State v. Langley

• Decision Date: 14 April 1998
• Citation: 711 So.2d 651
• Parties: 95-1489 La
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court

Page 651

711 So.2d 651

95-1489 La. 4/14/98

STATE of Louisiana v.Ricky Joseph LANGLEY.

No. 95-KA-1489.

Supreme Court of Louisiana.

April 14, 1998.

Order Granting Rehearing in Part

June 19, 1998.

Clive Adrian Stafford Smith, R. Neal Walker, New Orleans, for Applicant.

Richard P. Ieyoub, Atty. Gen., Robert R. Bryant, Dist. Atty., Paul P. Reggie, Vernon E. McGuire, III, Lake Charles, for Respondent.

[95-1489 La. 1]CALOGERO, Chief Justice.^*

On July 9, 1994 a jury in the 19 th Judicial District Court East Baton Rouge Parish, convicted the defendant, Ricky Joseph Langley, of first degree murder for strangling six-year-old Jeremy Guillory.The jury determined Langley should be sentenced to death, and he was so sentenced by the District Judge, the Honorable Fred Godwin.On appeal to this court, the defendant made numerous arguments based on 24 assignments of error in seeking to have the conviction and sentence overturned.¹Because we find no reversible error in any assignment, we affirm the conviction and the death sentence.

FACTS

According to the defendant's confession, on February 7, 1992, six-year-old Jeremy Guillory came to the door of the house where the defendant lived as a tenant of the Lawrence family.Jeremy was looking for the Lawrence children, Joy and Joey, who had gone with their parents to visit relatives.The defendant told Jeremy that the Lawrence children were not at home and asked Jeremy if he wanted to come inside.Jeremy said that he did not, but asked when the other children would be back.The defendant invited Jeremy in a second time and [95-1489 La. 2] Jeremy decided to go inside to wait.He walked in the house, went upstairs to Joy's room and sat down on the floor and started playing.Langley followed Jeremy up the stairs, grabbed him around the neck from behind and strangled him as he kicked and struggled.When Jeremy seemed dead, the defendant took him into the defendant's bedroom and placed him on the bed.He then went up and down the stairs several times.He confessed that he would sit and pet the child's hair.²

On one of his trips up the stairs, the defendant thought he heard a noise coming from Jeremy.He took some strong line and wrapped it around Jeremy's neck a few times, pulled it as tight as he could, and then tied it.Because noises still seemed to be coming from Jeremy's body, the defendant stuffed a dirty sock in the dead boy's mouth.The defendant then placed the dead boy in his bedroom closet.

The victim's mother, Lorilei Guillory, called for her son who was outside playing with his BB gun, and received no response.She went to the Lawrence house, where her son often played.Langley answered the door.Ms. Guillory asked Langley if he had seen her son, and he told her no.She left to search for her son, but later returned to the Lawrence house to call 911 to report her son missing.A short time later Langley also made a 911 call and pretended to help Ms. Guillory search for her child.Deputies Thomas Pitre and Ham Reid responded to the 911 call, and with the help of the volunteer fire department and some neighbors, started to search the woods in the area.Later a command center was set up across from the Lawrence residence.A search was conducted throughout the weekend, and when Jeremy was not found by Monday the FBI became involved.³

On Monday, the police received information from Elizabeth Clark that there was a convicted child molester named Ricky Langley whose last address was in the area.Clark is a Louisiana parole agent who was attempting to keep track of the defendant, a Georgia parole violator.The police spoke with Ms. Guillory and matched her description of the man she saw [95-1489 La. 3] at the Lawrence house to Ricky Langley.The FBI discovered an outstanding Georgia parole violation warrant for the defendant.The police obtained a facsimile of the warrant and went to the Fuel Stop 36 where the defendant was working.According to Detective Donald "Lucky" DeLouch, Assistant Chief of Detectives of the Sheriff's Office in Lake Charles, he went to the truck stop with FBI agents Don Dixon and Neal Edwards.When they arrived at the truck stop they spoke with the manager who told them that Langley was working out back on a tractor.Langley was given his Miranda rights and arrested for the parole violation.While Detective DeLouch went inside to get his work records and his coat, Agent Dixon took the defendant to the car.

While waiting in the car, Agent Dixon gave the defendant his Miranda rights again and told him that he was a suspect in the disappearance of Jeremy Guillory.The defendant said that he had heard about it in the news.The agent asked defendant to "look him in the eye" and tell him if he knew anything about the disappearance.The defendant dropped his head and did not answer.Agent Dixon then asked Langley if he had killed Jeremy Guillory and the defendant said that he did it.When Agent Dixon asked where the body was, Langley said that it was in his bedroom closet.Then, without prompting, the defendant explained when and how the murder occurred.When Detective DeLouch came outside, the defendant agreed to sign a consent to search form for his room.

The group went to the Lawrence house.Once there, the officers explained the defendant's rights a third time and presented forms for showing waiver of rights and permission for search and seizure, which Langley signed.In addition, the police obtained consent to search from Ms. Lawrence because it was her home.Finally, the police asked Langley if he would allow them to videotape him as he walked them through the events and showed them where the body was located, and he agreed.After the defendant walked the police through the residence and showed them the body, he was taken to the police station, advised of his Miranda rights a fourth time, and signed another waiver of rights form.He subsequently gave another videotaped confession.

On February 20, 1992, a Calcasieu Parish Grand Jury indicted Langley for first degree murder.He was arraigned on March 2, 1992, at which time he pled not guilty and not guilty [95-1489 La. 4] by reason of insanity.Due to pre-trial publicity in Calcasieu Parish, this Court ordered venue changed to East Baton Rouge Parish.The case went to trial on June 27, 1994, and on July 9, 1994, the defendant was found guilty of the first degree murder of a person under the age of 12 years.

Jurors rejected the defense of insanity which emerged through the testimony of Dr. Paul Ware, a well-known psychiatrist in Shreveport and an expert in pedophilia and other deviant sexual behavior.Dr. Ware had interviewed the defendant in April of 1994, approximately two years after the crime, and recorded the defendant's statements that he killed Jeremy in the deluded belief that the victim was Oscar Lee Langley, the defendant's dead brother whom he had never known.(Oscar Lee had died with his sister in an automobile accident which also led to a lengthy hospital convalescence of his mother.During her convalescence, she became pregnant with the defendant, though confined in a full body cast at the time.)The defendant told Dr. Ware that Oscar Lee's hallucinatory presence had plagued him throughout his life, and in the days before the murder had urged him to "go ahead and have Jeremy."The defendant said that on February 7, 1992, he had determined to exorcize the demon of Oscar Lee, only to discover that he had killed Jeremy instead.At the completion of the penalty phase, the defendant received the death penalty, and on September 26, 1994he was formally sentenced to death by lethal injection.

DISCUSSION

ASSIGNMENT OF ERRORNO. 1: The Exclusion of Mitigation Evidence in the Penalty Phase; and

ASSIGNMENT OF ERRORNO. 12: The Exclusion of Evidence in the Guilt Phase

Under his first assignment of error, the defendant makes several arguments arising from trial court's limiting of his right to present some mitigating evidence in the penalty phase.In his twelfth assignment of error, he alleges that one of items--a videotaped interview--was also erroneously excluded from the trial of his guilt.(Assignment of ErrorNo. 12 is treated at Part "G" under these assignments of error.)

A.The "Guilty Plea" Letter

Langley first argues that in the penalty phase the trial court erred by prohibiting him from presenting evidence of his supposed desire to plead guilty unconditionally, communicated [95-1489 La. 5] in a letter from defense counsel to the District Attorney's office.In the letter, defense counsel states that, "Mr. Langley is prepared to accept any offer of settlement short of the death penalty that you see fit to make."Yet in the next paragraph, he states that "Mr. Langley is himself offering a plea of guilty to first degree murder regardless of your agreement.However, as you know, I do not believe that the trial judge is currently permitted to go along with the offer of a plea without your consent."Defense counsel acknowledged that the law prohibited Langley from an unconditional plea of guilty to capital murder, but the defense argued that the pre-trial offer should come before the jury at the sentencing stage as a demonstration of remorse.

B.An Alleged Flaw in the Capital Sentencing Scheme

At the time of the defendant's trial, La.C.Cr.P. art. 557 prohibited a defendant in a capital case from entering an unqualified plea of guilty in the absence of a plea agreement from the district attorney that the State would not seek the death penalty.⁴The defense asserts that this "flaw" in the capital sentencing scheme denied Langley the right to plead guilty and the right to present evidence of remorse to the jury.

This Court has held that there was "no prejudice in the statutory scheme which requires that a plea of not guilty be entered in a capital case."State v. Watson, 423 So.2d 1130, 1134(La.1982).In Watson, the defense argued that the trial court erred by not allowing him...