State v. Farmer

• Decision Date: 08 January 1993
• Docket Number: No. 398A91,398A91
• Citation: 424 S.E.2d 120,333 N.C. 172
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE of North Carolina v. Daron Leon FARMER.

Page 120

424 S.E.2d 120

333 N.C. 172

STATE of North Carolina v.Daron Leon FARMER.

No. 398A91.

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

Jan. 8, 1993.

Appeal of right, pursuant to N.C.G.S. § 7A-27(a), from a judgment entered by Ross, J., in the Superior Court, Guilford County, on 22 October 1990.Heard in the Supreme Court on 3 November 1992.

Lacy H. Thornburg, Atty. Gen. by G. Lawrence Reeves, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., Raleigh, for State.

Malcolm Ray Hunter, Jr., Appellate Defender by Daniel R. Pollitt, Asst. Appellate Defender, Raleigh, for defendant-appellant.

MITCHELL, Justice.

The defendant, Daron Leon Farmer, was tried in a capital trial, and the jury found him guilty of first-degree murder.At a separate sentencing proceeding, pursuant to N.C.G.S. § 15A-2000, the jury recommended a sentence of life imprisonment.The trial court entered judgment accordingly.The defendant appealed to this Court as a matter of right.

The State's evidence introduced at trial tended to show, inter alia, the following.On 13 November 1989, Norva Martin made arrangements with Margaret Robinson, the victim, to walk together at the Circle Mall.On the following morning, Martin called Robinson by telephone, but she got no answer.Martin then drove to Robinson's home in Stokesdale, a community in Guilford County.Martin knocked on the door, but no one answered.Martin then went to the Webco station located across the street from Robinson's home and asked Edd Shelton to accompany her back to the home.Upon arriving at Robinson's home, Shelton looked into the windows and checked the exterior of the house thoroughly.However, there was still no sign of Robinson, so Martin and Shelton returned to the Webco station and asked Phil Webster to call the Guilford County Sheriff's Department.

At 7:42 a.m. on 14 November 1989, Deputy Sheriff Moselle Kelly of the Guilford County Sheriff's Department was dispatched to the Webco station.After talking there with Webster, Deputy Kelly drove to Robinson's home.Deputy Kelly became suspicious when she saw a window up with the screen pushed in, so she looked into the kitchen window and saw the toes of a person lying on the floor.Deputy Kelly also heard water running in a sink.

As a result of her observations, Deputy Kelly advised her dispatcher by radio that there was a person in the house and that she would have to make a forced entry.Deputy Kelly then returned to the Webco station where she encountered Marty Southard, a volunteer fireman, and asked him to accompany her to Robinson's home.While at Robinson's home, Southard looked into the kitchen window and saw the victim's nude body on the floor.Southard then enlisted the assistance of Winfree Dunlap, a passing motorist.With Dunlap's help, Southard broke out a panel in the back door and entered the house.After noticing a large amount of blood on the kitchen floor, Dunlap checked the victim for vital signs, but found none.Dr. Roger Thompson, a forensic pathologist in Chapel Hill, later conducted an autopsy and determined that Margaret Robinson's death was caused by blunt force injuries.

Michael Wayne Smith testified that he had known the defendant since they had attended high school together in Guilford County.One morning at approximately 11:00 a.m., Smith encountered the defendant who was walking in front of Smith's grandmother's house on Ellisboro Road.Smith and the defendant then spent some time at the defendant's home and at a place called Jack's Store.While the two men were together that morning, the defendant asked Smith to go with him to Stokesdale in order to assist him while he raped a woman.The defendant told Smith that the woman lived in a white house and that she was blonde and about fifty or sixty years of age.The defendant told Smith that he had seen this woman before through a window while she was taking a bath.The defendant then told Smith that he was going to cut the power off, kick in the door, and commit a rape.The defendant also stated that he wanted Smith to be the lookout and that Jamie Shoemaker would take them to the woman's house.The defendant further indicated that the rape would occur at approximately 2:30 or 3:00 a.m. and that he and Shoemaker would pick Smith up before 6:00 p.m.

Following this conversation, Smith went home and watched television.At approximately 6:00 p.m., Smith went down the road to meet the defendant and Shoemaker.However, after waiting for about thirty minutes, Smith concluded that the two men were not coming for him.

On direct examination, Smith testified that his conversation with the defendant took place on a morning in November 1989.On cross-examination, however, he testified that he did not know when the conversation occurred.

Timmie Tilley testified that he had first met the defendant while they were attending elementary school and that they had grown up in the same neighborhood.When they were children, the defendant frequently spent the night at Tilley's home.Three or four years prior to the Robinson killing, the defendant had lived next door to the victim.

On a day in November 1989 at approximately 6:30 p.m., the defendant visited Tilley's house.At approximately 7:00 p.m., Tilley, the defendant, and three acquaintances went to Bradley Rice's house, where they drank beer and smoked marijuana.At approximately 9:00 p.m., the defendant left after saying that he was going to get something from the store.

The defendant returned to Tilley's home at approximately 11:00 p.m. Tilley was sitting in a parked car in his back yard when he looked up and saw the defendant standing next to his car.Tilley asked the defendant to get into the car.At that time, he noticed that the defendant was acting sick, holding his head down and holding his stomach.Approximately five minutes later, Ronnie Buchanan drove up in his car, and Tilley went over to speak with him.Initially, the defendant also walked over to Buchanan's car, but he turned around and walked back to Tilley's car and sat in the passenger's seat.

After talking with Ronnie Buchanan, Tilley and the defendant went inside Tilley's home.Earlier that day, Tilley had told the defendant that he could spend the night there.Tilley noticed that the defendant had blood on his face, neck, forehead and ears.Tilley asked the defendant what had happened, and the defendant said that a gunshot wound had caused him to bleed.Tilley and the defendant then went upstairs to Tilley's bedroom and went to sleep.

On the following morning, Tilley's mother called and told him that Margaret Robinson had been killed.When Tilley told the defendant that Robinson had been killed, there was no expression on the defendant's face, and he merely said, "damn."Tilley then told the defendant that he had to leave.The defendant left Tilley's house at approximately 9:00 a.m.

William Lester Mabe testified that he learned about Margaret Robinson's death one day in November 1989.Mabe is a tobacco farmer and lives approximately three miles north of Stokesdale.At approximately 10:00 a.m. on the morning Mabe learned that the victim had been killed, the defendant walked through Mabe's yard, and the two men had a brief conversation.The defendant told Mabe that he had spent the night at a friend's house in Stokesdale and that he was on his way home.During the conversation, Mabe noticed "fresh" scratches on the defendant's face and neck.After this brief conversation with Mabe, the defendant left.

The State's evidence further tended to show that at some point after Margaret Robinson was killed, the defendant had a series of telephone conversations with his mother-in-law, Betty Shields.The defendant at one point told Shields that he did not hurt Margaret Robinson in any way, but that Timmie Tilley had beaten her.The defendant said that he had stayed outside the house while Tilley entered.The defendant told Shields that he had left when "things got out of hand."

At another point, the defendant told Shields that he had met Tilley in front of the victim's house.Tilley already had blood on his person at that time, and the two men left and went to Tilley's house.

In other conversations with Shields, the defendant said that he and Tilley had both entered the victim's home through a window.The defendant said that Tilley had picked up an antique iron that had been on the floor in the home and hit the victim.The defendant said that he was "going through a closet" in the home while Tilley was hitting the victim.The defendant told Shields that the only way he could have gotten blood on his person was by turning the victim over to see whether she was alive.

Lieutenant Roy T. Forrest of the Guilford County Sheriff's Department participated in the investigation of the Margaret Robinson homicide.On 15 November 1989 at approximately 10:00 a.m., Detective Sergeant Steve Shaver told Forrest that two women who live a few houses east of Margaret Robinson's home had said that a young boy named Daron Farmer had peeked into Robinson's windows and had made spiteful comments to her in the past.Phil Webster, the owner of a Webco station located directly across the street from the victim's house, told Forrest that the victim had said that the defendant Farmer had peeked into her windows and had made derogatory comments to her approximately two or three years before, when Farmer lived next door to the victim.Webster also gave Forrest a physical description of the defendant and told him where the defendant lived.

As a result of the information they had received, Forrest and Shaver decided to ask the defendant some questions.They began driving north on Ellisboro Road toward the defendant's home.At approximately 10:50 a.m., after driving approximately four miles, the officers observed a man who fit the general description of the defendant walking down the road.After passing the man, the officers backed onto the shoulder of the road and stopped their car near him. ...