State v. Doody

Decision Date05 September 1996
Docket NumberNo. 1,CA-CR,1
Citation930 P.2d 440,187 Ariz. 363
PartiesSTATE of Arizona, Appellee, v. Johnathan Andrew DOODY, Appellant. 94-0120.
CourtArizona Court of Appeals
OPINION

McGREGOR, Judge.

Johnathan Andrew Doody appeals his convictions and sentences for nine counts of first degree murder, nine counts of armed robbery, one count of burglary, and one count of conspiracy to commit armed robbery. For the reasons stated below, we affirm Doody's convictions and sentences.

I.

On the morning of August 10, 1991, members of the Wat Promkunaram Buddhist Temple discovered nine bodies inside the temple (the temple murders). The victims, including six Buddhist monks, lay face down in a circle, each shot in the head. Several of the victims had sustained additional, non-fatal shotgun wounds. Living quarters inside the temple had been ransacked, and items of personal property, including money, cameras, and stereo equipment, were missing. Police analysis of the bullets identified the murder weapon as a Marlin Model 60 .22 caliber rifle (Marlin rifle).

In September 1991, detectives received an anonymous tip implicating four men from Tucson (the Tucson Four) in the temple murders. During questioning, the suspects made inculpatory statements, based on which the state charged the Tucson Four with the temple murders.

In an attempt to locate the murder weapon, investigators issued an advisory directing all law enforcement agencies to report any Marlin rifles. Investigators subsequently received a report from Luke Air Force Base that a military officer had discovered a Marlin rifle during a search of a vehicle stopped in an unrelated incident. Investigators recovered the rifle from its owner, Rolando Caratachea, and later identified it as the temple murder weapon. Caratachea denied involvement in the temple murders and claimed that two minors, Doody and another friend, Alessandro Garcia, had borrowed the rifle shortly before the murders.

Officers located Doody on October 25, 1991, at a high school football game. Doody agreed to accompany the officers to the police station for questioning. After arriving at the station, the officers advised Doody of his Miranda 1 rights. Doody indicated that he understood his rights and was willing to speak to the investigators without an attorney or his parents present.

Doody's interrogation began at 9:25 in the evening. Doody initially denied any knowledge of the events at the temple but, after two and one-half hours, made inculpatory statements and, after approximately four more hours of questioning, admitted to being at the temple on the night of the murders. Doody claimed that Caratachea and Garcia approached him with a plan to conduct a "war game," which entailed surrounding the temple without setting off the security system. Doody stated that he went to the temple with Caratachea, Garcia, and two others, George Gonzalez and his friend. Doody maintained that he had not intended to enter the temple but that, once past the security sensors, he followed the others inside. Doody stated that Caratachea, Garcia, Gonzalez, and the other participant ransacked the temple's living quarters and gathered the victims into the main room. Doody stated that one of the monks recognized Gonzalez, who then ordered Doody to go outside and confirm that the walls were sound-proof. Doody maintained that the shootings occurred while he was outside and that he did not know who fired the shots. Officers did not complete the interview until after 10:00 the next morning.

Officers also questioned Garcia on the night of October 25, 1991. Garcia initially invoked his right to remain silent but, after consulting his father, agreed to give a statement regarding his involvement in the temple murders. Garcia claimed that Doody conceived the plan to rob the temple and persuaded Garcia to join him. Garcia stated that, once inside the temple, Doody insisted they leave "no witnesses" and that, despite Garcia's attempts to dissuade him, Doody shot each of the victims in the head with a rifle he had borrowed from Caratachea. Garcia claimed that he panicked and fired his shotgun in the direction of the victims. Garcia maintained that only he and Doody participated in the robbery and murders.

Investigators searched Garcia's home and discovered several items taken from the temple. Investigators also found a shotgun, later determined to be the gun that fired the shotgun shells recovered at the crime scene. Based on the confessions and the evidence collected at Garcia's home, the state dismissed the charges against the Tucson Four and charged Doody and Garcia with the temple murders. Following a juvenile transfer hearing at which Caratachea testified that Doody and Garcia had borrowed his rifle shortly before the murders, the court ordered Doody and Garcia to stand trial as adults.

Early in the pretrial proceedings, Doody and Garcia moved to suppress their confessions. After a ten-day suppression hearing, the trial court denied both motions. Garcia thereafter entered a plea agreement, pursuant to which the state agreed not to pursue the death penalty and Garcia agreed to testify against Doody. In addition, Garcia pled guilty to nine counts of first degree murder and one count of burglary in connection with the temple murders, as well as one count of first degree murder in an unrelated homicide (the Cameron murder).

The state proceeded to trial against Doody. At trial, Garcia testified consistently with his interrogation statements. The trial court did not allow Doody to cross-examine Garcia regarding the Cameron murder or other unrelated and uncharged offenses that Garcia had committed with Caratachea, including a series of burglaries and conspiracy to commit murder and armed robbery (the Cruz offenses). After Caratachea invoked his fifth amendment right not to testify at Doody's trial, the trial court allowed Doody to read into evidence Caratachea's testimony from the juvenile transfer hearing, except those portions of the transcripts referring to Caratachea's prior crimes.

The jury ultimately convicted Doody on each count. With respect to the first degree murder charges, the verdicts revealed that the jury premised Doody's convictions on felony murder rather than premeditated murder. The trial court subsequently sentenced Doody to nine consecutive life terms on the murder counts and eleven additional prison terms on the remaining counts. 2 Doody now appeals. We have jurisdiction pursuant to Arizona Revised Statutes Annotated (A.R.S.) section 12-120.21.

II.

Doody asserts that the trial court erred by failing to suppress his confession. Prior to trial, the trial court conducted an evidentiary hearing to determine the admissibility of Doody's statements. The suppression hearing lasted ten days, with testimony on each day. Based on the evidence presented at the hearing, including testimony from the officers who questioned Doody and the audio tapes of Doody's interrogation, the trial court concluded that Doody confessed voluntarily and waived his constitutional rights knowingly and intelligently. We will not disturb the trial court's determination absent clear and manifest error. State v. Lucas, 146 Ariz. 597, 607, 708 P.2d 81, 91 (1985). 3

A.

Doody argues that the trial court should have suppressed his statements because the officers coerced him to confess. In Arizona, confessions are presumed to be involuntary, and the state must establish by a preponderance of the evidence that a defendant confessed voluntarily and freely. State v. LaGrand, 153 Ariz. 21, 26, 734 P.2d 563, 568, cert. denied, 484 U.S. 872, 108 S.Ct. 207, 98 L.Ed.2d 158 (1987). In assessing the voluntariness of a confession, we "look to the totality of the circumstances surrounding the confession and determine whether the will of the defendant has been overborne." State v. Lopez, 174 Ariz. 131, 137, 847 P.2d 1078, 1084 (1992), cert. denied, 510 U.S. 894, 114 S.Ct. 258, 126 L.Ed.2d 210 (1993). With respect to juvenile confessions,

the "greatest care must be taken to assure that the admission was voluntary, in the sense not only that it was not coerced or suggested, but also that it was not the product of ignorance of rights or of adolescent fantasy, fright or despair." Thus, we evaluate whether police conduct was coercive in the context of a juvenile confession by carefully scrutinizing not only the external circumstances under which the juvenile was questioned but also the juvenile's reasonably apparent cognitive abilities. We also consider other inherently coercive factors in the totality: the arguably coercive atmosphere of the police interrogation room; the focus of the investigation on defendant as the prime suspect; and police transportation to the station.

State v. Jimenez, 165 Ariz. 444, 449, 799 P.2d 785, 790 (1990) (citations omitted).

The trial court considered the factors set forth in Jimenez. At the time of questioning, Doody was seventeen and one-half years old and completing his junior year in high school. Doody told the officers that he maintained a B grade average. Doody participated in his high school honor guard and color guard and held a job at the Luke Air Force Base commissary. Doody spoke fluent, although lightly accented, English. Doody gave no indication of any mental disorder. 4 The trial court also considered the external circumstances of the interrogation, specifically the time and duration of the interrogation, and concluded that, in light of the officers' testimony regarding Doody's demeanor and the court's own review of...

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