State v. Doerr

• Decision Date: 12 November 1998
• Docket Number: No. CR-96-0679-AP,CR-96-0679-AP
• Parties: , 282 Ariz. Adv. Rep. 14 STATE of Arizona, Appellee. v. Eugene Allen DOERR, Appellant.
• Court: Arizona Supreme Court

Page 1168

969 P.2d 1168

193 Ariz. 56, 282 Ariz. Adv. Rep. 14

STATE of Arizona, Appellee. v. Eugene Allen DOERR, Appellant.

No. CR-96-0679-AP.

Supreme Court of Arizona,

En Banc.

Nov. 12, 1998.

Grant Woods, Attorney General, Phoenix by Paul McMurdie, Ginger Jarvis, and Joseph T. Maziarz, for Appellee.

Dean W. Trebesch, Maricopa County Public Defender, Phoenix by Carol A. Carrigan and James H. Kemper, for Appellant.

OPINION

ZLAKET, Chief Justice.

¶1 At approximately 10:00 a.m. on September 24, 1994, two Phoenix police officers responded to a "check welfare" dispatch following a 911 call. Upon arriving at a bungalow-style apartment, they found the front door ajar and a disheveled Eugene Doerr sitting on the coffee table in the living room. He wore only shorts and was covered with blood.

¶2 When asked what had occurred, Doerr replied: "I don't know. I woke up with this----with a dead body back there." In a bedroom doorway, Officer Wirth found a naked woman lying in a pool of blood. Detecting no pulse, he instructed his partner to radio the fire department. Doerr responded, "[Y]ou don't need fire because she's dead." He told the officers that he had awakened, gone to the bathroom, and found the body on the floor. He denied knowing the victim's identity.

¶3 The four-room apartment showed signs of a violent struggle, with blood in every room. At trial, the medical examiner testified that the victim, 39-year-old Karen Bohl, died of multiple blunt force trauma. She suffered numerous injuries to the head, including a fractured nose, abrasions, cuts, bruises, and a two-inch laceration that exposed her skull. Her left hand was swollen and red. Her right hand was clenched in a fist holding hairs consistent with her own. Her left nipple and areola had been cut off, and above her right nipple were small lacerations. The body was covered in blood and fecal matter. Blood also formed a V-shaped pattern down her back from saturated hair.

¶4 The victim had been assaulted vaginally and rectally with an instrument of some kind. The doctor testified that the wall between her rectum and cervix had been destroyed. A bloody pipe, apparently part of a broken lampstand, and a bloody broom handle were found nearby--objects that the medical examiner said could have produced the injuries. Because of significant blood loss, swelling, and bruising, the doctor concluded that the injuries likely occurred prior to or during the victim's death. There were twenty-six other areas of injury to her body. Her blood alcohol level tested at .25, but no other drugs were detected. Tests for semen were negative.

¶5 Defendant Doerr was also injured. His right hand was swollen, and he had minor cuts on his forearm, above his wrist, and on his left foot. His chest, stomach, pubic area, and hands were smeared and caked with blood.

¶6 Investigators performed enzyme tests on the blood collected at the scene. The state's criminalist testified that Karen Bohl's PGM subtype was 1+2+ and Eugene Doerr's was 1+1+. He found blood consistent with only those two subtypes on numerous objects throughout the apartment. The pipe was saturated in blood of both subtypes, and the broom handle showed 1+1+ on the base and 1+2+ at the other end. The victim's bloody footprint was found on a bathtub. Bloody fingerprints belonging to both Bohl and Doerr were recovered from various locations around the apartment.

¶7 Defendant, a construction worker, had dined with his boss the evening before the murder. Around 8:30 p.m., he left in a company truck to purchase supplies for the next day's job. A receipt showed that he paid for the materials, including thirty-six bags of Redimix cement, at 9:05 p.m. He told the investigating officers that he then went to a bar and later stopped at the house of someone named Jeff. Finally, he went home. The next morning he awoke to find Bohl's body in his apartment and called 911 from the truck's mobile phone.

¶8 Defendant first claimed that he had no idea how the woman got there. Later, as officers waited for a search warrant, he told them that he thought her purse and ID were in the bathroom "because I remember seeing a purse and I don't own a purse." He also said the white car parked out front belonged to the victim. "That is her car she said ... I think." One of the officers testified that Doerr hesitated before adding the "I think."

¶9 Doerr voluntarily went to the police station. During questioning, he asked one of the officers if he thought a judge would give him life for the murder. He also said, "[S]he must have really made me mad for me to do something to her like this." The police did not test Doerr for drugs or alcohol until about 3:00 p.m., five hours after the 911 call. The tests were negative.

¶10 Tina Allgeir last saw her sister, Karen Bohl, at about 4:30 p.m. on the previous day, when Karen dropped off her 7-year-old daughter before going to work. Bohl had just started a new job as a manager trainee at a fast food restaurant. Her supervisor reported that she had called to say she would be late. However, she never arrived at work. When she later failed to pick up her daughter, Allgeir and other family members went to Bohl's apartment. They found her work uniform there, and food was still on the stove. Police investigators were unable to determine where or when Bohl and the defendant met on the day of the murder. They also did not find any indication that the two had been previously acquainted.

¶11 While in custody, the defendant initially told his cellmate, Victor Rosales, that he did not remember anything about the incident. However, a few weeks later he recalled picking up Bohl, going on a "partying binge," and arguing with her. Rosales testified that Doerr "flew off the handle" because descriptions contained in police reports were not "the way it happened." For instance, the defendant told Rosales that he struck the victim with a pipe when she started screaming, and not with a lamp as a police report indicated.

¶12 According to Rosales, Doerr wanted to have sex with Bohl, but she refused. Defendant reportedly stated, "[U]sually when you go pick out a woman, pick up a broad at a bar and take her partying, she knows what is expected." Rosales further testified that Doerr said "he should have buried the bitch in the back yard" with the cement he had purchased. Rosales claimed that he distanced himself from Doerr after the latter described the sensation he experienced from playing with the victim's blood.

¶13 At trial, defense counsel suggested that a third party could have entered the apartment, murdered the victim, and injured the defendant. Investigators, however, testified that the apartment windows were locked. Some, in fact, were painted shut. The front door was open when police arrived, but the back door was locked. No blood was found outside the apartment, except for a smear on the driver's side of the defendant's truck. Its location was consistent with the defendant's account of using the truck's mobile phone to call 911.

¶14 A jury convicted Doerr of premeditated first degree murder, felony murder, sexual assault, and kidnapping. Following a presentence hearing, the trial judge found the heinous, cruel, or depraved aggravator, A.R.S. § 13-703(F)(6), and insufficient mitigation to warrant leniency. He sentenced the defendant to death. This automatic appeal followed. We have jurisdiction pursuant to Ariz. Const. art. VI, § 5(3), A.R.S. § 13-4031, and Ariz. R.Crim. P. 31.2(b).

TRIAL ISSUES

Tainted Jury Pool

¶15 Defendant contends that the jury was irreparably tainted by the statements of two potential jurors during voir dire. The first, Joe Collier, had once directed the Phoenix Crime Lab. Collier indicated that he could not be fair and impartial because he knew several of the state's witnesses. He identified by name Detective Dennis Olson, who was seated at the prosecutor's table and had been previously introduced to the jury panel. When asked by the court about his ability to sit as a juror, Collier said: "I don't think it would be fair to the defense, Your Honor, because of--I am aware of the integrity and I highly respect a number of the people that would be witnesses."

¶16 The second prospective juror, Jose Martinez, was a prison guard in the federal system. He volunteered that during his four and one half years on the job, he had encountered only three inmates who were not guilty. The judge excused both Collier and Martinez for cause. Defendant later moved for a mistrial, alleging that the entire panel had been prejudiced by their remarks. The court denied the motion.

¶17 On the second day of voir dire, the defense claimed that it had objected to Collier's presence on the panel in a conversation with the judge outside the courtroom before jury selection began. However, the record contains no evidence of this challenge as required by Ariz. R.Crim. P. 18.4(a). Defense counsel also did not move to strike the panel when Collier made his statements, but only called for a mistrial the following day.

¶18 The issue before us, then, is whether the court should have granted the formal mistrial motion because the remarks of these two panelists tainted the remaining jurors. See State v. Greenawalt, 128 Ariz. 150, 167, 624 P.2d 828, 845 (1981) ("An accused has a constitutional right to be tried by a fair and impartial jury."). Defendant merely speculates that this contamination occurred. We will not, however, indulge in such guesswork. See State v. Tison, 129 Ariz. 526, 535, 633 P.2d 335, 344 (1981) ("Unless there are objective indications of jurors' prejudice, we will not presume its existence."); see also State v. Reasoner, 154 Ariz. 377, 384, 742 P.2d 1363, 1370 (App.1987) (appellant had burden of showing that remarks of excused juror prejudiced others); State v. Davis, 137 Ariz. 551, 558, 672 P.2d 480, 487 (App.1983) (court will not assume that panel was prejudiced).

¶19 Defendant points to a recent Ninth...