State v. Huffstetler, 329A83
| Decision Date | 06 November 1984 |
| Docket Number | No. 329A83,329A83 |
| Citation | 312 N.C. 92,322 S.E.2d 110 |
| Court | North Carolina Supreme Court |
| Parties | STATE of North Carolina v. David Earl HUFFSTETLER. |
Robert W. Clark, Asst. Public Defender, Gastonia, for defendant-appellant.
The defendant was convicted of the first degree murder of Edna Cordell Powell and sentenced to death. He brings forward assignments of error relative to the guilt-innocence phase of his trial and the sentencing phase. Having considered with care the entire record and each of the assignments, we find no prejudicial error in either phase of the defendant's trial. We do not disturb the defendant's conviction or the sentence of death.
The evidence as presented by the State tended to show that in December 1982 the defendant, David Earl Huffstetler, and his wife, Ruby Huffstetler, lived in a trailer on Highway 161 in Kings Mountain. The deceased, Edna Powell, was Ruby Huffstetler's mother. She was sixty-five years old and lived in a trailer next door to the Huffstetlers. Mrs. Huffstetler visited her mother during the afternoon of December 31, 1982. Later that day Mrs. Huffstetler went with her daughter Kim to spend the night in a motel in Kings Mountain. Around 10:00 p.m. on that date, several long distance calls that she did not make were made from the telephone in the Huffstetler's trailer. Mrs. Huffstetler did not know where the defendant spent the night on December 31.
Another daughter of the deceased, Barbara Shannon, visited her mother at about 8:00 p.m. on December 31. During the time Mrs. Shannon and her family were visiting, Mrs. Powell received a telephone call. After the call, Mrs. Powell phoned her granddaughter, Ruby Huffstetler's daughter Debbie Sutton, who lived with the Huffstetlers. Mrs. Powell asked her granddaughter where Mrs. Huffstetler was. After ending the conversation with her granddaughter, Mrs. Powell called the police. Mrs. Powell then went with the On January 1, 1983, at approximately 6:00 a.m., Mr. Shannon took Mrs. Powell back to her home in Kings Mountain. He left after checking throughout the trailer and finding nothing suspicious.
Shannons to their home in Gastonia to spend the night.
A friend of Mrs. Powell's from work, Miller Eugene Hughes, drove her to First Union Bank in Kings Mountain to do "some banking" on December 31, 1982. He also made plans with Mrs. Powell to take her to the Veterans Hospital in Asheville early on the morning of January 1 so that she could visit her husband. Mrs. Powell asked him to call her before he came by to pick her up on the morning of January 1. He called Mrs. Powell's trailer three times at about 7:50 a.m. on January 1, 1983. He received no answer. He called two more times after that, thirty to forty minutes apart, but never got a response.
Paul Glenn Sisk was working for the Yellow Cab Company on the morning of January 1. At about 8:00 a.m. a call came in to the dispatcher for the company, and Sisk answered the phone. Sisk recognized the defendant's voice. The caller identified himself as David Huffstetler. The caller asked that a cab be sent to a point on Highway 161 about two miles out of Kings Mountain at two churches. William Wilde, another employee of Yellow Cab, drove a cab towards Kings Mountain to pick up David Huffstetler. Although he drove out toward Highway 161 he never found Huffstetler.
Alice Cantrell testified that the defendant was a friend of hers and that he came to visit her on January 1, 1983 at about 10:00 a.m. He came into the room where she was sleeping and asked if she wanted to shoot pool. Ms. Cantrell and the defendant stayed together all day long at the home of Ms. Cantrell's sister. The two worked on a car most of the day. The defendant, Ms. Cantrell and her two sons spent the night of January 1 in a motel in Kings Mountain. Ms. Cantrell and the defendant stayed together for two days after January 1 spending the second night in Ms. Cantrell's mother's home.
Debbie Sutton, the granddaughter of the deceased, testified that on January 1, 1983 she was living in the trailer where her mother Ruby Huffstetler lived with the defendant. She saw the defendant leave with her mother and her sister on December 31. Her mother came back home without the defendant. She later saw her mother on the evening of December 31 at a New Year's Eve party, but the defendant was not with her mother. Ms. Sutton returned to her mother's trailer around 4:00 a.m. on the morning of January 1, 1983. She stated that she went to bed and got up late the next day. She did not leave the trailer again that day.
The deceased's daughter, Mrs. Shannon, began to try to call her mother at her mother's trailer between 4:00 and 4:30 p.m. on January 1. She received no answer and continued to call every thirty minutes until 6:00 p.m. After a final unsuccessful attempt to reach her mother, she called Deborah Sutton and asked her to go to Mrs. Powell's trailer and tell Mrs. Powell to come to the phone. Ms. Sutton went next door to her grandmother's trailer. She opened the unlocked door, entered and found the body of Mrs. Powell lying on the floor of the kitchen. She testified that she could tell her grandmother was dead because her head was "bashed in."
The police were called at 7:15 p.m. on January 1 and arrived at the Powell residence shortly thereafter. Officer Richard Redding of the Gaston County Police Department testified that after being called to the Powell residence, he went inside the deceased's trailer and observed Mrs. Powell lying in a large amount of blood on the kitchen floor. The blood was spattered along the dryer and on the refrigerator in the kitchen. He also observed a pair of false teeth located under the front edge of the clothes dryer. A black metal fragment was found on the east wall of the kitchen area. A wall style telephone was not hanging in its place in the entryway of the trailer, but instead had been placed in a Law enforcement officers searched the area surrounding the victim's home and found a black plastic garbage bag containing bloodstained clothes approximately two-tenths of a mile from the victim's trailer. The bag contained a pair of jeans and a shirt identified by Mrs. Huffstetler as belonging to her husband, the defendant. The bag also contained a bloody crumpled bank envelope from First Union Bank and a pair of gloves identified by the defendant's wife as similar to a pair owned by her husband.
chair at the entry point. Officers found hair samples and metal fragments on the carpet.
An S.B.I. hair analyst testified that several hairs found on the gloves were microscopically consistent with hairs taken from the victim. An S.B.I. forensic serologist testified that blood samples taken from the clothes found in the bag were consistent with the blood type of the victim and inconsistent with the blood type of the defendant.
Officers found a broken cast-iron skillet and its handle approximately a hundred feet from the defendant's trailer. The skillet was bloodstained and bore hairs microscopically consistent with the hair of the victim. The metal fragment found beside the head of the victim in her trailer fit into the broken skillet.
A pathologist, Dr. Phillip Leone, performed an autopsy on the body of the deceased. He testified that Mrs. Powell had multiple wounds and lacerations about her head, neck and shoulders. He found more than fourteen lacerations on her head and body. Both eyes were massively bruised and swollen shut, and blood was found in both nostrils and in her mouth. The victim's jaws were broken on both sides so that the lower jaw moved freely. The victim's spine and neck were fractured, as was her left collar bone. There was a large head wound behind the right ear in which the skull had been pushed into the brain. The pathologist also described a bilateral skull fracture and a "tremendous" hemorrhage in the brain. The cause of death in the opinion of the pathologist was skull fractures, hemorrhaging, edema of the brain and injury to major life centers causing cardio-respiratory arrest. The pathologist testified that in his opinion the fourteen lacerations of the head were caused by separate blows and that an object such as a cast-iron skillet could have inflicted the wounds.
The defendant did not testify or offer evidence at the guilt-innocence phase of the trial. The jury found him guilty of murder in the first degree.
Prior to the sentencing hearing, the trial court disallowed the State's attempt to offer evidence that the defendant was involved in an armed robbery on the day of the murder. The State offered no further evidence but requested that the trial court submit as an aggravating circumstance that the killing was an especially heinous, atrocious or cruel murder under N.C.G.S. 15A-2000(e)(9).
The defendant testified in his own behalf at the sentencing hearing. He stated that he was taking $150 to $200 worth of the drug dilaudid per day at the time of the murder. He supported himself with money he got shoplifting and working.
On December 31, 1982, he went to the Yellow Cab Company and drank some liquor with employee Bill Wilde. He stole some money from the Yellow Cab Company at that time. He then went to a house in East Gastonia and injected two crushed up dilaudid pills. He got a ride home to his trailer on Highway 161 at about 10:00 p.m. on December 31. He drank some whiskey after arriving home and went to sleep. On rising the following morning, he injected two more Dilaudid pills and drank more liquor.
The defendant testified that about 8:00 a.m. on January 1, 1983, he went next door to visit the deceased, his mother-in-law. After talking with Mrs. Powell a little, the defendant asked her whether she knew where his wife was. Mrs. Powell said that she did not and asked whether the defendant had been drinking. The defendant told The defendant...
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