State v. Congress
| Decision Date | 05 December 2014 |
| Docket Number | No. 11–307.,11–307. |
| Citation | 114 A.3d 1128,2014 VT 129 |
| Court | Vermont Supreme Court |
| Parties | STATE of Vermont v. Latonia CONGRESS. |
Thomas J. Donovan, Jr., Chittenden County State's Attorney, and Pamela Hall Johnson, Deputy State's Attorney, Burlington, for Plaintiff–Appellee.
Matthew F. Valerio, Defender General, and Marshall Pahl, Appellate Defender, Montpelier, for Defendant–Appellant.
Present: REIBER, C.J., DOOLEY, SKOGLUND, BURGESS and ROBINSON, JJ.
¶ 1. This case requires us to decide whether, in a murder prosecution, a jury can find a defendant guilty of voluntary manslaughter, as opposed to murder, on the basis of evidence that the defendant's actions were influenced by a serious psychological condition that does not rise to the level of insanity and does not negate the defendant's specific intent to kill. It also obliges us to reconcile disparate strands of our case law concerning
the effect of what is often described as “diminished capacity” evidence in the context of a homicide prosecution. We conclude that the trial court correctly declined to instruct the jury that it could consider the evidence of defendant's psychological condition as a basis for convicting her of voluntary manslaughter, and reject defendant's challenges on appeal to several of the trial court's evidentiary rulings. Accordingly, we affirm.
¶ 2. A jury convicted defendant Latonia Congress of second-degree murder following a trial. The evidence relevant to the issues on appeal can be summarized as follows. In October 2009, defendant lived in a house in Essex Junction with her husband; their three children; her husband's sister, Helena Copeland; a friend, Shateena Morris; and four of defendant's cousin's children, including sixteen-year-old Shatavia Alford. Copeland described defendant as “sweet,” and testified that defendant took care of all of the kids in the house before worrying about herself. Copeland described defendant's relationship with Shatavia as close, recalling that the two played and sang together, and that defendant paid for Shatavia's clothes, school events, and anything else she wanted.
¶ 3. Copeland testified that she was at the house with Shatavia and several younger children on the afternoon of October 16, 2009, when defendant telephoned, spoke with Shatavia, and shortly thereafter arrived home. Defendant “came storming in” and went straight to Shatavia, yelling at her about something related to their phone conversation, and then about the latter's responsibilities around the house. Defendant slapped Shatavia, and the two began punching each other and pulling each other's hair until Copeland and Morris separated the two and tried to calm them down. Defendant slipped free, said, “I'm going to kill that bitch,” and stood behind the kitchen counter looking at Shatavia. Thinking that defendant and Shatavia had calmed down, Copeland turned away and moments later heard Shatavia scream. She turned around and saw Shatavia jumping up and down with blood spraying from her chest and a knife falling to the floor. Inferring that defendant had thrown the knife at Shatavia, Copeland called 911. While speaking to the police, she heard defendant repeatedly tell the victim that she was sorry.
¶ 4. A recording of the 911 call was played for the jury and admitted into evidence. A police officer arrived during the call, and
Copeland can be heard telling him that defendant and Shatavia had been fighting, that Copeland had attempted to intervene, and that she had heard defendant say, “I'm going to kill that bitch.”
¶ 5. The first police officer on the scene testified that after he transferred care of Shatavia to the rescue squad, he heard defendant talking on the phone, crying, and saying several times that “this is just a dream, this can't be happening.” She urged the person on the other end of the line to go to the hospital and check on Shatavia and said, “I don't know what happened.” She slumped to the ground for a period, and when asked what had occurred, defendant repeatedly stated that “[i]t happened so fast, I don't know” but also acknowledged that she and Shatavia had been fighting.
¶ 6. Shatavia was transported to a hospital where she was pronounced dead. A medical examiner testified that she died from a stab wound to the heart that severed her pulmonary artery. The wound was three to five inches in depth and could not, in the medical examiner's opinion, have been caused by a thrown knife. The examiner also noted some injuries to the victim's fingers that were consistent with defensive wounds.
¶ 7. Morris, the other adult who observed the altercation, testified for the defense, recalling that defendant and Shatavia had enjoyed a close “mother-daughter” type of relationship. Morris had seen them “debate” about chores, but had never heard defendant use abusive language with Shatavia, nor seen her become violent with or strike Shatavia. Although Morris was present at the time of the offense, she did not hear defendant threaten to kill Shatavia. Morris testified that defendant's husband was extremely abusive, physically and emotionally, and described in detail a time when he got on top of defendant and punched her repeatedly.
¶ 8. Morris was not alone in testifying about such abuse. Defendant's aunt recalled that she repeatedly heard defendant's husband verbally abuse defendant, and described several instances in which she saw him physically hit her, including while she was pregnant. She spoke about a time when defendant's husband ripped wires out of defendant's car and ripped her shirt because he did not want her going to church. Several of defendant's friends testified that her husband repeatedly called her names and yelled at her, and they described incidents in which he tried to strike her, ripped her clothes, restrained her by sitting on her,
followed her in his car, removed a license plate from a van to prevent her from driving it, and tried to prevent her from leaving the house. One friend explained that when her husband was away, defendant was outgoing and fun, but when he was around, she “goes into a shell” and “shuts down.” Defendant's husband testified as well, acknowledging that he had frequently struck, choked, and beat defendant with a belt. He explained that he didn't feel good about his actions, but he was upset at the time, and he suggested that as his wife, she should follow his instructions.
¶ 9. Defendant testified on her own behalf. She described how she came to be the principal care provider for her own three children and her cousin's four children, including Shatavia. She acknowledged that she had not given birth to Shatavia, but described her as “my oldest daughter” and “my other half.” Defendant confirmed that her husband had physically and emotionally abused her for many years, and described various incidents including one in which he hit her on the side of the head and broke her eardrum, more than one when he hit her while she was pregnant, and one in which he sliced her dress open with a razor blade to prevent her from going to a wedding reception. With respect to the events surrounding Shatavia's death, she recalled that she had an argument with Shatavia, that Shatavia struck her, and that they started fighting, but she could not remember what happened thereafter until she saw Shatavia lying on the ground bleeding and tried to pull her up to take her to the hospital.
¶ 10. Philip J. Kinsler, Ph.D., a clinical and forensic psychologist, testified as defendant's expert. Dr. Kinsler explained that he had reviewed the case records, interviewed defendant on five separate occasions for a total of fourteen to fifteen hours, and administered a number of psychological tests. Dr. Kinsler testified that the tests indicated that defendant had “enormously elevated” levels of psychological trauma; strong indicators of depression and dissociation; and a composite I.Q. of 77, which is among the lowest six percent of the population. He concluded that, at the time of the events in question, defendant suffered from “acute stress disorder ” (an early stage of post-traumatic stress disorder ), and “as a component of” that disorder, suffered from “dissociative amnesia.” Dr. Kinsler explained that, as a result of her history of extreme abuse, defendant “went into a dissociative state” when she became embroiled in the fight with Shatavia so that she was
not aware of how she was acting and could not remember what occurred. It was his opinion that she reacted “automatically and without conscious control,” and would not have been “able to control her actions to conform with the law.” The dissociative response would have been the same, according to Dr. Kinsler, regardless of who “struck the first blow.”
¶ 11. The State called Albert M. Drukteinis, M.D., a forensic psychiatrist, as a rebuttal witness. Dr. Drukteinis disputed that defendant was suffering from any mental disease or defect at the time of the killing, although he acknowledged that his opinion was limited to psychoses causing hallucinations or delusions and acknowledged that it was “very possible” defendant had PTSD. He did not believe that psychiatry had the “tools” to know whether defendant's dissociation occurred during or after the events, or whether she could control her actions.
¶ 12. The central issue on appeal involves the jury instructions as they relate to defendant's evidence that she suffered from a psychological condition that prevented her from controlling her actions. In addition to an instruction on insanity, defendant requested that the jury instructions address her psychological condition as an extenuating circumstance mitigating what would otherwise be a conviction for murder to manslaughter. The trial court responded that the evidence of defendant's condition either did or did not negate specific intent. The court's proposed instructions reflected that if the jury concluded that the psychological condition did...
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