State v. Hill

• Decision Date: 30 August 1995
• Docket Number: No. 94-355,94-355
• Citation: 73 Ohio St.3d 433,653 N.E.2d 271
• Parties: The STATE of Ohio, Appellee, v. HILL, Appellant.
• Court: Ohio Supreme Court

Page 433

73 Ohio St.3d 433

653 N.E.2d 271

The STATE of Ohio, Appellee, v. HILL, Appellant.

No. 94-355.

Supreme Court of Ohio.

Submitted May 9, 1995.

Decided Aug. 30, 1995.

In March 1991, defendant-appellant, Jeffrey Hill ("Hill"), stabbed to death his mother, Emma Hill, in her Cincinnati apartment. Then, he ransacked her apartment and took money to buy cocaine. Three days later, Hill confessed to killing his mother. A jury convicted Hill of his mother's aggravated murder, and he was sentenced to death.

According to his confession, Hill went to visit his mother around 6:30 a.m., Saturday, March 23, 1991, because she had promised to help find him an apartment. When he arrived, he had been smoking cocaine. She gave him $20, and he left for thirty to sixty minutes. After he came back, she complained he did not visit her often enough, and they argued. She "was talkin' to me" and "[t]he next thing I know she's layin' on the floor." Hill "stabbed" her "more than once" with a kitchen knife.

As Emma lay on her bed, she looked up at him and said, "Why? Why did you do this?" Hill did not bother to reply, but instead he kept "goin' through 'er stuff" looking for "money to get some more crack." He found $20 and left, locking the apartment door behind him. Then he drove around in her Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera, threw away the knife, smoked more cocaine, and met a new friend, Charlotte Jones.

Around 6:30 or 7:00 p.m. that evening, Hill, along with Jones, returned to the area near Emma's apartment. Hill told Jones he was going to get some money from his mother, and Jones waited in the car. Hill later said he went back "to see if she [his mother] was all right." He used a jack handle to force the apartment door open because he had forgotten to take her apartment key. When detectives asked if his mother was alive then, Hill replied, "she didn' say nothin'. So I went in 'er closet an' got the rest of the money." Hill admitted taking $80 and putting $40 in the car trunk so Jones would not get it.

Later that evening, police officer Paul Fangman noticed a 1985 Oldsmobile being driven without lights. After following the car, Fangman observed the driver make "quick definite movements" as if he was "trying to hide something." In the car, Fangman found a crack cocaine pipe next to the driver's seat. Hill, the driver, had no license, and was wanted on an unrelated outstanding warrant, so Fangman took him into custody. Fangman verified that the Oldsmobile was registered to Emma Hill and left it, secured, at a nearby parking lot. Fangman established Jones' identity and released her.

On March 25, while in custody, Hill called and asked a friend to check on his mother. The friend checked Emma's apartment, but got no response. That evening, police entered the ransacked apartment and found Emma's body next to her bed. On a living room stool, police found a blood-soaked brown cloth purse. On a bathroom faucet, police found Hill's fingerprints, suggesting he may have last used that faucet.

The coroner testified that Emma had been dead for at least thirty-six hours at the time of the March 26 autopsy. Emma died as a result of ten stab wounds to her chest and back. Some were inflicted with "considerable force." One knife wound perforated the heart and nicked a lung; two others punctured a lung and broke ribs. Another wound perforated the scapula or "wing bone." No defensive-type wounds were evident. Emma, sixty-one years old, had been partly paralyzed from a stroke she had suffered several years before.

On March 26, homicide detectives interviewed Hill and advised him of his Miranda rights. Hill signed a written waiver of those rights. Hill told detectives that around March 23 he had been driving in his mother's car, using cocaine, but he denied knowing about his mother's death. Detectives talked with Jones and Vernon Hill, Hill's brother. Police further learned Emma never let either son drive her car without her being present.

Then, detectives readvised Hill of his rights and confronted him about inconsistencies in his statement. After ten or fifteen minutes, Hill "admitted that he stabbed his mother to death." Then police readvised Hill of his rights and tape recorded his confession. After that, Hill asked to see Vernon and told his brother, "he killed mama but he didn't mean to."

That evening, at a location pointed out by Hill, police found a bloodstained knife. Hill identified that as the murder weapon. The coroner confirmed this knife could have caused Emma's wounds.

Pursuant to a warrant, police searched Emma's Oldsmobile and found a tire tool, two $20 bills, and two $1 bills in the trunk. One $1 bill was stained with type A blood, which was Emma's blood type. Forensic examination of the tire tool revealed microscopic brass flakes matching the composition of a brass door protector on Emma's apartment door. That brass protector appeared to have "fresh jimmy marks," and black paint on that protector matched the painted tire tool.

A grand jury indicted Hill on four counts. Count I charged aggravated murder during an aggravated robbery, R.C. 2903.01. The single felony-murder death-penalty specification charged murder during aggravated robbery, R.C. 2929.04(A)(7). Count II charged aggravated robbery, R.C. 2911.01; Count III charged aggravated burglary, R.C. 2911.11; and Count IV, theft of a motor vehicle, R.C. 2913.02. Following competency evaluations by experts, the court found Hill mentally competent to stand trial. After further evaluations, experts found Hill mentally responsible for his acts. At trial, Hill did not pursue his insanity pleas. Despite not guilty pleas, the jury convicted Hill as charged.

At the sentencing hearing, Hill testified, under oath, consistent with his earlier confession. When he went to see his mother at 6:30 a.m., he "had been up all night smoking [$400 worth of] crack." After she gave him $20 to buy cigarettes, he took her car and bought more cocaine. After he came back, he recalled talking with her and then seeing her "laying [sic ] on the floor." When asked if he remembered stabbing her, Hill replied "[n]ot really." After he went "through everything," he left to buy more crack. He loved his mother "[m]ore than anything" and stated it "[a]in't like I meant to" stab her.

Hill, who was twenty-seven just after the murder, testified that he left high school at age seventeen to take care of his mother for a year after her stroke. After he left school, Hill worked for several years at various jobs, including helping handicapped children. At the time of the murder, he worked for a dry cleaning plant. Over the past five years, Hill claimed he had received some thirty-thousand dollars from settling four accident claims. His mother evidently kept some of this money for him, but he did not know how much she still had. For a time, Hill lived with Shawanna Head, who bore him a daughter, for whom he cared. Hill's father never lived with his family, but after his father died in 1990, Hill felt "lost" and "hurt" and began using crack cocaine.

Dr. Myron Fridman, a psychologist working with addictions, described crack cocaine as producing "a very, very intense addiction" causing a "compulsive behavioral need" to continue use. After a cocaine "binge," a user can develop a "mental state" known as "cocaine psychosis." That may be characterized by "mental confusion, irrational behavior, * * * like a paranoid state * * * [or even] like schizophrenia with hallucinations." As a cocaine addict, Hill's behavior could have been directed "by his overwhelming intense need" for more cocaine. Fridman believed Hill could be rehabilitated.

Hill also introduced into evidence competency and mental evaluations of Hill performed by four psychologists. After evaluations in July and September 1991, Dr. Nancy Schmidtgoessling concluded Hill was uncooperative, malingering, and mentally competent. After a February 1992 evaluation, she found "no history of any symptoms of any severe mental disease or defect" and concluded Hill was mentally responsible. Dr. Bill Fuess agreed that Hill was malingering, competent, and mentally responsible. Dr. Fuess further stated that Hill did suffer from "borderline personality" and "substance abuse" disorders, and that Hill was "a seriously depressed individual grieving the death of his mother."

In August 1991, Dr. Massimo DeMarchis evaluated Hill as an inpatient and found him competent to stand trial. During the evaluation, Hill made "an extremely poor and naive attempt * * * at faking mental illness." DeMarchis found Hill's "refusal to fully cooperate * * * nothing more than a conscious calculated attempt to delay * * * court proceedings." Hill displayed no "signs of a major mental disorder."

In contrast, Dr. Roger Fisher found Hill incompetent to stand trial, but later concluded Hill did not lack mental responsibility when he killed his mother. Fisher was "not persuaded of the validity" of Hill's claims of "hearing 'voices' and seeing 'demons.' " Although Fisher thought Hill was "extremely intoxicated" at the time of the offenses, Fisher had "no reason to believe he was mentally ill."

Shawanna Head, Hill's girlfriend, lived with him for five or six years and they had a daughter whom Hill supported. Robin Hill, Hill's cousin, lost contact with him shortly after Hill's father died. Robin never knew Hill to use cocaine, and she described him as a decent person, who helped his mother.

The jury recommended the death penalty. The trial court sentenced Hill to death for aggravated murder and terms of imprisonment for the remaining charges. The court of appeals affirmed.

Joseph T. Deters, Hamilton County Pros. Atty., and Philip R. Cummings, Asst. Pros. Atty., for appellee.

H. Fred Hoefle and D. Shannon Smith, Cincinnati, for appellant.

ALICE ROBIE RESNICK, Justice.

In this appeal, Hill advances fifteen propositions of law. Finding none meritorious, we affirm his convictions. We have also...