State v. Carter
| Decision Date | 02 June 1986 |
| Citation | 714 S.W.2d 241 |
| Parties | STATE of Tennessee, Appellee, v. James David CARTER, Appellant. . Application for Permission to Appeal Denied by Supreme Court |
| Court | Tennessee Supreme Court |
Mindy Norton Seals, Douglas R. Beier, Morristown, for appellant.
W.J. Michael Cody, Atty. Gen, William Barry Wood, Asst. Atty. Gen., Nashville, for appellee.
This is a direct appeal of a death penalty case where in the jury found defendant guilty of murder in the first degree. At the sentencing hearing the jury found two aggravating circumstances, the murder was committed for the purpose of avoiding, interfering with or preventing a lawful arrest or prosecution of defendant and was committed while the defendant was engaged in committing larceny and kidnapping. The jury found no mitigating circumstances and sentenced defendant to death by electrocution.
This murder was committed in Hamblen County but defendant was tried in Greene County. The trial judge granted defendant's motion for a change of venue based upon publicity about the trial of defendant for crimes committed in nearby counties and a Morristown newspaper article reporting that defendant had been accused of stabbing another prison inmate.
The victim was C.A. Lile, of Bethany, Oklahoma. His body was found on February 17, 1984, at a place on Cherokee Lake called "The Bluffs," just off Highway 25 E. A telephone company employee stopped at "The Bluffs" to eat his lunch, walked over to the edge of the cliff to look at the lake and saw the body lying on a lower rocky ledge at the edge of the water. If the body had rolled another foot it would have gone into the lake. Mr. Lile, who worked for Auto Driveaway, had driven a vehicle from Oklahoma to Virginia and on February 16, 1984, was returning to Oklahoma in a GMC pick-up truck. He had the misfortune of stopping at a rest stop on Interstate 81 in Greene County, north of Baileyton, shortly after midnight where defendant and his accomplice, Danny Price were casing the area for a vehicle to steal to use in a food store robbery the next day.
Michael Garber was the maintenance man at the Interstate 81 rest stop on the midnight to eight thirty a.m. shift. He observed defendant and Price milling around the area and kept an eye on them because there had been recent reports of thefts from cars. Later he saw one of the two leave the area with a third party in a pick-up truck.
Danny Price testified that he arrived in Morristown on February 7, 1984, after his release from a federal prison in Indiana. Price and defendant, whom he had known for twenty-five years, spent a great deal of time together during the ensuing ten days. After relating many of their activities, Price testified they drove to the Interstate 81 rest stop in defendant's brown Chevette, arriving about eleven thirty p.m. on February 16 for the purpose aforesaid.
Price spent most of the waiting time there sitting in the Chevette as he was under instructions to follow defendant if he left in another vehicle. After a while he saw defendant go inside the restroom and return shortly with a man he had seen arrive in a GMC pick-up. Price saw them enter the truck and leave the area with defendant as the passenger. He followed them to "The Bluffs" on Cherokee Lake. He had kept some distance behind, and as he arrived defendant and Lile were standing at the side of the truck when Lile went down "as if he had been hit." Price did not hear the first shot but saw and heard defendant shoot Lile three times after he was on the ground. Price testified that defendant dragged Lile's body over to the edge and rolled it off the cliff. When he asked defendant, "What is going on?", defendant said, "Get in the car and follow me."
They drove to an area near Cocke County, left the truck and returned to Morristown in the Chevette. The next day defendant came to Price's motel. They decided to abandon the food store robbery. Defendant wanted to get rid of the pick-up truck and Price agreed to help. Carter took all of the papers and personal belongings of Lile to burn or otherwise dispose of, and Price took the truck and had it washed and vacuumed.
Price testified that he promised defendant he would bring the truck to his motel in Newport, Saturday morning, February 18. Friday night he drove to Newport with his girlfriend and went to the combination steak house, bar and motel where defendant lived. Defendant's car was parked there but they did not see him that evening. They ate and drank until closing time, about twelve or one, and left in the pick-up truck. Price testified that he was drunk, ran off the road and turned the truck over. He was arrested and taken to the Cocke County Jail about one thirty a.m. on February 18 and charged with driving while intoxicated. Defendant came to the jail Saturday morning and posted a cash bond of $468.25 for Price's release. Defendant wanted to know what had happened to the truck. When Price told him he had wrecked it and it was probably in bad shape, defendant cursed and said, "I had to kill a person for that truck."
Price testified that he and defendant were riding around Saturday night, February 18, that defendant gave him the .32 revolver and put him out at the Cornet Boat Dock, and that defendant was to have returned later. Price was arrested at the boat dock by Grainger County officers.
The Grainger County Sheriff's Department notified the TBI and Hamblen County officers that they had arrested Price and that he had in his possession a .32 Rossi revolver. A TBI agent and the officers from Hamblen County assigned to investigate the murder of C.A. Lile went to Grainger County and interviewed Price at 10:45 a.m. on Sunday, February 19. Price told them he had been drunk since returning to Morristown from federal prison and denied any knowledge of a murder. However, he asked for time to think and told them when they returned they would not be disappointed.
They began interviewing him again about 6:30 p.m. on February 19, and he gave a statement that omitted the events at the Interstate 81 rest area and his witnessing a murder. However, at 9:35 p.m. on the same date, Price gave a second statement that was substantially the same as his trial testimony.
A firearms identification expert, Dr. Larry Miller, testified that he compared the four bullets removed from Lile's body with two bullets fired from a .32 Rossi revolver. Two of the four bullets removed from the victim's body were distorted to the extent that they could not be adequately compared, but the other two bullets were positively identified as having been fired from the .32 Rossi revolver to the exclusion of any other gun in the world.
Keith Turner, the owner of Turner's Market at Talbot, testified that defendant came to his store on the morning of February 17, 1984, and asked to borrow some money for medicine and gas. Turner knew defendant was a diabetic, but he was in a bind and did not have any money to lend to defendant, who then asked if he had that gun that "that woman brought back." Turner had it and gave it to defendant to pawn and return. The gun was a .32 Rossi revolver.
Mike Turner, Keith Turner's son, testified that defendant came to Turner's Market on Sunday morning, February 19, 1984, before the store opened at noon. Defendant asked Mike to tell his father that the gun he had borrowed had been taken from his car but that defendant would pay for it.
The defense, through cross examination, brought out that Price had six felony convictions: four for forgery, one for larceny after trust, and one for assault with intent to commit murder. It was also revealed that for his involvement in the Lile murder a plea bargain agreement had been made with the State that on his plea of guilty to second degree murder, he would receive a thirty-five year sentence.
A defense witness testified that defendant had purchased a battery and an alternator for his Chevette on February 17, 1984, the day after the murder. A resident of the motel where defendant lived testified that defendant had been having trouble starting his car and she had used her jumper cables to start it several times. She testified that she saw defendant park his car and go to his room between 9:30 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. on Thursday night, February 16, 1984, and did not hear him leave or start his car after that.
Defendant asserts that the evidence was insufficient to support a finding of his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Defendant argues that there was insufficient corroboration of the testimony of Price, defendant's accomplice, and that without Price's testimony there was no proof that defendant murdered Lile.
Price was an accomplice as a matter of law in the murder of C.A. Lile. A conviction may not be based upon an accomplice's testimony unless there is some fact testified to entirely independent of the accomplice's testimony which taken by itself leads to an inference, not only that a crime has been committed, but that the accused is implicated in the crime. Mathis v. State, 590 S.W.2d 449, 455 (Tenn.1979). The corroborative evidence may be direct or entirely circumstantial and it need not, of itself, be adequate to support a conviction. It is sufficient to meet the requirements of the rule if it fairly and legitimately tends to connect defendant with the commission of the crime charged. Sherrill v. State, 204 Tenn. 427, 321 S.W.2d 811, 815 (1959).
It is our opinion that there was ample evidence corroborating the testimony of Price. Keith Turner testified that he loaned defendant the .32 Rossi revolver used to commit the murder the morning of February 17, which was twelve hours or more before the murder was committed. Mike Turner testified that defendant came to the store Sunday morning and left the message for his father that the gun had been taken from his car.
Michael Garber, the Interstate 81 rest area maintenance man, positively identified Price and de...
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