State v. Celestine
| Decision Date | 28 November 1983 |
| Docket Number | No. 83-KA-0916,83-KA-0916 |
| Citation | 443 So.2d 1091 |
| Parties | STATE of Louisiana v. Willie Lawrence CELESTINE. |
| Court | Louisiana Supreme Court |
William J. Guste, Jr., Atty. Gen., Barbara Rutledge, Asst. Atty. Gen., J. Nathan Stansbury, Dist. Atty., Michael Harson, Asst. Dist. Atty., Robin Rhodes, Don Landry, Asst. Dist. Attys., for plaintiff-appellee.
David Clarke, Lafayette, for defendant-appellant.
On September 23, 1981 a Lafayette Parish grand jury indicted defendant Willie Lawrence Celestine for the first degree murder of Marcelianne Richard, eighty-one years old, in violation of R.S. 14:30. Following the guilt phase of his bifurcated trial, the jury unanimously found defendant guilty as charged. After the sentencing phase, the jury unanimously recommended the death penalty, finding that three aggravating circumstances existed: the victim had been killed during the commission of an aggravated rape; the defendant had previously been convicted of an unrelated aggravated rape; and the offense had been committed in an especially cruel manner. Subsequently, the trial judge sentenced defendant to death. On appeal to this court, Celestine designates five assignments of error. After considering the oral and written arguments of the parties and the evidence on the record, we affirm Celestine's conviction and sentence.
The facts reveal that on September 13, 1981 the Lafayette City Police Department obtained an arrest warrant for Celestine for the aggravated burglary of a house the previous weekend. Celestine was found at the home of his parents that afternoon. That same evening he waived his rights and gave a taped statement to the police. In the statement, he admitted breaking into three different homes in the Lafayette area and to forcing women on each of those occasions to engage in sexual intercourse with him. As to the crime against Mrs. Richard, he relates in the statement how he had been out all night drinking and taking "speed." Early that morning a friend dropped him off near his house, and he began to walk until he saw a light on in the house of Mrs. Richard whom he claimed not to know. He said he entered through the bathroom window and found Mrs. Richard sitting in the living room. He then put his hand over her mouth, and, after a struggle, "had sex" with her on her bedroom floor. He remembered how she had tried to get to the telephone, knocking it off the hook. He then stated he left through the back door, went home, and slept until the police arrived that afternoon.
On that same morning of September 13, 1981 Mrs. Richard was preparing to visit her sisters. Her friend, Arthur Boulet, called her at 5:30 a.m. to see if she was ready for the trip. Later, at about 6:55 a.m., Boulet, accompanied by his wife and a cousin, drove by Mrs. Richard's home to pick her up. No one answered the front door. Finding the back door open, they entered the house and discovered Mrs. Richard's body lying on the floor of her bedroom. Boulet testified that there was no sign of breathing, that she was without undergarments, that her face was bruised, and that there was bleeding from the nose.
A police officer who investigated the scene substantiated Boulet's testimony and described Mrs. Richard's face as very much disfigured. The investigating pathologist testified that Mrs. Richard died of strangulation. The hialate bone in her neck was broken. To fracture this bone, he testified, required a blow of "tremendous force." He found considerable bruising of the face and neck as well as seven broken ribs. He also found evidence of recent sexual intercourse.
In addition to an edited version of the taped statement (references to the other crimes were deleted), the state introduced a palm print found in Mrs. Richard's bathroom. An expert compared it to Celestine's and found them identical, finding twenty-five points of similarity. Examination and comparison of defendant's seminal fluid and that found near Mrs. Richard's body indicated that the offender and Celestine had similar blood groupings.
Although Celestine claimed not to know Mrs. Richard, he lived one block away with his parents. At the time of the crime, he was twenty-five years old.
The defense attempted to suggest that the confession had been coerced, that the palm prints were suspect, and that defendant was intoxicated to such an extent that it precluded his forming the requisite specific intent to have actively desired either the victim's death or to have inflicted great bodily harm. The defendant did not testify at the trial or at the sentencing hearing.
Celestine's mother testified that he had had six beers before going out on Friday evening at 10:00 p.m. She did not see him until daybreak the next morning. She stated she saw no evidence of tearing or blood on his clothing. Both she and her husband testified that Celestine was difficult to wake up when the police arrived to arrest him at about 5:30 p.m. that evening.
Other friends testified that he had been drinking. The witness to see him last, however, at 3:30 a.m. on the morning of the crime, could not say whether he had been drinking. Defendant, in his statement, said, The jury heard this in the edited tape introduced at trial.
By this assignment Celestine argues that a Mrs. Holmes was improperly excused for cause at the insistence of the state, thereby tainting his jury and violating his right to due process under the principles announced in Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 510, 88 S.Ct. 1770, 20 L.Ed.2d 776 (1968).
The Supreme Court in Witherspoon, supra at 522, held that "a sentence of death cannot be carried out if the jury that imposed or recommended it was chosen by excluding veniremen for cause because they voiced general objections to the death penalty or expressed conscientious or religious scruples against its infliction." Under Witherspoon, only a juror who would automatically vote against the death penalty may be excluded for cause. Id. at 522 n. 21, 88 S.Ct. at 1777 n. 21. "The most that can be demanded of a venireman in this regard is that he be willing to consider all of the penalties provided by state law, and that he not be irrevocably committed, before the trial has begun, to vote against the penalty of death regardless of the facts and circumstances that might emerge in the course of the proceedings." Id. See also C.Cr.P. 798; State v. Jordan, 420 So.2d 420, 423 (La.1982).
We find that Mrs. Holmes clearly stated that she was irrevocably committed to vote against the death penalty and that she expressed much more than general objections or religious scruples against its imposition. For example, she stated to the prosecutor, "I don't feel like I could vote for the death penalty." Her lifelong beliefs would prevent her from imposing the penalty, she said, no matter what the facts and circumstances of the case showed. Defense counsel inquired whether she would:
Later, the prosecutor asked:
Near the end of the questioning, the prosecutor asked whether she would:
Although she did reply affirmatively to several general questions as to her ability to consider the law as told to her by the judge, she nevertheless consistently stated that she could not vote for the death penalty whenever it was specifically mentioned in a question.
This assignment is without merit.
This assignment was neither briefed nor argued; hence it would normally be considered abandoned. However, this court will review all assignments of error in cases where the death penalty has been imposed. State v. Narcisse, 426 So.2d 118, 131 (La.1983). By this assignment Celestine argues that the trial court erred in refusing to excuse a Mrs. Broussard for cause at his request, forcing him to use one of his peremptory challenges.
Since Celestine exhausted his peremptory challenges by the time the jury was completed, he has the right to complain of the trial court's ruling. C.Cr.P. 800; State v. Edwards, 406 So.2d 1331, 1345 (La.1981). However, to be successful, he must show that the trial court abused its broad discretion in an arbitrary and unreasonable way. State v. Edwards, supra.
During voir dire, Mrs. Broussard disclosed that she was a good friend of the victim's granddaughter. She also stated she knew the prosecutor who had represented her father on occasion. She stated several times that she would try to be fair, however, and said that she would try to do her "civic duty." The court asked her if it would embarrass her to face either the prosecutor or the victim's granddaughter in the event of a not guilty verdict. She replied that it would not. She concluded her interrogation with the following statement: "Well, the way I feel, if he's right, I would vote him right, but if he done wrong, I would vote him wrong." When defense counsel challenged for cause, the trial judge denied, stating:
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