State v. Heckathorn
| Decision Date | 25 March 2019 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 17 CO 0011 |
| Citation | 2019 Ohio 1086 |
| Parties | STATE OF OHIO, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. DANIELLE L. HECKATHORN, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | Ohio Court of Appeals |
OPINION AND JUDGMENT ENTRY
Atty. Robert L. Herron, Prosecuting Attorney, Atty. Ryan P. Weikart, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, 105 South Market Street, Lisbon, Ohio 44432, for Plaintiff-Appellee and Atty. Katherine R. Ross-Kinzie, Assistant State Public Defender, Atty. Carly M. Edelstein, Assistant State Public Defender, Office of the Ohio Public Defender, 250 East Broad Street—Suite 1400, Columbus, Ohio 43215, for Defendant-Appellant.
{¶1} Defendant-Appellant Danielle L. Heckathorn appeals after being convicted of murder and other offenses in the Columbiana County Common Pleas Court. She raises issues with: sufficiency of the evidence to show she was complicit to murder; sufficiency of the evidence to support three counts of obstructing justice, claiming any false information she provided the officers was for the purpose of hindering their investigation of her rather than to hinder their case against another; admissibility of four photographs of the victim showing his body was cut in half; ineffective assistance of counsel for various reasons; cumulative error; and consecutive sentence findings.
{¶2} For the following reasons, Appellant's convictions are affirmed, and the case is remanded for the trial court to issue a nunc pro tunc sentencing entry incorporating the consecutive sentence findings made at the sentencing hearing.
{¶3} On Sunday, March 8, 2015, a distressed man appeared at the Columbiana County Sheriff's Department to report that his neighbor, Daniel Landsberger, confessed to killing a black male. Landsberger said the body was still in the bedroom of his trailer packed in snow and he was thinking of cutting it up and burning the mattress. The trailer was in a rural area with a steep, icy drive. The deputies attempted to gather support personnel and four-wheel-drive vehicles, but they were not able to respond until the next day.
{¶4} As a team from the sheriff's department approached Landsberger's trailer on March 9, he met them outside and provided consent to search. (Tr. 285). He had four scratches on the side of his neck that looked like fingernail scratches. (Tr. 288-289). The remains of a mattress and box spring were still smoldering in a fire pit in the yard. (Tr. 287, 497). In the trailer, officers discovered blood in a bedroom containing an empty bed frame, and the wall behind the bed had blood spatter in the shape of the headboard that was no longer present. (Tr. 286, 480, 487). Below this was a small area of carpet saturated with blood. (Tr. 484). Objects near the adjacent wall also had blood spatter. (Tr. 486). There was "cast-off" blood identified on the ceiling; a BCI investigator explained this blood was cast from a moving object after it was used to hit a bleeding body. (Tr. 481, 485, 582). The bedroom appeared to have recently been used as a "walk-in cooler" due to the lack of heat, open windows, six five-gallon buckets of melting snow, and a rolled towel under the door. (Tr. 286, 290-291, 479).
{¶5} In Landsberger's SUV, officers found a small area saturated with blood in the cargo hold. (Tr. 502). Smears of blood were discovered on both rear passenger lower door frames and the inside of the back hatch. (Tr. 504-506). While a dog warden was attempting to secure a dog, a bag of dog food in a shed was opened and found to contain bloody items such as bed sheets, plastic sheeting, a garbage bag, and clothing (with an open condom in the pocket). (Tr. 397-398, 514-520). Another condom and wrapper were recovered from the bedroom floor. (Tr. 491). No body or bloody weapon was discovered on the property.
{¶6} Officers searched for Landsberger's female friend whom they concluded was Appellant Danielle Heckathorn (fka Eckhart). She was interviewed on Tuesday, March 10, 2015, the day after Landsberger was arrested for tampering with evidence. She said: Landsberger picked her up on Thursday; he had a black male named "Q" (the victim) in his car; they went to certain places and then to Landsberger's trailer; she and Landsberger used cocaine that night which she believed the victim provided; the condom in the bedroom may have been hers but was not from that night; when they were taking her home, Landsberger stopped the car, told the victim to get out of the car, and proceeded to beat him; Appellant locked the door out of fear, but the two men returned acting friendly to each other; the victim got in the back seat bleeding from his nose; Landsberger had scratches on his neck; and Landsberger took Appellant home. (Tr. 776-786); (St.Ex. 27).
{¶7} When a detective expressed he did not believe her story, Appellant admitted she had intercourse with both Landsberger and the victim that night, stating her services constituted her payment for drugs. She said Landsberger "ripped" the victim out of the car and beat him up in order to rob him; she also said the victim lost the crack cocaine during the fight, but they subsequently found it. (Tr. 788-789). She claimed the beating occurred at a pull-off for a recreation area, pointed out the area on a map, and said she could bring them to the location. She disclosed there was blood on the snow. (Tr. 803). She insisted the victim was awake when they dropped her off at home around 2:00 a.m. (Tr. 793).
{¶8} The detective received a photograph of Quinn Wilson after texting another officer to say Appellant mentioned a black male named Q. Appellant identified the photograph of the victim. (Tr. 749). She then announced that she had the victim's phone, stating she used it because her phone had no service. When asked if she deleted messages from the victim's phone, she assured the detective she deleted no messages from his phone. (Tr. 791). She said she did not speak to Landsberger after the incident. (Tr. 793).
{¶9} Appellant thereafter added a new part to her story; she said Landsberger instructed her to drive the car down the road during the beating. (Tr. 795). When confronted with her different versions of the story, she revealed the pertinence of text messages by claiming she thought Landsberger was joking when he texted her to say he would beat the victim up and "take his shit." (Tr. 797). She subsequently admitted going to Landsberger's residence a second time, after having sex in the bedroom but before the robbery; she said this time Landsberger walked down to get vinegar in order to prepare crack for injection while she and the victim waited in the car at the top of the icy drive. (Tr. 798).
{¶10} She said she deleted messages on her own phone (or her phone automatically deleted messages) when the memory became full. (Tr. 933-936). A detective brought Appellant to the recreation area so she could direct him to the pull-off where the incident allegedly occurred. (Tr. 948, 955). A search was conducted that day and the next day, but no evidence of an altercation was uncovered. (Tr. 370-371, 949).
{¶11} On Wednesday, March 11, 2015, a man who lived on a dirt road found the victim's body on a hill by the road. He reported seeing a loud blue truck on the road the previous evening; after he thought it passed from hearing-distance, he heard its engine start, making him suspect someone was dumping tires or a deer carcass as they had in the past. (Tr. 461-463). When he inspected the property the next day, he found the bottom half of the body of a black male and then saw the top half of the body farther down the hill. (Tr. 463-464). This location was 1.7 miles from where Appellant resided and 8.8 miles from Landsberger's trailer. (Tr. 759-760).
{¶12} The medical examiner concluded someone cut the body in half at the waist after death, first using a sharp knife-like instrument and then cutting through the bones in the pelvic area with a saw. (Tr. 1005-1006). The victim suffered multiple (at least 19) chopping "blunt-force injuries" to the head with "features of sharp-force injury" caused by an instrument such as a hatchet. (Tr. 1012). The blows caused: a broken lower jaw on the left side; a left forehead injury; a base skull fracture which radiated from a hit on the top of the head; open skull fractures oozing brain tissue; seven overlapping blows to the right forehead and eye; blows to the right back of the head; crushed bones of the nose and cheeks; and a split maxilla caused by two chops to the upper lip. (Tr. 1012-1019). Death occurred within seconds to a few minutes after these blows. (Tr. 1022). The victim also suffered a fractured right forearm prior to death which was not caused by a sharp object (but could have been caused by the opposite side of the sharp-edged object). (Tr. 1007-1008). The medical examiner found no evidence of blows from a fist. (Tr. 1020).
{¶13} The blood evidence from Landsberger's property matched the victim's DNA. Appellant was a major contributor to the DNA on the condom from the bedroom floor. (Tr. 643). DNA on the condom from the pocket of the victim's sweatshirt was a mixture consistent with the victim, Landsberger, and Appellant. (Tr. 646).
{¶14} The police conducted the second interview of Appellant on April 24, 2015. She said she obtained the victim's phone at approximately 1:00 a.m. She claimed she listened to music on it, she tried to call a friend, and then it ran out of battery. She also explained she did not have sex with Landsberger that night as he could not obtain an erection; she had sex with the victim two times that night. (Tr. 808, 815). Appellant mentioned a conversation on robbing the victim they had in person before the texts on the subject. (Tr. 811). In describing the victim's condition after the...
To continue reading
Request your trial