to Ms. Beadle. Photos of the recovered car show pictures of Ms. Cox’s young daughter prominently displayed on either side of the speedometer.

During his second statement on Monday, the defendant told the police that he had given his mother the clothes he was wearing Friday night to be laundered. Later that day, the police retrieved them from the trunk of her car and submitted them for testing. Ms. Beadle’s blood and DNA were found on the defendant’s underwear.

In July 2014, the defendant was indicted on two counts of first degree murder, and the state gave notice of its intent to seek the death penalty. The matter was set and reset for trial numerous times. In August 2018, the matter was set for a four-week jury trial on March 11, 2019. The state eventually withdrew the request for the death penalty in January 2019, at which time the defense waived a jury trial in favor of a bench trial. The trial date of March 11, 2019, was maintained.

Trial began March 11, 2019, and concluded on March 18, 2019. On March 20, 2019, the trial court announced its verdicts in court, finding the defendant guilty as charged on both counts of first degree murder, and giving oral reasons for its decision. It also issued a written opinion in which it extensively discussed the evidence presented at trial and detailed its reasons for finding the defendant guilty. In May 2019, the trial court imposed the mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without benefit of parole, probation, or suspension of sentence on each count. It ordered that the sentences be served consecutively.

The defendant appealed, asserting two assignments of error: (1) the evidence was insufficient to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt; and (2) the trial court erred in denying the defendant’s motions for continuance.

SUFFICIENCY OF EVIDENCE

The defendant contends that the trial court erred in finding that the state presented sufficient evidence to support his convictions for the first degree murders of Ms. Beadle and Ms. Cox. He argues that the state’s evidence was insufficient because it did not exclude a reasonable hypothesis of innocence, i.e., that Mr. Washington murdered the victims. Among the facts he claimed that the trial court overlooked were the failure to take fingernail scrapings from the victims, Mr. Washington’s palm print on Ms. Beadle’s door frame, and matted grass under Ms. Beadle’s window.

Law

The standard of appellate review for a sufficiency of the evidence claim is whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Jackson v. Virginia , 443 U.S. 307, 99 S. Ct. 2781, 61 L. Ed. 2d 560 (1979) ; State v. Tate , 2001-1658 (La. 5/20/03), 851 So. 2d 921, cert. denied , 541 U.S. 905, 124 S. Ct. 1604, 158 L. Ed. 2d 248 (2004) ; State v. Williams , 52,519 (La. App. 2 Cir. 2/27/19), 266 So. 3d 485, writ denied , 19-00718 (La. 10/21/19), 280 So. 3d 1172 ; State v. Brooks , 49,024 (La. App. 2 Cir. 5/14/14), 139 So. 3d 1072, writ denied , 14-1202 (La. 2/13/15), 159 So. 3d 459. This standard, now legislatively embodied in La. C. Cr. P. art. 821, does not provide the appellate court with a vehicle to substitute its own appreciation of the evidence for that of the fact finder. State v. Pigford , 05-0477 (La. 2/22/06), 922 So. 2d 517 ; State v. Brooks , supra .

The Jackson standard is applicable in cases involving both direct and circumstantial evidence. An appellate court reviewing the sufficiency of evidence in such cases must resolve any conflict in the direct evidence by viewing that evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution. When the direct evidence is thus viewed, the facts established by the direct evidence and inferred from the circumstances established by that evidence must be sufficient for a rational trier of fact to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was guilty of every essential element of the crime. State v. Sutton , 436 So. 2d 471 (La. 1983) ; State v. Lambert , 52,004 (La. App. 2 Cir. 5/23/18), 248 So. 3d 621 ; ...