State v. Lee

• Citation: 976 So.2d 109
• Decision Date: 16 January 2008
• Docket Number: No. 2005-KA-2098.,2005-KA-2098.
• Parties: STATE of Louisiana v. Derrick Todd LEE.
• Court: Supreme Court of Louisiana

976 So.2d 109

STATE of Louisiana v. Derrick Todd LEE.

No. 2005-KA-2098.

Supreme Court of Louisiana.

January 16, 2008.

Rehearing Denied March 7, 2008.

Capital Appeals Project, Jelpi Pierre Picou, Jr., Marcia Adele Widder, for Appellant.

Charles C. Foti, Jr., Attorney General, Douglas P. Moreau, District Attorney, John Warren Sinquefield, Monisa L. Thompson, Dana J. Cummings, Assistant District Attorneys, for Appellee.

KNOLL, Justice.

On June 25, 2003, an East Baton Rouge Parish grand jury indicted defendant, Derrick Todd Lee, with the May 31, 2002, first-degree murder of Charlotte Murray Pace, a violation of LA.REV.STAT. ANN. § 14:30. Defendant's jury trial commenced on September 13, 2004, and the presentation of evidence ended on October 12, 2004. After hearing closing arguments at the conclusion of the guilt phase, receiving the trial court's instructions, and deliberating defendant's guilt, the jury returned a unanimous verdict of guilty of first-degree murder. At the conclusion of the penalty phase, the jury unanimously returned a verdict of death, finding the defendant committed the aggravated rape of the victim. The trial court sentenced defendant to death in accordance with the jury verdict and denied defendant's motion for new trial on December 10, 2004.

This is a direct appeal under LA. CONST. ANN. art. V, § 5(D) by the defendant, Derrick Todd Lee. Defendant appeals his conviction and sentence raising 32 assignments of error. We will address the most significant of these errors in this opinion, and the remaining errors will be addressed in an unpublished appendix. After a thorough review of the law and the evidence, for the following reasons we affirm defendant's first-degree murder conviction and the imposition of the death sentence.

FACTS

The victim, Charlotte Murray Pace, was a pretty 22 year old who had just graduated from Louisiana State University (LSU) as one of the youngest recipients of a MBA degree. Her family and friends called her Murray. After graduating from LSU, she continued her graduate work with the LSU Alumni Association until her job in Atlanta at the firm of Deloit and Touche would begin later that summer.

On Friday, May 31, 2002, after leaving her graduate work, Pace washed her newly acquired 1999 BMW at approximately 11:52 a.m.¹ and then went to her Baton Rouge townhouse at 1211 Sharlo that she shared with Rebecca Yeager, a close friend for six years, to await Rebecca's scheduled 1 p.m. arrival. Pace and Rebecca planned to travel to Alexandria, Louisiana to attend the weekend wedding of Grace Crouch, a former roommate. When Rebecca arrived at 2:00 p.m., she found Pace's almost completely nude body lying on the floor between the bedroom door and the bed. She observed blood all over the room, on the furniture, and all over the floor; the bed was made, but the bedspread was blood-soaked. She later also found blood in the kitchen and in the hallway to the bedroom. She saw Pace had many small holes in her chest and stomach, and Pace's throat was cut open. Unable to find the townhouse's portable phone, Rebecca used her cell phone to call a 9-1-1 operator and then flagged down a passing police car.

In addition to the Baton Rouge City Crime Scene Unit, the Baton Rouge police, including Detectives Ike Vavasseur, Don Greene and Chris Johnson, called the Louisiana State Police Crime Lab (Crime Lab) to collect trace evidence² and to conduct serological techniques prior to moving Murray's body from the crime scene. The Crime Lab sent Julia D. Naylor, an expert in the field of forensic DNA analysis, to examine the crime scene. Her partner, Adam Becnel, accompanied her to the crime scene. Joining Naylor and Becnel at the crime scene were the East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner, Dr. Louis Cataldie, two members of the Coroner's office, Jason Doyle and Don Moreau, and three Baton Rouge crime scene technicians, David Fauntleroy, Darryl Busbin, and Charles Thompson. The police investigators found no evidence of a forced entry into the townhouse.

With the assistance of the crime scene investigators, Naylor took swabs from Pace's breasts and nipples, swabs from voided areas near the rib cage, a swab from her left buttock just below her vagina, and another swab on the decedent's left thigh. These samples were deemed important because a procedure referred to as "ALS" (Alternate Light Source)³ revealed the presence of biological stains, e.g., urine, feces, saliva, or semen, that might yield valuable DNA evidence. In addition to this evidence, Fauntleroy, one of the crime scene technicians, found a clothing iron in the bedroom and four pieces of plastic, two black and two blue; the iron was in close proximity to Pace's body.⁴ The base of the iron (the heating element) was blood-stained and the majority of the iron, including the handle and the cord, was missing. After the investigative team gathered the individual pieces of evidence and labeled each according to protocol, they submitted the specimens to the Baton Rouge City Police who logged them into evidence and sent them to the Crime Lab for scientific analysis.

After the crime scene was searched, the evidence secured, and bags were placed over Pace's hands, the Coroner's Office moved Pace's body to the morgue. At the morgue, Dr. Michael Cramer collected sexual assault kit evidence, taking swabbings from the vaginal and anal areas, as well as the breasts, and submitted the kit for scientific examination. Additionally, Dr Cramer removed the bags from Pace's hands and took fingernail clippings for future scientific analysis. Pace's tank top and bra, which were found loosened and pulled above her breasts, were also removed. After this evidence was bagged and labeled, Dr. Cramer presented the items to Pamela Faye Young, a Baton Rouge City police officer who works in the crime scene division. Officer Young logged the evidence into the evidence log book at the police office and secured the evidence. This additional evidence was then also sent to the Louisiana State Police Crime Lab for scientific analysis.

Dr. Cramer's autopsy report enumerated 81 different wounds to Pace's body and opined that the cause of death was exsanguination. He theorized that two patterns of stab wounds were present: one resembling lesions caused by a flat bladed screwdriver and the other resembling incised wounds from a knife. He also found Pace sustained blunt injuries to the head with a fractured skull and blunt trauma to the eyeballs, together with multiple bruises to the upper and lower extremities. The heart, the liver and the lungs were perforated three times each; there was also a stab wound to the left area of the eyeball that penetrated into the cranial cavity after fracturing the left frontal bone. In addition, there was an impressive wound at the top of the neck with transection of the cartilage and the esophagus accompanied with a severed left jugular vein.

Dr. Alfredo Suarez, an expert pathologist who reviewed Dr. Cramer's autopsy report and the accompanying photographs,⁵ told the jury there were a number of defensive wounds on Pace's arms, forearms, hands and wrists inflicted as she attempted to ward off her assailant. He agreed with Dr. Cramer's opinion that Pace died as the result of exsanguination.

On June 13, 2002, Naylor began her DNA analysis of the evidence she obtained from the crime scene and the fingernail clippings obtained during the autopsy. Although Naylor detected seminal fluid on the swabs from Pace's left buttock and the vaginal and cervical areas, she obtained her most complete DNA profile from the sample taken from the victim's left buttock. Naylor calculated the probability of a random match to the genetic profile of Pace's assailant was 1 in 3.6 quadrillion persons. Naylor recorded the result of her tests in the various DNA data banks maintained at the local, state, and national levels, but she failed to identify a consistent profile with any DNA profile already logged into the systems. Pace's rape and murder remained unsolved during this time.

At the time of Pace's rape and murder, there were other unsolved violent rapes and murders of women in the Baton Rouge and Lafayette areas that caused the police to further investigate these homicides. Indeed, some time later when the DNA analysts in the State Police Crime Lab compared notes on DNA samples recovered from several victims of these unsolved homicides, it showed that a single perpetrator had committed the unsolved homicides of these women. The perpetrator was thus deemed a serial killer. Because some of these homicides were used at defendant's trial to show identity, motive, plan, system, and intent, we will now set forth the facts of five of these homicides the State used at defendant's trial.

On September 24, 2001, eight months prior to Pace's death, Gina Wilson Green, an attractive, successful registered nurse 40 years of age, was found strangled and raped just three doors away from Murray's townhouse. No signs of forced entry were evident. John Colter, the lead detective from the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Office, opined that although Green's body was found in her bed, a struggle appeared to have begun in the hallway. He said that in the hallway there were large stains, later determined to be fecal matter, a clump of hair, and Green's earrings were separated a good distance on the floor; her shoes were found in different rooms. Crime scene personnel bagged the blouse Green was wearing, logged it into evidence, and submitted it to the Crime Lab for analysis.

Green's shorts, as well as her purse and cell phone, were missing. Through the assistance of Cingular Wireless, Green's cell phone provider, police officers recovered these items dumped behind a warehouse on Choctaw Street in Baton Rouge. In addition to those items, the police recovered a kitchen towel that appeared to come from Green's home.

In April 2002, Angela Ross, an expert in DNA analysis with the...