State v. Jeffrey A. Wogenstahl
| Decision Date | 30 November 1994 |
| Docket Number | C-930222,94-LW-0884 |
| Parties | STATE OF OHIO, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. JEFFREY A. WOGENSTAHL, Defendant-Appellant. APPEAL |
| Court | United States Court of Appeals (Ohio) |
Criminal Appeal From Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas
Joseph T. Deters, Prosecuting Attorney, No. 0012084, and William E Breyer, Esq., No. 0002138, 411 Hamilton County Courthouse Court and Main Streets, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202, for Plaintiff-Appellee,
David J. Boyd, Esq., No. 0031618, 1770 Federated Building, 7 West Seventh Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202, and Herbert E Freeman, Esq., No. 0005364, 620 American Building, 30 East Central Parkway, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202, for Defendant-Appellant.
DECISION
This cause came on to be heard upon the appeal, the transcript of the docket, journal entries and original papers from the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas, the transcript of the proceedings, the briefs and the arguments of counsel.
This appeal is taken from the judgment of the court of common pleas convicting the defendant-appellant, Jeffrey A Wogenstahl, following a jury trial, of aggravated murder, kidnapping, and aggravated burglary.[1] In accordance with the jury's recommendation and an independent determination by the court that the three aggravating circumstances of the murder outweighed the factors offered by Wogenstahl in mitigation of punishment, the court imposed the death sentence.[2] Wogenstahl has given us thirty-five assignments of error for review, raising issues that range from the constitutionality of the death penalty in Ohio to the validity of various evidentiary rulings made during the guilt phase of Wogenstahl's trial. In addition to addressing each of those assignments on the merits, we perform the other tasks mandated by R.C. 2929.05 in the appellate review of any case involving the imposition of the death penalty. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.
On Wednesday, November 27, 1991, the body of 10-year-old Amber Garrett was found in a heavily thicketed area off Jamison Creek Road in West Harrison, Indiana. She had numerous stab wounds to her chest and neck and a cracked skull. She was last seen the previous Saturday night and reported missing to the Harrison, Ohio, police department Sunday afternoon.
The investigation immediately centered on Wogenstahl. Early suspicions were the result of a visit Wogenstahl made to the Garrett household at about 3:00 a.m., Sunday morning. Wogenstahl was a casual acquaintance of Amber's mother, Peggy Garrett, and he had been "barhopping" with Peggy Garrett and her friend, Lynn Williams, on Saturday night. After he parted company with the two women that night, Wogenstahl went to the house trailer where Garrett lived with her four children and lured away Peggy's son, Eric Horn, who was babysitting for the children, by claiming that Peggy needed Eric.
Following this lead, police investigated and found the following evidence to link Wogenstahl to the disappearance and death of Amber Garrett: (1) statements by several persons that they saw Wogenstahl and/or his car parked alongside Jamison Creek Road in the early hours of Sunday morning; (2) blood tests that linked a small patch of blood found in Wogenstahl's car to the victim; and (3) traces of thorns and tears on Wogenstahl's clothing placing him in the area where the victim's body was discovered. To establish Wogenstahl's guilt at trial, prosecutors relied on this circumstantial evidence and inculpatory statements made to a fellow inmate while Wogenstahl was incarcerated. Wogenstahl's defense attacked the accuracy of the identification testimony, the results of the blood and botanical testing, and the credibility of the inmate testimony.
In the first of his thirty-five assignments of error, Wogenstahl challenges the trial court's refusal to suppress evidence obtained when police officers searched his apartment and one of his cars. He does no more to support this claim than to argue in general terms that the prosecution failed to sustain its burden of proving at the suppression hearing that he voluntarily consented to the searches.
There is no question from the record that Wogenstahl, in fact, gave his consent for the searches to proceed. The only issue that could have been meaningfully disputed below was whether that consent was voluntary under the totality of the circumstances. See Florida v. Royer (1983), 460 U.S. 491, 103 S.Ct. 1319; State v. Childress (1983), 4 Ohio St.3d 217, 448 N.E.2d 155, paragraph one of the syllabus; State v. Schmurr (Sept. 21, 1994), Hamilton App. No. C-930697, unreported. In our judgment, there was more than enough evidence presented at the suppression hearing to make the issue one of fact, and we cannot say that the trial court erroneously concluded, upon assessment of that evidence, that the state had met its burden of proof to justify the warrantless searches on a theory of consent. The first assignment of error, accordingly, is not well taken.
In his second assignment of error, Wogenstahl objects to the trial court's decision to admit into evidence, during the guilt phase of the proceedings, a video tape of the scene where the victim's body was found, a school photograph depicting the victim in life, and a number of other photographs displaying the victim's corpse, taken either at the scene of its discovery or at the morgue. The challenged exhibits were improperly admitted by Wogenstahl's reckoning for one of two reasons: (1) they were not relevant to a legitimate issue in dispute at trial, or (2) they were, in content, unduly repetitive, gruesome, and inflammatory.
It is well settled that the admission of photographic evidence, even in a capital prosecution, remains largely within the discretion of the trial court, subject to the following guidelines set down in State v. Maurer (1984), 15 Ohio St.3d 239, 473 N.E.2d 768, paragraph seven of the syllabus:
Properly authenticated photographs, even if gruesome, are admissible in a capital prosecution if relevant and of probative value in assisting the trier of fact to determine the issues or are illustrative of testimony and other evidence, as long as the danger of material prejudice to a defendant is outweighed by their probative value and the photographs are not repetitive or cumulative in number.
In the case sub judice, we are convinced that all the challenged exhibits easily met the threshold standard of relevancy below. This left the trial court essentially with the task of engaging in the familiar weighing process to determine whether the potential prejudicial effect of the evidence, either by its content or its repetitiveness, was outweighed by its clear probative value. Having reviewed the exhibits as they have been made a part of the record on appeal, we are not persuaded that the results of the trial court's weighing process in favor of admissibility amounted to an abuse of discretion. The court's ruling was not unreasonable, arbitrary, or unconscionable under the accepted standard for measuring the exercise of discretion in Ohio. See Pembaur v. Leis (1982), 1 Ohio St.3d 89, 437 N.E.2d 1199; State v. Graham (1979), 58 Ohio St.2d 350, 390 N.E.2d 805. Wogenstahl's second assignment of error is, accordingly, without merit.
In his third assignment of error, Wogenstahl asserts that the trial court improperly permitted an employee of a serological institute to give opinions on the identity of certain blood samples when that employee did not have the requisite qualifications of an expert. His argument points out as the fatal flaw in the witness's qualifications the absence of an appropriate undergraduate or postgraduate degree from an institution of higher education. Evid.R. 702, entitled Testimony of Experts, rejects this argument by its very terms, which include the following:
If scientific, technical or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue, a witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education, may testify thereto in the form of an opinion or otherwise.
The Ohio Supreme Court has rejected a per se degree requirement for expert qualification in State v. Beuke (1988), 38 Ohio St.3d 29, 43, 526 N.E.2d 274, 289, stating:
The prosecution contends that Todd testified as an expert * * *. Although Todd has no degree, his professional experience and training in collecting and preserving evidence was such as to permit the trial court to qualify him as an expert. Todd's opinions were based on his personal observations of the crime scene, Craig's wounds, and Craig's automobile as required by Evid.R. 703. We find no error in the admission of the challenged opinion.
In the instant case, the witness in question, Brian Wraxall, did lack a United States college education, but the trial court did not abuse its discretion by finding that Wraxall possessed ample knowledge, skill, experience, and training in forensic serology to be qualified as an expert. He was educated in England, had spent fourteen years working at the Serological Research Institute in California, and had additional experience working for the Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory in London. Moreover, his opinions were based on his personal testing of the blood samples provided to him. The third assignment of error is overruled.
In his fourth assignment of error, Wogenstahl argues that his convictions for aggravated burglary, kidnapping, and aggravated murder are manifestly against the weight of the evidence adduced at trial. In particular, Wogenstahl would have this court apply a stricter standard of review where, as here, the prosecution has relied strongly on circumstantial evidence to meet its burden of...
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