State v. Hampton

• Decision Date: 23 April 1999
• Docket Number: No. 98-KA-0331.,98-KA-0331.
• Citation: 750 So.2d 867
• Parties: STATE of Louisiana v. Bobby L. HAMPTON.
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court

750 So.2d 867

STATE of Louisiana v. Bobby L. HAMPTON.

No. 98-KA-0331.

Supreme Court of Louisiana.

April 23, 1999.

Dissenting Opinion June 15, 1999.

Sarah Lynn Ottinger, New Orleans, Counsel for Applicant.

Richard P. Ieyoub, Attorney General, Paul Carmouche, District Attorney, Hugo A. Holland, Jr., Catherine Estopinal, Shreveport, Counsel for Respondent.

Dissenting Opinion of Judge Johnson, June 15, 1999.

TRAYLOR, Justice.¹

On September 28, 1995, a Caddo Parish Grand Jury indicted the Defendant, Bobby Hampton, for the first degree murder of Philip Russell Coleman in violation of La. Rev.Stat. 14:30. After a trial by jury, the Defendant was found guilty as charged. At the conclusion of the penalty phase the jury, having found one aggravating factor, unanimously sentenced the Defendant to death. The trial judge sentenced Defendant to death in accordance with the jury determination. This matter is now before this court on direct appeal. La. Const. art. V, § 5(D). On appeal, Defendant alleges eighty-two assignments of error for the reversal of his conviction and sentence.²

FACTS

At approximately 12:55 a.m. on August 12, 1995, the Defendant, Bobby Lee Hampton, and his co-defendants, Elbert Williams and Michael Williams, entered the Thrifty Liquor Store on the corner of Greenwood and Monkhouse Roads in Shreveport, Louisiana, as the employees were preparing to close for the evening. The cashier, Colette Shinberger, rang up a customer's purchases while a second employee, Frank Tesnear, walked to the rear storeroom to get some trash bags. The third employee, Philip Russell Coleman, sat on the turnstile waiting to lock the entrance doors. After all legitimate customers exited the store, the Defendant approached the sales counter with a soft drink and some potato chips but said he forgot something and left the sales counter.³ Co-defendant Michael Williams remained near sales counter, and co-defendant Elbert Williams stood between the sales counter and the entrance. Without warning, multiple shots were fired and the employees were informed that there was a robbery in progress. After this point, Tesnear and Shinberger could no longer see Coleman at the entrance turnstile. When the robbers exited the store, they found that Coleman had been shot and killed during the commission of the robbery.

Police Detective Muller interviewed Tesnear immediately after the incident. Tesnear requested a second interview nine days later because he was concerned that he had not told the police all that he had seen on the day of the shooting.⁴ Tesnear recounted that he walked down the aisle leading to the rear storeroom and reached the storeroom door before he heard several gunshots. He immediately turned and saw the Defendant standing directly behind where Coleman had been sitting on the entrance turnstile. He also saw Elbert and Michael Williams near Shinberger at the sales counter. Elbert Williams was standing closest to the turnstile where Coleman had been seated and Michael Williams was on the other side of the sales counter, near the store exit. Initially, Tesnear told the detective that he believed Elbert Williams was the shooter because he was standing closest to the victim. However, during the second interview Tesnear considered the location of the victim, the bullet holes in the entryway door, and the relative location of all three suspects and realized that the shots had to come from behind the victim: where Defendant was standing at the time of the gunfire.

As Elbert and Michael Williams took money out of the cash registers in the front of the store, the Defendant, walked toward Tesnear in the back of the store, pointed a gun at him, and ordered him to lay on the floor. Later, the Defendant forced Tesnear to break into and ransack the manager's office. According to Tesnear, as the Defendant left the store, he told Elbert and Michael Williams to "[t]ake care of the other two." However, the co-defendants followed the Defendant out of the store and did not involve themselves further with the store employees.

After checking Russell Coleman for a pulse, Tesnear asked Shinberger to call the police. She responded that the phone inside the store had been ripped out of the wall. Tesnear exited the store to use the pay phone to call 911. As he was making the call, the police arrived. The police determined that Coleman, who had been shot three times in the back, was dead.

Shinberger was also interviewed two separate times and related her version of the events to the police. While her statements were not entered into evidence at trial, the State provided the transcript of these interviews to the defense in its responses to discovery. The substance of her statement was that the Defendant left the sales counter seconds before she heard the gunshots. She saw only two of the suspects, the Defendant and a "younger suspect," because she was ordered to lay on the floor under the sales counter shortly after the gunfire. She stated several times that she did not see who shot Coleman⁵ and did not see any of the suspects with their guns aimed at Coleman. Nevertheless, she believed Elbert Williams was the shooter.

On August 13, 1995, the police received an anonymous tip identifying Bobby Hampton, Elbert Williams, and Michael Williams as the perpetrators of the Thrifty Liquor homicide and armed robbery. The police confirmed the information received in the tip. The surviving employees were subsequently shown photographic and video line-ups of the suspects. Tesnear identified the Defendant, Elbert Williams, and Michael Williams. Shinberger only tentatively identified the Defendant in the photographic line-up and only positively identified Elbert Williams. The Defendant was arrested for first degree murder on August 14, 1995. He denied any involvement in the crime and claimed that he had been with his girlfriend, Marla Manning, at the time the crime was committed. Manning initially served as an alibi for the Defendant but she retracted when the police confronted her with conflicting information.

On September 26, 1995, the grand jury conducted a hearing wherein Shinberger and Tesnear testified as eyewitnesses to the August 12, 1995 armed robbery and murder. Testimony from all witnesses was released to the defense as Brady material. The defense used Tesnear's grand jury testimony in an attempt to impeach him at trial due to prior inconsistent statements he made identifying Elbert Williams as the shooter. On September 28, 1995, the grand jury indicted Bobby Hampton for first degree murder. The case went to trial on May 19, 1997. At trial, the Defendant's strategy was to concede participation in the armed robbery but argue that he was not the shooter. The State called fourteen witnesses to prove its case against the Defendant. The testimony pertinent to our inquiry may be summarized as follows:

Franklin Tesnear, a victim of the armed robbery testified consistent with all previous statements that he was walking to the rear storeroom when he heard three or four gunshots. He turned and saw the Defendant pointing a gun in the direction of Coleman. The Defendant then walked toward Tesnear, flattened him to the ground, and later forced him to break into the locked manager's office. The State asked Tesnear for an explanation as to why this testimony differed from his previous statement to police and grand jury testimony identifying Elbert Williams as the shooter. He responded that he thought about where the bullets hit the glass front door and realized that Elbert Williams could not be the shooter because his position was wrong and that the Defendant was the only perpetrator who was "in line" with the bullet holes in the door.

Next, Corporal Rick D. Hall, an expert crime scene reconstructionist for the Shreveport Police Department testified that he responded to Thrifty Liquor shortly after the crime and saw a blood-soaked rug, glasses, three shell casings, and bullet holes in the front door. From his examination of the evidence at the crime scene, Corporal Hall deduced that three .38 caliber shots were fired in the store. Of specific importance, Corporal Hall revealed that the shell casings were scattered to the north of the turnstile which indicated to him that the shooter was at the end of the first counter and, based on the amount of gun powder on Coleman, the shooter stood ten to twelve feet from Coleman at the time of the shooting. He opined that the shooter could not have been at the sales counter where Tesnear had located Elbert and Michael Williams. Richard Beighley, a criminalist at North Louisiana Crime Lab, examined Coleman's shirt after the murder and testified that the shooter stood between eighteen inches and six feet from the victim. However, he stated that a distance determination under the circumstances of this case was complicated because more than one bullet had been shot.

Corporal Jimmy Muller of the Shreveport Police Homicide Unit testified regarding the homicide investigation he conducted subsequent to the murder. In his recollection, Tesnear originally believed Elbert Williams was the shooter. However, when the officer inquired about the relative location of all perpetrators during the shooting, Tesnear visualized the events and concluded that he had been mistaken. He realized that the Defendant was the shooter due to his location in the store and the trajectory of the bullets. Muller emphatically stated that Tesnear never changed his placement of the suspects during the gunfire.

Dr. George M. McCormick, III, a coroner and expert in forensic pathology, performed the autopsy on Coleman. Dr. McCormick testified that Coleman died due to three gun shots to the torso which lacerated and tore his heart, lungs, liver, pancreas, and right kidney. He opined that death resulted from a lack of blood to the brain due to extensive hemorrhaging in the chest and abdomen. The nature of the bullet wounds indicated to him that Coleman...