State v. Huertas

• Citation: 51 Ohio St.3d 22,553 N.E.2d 1058
• Decision Date: 09 May 1990
• Docket Number: No. 88-1627,88-1627
• Parties: The STATE of Ohio, Appellee, v. HUERTAS, Appellant.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Ohio

Page 22

51 Ohio St.3d 22

553 N.E.2d 1058

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

No. 88-1627.

Supreme Court of Ohio.

Submitted Jan. 9, 1990.

Decided May 9, 1990.

Syllabus by the Court

Expressions of opinion by a witness as to the appropriateness of a particular sentence in a capital case violate the defendant's constitutional right to have the sentencing decision made by the jury and judge.

Appellant, Ediberto ("Eddie") Huertas, was convicted of the June 7, 1986 murder of Ralph Harris, Jr., and sentenced to death.

Appellant attended high school with Elba Ortiz and Harris in Lorain, Ohio. The three became friends. Before his scheduled graduation, appellant dropped out of school. Harris apparently completed school and went into the Air Force. Appellant and Ortiz developed a "shaky, on and off" relationship while in high school. Though they never married, the couple had two daughters while Ortiz was still in school.

Appellant ended the relationship with Ortiz, and entered into what was apparently a common-law marriage with his wife, Arlene. This marriage produced three children. About a year and a half after he married Arlene, appellant resumed a relationship with Ortiz. Appellant eventually separated from his wife and lived with Ortiz intermittently during the early part of 1986. There was tension, caused by appellant's refusal to divorce his wife, and by his involvement with other women.

In May 1986, Harris came home on leave from the Air Force and began dating Ortiz. On May 31, appellant went to visit Harris, who was staying with his parents. Appellant told Harris to stop dating Ortiz because Ortiz was "his woman." Harris replied, "Your woman is Arlene. Elba is single; and I'm single." In the conversation, appellant told Harris "[h]e didn't want to end their friendship this way" but he "was going to waste him" if he didn't stop seeing Ortiz. Harris responded, "Well, you know where I live."

Appellant came back to the Harris house an hour later. Appellant claimed that Ortiz did not want to see Harris anymore. Harris said, "if Elba says that, Elba is going to have to tell me herself." When Harris again refused to promise not to see Ortiz, appellant said, "I still say I'm going to have to waste you. * * * You know, you know I don't do--I don't do it fair, * * * but I'm going to waste you." Appellant admitted these conversations, but denied threatening Harris.

On the evening of June 6, appellant went home after work, "had a few beers" and smoked marijuana. Sometime after ten he went to a bar with a female friend. His roommate, Danny Lopez, joined them an hour or so later. Sometime after midnight, appellant purchased cocaine and ingested it. Appellant and Lopez continued their rounds of Lorain-area bars until after two in the morning. By his admission appellant consumed six to nineteen beers, six to ten shots of rum, and a quarter to a half gram of cocaine. Lopez estimated that they smoked five or six marijuana cigarettes.

That same evening, Ortiz and Harris went to a concert, returning to her apartment at about eleven. Ortiz invited Harris to spend the night. She got a call from appellant as she was getting ready for bed. Appellant seemed intoxicated. He told her he still loved her and wanted to come to the apartment. She refused, telling him that Harris was spending the night there. Angry, she hung up the phone. Appellant called back, but Ortiz refused to talk. Harris took the phone off the hook.

At about three in the morning, Harris and Ortiz were awakened by a noise at the door. Harris got up to investigate. From the bedroom, Ortiz saw someone in the hallway with a knife. She heard appellant say, "Come on now," and Harris say, "Calm down, Eddie." She heard them struggle. Then appellant said, "I got you," and "I got to go get Elba." Ortiz tried to close the bedroom door, but appellant was pushing against it with "half his shoulder and arm in" the room. Ortiz braced against the wall and held the door closed with her feet. Appellant put a hole in the door. Ortiz heard Harris throw something. Then the house became quiet.

Ortiz came out of the bedroom and found Harris injured. She drove him to the hospital, where he was admitted at 3:25 a.m. with a serious stab wound. In the emergency room, Harris was interviewed at about 3:45 a.m. by Detective Charles Shuster of the Lorain police. Harris gave a tape-recorded statement describing appellant's attack on him.

Ralph Harris died at 2:00 that afternoon. The cause of death was loss of blood and resulting complications.

Police found appellant's fingerprints on the storm windows through which he entered the apartment. His shoe heel matched the hole in the bedroom door. Appellant's shirt had bloodstains matching Ralph Harris's blood type.

Appellant was indicted on one count of aggravated murder with prior calculation and design, one count of aggravated murder in the course of committing an aggravated burglary, two counts of attempted aggravated murder, and one count of aggravated burglary. There were two specifications to each of the aggravated murder counts: murder committed during an aggravated burglary, and murder committed as part of a course of conduct involving the purposeful killing or attempted killing of two or more persons. The state dropped the two attempted murder counts before trial.

Appellant testified in his own defense. He admitted going to Ortiz's apartment, but claimed he was unable to recall what had happened there, except he remembered Harris saying, "You got me." He claimed that he did not plan to kill anyone. He admitted to being angry that night because Ortiz and Harris "were making love in our bed." He also admitted to having a problem with drugs and alcohol since he was seventeen.

Appellant was found guilty of all charges and specifications. Following the mitigation hearing, the jury determined that the aggravating circumstances outweighed the mitigating factors and recommended a sentence of death on both counts. The trial court accepted this recommendation. Appellant was given a sentence of ten to twenty-five years' imprisonment on the aggravated burglary count. The Court of Appeals for Lorain County affirmed the conviction and sentence.

This cause is before the court on an appeal as of right.

Gregory A. White, Pros. Atty., and Jonathan E. Rosenbaum, Vermilion, for appellee.

Randall M. Dana, Public Defender, Joann Bour-Stokes, Richard J. Vickers and Sharon H. Hainley, Columbus, for appellant.

HERBERT R. BROWN, Justice.

For the reasons which follow, we affirm appellant's conviction, but vacate the sentence of death and remand for imposition of a life sentence in accord with State v. Penix (1987), 32 Ohio St.3d 369, 513 N.E.2d 744.

I Admission of Victim Impact Evidence

In his second proposition of law, appellant challenges the use of victim impact evidence at the penalty phase of his trial.

In the instant case, appellant requested a presentence investigation report pursuant to R.C. 2929.03(D)(1). The report contained a summary of an interview with the victim's parents, Ralph, Sr., and Elizabeth Harris, in which Mr. Harris expressed the view that appellant should be sentenced to death. This report was admitted into evidence. The prosecution also called Mr. and Mrs. Harris as rebuttal witnesses.

Mrs. Harris testified concerning the victim's good character. When asked if she was proud of her son, she replied, "Oh, God, how proud I was, a child that never give me no problem, no nothing, no drinking, no smoking, nothing but go to church and come back * * *." She described the effect on the victim's son ¹: "I hate to take him to the graveyard. He always wants to go. He think[s] he [is] going to see his dad." Mr. Harris testified, in response to a question from the prosecutor, that he believed appellant should get the death penalty.

In Booth v. Maryland (1987), 482 U.S. 496, 107 S.Ct. 2529, 96 L.Ed.2d 440, decided after the trial of the instant case but before the court of appeals issued its opinion, the United States Supreme Court held that the introduction of victim impact evidence in the penalty phase of a capital trial is constitutionally impermissible. Victim impact evidence is defined in Booth as including evidence which describes the personal characteristics of the victim, the emotional trauma suffered by the victim's family, or the family members' opinions and characterizations of the defendant and the crime. Id. at 502, 107 S.Ct. at 2533. The court reasoned that "[t]he prospect of a 'mini-trial' on the victims' character * * * could well distract the sentencing jury from its constitutionally required task--determining whether the death penalty is appropriate in light of the background and record of the accused and the particular circumstances of the crime. * * * " (Emphasis added.) Id. at 507, 107 S.Ct. at 2535. The holding of Booth was reaffirmed in South Carolina v. Gathers (1989), 490 U.S. 805, 109 S.Ct. 2207, 104 L.Ed.2d 876.

In State v. Post (1987), 32 Ohio St.3d 380, 383, 513 N.E.2d 754, 758, we noted that the admission of victim impact evidence at capital trials was not expressly permitted by the Ohio statutes. However, in Post and two subsequent cases, State v. Sowell (1988), 39 Ohio St.3d 322, 530 N.E.2d 1294, and State v. Brewer (1990), 48 Ohio St.3d 50, 549 N.E.2d 491, we found the admission of such evidence is harmless in bench trials where there was no indication that the three-judge panel relied on the victim impact evidence in arriving at its sentence. See, e.g., Post, supra, at 384, 513 N.E.2d at 759.

Four arguments have been advanced by the state to distinguish the present case from Booth and Gathers. These are: (1) Ohio's use of a sentencing system where the jury's recommendation of a death penalty is not binding on the trial judge, (2) distinctions between the victim impact evidence in the instant case and that presented in Booth, (3) the victim impact evidence in this case was...