State v. Gregory

• Decision Date: 28 July 1995
• Docket Number: No. 232A93,232A93
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE of North Carolina v. Warren Robert GREGORY.

Page 638

459 S.E.2d 638

340 N.C. 365

STATE of North Carolina v. Warren Robert GREGORY.

No. 232A93.

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

July 28, 1995.

Michael F. Easley, Atty. Gen. by David F. Hoke, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

Alexis C. Pearce, Raleigh, for defendant-appellant.

PARKER, Justice.

Defendant was tried capitally on indictments charging him with the first-degree murders of Bernadine Parrish and Bobbie Jean Hartwig. The jury returned verdicts finding defendant guilty of each count of first-degree murder on the theories of both premeditation and deliberation and felony murder. Following a sentencing proceeding pursuant to N.C.G.S. § 15A-2000, the jury recommended that defendant be sentenced to death for each murder, and the trial judge entered judgments accordingly. Execution was stayed on 18 June 1993 pending defendant's The State's evidence tended to show that shortly after midnight on 24 August 1991, Wesley Parrish; his sister, Bernadine Parrish; and his girlfriend, Bobbie Jean Hartwig, were walking from where they lived in Grifton, North Carolina, to Ayden, North Carolina. The three lived in Grifton with Wesley's mother, Geraldine, and Bernadine's children. Wesley Parrish left a note for his mother telling her that the three had walked to Ayden to see an old boyfriend of Bernadine's. Wesley and Bernadine were each carrying a beer, and Bernadine also was carrying a cigarette case containing an identification card and her driver's license.

appeal. The jury also found defendant guilty of the first-degree kidnapping of Bernadine Parrish, the first-degree kidnapping of Bobbie Jean Hartwig, the first-degree rape of [340 N.C. 379] Bernadine Parrish, the first-degree rape of Bobbie Jean Hartwig, and assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury on Wesley Parrish. The trial court sentenced defendant to thirty years' imprisonment for kidnapping Bernadine Parrish, thirty years' imprisonment for kidnapping Bobbie Jean Hartwig, life imprisonment for raping Bernadine Parrish, life imprisonment for raping Bobbie Jean Hartwig, and fifteen years' imprisonment for assaulting Wesley Parrish with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury, each sentence to run consecutively. For the reasons discussed herein, we conclude the pretrial hearings, jury selection, guilt-innocence phase, and sentencing proceeding of defendant's trial were free from prejudicial error; and the death sentences are not disproportionate.

After walking several miles down Highway 11 towards Ayden, the three tried to catch a ride with a passing car. Three black men in a white four-door car stopped to pick them up.

The evidence tended to show that defendant and two friends, Kendrick Bradford and Richard Gonzales, were on their way from their barracks at Camp LeJeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina, to a club in Greenville, North Carolina. All three men had been drinking alcohol. Defendant, who was driving, passed by the victims, turned his car around, drove by them again, then turned his car around again, and stopped to pick up the victims. Wesley initially turned down the ride because he did not think everyone could fit in the car. The car drove off but stopped a short way down the road. Defendant got out of the car and called out to the victims that he would give them a ride anyway, and the three ran towards the car.

When they got to the car, Wesley noticed that the driver was holding a shotgun. Defendant told the victims to give him their money and their wallets. Wesley and Bernadine gave defendant their beer huggers, but Bobbie Jean did not have anything with her to give him. Defendant then ordered the victims to get into the backseat of the car with Bradford. Defendant ordered Wesley to walk away from the car and go into the woods. When Wesley reached the edge of the woods, defendant shot him three times with the shotgun. Defendant got into the car and drove away.

Wesley was able to crawl to the road and eventually flag down a passing motorist. He was transported to Pitt Memorial Hospital, where he remained for seven days before being released. At the hospital, doctors removed six inches of his small intestine, which was damaged as a result of the shooting.

Defendant drove the car into a field near Pitt Community College, where it got stuck in a ditch. The men tried to remove it from the ditch. Defendant ordered the two women to go into a wooded area and take off their clothes. Defendant then raped Bobbie Jean Hartwig, while Bradford raped Bernadine Parrish. Both defendant and Bradford were armed during this time. Defendant then pointed the shotgun at Gonzales and ordered him to rape Bobbie Jean Hartwig. Defendant kept the gun pointed at Gonzales during this rape, and then defendant raped Hartwig again. Defendant then raped Bernadine Parrish while Bradford raped Bobbie Jean Hartwig.

After defendant raped Bernadine Parrish, he tried to strangle her and snapped her head back sharply. Gonzales checked her for a pulse but could not find one. Bernadine Parrish then regained consciousness Defendant also tried to strangle Bobbie Jean and left her lying in the ditch. Defendant, Bradford, and Gonzales built a makeshift bridge out of ladders and a table top to get the car out of the ditch. They put the victims' clothes under the tires for traction. While they were trying to get the car out of the ditch, the men heard a scream from one of the women, later identified as Bobbie Jean Hartwig. Defendant asked Bradford if "he was going to take care of business." Bradford grabbed the pistol, but defendant told him not to take the pistol "because if you use the pistol you are going to have to shoot her three or four times." Bradford then took the shotgun and shot Bobbie Jean Hartwig in the chest, getting blood on his clothes.

and defendant choked her and snapped her neck again. Bernadine Parrish lost control of her bodily functions and went silent. Defendant threw Bernadine's body into a ditch. Gonzales asked defendant why he killed Bernadine Parrish, and defendant informed him that he choked her "so we would never have to go to prison."

The men got the car out of the ditch and returned to Camp LeJeune. On the way back to Camp LeJeune, defendant was laughing; and someone made the comment, "What are we going to do to top this?" The next Monday, defendant approached Gonzales and threatened that if Gonzales ever "turned a trick" on defendant, Gonzales would be taken care of.

On 10 September 1991 the bodies of Bernadine Parrish and Bobbie Jean Hartwig were found by employees of Pitt Community College in a ditch near a building site on campus. Both bodies were badly decomposed. Autopsies revealed that Bobbie Jean Hartwig died from a gunshot wound to the chest and Bernadine Parrish died from undetermined homicidal violence. The stage of decomposition was so advanced that it was impossible to tell from the physical evidence whether the women had been raped.

A liquor bottle found at the scene of the murders had been sold at an exchange store at Camp LeJeune. A key ring with five keys was dropped at the scene. This key ring was later identified as belonging to Bradford, who had to be let into his barracks room at Camp LeJeune the morning of 24 August 1991 because he was not in possession of his room key. Hair samples taken from the backseat of the car which defendant had been driving the night of the murders were consistent with the hair of Bobbie Jean Hartwig.

Agent Ronald Marrs with the State Bureau of Investigation determined that the shotgun wadding found at the scene where Wesley Parrish had been shot was consistent with the spent shells found at the murder scene. The twenty-nine lead pellets collected during the autopsy of Bobbie Jean Hartwig were the same type of shot that would be fired from the spent shells found at the scene where Wesley Parrish was shot.

The State's evidence further tended to show that on 6 September 1991 Kendrick Bradford and Maurice Glover committed an armed robbery of a man who attempted to purchase drugs from them in downtown Greenville, North Carolina. Glover testified that while defendant was not a participant in the robbery, he saw defendant give the shotgun and pistol used in the robbery to Bradford. Defendant had hidden the shotgun in the ceiling in his barracks room at Camp LeJeune. Glover testified that defendant told him about committing the shooting of Wesley Parrish and the kidnapping, rape, and murder of both Bernadine Parrish and Bobbie Jean Hartwig.

On the night of 7 September 1991, Bradford and defendant were spending the night at a house in Jacksonville. Pursuant to a robbery investigation, the Jacksonville police obtained entry into the house and found a .25-caliber pistol and a 12-gauge shotgun. Evidence at trial tended to show that the shotgun shells that killed Bobbie Jean Hartwig were fired by the same class of shotgun as that retrieved at the time of defendant's arrest.

While he was in Central Prison awaiting trial, defendant made a "fantasy confession" to Malik Shabazz, another inmate. In this "fantasy confession" defendant claimed that all of the information he gave Shabazz was merely fantasy and not true. In the statement defendant admitted shooting Wesley Parrish and leaving him for dead on the side Defendant put on no evidence during the guilt-innocence phase. At the close of all the evidence, defendant moved to have all the charges against him dismissed. The trial court denied this motion, and the jury found defendant guilty as charged on all counts.

of the road. He confessed to having sex with both victims and then killing one by strangling her. He indicated that one of his friends shot the other woman and that the men returned to Camp LeJeune. Shabazz voluntarily came forward with this information because he had a sister who had been murdered under similar circumstances.

Evidence relevant to the sentencing proceeding of defenda...