State v. Craig
| Decision Date | 20 May 1997 |
| Citation | 699 So.2d 865 |
| Parties | 95-2499 La |
| Court | Louisiana Supreme Court |
Richard M. Upton, Michael D. Lee, George R. Trelles, Baton Rouge, for Applicant.
Richard P. Ieyoub, Attorney General, Douglas P. Moreau, District Attorney, Thomas C. Walsh, Jr., Alexandria, John A. Cannon, Baton Rouge, for Respondent.
[95-2499 La. 2] CALOGERO, Chief Justice.
On September 14, 1992, defendant Dale Dwayne Craig brutally murdered Kipp E. Gullet, an 18 year-old freshman student at Louisiana State University. For that crime, defendant was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to death. This is a direct appeal from that conviction and sentence. La. Const. art. V, § 5(D). Finding no reversible error in any of the numerous assignments of error, both argued and unargued, we affirm both the conviction and the sentence.
The defendant, Dale Dwayne Craig, and three others, Zebbie Berthelot, James Conrad Lavigne and Roy Maurer, were indicted for the first degree murder of Kipp E. Gullet. The latter three negotiated a deal with the District Attorney; Lavigne and Berthelot testified against defendant at trial. 1
Near midnight on September 14, 1992, the victim, Kipp Gullet, drove his Ford Bronco into the parking lot of Kirby Smith dormitory on the Baton Rouge campus of Louisiana State University. Gullet, a freshman, was returning to his room after visiting with his friend, Christy White. As Gullet began to exit his truck, defendant rushed up and struck him in the face with a pistol. Defendant and his companions had spent much of the evening lurking in parking lots looking for a car to steal because defendant needed transportation to visit his girlfriend.
Screaming for his companions to get into Gullet's truck, defendant held his gun to Gullet's head in the back of the truck while the others got in the truck and Maurer drove them out of the parking lot. As they were driving, Gullet pled with his captors, offering them his money and his truck and telling them that his parents were rich and would pay for his safe return. The victim also attempted to keep his face hidden in his hands in an effort to [95-2499 La. 3] convince his captors that he would not be able to identify them if they were to let him go, but defendant made him sit up straight to "look normal." While the victim continued to cry and beg for mercy, defendant probed him for information on whether his disappearance would be noticed. He also asked the victim if he had "gotten any" from his girlfriend that evening.
As the group drove around town looking for a gas station without too many cars or people around, defendant and his companions debated the fate of the victim. Defendant expressed his decision to kill the victim, but the others suggested beating him into unconsciousness. Defendant seemed to acquiesce, and they drove to a secluded construction site near South Kenilworth Crossing in East Baton Rouge Parish. Defendant and Lavigne, both armed with handguns, pulled the victim from the vehicle and marched him at gunpoint away from the truck. They reached a grassy area where Lavigne struck the victim in the head with the butt of his gun. The victim fell to the ground and Lavigne began to walk back to the Bronco. As the victim lay on the ground in a fetal position, defendant knelt at his side and fired three bullets through his head, killing him.
The four drove quickly away from the scene. Defendant told his friends that he had killed the boy to protect their identities. Defendant then said to the group, To Maurer, he said, "I told you I was hard." Defendant then asked if the group should go kill anybody else while they were at it, then answered his own question by responding, "No, the game warden might get pissed."
Defendant drove the Bronco to visit his girlfriend, who was at his house. He told her, in detail, of his crime and of how he decided to kill his victim when one of the others had used an identifying name. 2 Defendant and his girlfriend then planned to drive the Bronco to Bogalusa the next day. The following day, [95-2499 La. 4] however, defendant changed his mind as they began to leave and decided instead to destroy the Bronco. Defendant ripped the stereo speakers and stereo from the car. Accompanied by his mother, his girlfriend, and Lavigne, who all followed in a separate car, defendant took the truck to the levee, where he set fire to the vehicle. Police later found at defendant's residence, through the execution of a search warrant, the pieces of stereo equipment and the victim's keys.
Soon after daybreak, the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Department investigated the suspected arson of a Ford Bronco found burning at the foot of the Mississippi River levee. Deputies discovered that the registered owner was the victim's father and that the truck was supposed to be in the possession of his son. After Ronald Gullet (the victim's father) was notified concerning the vehicle, he contacted the Louisiana State University Police Department to relate that he was unable to locate his son. Simultaneously, deputies were investigating reports of a body found at a construction site near the Kenilworth Ridge Apartments. Officers conducting the two investigations quickly realized the connection between the two crimes and identified the body as Kipp Gullet.
Based upon information from an anonymous caller, who stated that defendant Craig, Lavigne, Maurer and Berthelot were involved in the incident, police quickly arrested the four suspects. Berthelot, who was only 15 at the time, confessed to the officers in the presence of his mother. Based upon this statement and a subsequent statement given by Maurer, the police arrested defendant, who was charged with first degree murder.
Defendant initially pleaded not guilty, but later attempted to enter a plea of guilty, skip the guilt phase of the trial, and go straight to the penalty phase. The trial judge refused his attempted plea of guilty and the case went to trial. Defendant was found guilty of first degree murder on October 20, 1994, after a three-day trial. Following another three-day penalty phase, the jury found as aggravating factors that the crime was committed in [95-2499 La. 5] the course of an aggravated kidnapping and armed robbery, and that the offense was committed in an especially heinous, atrocious and cruel manner. The jury unanimously determined that defendant should receive the death sentence, which the district judge thereafter imposed. Defendant now perfects his appeal in this Court on the basis of 57 argued and unargued assignments of error. 3
Defendant contends that the trial court erred in denying his motion to enter a plea of guilty, waive the guilt phase of the trial and proceed directly to the penalty phase. At the time of defendant's trial in 1994, La.C.Cr.P. art. 557 provided, Jurisprudence interpreted this article to mean that a court is prohibited from accepting a guilty plea to a charge of first-degree murder unless that plea is qualified to exclude the possibility of the imposition of capital punishment. State v. Jett, 419 So.2d 844, 850-51 (La.1982) (). In 1995, Art. 557 was revised, and now provides that capital defendants may plead guilty and proceed directly to the penalty phase, if such plea is made "with the consent of the court and the state." 4
[95-2499 La. 6] In the instant case, there was no agreement between the defense and the state to exclude the possibility of capital punishment. The attempted plea was therefore not "qualified," and the trial court was correct to refuse it. 5 Further, even had the plea been properly qualified, nothing in either version of Art. 557 requires a court to accept a qualified plea of guilty in a given case; rather, the decision is left to the judge's discretion. See Jett, 419 So.2d at 851; State v. Green, 221 La. 713, 60 So.2d 208, 213 (1952). As to the 1995 amendment to Art. 557, defendant does not argue that it should apply retroactively to his trial, but rather cites the revised statute for the proposition that its predecessor should be read to allow unqualified pleas of guilty. This clearly conflicts with the extant jurisprudence at the time of defendant's trial.
Consequently, this assignment lacks merit. 6
In a related assignment of error, defendant contends that the trial court erred in failing to charge the jury, per his request, that he was prevented by law from entering an unqualified plea of guilty to first degree murder. Initially it should be noted that defendant requested this charge be given at both the guilt and penalty phases of the trial. Both requests were denied by the court; however, defendant's argument pertains only to the instruction not being read at the penalty phase. Specifically, defendant argues that because he was precluded from entering a plea [95-2499 La. 7] of guilty and "thus presenting [this as] mitigating evidence to the jury, it was necessary for the court to instruct the jury that the defendant could not plead guilty and thereby put evidence of his acceptance of responsibility before the jury."
Pursuant to La.C.Cr.P. art. 807, Any such charge must be supported by the evidence. State v. Toomer, 395 So.2d 1320 (La.1981).
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