State v. Harris
| Decision Date | 19 January 2005 |
| Docket Number | No. 2001-KA-2730.,2001-KA-2730. |
| Citation | 892 So.2d 1238 |
| Parties | STATE of Louisiana v. Clarence HARRIS, Jr. |
| Court | Louisiana Supreme Court |
Capital Appeal Project, Jelpi Pierre Picou, Jr., New Orleans, G. Benjamin Cohen, David Laurence Koen, Counsel for Applicant.
Charles C. Foti, Jr., Attorney General, Eddie J. Jordan, Jr., District Attorney, Valentin Michael Solino, Scott Douglas Peebles, Claire Adriana White, Assistant District Attorneys, Counsel for Respondent.
On October 14, 1993, an Orleans Parish grand jury indicted the defendant, Clarence Harris, Jr., for the August 17, 1993 first degree murder of Katie Carlin. On September 19, 1997, the jury returned a unanimous verdict of guilty as charged. At the conclusion of the penalty phase, the jury unanimously returned the sentence of death, after unanimously finding three aggravating circumstances: (1) the defendant committed the murder while knowingly creating a risk of death or great bodily harm to more than one person; (2) the defendant was engaged in the perpetration or attempted perpetration of aggravated rape and/or aggravated kidnapping; and (3) the offense was committed in an especially heinous, atrocious or cruel manner. On direct appeal to this Court under La. Const. art. 5, § 5(D), the defendant appeals his conviction and death sentence on the basis of 69 assignments of error. Finding that none of the arguments put forth by the defendant constitute reversible error, we affirm the defendant's conviction and sentence.
In the early morning hours of August 17, 1993, Katie Carlin was discovered by her husband and two of her three daughters lying in the middle of the street at the intersection of Jackson Avenue and South Liberty Street in New Orleans, Louisiana. She had been shot two times, once in the right shoulder and once in the left side of her head. The wound to her head proved to be a lethal injury; she died two days later without recovering consciousness.
After police arrived on the scene, they discovered that Mrs. Carlin had been with her 11-year-old daughter, K.,1 at the time of the shooting, but that K. was now missing. At approximately 5:20 a.m., Detective Paul Long was notified that the child was back at the Carlin residence. When he arrived there, Detective Long observed K. was noticeably shaken and had several brush burns on her legs.
Before being taken to the hospital, K. told Detective Long that while she and her mother were at a payphone at Jackson Avenue and Simon Bolivar, a small, blue four-door vehicle pulled up and a black man got out of the car. When her mother finished her telephone call, they began walking back to their residence on Jackson Avenue. She noticed that the man in the blue car was following them. When they got to the intersection of South Liberty Street and Jackson Avenue, the car pulled up next to them and the man grabbed her and tried to pull her into the car. K. remembered her mother running towards her when the man fired two or three shots.
K. told Detective Long that the man then dragged her into his vehicle and drove her to an apartment complex. Although she did not know on which street the apartment complex was located, K. described seeing a large Shell station and a large Auto Zone store on the way. Once inside an apartment within the apartment complex, the man told K. to go into the restroom and wash the blood off of her legs. When she came out of the restroom, the man forced her to disrobe and raped her.
K. was able to describe her assailant as a light-skinned black man who was five foot ten inches tall, weighing approximately 150 pounds, with a beard and a mustache. She also noted that the man had a tattoo of what appeared to be a skeleton on his left arm and that he was wearing a burgundy Polo type shirt and blue jeans.
At approximately 6 a.m. that morning, Detective Patrick Young, a member of the child abuse section of the New Orleans Police Department, was assigned to this case. Detective Young immediately went to the hospital to check on K.'s medical condition. Later that day, he interviewed her and she repeated her story to him, supplying even more details of her abduction and rape. In connection with this interview, Detective Young taped a statement from K. describing the events, the perpetrator, his vehicle and his apartment.
K. again related how she had been waiting while her mother made telephone calls at a payphone. She described how the man, who had been following them in his car, pulled up and grabbed her around the elbow. She remembered her mother running toward them calling out, "no, my baby, my baby." Then the man hollered at her mother to get back or he would shoot her. Thereafter, K. heard two or three gunshots.
The man pulled K. into his car while it was moving, causing her to have brush burns on her legs and scraped toes. After pulling K. into the car, the man put his gun to her head and told her he would kill her if she moved. The man then made K. lie back in the seat of his car so that she could not see the route they were taking. He later placed a towel over her face, but she was able to see out of the towel and noticed a large Shell gas station and a Popeye's restaurant across the street from that station at the intersection of two large streets with medians in the middle of them. She also saw an Auto Zone store when they were traveling to the man's apartment and when they left it. K. also saw a big vacant lot with a silver chain link fence about a block from the Shell station and thought she was in the area of the Carrollton shopping center.
The man then pulled into a parking lot of an apartment complex and parked his vehicle. He pulled K. from the passenger's seat while still holding his gun. She attempted to escape, but the man caught her. He scuffled with her and put his hand over her mouth, threatening to kill her if she tried to run again. She bit his finger, but he did not bleed.
The man brought her through a black iron gate with a bar which had to be pulled to open and then up a flight of stairs to an apartment. K. described to Detective Young the configuration of the apartment buildings and configuration of the parking lot. She then described the configuration of the rooms in the apartment.
During the entire event, K. was able to observe several items in the apartment including a straw bowl of pink lipstick in the bathroom, pink and white bed sheets, the bed's headboard, two coffee tables, a living room table, two lamps, the refrigerator, and a blue telephone with a caller ID box. The apartment had light brown or beige carpeting throughout. She described the color of the apartment door as white2 and remembered beige or tan colored wood, and not brick, on the outside of the apartment complex.3
She told the detective that once the man took her inside the apartment, he told her to go into the restroom to clean the blood off of her legs. When she came out of the restroom, the man made her remove her clothes and go upstairs. He followed her upstairs and undressed. He forced her to lie down on a bed in the bedroom. The man told K. that if she did not do what he said, he would beat her and kill her. The perpetrator then lay on top of her and placed his penis in her vagina. K. tried to get up and escape, but the man yelled at her and told her that if she moved, he would kill her and throw her body into the canal. He left the room briefly and returned with a bottle of Johnson's baby oil which he retrieved from the bathroom. He placed the oil on K.'s vaginal area, and again began moving on top of her. During the assault, K. cried and continually asked the man to stop. The man repeatedly told K. he would kill her if she did not do what he wanted. Eventually, the man removed his penis from her vagina and proceeded to rape her anally.4 After he finished, the man told K. to put on her clothes. When they were both dressed, K. asked whether he was going to kill her and the man told her that he was going to return her to her house. He made K. close her eyes and led her out of his apartment with a towel over her eyes. He asked K. if she knew his name and she replied that she did not. He asked her if she knew where she was and she said that she did not. He then told her she could open her eyes and she saw the Auto Zone sign. She also remembered seeing the Shell station on Earhart Boulevard. She asked him if they were near the Carrollton shopping area and he told her that he lived far away from the Carrollton area. K. remembered the man throwing bullets out of the window of his car as he drove. He then returned her to the area in which she was abducted.
K. stated that she started running after she was released. As she neared her home, a neighbor saw her and asked her where she was going. When she told the neighbor she was going home, the neighbor told her that no one was at her home and called the police. The neighbor told K. that her mother had been shot.
K. described the car she had been abducted in as a small, four-door, dark blue car. She remembered there were beaded mats on the driver and front seat passenger seats and that there were a lot of books and clothes in the back seat. She described the rear view mirror as not being attached to the windshield and the automatic shift being on the floor. She thought she remembered seeing the letters "S-A-A-B" or "S-A-B-B" on the back of the vehicle by the trunk.5
K. further described her assailant as between 6' and 5'8" tall,6 with a medium bush hairstyle and a black-colored full beard. She remembered seeing a tattoo on his left arm near the shoulder when she had been laying down in bed trying to get up. She recalled that the tattoo looked like a skeleton head and some kind of banner with writing. She described the clothes he had been wearing as a striped burgundy polo shirt and blackish...
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