State v Hartman

• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: Maynard
• Citation: State v Hartman, 42 S.W.3d 44 (Tenn. 2001)
• Decision Date: 18 April 2001
• Docket Number: 98-00803
• Parties: STATE OF TENNESSEE v. CHARLES EDDIE HARTMANIN THE SUPREME COURT OF TENNESSEE AT NASHVILLE

STATE OF TENNESSEE v CHARLES EDDIE HARTMAN

No. M1998-00803-SC-DDT-DD

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF TENNESSEE AT NASHVILLE

February 8, 2001 Session

Automatic Appeal from the Court of Criminal Appeals Criminal Court for Montgomery County: No. 20101

Robert W. Wedemeyer, Judge

Filed April 18, 2001

The appellant, Charles Eddie Hartman, was convicted in 1983 of the first degree murder in the perpetration of a kidnaping of sixteen-year-old Kathy Nishiyama. The jury imposed a sentence of death for the murder conviction. On the initial direct appeal, this Court affirmed both the conviction and sentence. See State v. Hartman, 703 S.W.2d 106 (Tenn. 1985). Thereafter, Hartman filed a petition for post-conviction relief, and finding error in the sentencing hearing, this Court vacated the sentence of death and remanded for re-sentencing. See Hartman v. State, 896 S.W.2d 94 (Tenn. 1995). The re-sentencing hearing occurred in 1997 with the prosecution again seeking the death penalty and relying upon the following three aggravating circumstances: (1) the murder was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel in that it involved torture or depravity of mind; (2) the murder was committed for the purpose of avoiding, interfering with, or preventing a lawful arrest or prosecution of the defendant or another; and (3) the murder was committed while the defendant was in lawful custody, or in a place of lawful confinement, or during his escape from lawful custody, or from a place of lawful confinement. See Tenn. Code Ann. 39-2404(i)(5), (6) and (8) (Supp. 1980). Following a hearing at which both the prosecution and the defense offered proof, the jury imposed the death penalty upon finding that the prosecution had proven the three aggravating circumstances beyond a reasonable doubt and that the mitigating circumstances were not sufficiently substantial to outweigh the aggravating circumstances so proven. See Tenn. Code Ann. 39-2404(g) (Supp. 1980). The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the sentence of death, and thereafter, the case was docketed in this Court. After a careful review of the record and the relevant legal authorities, we conclude that the trial court erred in refusing to allow the defendant to present evidence relevant to establish residual doubt as a mitigating circumstance and that the trial court erred in submitting aggravating circumstance (i)(6) to the jury, as the proof is not sufficient to support the aggravating circumstance. After carefully considering the record, we are unable to conclude that these errors are harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Accordingly, the defendant's sentence of death is vacated, and the case is remanded for re-sentencing.

Tenn. Code Ann. 39-13-206(a)(1) Automatic Appeal; Judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeals Reversed

FRANK F. DROWOTA, III, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which E. RILEY ANDERSON, C.J., ADOLOPHO A. BIRCH, JR., JANICE M. HOLDER, and WILLIAM M. BARKER, JJ, joined.

Richard McGee and John G. Oliva, Nashville, Tennessee, for the appellant, Charles Eddie Hartman.

Paul G. Summers, Attorney General & Reporter, Michael E. Moore, Solicitor General, Amy L. Tarkington, Deputy Attorney General, Joseph Baugh, District Attorney General, Art Bieber, Assistant District Attorney General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee.

OPINION

I. Background

The proof introduced at this re-sentencing hearing showed that after school on November 16, 1981, sixteen-year-old Kathy Nishiyama left a note for her parents stating that she was going to visit her boyfriend, David Linn, and that she would be home by 10:00 p.m. Nishiyama lived with her parents on Charlemagne Street, near its intersection with Highway 41A in Clarksville in Montgomery County. Nishiyama arrived at Linn's house, stayed for awhile, and left to return to her own home between 8:00 and 8:30 p.m. She never returned home. Linn telephoned the Nishiyama residence about 9:30 p.m., and after two subsequent phone calls revealed that she had not arrived, Linn became concerned, left his residence, and began to search for her. He drove the route she would have taken to her home, and around 11:00 p.m., Linn discovered Nishiyama's car, a 1978 Ford Mustang, in the parking lot of a church on Lafayette Street, near its intersection with Highway 41A. The church was located about one-half mile from the street on which Nishiyama lived. Linn testified that the car was locked, covered with dew, and that the muffler and engine were cold. Linn advised Nishiyama's parents of his discovery, and by midnight, her parents notified the Montgomery County Sheriff's Department that Nishiyama was missing.

Despite intensive search efforts, no clues about Nishiyama's disappearance were discovered until February 24, 1982, when a worker with the Tennessee Highway Department found her purse thirty feet down an embankment on Highway 49 in Houston County between Charlotte and Erin.¹ Although an extensive search was conducted, law enforcement officials found nothing further in that area.

One week to ten days later, residents of a trailer home located in a remote area near Highway 49 where Nishiyama's purse was found called the Houston County Sheriff's Department and asked that the Sheriff investigate something they had found in their yard. Further investigation revealed that the object was a human skull that was eventually identified as that of Kathy Nishiyama by Dr. Marvin Bass, Chairman of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee and forensic anthropologist for the State of Tennessee.

The surrounding area was carefully and thoroughly searched. Fragments of Nishiyama's skeleton and her clothing were found scattered in a wide area of remote woods along an old logging road about three miles from where her purse was found. Upper jaw bones and upper teeth were found, and, using a dental chart and an x-ray of Nishiyama's skull, Dr. Bass was able to make a positive identification that these were the skeletal remains of Nishiyama. He testified that the victim had been hit in the mouth with a blunt object hard enough to break three teeth. The victim had also suffered a blow to her left eye that fractured her skull, another blow to the center of her head and a "massive" fatal blow to the right side of the head. This last blow caused her skull to cave in and also fractured the back of her skull. All of the injuries occurred at or near the time of death, but Dr. Bass could not determine exactly when the victim's death occurred. He opined that the victim had died approximately three to four months before her remains were found, and he noted that some of her bones exhibited evidence of dog tooth marks. Although Dr. Bass was unable to determine how long the victim had lived after receiving these injuries, the order in which the blows were inflicted, or how long the victim remained conscious, he opined that the massive blow to the right side of her head would have rendered her unconscious.

With respect to Nishiyama's clothing, the proof showed that her jeans were zipped and buttoned at the waist, but the fabric on the right side of the jeans had been cut through from the waistband to just above the ankle. Her panties had also been cut on the right side and a hole about one inch in diameter had been cut in the crotch of the panties. All cuts were consistent with having been made by a single-blade instrument like a knife. The left pant leg of the jeans was turned so that the inside of the fabric was facing out. Most of the victim's clothing and a portion of her remains were found near two trees that were about eight feet apart. Law enforcement authorities discovered scrapes on the trunks of both these trees which the Sheriff of Houston County, an experienced timbercutter and woodsman, said resembled marks that are made by a rope being tied around a tree.

At the time of the victim's disappearance in November of 1981, the defendant was serving a sentence for a criminal offense in the Dickson County Jail at Charlotte, where he had the status of trusty. Hartman performed maintenance work on the sheriff's department patrol cars and apparently performed other work for the sheriff and sheriff's deputies, particularly Deputy Carroll Fizer. Deputy Fizer was assigned patrol car number five. This car was described as a white 1978 Plymouth Fury, with a green stripe down the middle of the rear fenders, gold stars on the front doors, a full blue light bar across the roof, a heavy wire screen between the front seat and the back seat, and rear doors and windows that could not be opened from the inside. The proof also indicated that the Montgomery County Sheriff's Department had no Plymouth patrol cars at that time, that all of its patrol cars were Chevrolet Malibus, although they were also white with some green trim, similar to most county patrol cars in the State.

At approximately 6:00 p.m. on November 16, 1981, the night Nishiyama disappeared, Deputy Fizer and Hartman were working at a tobacco barn near Deputy Fizer's home. Deputy Fizer turned over custody of car number five to Hartman, instructing Hartman to drive the car back to the Dickson County jail. Hartman did not arrive at the jail until approximately 4 a.m. on November 17.

The proof showed that by turning on the patrol car's blue lights and pretending to be an officer, Hartman pulled over three automobiles in Montgomery County between 6:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. that night.² The first stop occurred in the Palmyra area of Montgomery County at approximately 6:30 p.m. Richard Hughes was driving home from work on Highway 49 when he passed a patrol car that later followed him for approximately four miles. When Hughes turned off of Highway 49, the patrol car turned on its blue lights. Hughes stopped and was reaching for his license when Hartman told him that he did not need to see his license, that he only needed directions back to Dickson County.

The next stop occurred around 7:00 p.m. about six or...