State v. Holmes

• Decision Date: 02 December 2008
• Docket Number: No. 2006-KA-2988.,2006-KA-2988.
• Citation: 5 So.3d 42
• Parties: STATE of Louisiana v. Brandy Aileen HOLMES.
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court

5 So.3d 42

STATE of Louisiana v. Brandy Aileen HOLMES.

No. 2006-KA-2988.

Supreme Court of Louisiana.

December 2, 2008.

Rehearing Denied January 30, 2009.

Capital Appeals Project, Jelpi Pierre Picou, Jr., New Orleans; Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana, Sarah Lynn Ottinger, New Orleans, Caroline Wallace Tillman, for Appellant.

James D. Caldwell, Attorney General, Paul Carmouche, District Attorney, Hugo A. Holland, Jr., Lea R. Hall, Jr., Brady Dennis O'Callaghan, Catherine Marion Estopinal, Shreveport, for Appellee.

KNOLL, Justice.

On February 14, 2003, a Caddo Parish grand jury indicted Brandy Aileen Holmes ("defendant") for the first-degree murder of Julian L. Brandon, Jr.¹ On February 14, 2006, a unanimous jury found the defendant guilty as charged.² On February 16, 2006, the jury unanimously determined that defendant be sentenced to death, finding all three aggravating circumstances urged by the State, specifically that: (1) the defendant was engaged in the perpetration or attempted perpetration of an armed robbery, first-degree robbery and simple robbery; (2) the defendant knowingly created a risk of death or great bodily harm to more than one person; and (3) the victim was 65 years of age or older.

This is a direct appeal under La. Const. art. V, § 5(D) by the defendant. Defendant appeals her conviction and sentence raising 45 assignments of error, variously combined into seventeen (17) arguments, with numerous assignments remaining not argued. We will address the most significant of these assignments of error in this opinion, and the remaining assignments of error will be addressed in an unpublished appendix. After a thorough review of the law and the evidence, for the following reasons we affirm the defendant's first-degree murder conviction and the imposition of the death sentence.

FACTS

During the early evening hours of January 1, 2003, the defendant and her boyfriend, Robert Coleman,³ forced their way into the rural home of Julian Brandon, a retired minister who was 70 years of age, and his wife Alice, who was 68 years of age. Reverend Brandon was shot at near contact range in the underside of his jaw with a .380 caliber handgun. The bullet separated into two pieces: one fragment entered the victim's brain; the other exited the top of his head and was later recovered from the dining room ceiling, adjacent to the front entryway. Julian Brandon immediately collapsed.

Defendant and Coleman then took Mrs. Brandon to the rear bedroom of the residence and demanded her valuables, cash, and credit cards as she begged for her life. The defendants subsequently placed a pillow over Mrs. Brandon's face, shot her in the head, and left her for dead. After shooting Mrs. Brandon, defendant and Coleman heard Reverend Brandon struggling with his wounds. After retrieving three Chicago Cutlery knives from the kitchen, they stabbed and slashed him to death. They inflicted slashing cuts to Reverend Brandon's nose and face and stabbing wounds on the top and rear of his head and chest. One of the knives struck Reverend Brandon's head with such force, it shattered and pieces of the knife were found strewn about the crime scene. The offenders cut Reverend Brandon's throat several times—two large cutting wounds went around the entire neck, severing the carotid artery and jugular vein. Six stab wounds, some wounds penetrating as deep as six inches, were also identified in Reverend Brandon's left upper chest; these wounds went into the chest cavity and involved the heart and lungs resulting in internal bleeding. Another stab wound was found on the right side of the chest; this wound involved the abdomen and liver. In addition, a six-inch knife was found imbedded up to the handle in Reverend Brandon's back.

On January 5, 2003, four days after the attack by defendant and Coleman, Calvin Barrett Hudson, a family friend of the Brandons, became concerned when the couple did not attend church on Sunday and decided to check on them. When he and his wife went to their friends' residence they found Reverend Brandon lying in a pool of his blood on the carpet. Hudson immediately went to a neighbor's house and called the sheriff's office.

When the police responded to the call, they found Reverend Brandon's body. It was not until the authorities checked the house that they discovered Mrs. Brandon was barely alive. After the police summoned emergency medical personnel, a medical helicopter was called to transport Mrs. Brandon to the hospital. Even though Mrs. Brandon received a gunshot wound to the head, she survived the attack; at the time of trial, she remained permanently disabled and requires around-the-clock care.

After the television news reported the crime, the Caddo Parish Sheriff's Office received a tip from persons at an apartment complex near the crime scene. The callers indicated the defendant had been bragging about killing an elderly couple down the road near a church and that she was trying to sell their jewelry. Detectives then went to the trailer of Brenda Bruce, defendant's mother, which was located near the homicide scene. There they located defendant, Coleman, her mother, and defendant's 15-year-old brother, Sean George. All four agreed to accompany the officers to the sheriff's office for interviews.

Over the next two days and after being Mirandized numerous times, the defendant made six recorded and unrecorded statements, implicating herself and others to varying degrees in the homicide and robbery; in only the first statement did the defendant deny involvement in the murder of Reverend Brandon. In one of the interviews, defendant claimed she was the shooter in both the murder of Reverend Brandon and the attempted murder of his wife. Defendant further revealed that two days after the violent entry into the Brando home, she and two of her young nephews bicycled to the Brandons' residence; only the youngest nephew, nine years of age, entered the residence with her. Defendant stated she went back to the house because she dreamed the woman was still alive; even though she heard Mrs. Brandon's heavy breathing, she just left the residence. The nine-year-old nephew entered the home with his aunt, where he observed Reverend Brandon lying in a pool of blood and heard Mrs. Brandon screaming from another room in the home.⁴ A neighbor witnessed both nephews fleeing from the residence, leaving the defendant inside the home.

In addition to several statements the defendant made in which she admitted involvement in the violent entry into the Brandon home and murder, police recovered considerable circumstantial evidence demonstrating her participation. Although the gun used in the shootings was not recovered, ballistics evidence demonstrated that the weapon used in the Brandon homicide was the same weapon that had belonged to defendant's father and had been stolen from his residence in Tylertown, Mississippi; this theft occurred immediately before defendant and Coleman traveled from Mississippi to Shreveport on Christmas Eve 2002.⁵ In one of her statements to the police, the defendant admitted she had stolen her father's .380 handgun while visiting him in Mississippi. In addition, a surveillance video from Hibernia Bank depicted the defendant and Coleman attempting to use the Brandons' credit card at an ATM.

A search of the Bruce trailer where the defendant and Coleman were staying led to the discovery of several incriminating items. A multi-colored bracelet found in a clear plastic food service glove was recovered from the rain gutter of the trailer where the defendant stayed; Mrs. Brandon's daughter identified the multi-colored bracelet as one she had given her mother some time earlier. A box of food service gloves recovered from the bedroom that defendant shared with Coleman had a diamond pattern consistent with blood transfer stains observed at the crime scene. Three fired .380 cartridge casings were also found in the rain gutter of the trailer. Laboratory analysis revealed that Reverend Brandon's DNA was found on one of these casings. Additionally, forensic analysis matched the .380 projectile recovered from Reverend Brandon's brain and the dining room ceiling to a projectile recovered from a tree at the home of defendant's father in Mississippi; defendant's father had fired the gun into a tree on his property before the gun was stolen.

At the penalty phase, in addition to victim-impact evidence from the Brandons' two daughters, the State introduced evidence that defendant had attempted another violent home entry days before the charged offense in a gated community known as "Nob Hill." As a result of one of the defendant's admissions during investigation, it became known the defendant participated in the homicide of Terrance Blaze days after the Brandons were shot. Regarding the unadjudicated homicide of Blaze, defendant originally directed the authorities to his body during her interrogation concerning the Brandon homicide. While defendant originally claimed Blaze had been killed by a gang member as a result of a drug debt, forensic evidence later demonstrated he had actually been killed in the car owned by defendant's mother. The bullet recovered from the back of Blaze's skull had the same class characteristics as the bullet recovered from the tree in Mississippi; additionally, a cartridge casing found near Blaze's body matched the cartridge case found in Mississippi where the defendant's father had earlier fired the weapon. High velocity blood spatter and other bloodstains matched to Blaze were found in the defendant's mother's automobile and on Coleman's right boot and right pant leg. Blood spatter evidence indicated Coleman was in the driver's seat of the vehicle while Blaze rode as the passenger and that the gunshot to the back of Blaze's head originated from the back seat of the car. Defendant later admitted shooting Blaze in an unsolicited letter to the assistant district attorney.

During...