State v. Commander

• Decision Date: 11 June 2009
• Docket Number: No. 4560.,4560.
• Citation: 681 S.E.2d 31
• Parties: The STATE, Respondent, v. Christopher Sam COMMANDER, Appellant.
• Court: South Carolina Court of Appeals

681 S.E.2d 31

The STATE, Respondent, v. Christopher Sam COMMANDER, Appellant.

No. 4560.

Court of Appeals of South Carolina.

Heard March 18, 2009.

Decided June 11, 2009.

Rehearing Denied August 25, 2009.

Deputy Chief Appellate Defender for Capital Appeals Robert M. Dudek and Assistant Appellate Defender LaNelle C. DuRant, South Carolina Commission on Indigent Defense, of Columbia, for Appellant.

Attorney General Henry Dargan McMaster, Chief Deputy Attorney General John W. McIntosh, Assistant Deputy Attorney General Donald J. Zelenka, Assistant Attorney General Melody J. Brown, Office of the Attorney General, of Columbia; and Solicitor Warren B. Giese of Columbia, for Respondent.

GEATHERS, J.:

Appellant Christopher Commander seeks review of his murder conviction. He challenges the trial court's admission of certain expert testimony and the trial court's failure to charge the jury on the defense of accident. We affirm.

FACTS/PROCEDURAL HISTORY

Commander's pregnant girlfriend, Gervonya Goodwin, was last seen alive by members of her family on November 29, 2004. On January 7, 2005, her family discovered her body covered with a blanket and lying on a couch inside her home. The body was mummified and partially decomposed.¹ Additionally, Goodwin's purse, cell phone, and car were missing. Police investigators and family members later discovered that Commander had (1) stolen Goodwin's car, credit cards, and cell phone; (2) withdrawn money from her bank accounts; and (3) sent text messages from her cell phone to members of her family indicating that she was at the beach and was still alive. Commander admitted to killing Goodwin when he was arrested in New Orleans, Louisiana.

The State indicted Commander for murder in violation of S.C.Code Ann. § 16-3-10 (2003). At trial, the State's expert in forensic pathology, Dr. Clay Nichols, testified that the cause of Goodwin's death was asphyxiation. Prior to sharing his final conclusion as to the cause of death, counsel for the State questioned him about his preliminary conclusion upon examining Goodwin's body at her home:

Q Did you come — after your examination and prior to getting the toxicology reports back, did you come to a preliminary conclusion as [sic] the cause of death in this case?

A Yes, I did.

Q And what was that, sir?

A Given the fact that this woman died under suspicious circumstances, that the history I was given was that her — she was already in her house, no one had talked to her for a period of time, her car was missing, her purse was missing, there was some indication that somebody was sending text messages to family members indicating that the dead woman, Gervonya Goodwin, was still alive, this indicated an extremely suspicious circumstance, and I felt that we were dealing with a homicide.

Defense counsel immediately objected. Outside the jury's presence, defense counsel argued that Dr. Nichols' opinion was based on matters outside the scope of his expertise and therefore was not allowed under Rule 702, SCRE.² The trial court questioned Dr. Nichols on his definition of "homicide," and Dr. Nichols responded as follows:

THE WITNESS: Yes sir. Homicide is someone [sic] who died as a result of the actions of another individual.

THE COURT: As opposed to?

THE WITNESS: An accidental cause where somebody unintentionally caused death to another individual.

(emphasis added). Defense counsel objected to Dr. Nichols' use of the concept of intent in his definition of "homicide" and requested that the trial court give a curative instruction to the jury.

The trial court did not indicate whether it would give a curative instruction, but it directed counsel for the State to question Dr. Nichols on his definition of "homicide" in the jury's presence.³ Dr. Nichols provided the jury with the following definition:

Q Doctor, what is your definition of homicide?

A A person that [sic] has died as a result of another person's actions.

Q And in your opinion in this case, was this or could this have been a natural death?

A No, I don't believe so.

Q Or an accidental death?

A No, I do not believe so.

Q Or a suicide?

A No, I don't believe so.

Defense counsel cross-examined Dr. Nichols on his earlier statement that Goodwin died under "suspicious circumstances," and Dr. Nichols explained that the autopsy process included interpreting the history of the case. During his explanation, Dr. Nichols stated "somebody went through an awful lot of effort to cover up this death...." After ruling out other causes of death, Dr. Nichols concluded that the cause of Goodwin's death was homicide due to asphyxiation. The conclusion was based in part on the absence of any other cause. Dr. Nichols later stated, "I'm not claiming intent. I'm claiming that she died as a result of somebody else's actions."

The State also presented the testimony of John Pressley, who met Commander while they were both serving prison time at the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center. Pressley testified that Commander approached him to obtain assistance with a petition for a writ of habeas corpus and that they had several conversations about Commander's pending murder charge. Pressley recounted Commander asking him the following question:

What do you think if I told my attorney to tell them that she, the victim, hit me in the head with a stick, we had an argument and she hit me in the head with a stick and I fell unconscious and fell on top of her, and when I regained consciousness she had died from being suffocated?

Pressley stated that he told Commander that no one was going to believe that account of events. Pressley also indicated that Commander later told him that he had an argument with Goodwin, that she hit him with a stick and made him angry, and that he fell on her and suffocated her. Pressley further stated, "I asked him were you unconscious, and he said, no, he wasn't unconscious, he suffocated her." On cross-examination, Pressley repeated Commander's question regarding what he should tell his attorney:

And he asked me a question, what did I think, he wanted my opinion. If he had this lawyer ... what did I think if he told his lawyer to tell the State that his girlfriend, the victim, hit him in the head with a stick and he fell unconscious and fell on her and when he was — when he regained consciousness that she had died from suffocation because he was on her, he fell on top of her. And I told him, no one is going to believe this.

At the conclusion of trial, defense counsel requested the trial court to charge the jury on the defenses of self-defense and accident, but the trial court declined to do so. As to Dr. Nichols' testimony, the trial court charged the jury that they were not to place any expert opinions "above the idea of your own opinions on the subject, but you are to consider these opinions along with all the other evidence in the case in forming your own conclusions." The jury found Commander guilty of murder, and the trial court sentenced Commander to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. This appeal followed.

ISSUES ON APPEAL

1. Did the trial court err in allowing Dr. Nichols to give his opinion that the "suspicious circumstances" surrounding Goodwin's death indicated a homicide when that opinion was not based on scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge that would assist the jury in understanding the evidence or in determining a disputed fact as required by Rule 702, SCRE?

2. Did the trial court err in declining to charge the jury on the defense of accident?

STANDARD OF REVIEW

The conduct of a criminal trial is left largely to the discretion of the trial court and this Court will not interfere unless the rights of the appellant were prejudiced. State v. Bridges, 278 S.C. 447, 448, 298 S.E.2d 212, 212 (1982). As such, this Court reviews errors of law only and is bound by the trial court's factual determinations unless they are clearly erroneous. State v. Baccus, 367 S.C. 41, 48, 625 S.E.2d 216, 220 (2006).

LAW/ANALYSIS

I. Admission of Expert Testimony

Commander asserts that the trial court erred in admitting Dr. Nichols' opinion that the "suspicious circumstances" surrounding Goodwin's death indicated a homicide because that opinion was not based on scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge that would assist the jury in understanding the evidence or in determining a disputed fact. We conclude that Commander was not prejudiced by the admission of this opinion into evidence.

"Error may not be predicated upon a ruling which admits or excludes evidence unless a substantial right of the party is affected." Rule 103, SCRE. In other words, to warrant reversal based on the admission or exclusion of evidence, the complaining party must prove both the error of the ruling and the resulting prejudice. Vaught v. A.O. Hardee & Sons, Inc., 366 S.C. 475, 480, 623 S.E.2d 373, 375 (2005); Fields v. Reg'l Med. Ctr. Orangeburg, 363 S.C. 19, 26, 609 S.E.2d 506, 509 (2005).

To establish prejudice, the appellant must convince this Court that there is a reasonable probability that the jury's verdict was influenced by the challenged evidence. Fields, 363 S.C. at 26, 609 S.E.2d at 509. Here, Commander argues that he was prejudiced by Dr. Nichols' opinion detailing the "suspicious circumstances" of Goodwin's death because it misled the jurors into substituting his opinion for their own judgment on matters not requiring specialized knowledge.

Assuming, arguendo, that the admission of this opinion violated Rule 702, SCRE, Commander was not prejudiced. Dr. Nichols later explained to the jury that in concluding that Goodwin's death was a homicide, he was not purporting to give an opinion on "intent," but was rather attempting to establish the manner of death — that Goodwin died as a result of somebody else's actions. Further, during the course of giving standard jury instructions, the trial court advised the jury that they were not to place any expert opinions...