State v. Hobley
| Decision Date | 15 December 1999 |
| Docket Number | No. 98-KA-2460.,98-KA-2460. |
| Citation | 752 So.2d 771 |
| Parties | STATE of Louisiana v. Richard D. HOBLEY. |
| Court | Louisiana Supreme Court |
Gary Patrick Clements, Nicholas Joseph Trenticosta, New Orleans, for Applicant.
Richard P. Ieyoub, Attorney General, Van H. Kyzer, District Attorney, for Respondent.
On September 20, 1995, a Natchitoches Parish grand jury indicted defendant for first degree murder of Steven Traylor, a violation of La.Rev.Stat. 14:30. On January 30, 1996, the state filed notice of intent to seek the death penalty. On October 30, 1997, after a trial by jury, defendant was found guilty as charged. At the penalty phase of the trial later that day, the jury unanimously returned a verdict of death, finding as aggravating circumstances that defendant was engaged in the perpetration or attempted perpetration of an aggravated kidnapping and an armed robbery. Defendant now appeals his conviction and sentence raising forty-five assignments of error.2
For the reasons set forth below, we affirm defendant's conviction for first degree murder. However, we reverse the sentence to death and remand the case to the district court for a new penalty phase hearing.
On the evening of June 14, 1995, the victim of this murder, Steven Traylor, and his wife, Juanita, took their daughters to the park to play baseball. They arrived home at about 9:00 p.m. Mr. Traylor left the house about an hour later to close the liquor store he owned and to visit with his employees. Mr. Traylor never returned home.
The next morning, Mr. Traylor's body was discovered in his vehicle at a landfill site in Natchitoches Parish. Ballistics analysis revealed that Mr. Traylor had been shot twice and that the murder weapon had been fired from a distance of not less than one foot and not more than four feet from his body.
The ensuing investigation led police to defendant, Richard Hobley, and three accomplices. Following his arrest, defendant gave a detailed confession to the crime. On the day before the murder, defendant, along with Ricky Ray Lewis, Joe Walker, Jr., and Otis Anthony, planned to rob Mr. Traylor. They believed that he would be carrying the proceeds from his business when he returned home in the evening. The men staked out the store and followed Mr. Traylor home, but they did not then execute their plan. The following day they returned and parked their car by a vacant house near Mr. Traylor's home, where Anthony, who knew Mr. Traylor, positioned himself to act as a lookout. Defendant Hobley, accompanied by Lewis and Walker, then waited for Mr. Traylor to arrive at his home. The men accosted Mr. Traylor as he pulled up in his driveway. They pretended that they needed directions, but they then demanded money. When Mr. Traylor responded that he did not have any money with him, the armed assailants ordered him out of the vehicle. Defendant Hobley instructed Lewis to immobilize Mr. Traylor with duct tape. The assailants soon noted the presence of police in the area and decided to place Mr. Traylor in the trunk of his vehicle. Unable to open the trunk, they decided to remove Mr. Traylor from the area. They ordered him into the rear seat of his vehicle, flanked on his left by Lewis and on his right by Walker, while defendant drove the vehicle.
The men returned to the vacant house, where Anthony was waiting for them. Walker then exited the Traylor vehicle and drove off with Anthony in the car in which the men had arrived. Defendant claimed that, as he was driving, with Mr. Traylor and Lewis in the back seat, a struggle for defendant's weapon ensued. During the struggle, the vehicle veered off the road and the gun went off twice, striking Mr. Taylor both times and killing him. After defendant wiped his fingerprints from the car, he and Lewis hitchhiked to Coushatta, leaving Mr. Traylor lying on the seat.
In his confession, defendant also stated that he was wanted for an incident that had occurred in Houston, Texas, and gave the interrogating officer a detailed account of his involvement in a shooting that had taken place there. After the jury convicted defendant of first degree murder, the state introduced at the penalty phase the part of his confession relating to the unadjudicated criminal conduct in Houston. The jury returned with a verdict of death.
Confession to Unadjudicated Other Crimes (Assignments 5, 21, 26, and 39).
In these assignments, defendant argues that the district court erred when it admitted into evidence at the penalty phase that portion of his confession in which he described his participation in the purported Houston shooting.
In the statement defendant gave to Natchitoches Parish Deputy Sheriffs Trammell and Jones at the Red River Parish Sheriffs Office on August 12, 1995, defendant stated that he thought he was wanted for an incident in Houston. According to the statement, in Houston he and a friend had become involved in a dispute over a woman with a man named "Big Riley." They decided to ambush "Big Riley" at night, knowing that he had cash and drugs in his truck. Defendant and several other men later approached "Big Riley" as he was washing his vehicle. When "Big Riley" sprayed water in defendant's face, defendant and another man, Darrel Wayne, began shooting their guns. Though "Big Riley" threw the vehicle's keys towards him, defendant could not find them because of the water in his eyes. One of the other men, Dion, retrieved the keys. Defendant did not know whether a bullet had struck "Big Riley," only that "Big Riley" was lying down in back of the house. The men left in Riley's vehicle, while defendant followed in his own vehicle. They took Riley's vehicle to another location where they stripped it. The items removed from Riley's vehicle were stashed at defendant's residence. Upon his release from serving some jail time for unrelated offenses, defendant and his cohorts sold the stolen goods to another person, who then alerted the police. While defendant was visiting a girlfriend, police officers entered defendant's residence looking for him, Darrel Wayne, and Dion. When his cousins informed him of the raid, defendant and Dion left for Shreveport. Later, Dion returned to Houston, but a relative told police of his whereabouts. After Dion in turn told police where defendant was located, defendant went to the country to hide out. He was planning to obtain the services of a lawyer before Mr. Traylor's murder. Defendant denied involvement in any other murders except for that of "Big Riley."
In pertinent part, La.Code Crim. Proc. art. 905.2 requires that the sentencing hearing in a capital case focus on the character and propensities of the offender. The hearing shall be conducted according to the rules of evidence. La.Code Crim. Proc. art. 905.2. Beginning with State v. Sawyer, 422 So.2d 95, 104 (La.1982), a slim majority of this court held that Article 905.2 authorizes the introduction at a capital sentencing hearing of evidence of convictions for unrelated crimes, even if the defendant does not place his character at issue. Evidence of the prior conviction was not only relevant, but also competent and reliable. Id. at 103-04; see also State v. Jordan, 440 So.2d 716 (La.1983).
As to evidence of unrelated and unadjudicated criminal conduct, the court in State v. Lowenfield, 495 So.2d 1245 (La.1985), found a bill of information charging the defendant with an unrelated crime not to be competent evidence of the defendant's character, as required by the mandate in Article 905.2 that the hearing shall be conducted in accordance with the rules of evidence. The court next held that fundamental fairness dictated that an accused receive adequate prior notice that evidence of unrelated criminal conduct might be offered by the state in the penalty phase. State v. Norton Hamilton, 478 So.2d 123, 132 (La.1985). Finally, in State v. Ward, 483 So.2d 578, 588-89 (La.1986), a majority expanded the category of admissible evidence in the capital sentencing hearing to include evidence of other crimes with which the defendant had been charged but of which he had not been convicted. The majority reasoned that the crimes with which the defendant was charged had been dismissed as the result of a guilty plea and that other testimony was introduced concerning acts in the dismissed charges by the same family members who were victims of the sex crimes identical to those for which the defendant was then being tried. Ward, 483 So.2d at 588-89.
The court eventually recognized the necessity of standards governing the admission in the penalty phase of evidence of unrelated and unadjudicated criminal conduct such as had been set forth in State v. Prieur, 277 So.2d 126, 129 (La.1973), with regard to the admission of other crimes evidence in the guilt phase of trial. State v. Brooks (Brooks I), 541 So.2d 801, 803 (La.1989). Thus, we held in Brooks I that, before the state in its case-in-chief in the penalty phase may introduce evidence of unrelated and unadjudicated criminal conduct, the trial judge must determine that: (1) the evidence of the defendant's commission of the unrelated criminal conduct is clear and convincing; (2) the proffered evidence is otherwise competent and reliable; and (3) the unrelated conduct has relevance and substantial probative value as to the defendant's character and propensities. Brooks I, 541 So.2d at 814. This holding was further restricted in State v. Jackson, 608 So.2d 949, 954-56 (La.1992), to evidence of conduct that involves violence against the person of the victim and for which crime the period of limitation for instituting prosecution has not run at the time of the indictment of the accused for the first degree murder. Jackson, 608 So.2d at 955; State v. Connolly, 96-1680, p. 14 (La.7/1/97), 700 So.2d 810, 820.
The instant case presents the situation wherein the...
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