State v. Clark, 27A88

• Decision Date: 02 March 1989
• Docket Number: No. 27A88,27A88
• Citation: 324 N.C. 146,377 S.E.2d 54
• Parties: STATE of North Carolina v. Bonnie Sue CLARK.
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court

Page 54

377 S.E.2d 54

324 N.C. 146

STATE of North Carolina v. Bonnie Sue CLARK.

No. 27A88.

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

March 2, 1989.

Lacy H. Thornburg, Atty. Gen. by David Roy Blackwell, Sp. Deputy Atty. Gen., Raleigh, for the State.

Charles H. Henry, Jr. and Walter W. Vatcher, Jacksonville, for defendant.

MARTIN, Justice.

Defendant was convicted in a capital trial of murder in the first degree and of conspiracy to commit murder in the stabbing death of her estranged husband, Glennie Clark. She was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder and to ten years' imprisonment for the conspiracy, the latter to commence at the termination of the life sentence. We find no error on the charge of murder in the first degree. However, with regard to the conviction of conspiracy we conclude that the sentencing court's erroneous failure to consider a statutory mitigating factor entitles defendant to a new sentencing hearing.

Evidence presented by the state tended to show that at 11 p.m. on 1 February 1987, defendant was discovered slumped over the steering wheel of a car parked in a movie-theatre parking lot. The police officer who first approached the car saw the body of a white male lying between the front and back seats, his head resting on the backseat. Detecting no vital signs on the male, the officer directed his flashlight beam onto defendant's face. Before he could reach in to check her, she aroused, shaking vigorously and screaming.

When the officer asked defendant what had happened, she replied that both doors had flown open and someone had slammed her head against the steering wheel, rendering her unconscious. Defendant was unable to provide further information as to the assailant, and after she was examined at the hospital, she reiterated this exculpatory explanation at the police station and reduced it to writing. Both the oral and written exculpatory statements were introduced at trial through the testimony of the interviewing officers.

About the same time defendant was being taken from the hospital to police headquarters, another officer interviewed a moviegoer who said he had observed a man later identified as Robert Bacon, Jr., enter defendant's car and depart with her around 8:30 p.m. The officer proceeded to defendant's house, where he was admitted by Robert Bacon, Jr. Bacon permitted the officer to view the bedroom that he shared with defendant. There the officer discovered and seized bloody clothes and shoes, which he brought back to headquarters around 3 p.m. Defendant was then read her rights. An hour later defendant signed a rights waiver form and offered a lengthy inculpatory statement.

In this statement defendant recounted the vicissitudes of marriage to an alcoholic, the couple's eventual separation, and the development of defendant's romantic relationship with Bacon. Defendant went on to describe the origin and evolution of the idea of killing her husband and how the plan was eventually executed.

Much of this statement was reiterated and detailed when defendant took the stand at her trial. She testified that her father had been a heavy drinker and that consequently family life throughout her childhood had been wrought with tension. Immediately after graduating from high school she joined the Marine Corps, where she met and married her first husband. A year and a half after their marriage, her husband left the Marine Corps and lived on unemployment benefits and defendant's earnings, spending his days partying with friends and dissipating most of the couple's money on drugs. He was domineering, violent, and abusive, and defendant reenlisted in 1980 in order to escape the marriage.

Defendant was assigned to Parris Island, where she met Glennie Clark. She became pregnant with his child and married him 5 March 1982, one day after receiving her divorce from her first husband. Towards the end of her pregnancy, Clark's occasional drinking increased to between six and twelve cans of beer a night and a case a day on weekends, and he began to abuse defendant physically. In April or May, Clark was ordered on a twelve-month tour in Japan, and in his letters home to defendant he repeatedly promised that he would drink no more upon his return. The promises proved to be vain, however, and upon his arrival home he returned to his pattern of excessive drinking and abuse of defendant. That summer, defendant, again pregnant, moved with her son to the house of a girlfriend. But she moved back in with Clark when his promises of reform were accompanied by his enrollment in alcohol rehabilitation and anti-abuse programs. The reform was short-lived. A month after the birth of their second child, the excessive drinking and physical abuse began again. This pattern was repeated with a second, shorter overseas tour and Clark's return to North Carolina and daily inebriation in the summer of 1986.

Defendant, exasperated by her husband's inability to face the fact of his drinking and disgusted with what he had become, made plans to leave Clark, intending to share the expenses of a house with two other women. When one woman backed out, defendant invited Bacon, a friend from work, to fill in.

Defendant left Clark in October, but despite the separation, her husband continued to harass her by telephone, by turns professing his love and pleading with her to return, and berating her and blaming her for creditors' calls. Although he contributed financially to the support of their two children, he did so only sporadically, and defendant was compelled constantly to juggle family bills.

Defendant testified that "the worse things got" between her and her husband, the closer she drew emotionally and romantically to Bacon. Defendant added that she became "real dependent" on Bacon, and in her anxiety that he not leave her, she was careful not to do or say anything that would make him mad and "would just do whatever he said." Shortly before Christmas, defendant, distressed and unnerved by her husband's incessant intrusion, said to Bacon that she wanted her husband dead. Although she had uttered such remarks before "jokingly," this time Bacon responded after a pause that "it could be arranged." Bacon told defendant he did not wish her to be involved, and he avoided responding to her questions and doubts, saying it was none of her business.

Defendant explained that because her husband rarely left his house, Bacon was unable to seize the opportunity to kill him. In response to Bacon's suggestion that defendant try to get her husband out of the house, she invited Clark out to see a movie, where, drunk, he created a disturbance and eventually left the theatre to await her in the car. Defendant expected to return to find him dead, but Bacon later told her that the nearby presence of policemen had foiled his plan. Bacon then outlined a plot for the following day, from which defendant attempted to dissuade him. Although she testified that she knew the revised plan would not work, defendant said she "didn't care": "No matter what the consequences of that would have been, anything was better than living the way I was living. He was making the decisions and I was just doing what he told me."

Defendant's testimony concluded by detailing the success of the plan the following day. When her husband called the next morning to apologize for his behavior the night before, she arranged another movie date with him for that evening. Defendant drove to the theatre parking lot where she met Bacon, and he accompanied her to the rendezvous with her husband. She told her husband she was giving Bacon a ride home, and in accord with this ruse, she followed Bacon's directions through dark, suburban streets. Bacon, who was in the backseat, reached over the front seat, grabbed the victim, and began stabbing him. Defendant continued driving, returning eventually to the theatre where Bacon exited, deposited his bloody shoes in the car he had left there, and unsuccessfully attempted to render defendant unconscious by ramming her head against the steering wheel. Bacon then thrust her head several times against the door glass, and defendant passed out. Regarding her earlier false statements, defendant testified that Bacon had told her to say upon discovery that she and her husband had been robbed, that the doors had flown open, and that she had been knocked out and remembered no more.

On appeal, defendant's assignments of error include her contention that the oral and written exculpatory statements made at the police station should not have been admitted because they were the products of custodial interrogation prior to her having been advised as to her constitutional rights as required by Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694, reh'g denied, 385 U.S. 890, 87 S.Ct. 11, 17 L.Ed.2d 121 (1966). Defendant contends that her constant accompaniment by police personnel and the fact that the officer who took her from the hospital to police headquarters admitted to being "suspicious" was tantamount to a custodial interrogation.

The trial court held a voir dire hearing on defendant's motion to suppress certain evidence, including these statements. That court found that defendant was taken by rescue squad vehicle to a hospital in the company of a police officer, in accord with the standard police procedure for transporting a victim for medical treatment, and that the officer remained with defendant throughout the half hour of tests and treatment. The trial court noted that defendant was then asked by another officer if she would accompany him to the police station so he could "obtain a more full statement ... with respect to what had happened and to attempt to identify the perpetrators of this offense." Defendant agreed to do so. The trial court also found that defendant began writing her exculpatory statement around 2 a.m., a half hour after her arrival at police headquarters. She was asked no further questions until the...