State v. McFarland

• Decision Date: 18 June 2020
• Docket Number: No. 2018-1116,2018-1116
• Citation: 164 N.E.3d 316,162 Ohio St.3d 36
• Parties: The STATE of Ohio, Appellee, v. MCFARLAND, Appellant.
• Court: Ohio Supreme Court

162 Ohio St.3d 36

164 N.E.3d 316

The STATE of Ohio, Appellee,

v.MCFARLAND, Appellant.

No. 2018-1116

Supreme Court of Ohio.

Submitted December 10, 2019

Decided June 18, 2020

Michael C. O'Malley, Cuyahoga County Prosecuting Attorney, and Daniel T. Van and Callista Plemel, Assistant Prosecuting Attorneys, for appellee.

Mark A. Stanton, Cuyahoga County Public Defender, and Jeffrey M. Gamso and Paul Kuzmins, Assistant Public Defenders, for appellant.

Kennedy, J. {¶ 1} In this discretionary appeal from a judgment of the Eighth District Court of Appeals, we are asked to determine whether there was sufficient evidence to support the convictions of appellant, Sheila McFarland, on charges relating to the murder of Robert Williams. The Eighth District held that there was sufficient evidence to support the convictions. We agree and therefore affirm the judgment of the appellate court.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

{¶ 2} Robert Williams was gunned down in the hallway outside his apartment on November 14, 2015. McFarland did not pull the trigger and was not at the scene of the murder. The issue in this case is whether there was sufficient evidence produced at trial to support the jury's verdicts that McFarland had conspired to murder Williams and had been complicit in the acts leading to his death.

{¶ 3} There is no dispute as to why Williams was killed and who killed him. Williams was a drug dealer whose cooperation with police had led to the arrest and jailing of his supplier, Eddie "Mann" Brownlee. McFarland was Brownlee's girlfriend, and she, too, had been arrested on drug charges due to Williams's cooperation with police. Ryan Motley, an associate of Brownlee, killed Williams, with encouragement from Brownlee to, at the very least, harm Williams. This case is about McFarland's involvement in the murder.

The arrest of Brownlee and McFarland

{¶ 4} Williams was 64 years old at the time of his death and was living in Euclid with his girlfriend, Korri Henderson, in the Indian Hills Senior Community Apartments. He also sold drugs there. After police caught Williams drug dealing in and around the Indian Hills complex, they searched his apartment and recovered crack cocaine. They arrested both Williams and Henderson; the pair then agreed to become confidential informants against their supplier, Brownlee.

{¶ 5} Police used Williams to conduct three controlled drug buys from Brownlee. In two of those buys, Brownlee handled the transaction with Williams. In the third, the purchase was made from McFarland. Police arrested Brownlee and McFarland directly after the third transaction. Both were taken to the Euclid Police Department; McFarland was released, but Brownlee was kept in jail. It was October 25, 2015.

Calls from jail

{¶ 6} Brownlee and McFarland almost immediately suspected that it was Williams who was responsible for their arrests. Brownlee called McFarland numerous times from jail; those calls were recorded, and portions were later played to the jury. Brownlee called his own cell phone, which McFarland possessed. On Brownlee's first call to McFarland from jail, on October 25, 2015, McFarland suggested to Brownlee that it was Williams who had set him up, and Brownlee said that he was going to "get him." Motley, the eventual triggerman, was with McFarland when Brownlee called, and he also talked to Brownlee on that call. Brownlee told Motley, "I need you to handle this. * * * Get Rob." On that same call, Brownlee asked McFarland what had happened to his "hammer," in other words, his gun. She reported that Motley had retrieved it from the hotel room that she and Brownlee had been staying in and had then given it to Brownlee's brother, Chris. Motley testified that he got the gun back from Chris within two days of giving it to him and that that gun was the murder weapon.

{¶ 7} On subsequent calls from jail, Brownlee, incensed about his predicament, discussed his suspicions about Williams and Henderson working with police and McFarland agreed. He told McFarland that he was going to "beat [Williams's] ass," that he was going to "get him," and that Williams was not going to get away with what he had done. He asked McFarland whether Motley knew that Williams had been the informant. McFarland had talked to Motley about it, and McFarland reported to Brownlee that Motley said that Williams would "have to be handled." McFarland reported that many of their associates thought it was Williams who had informed on Brownlee and that "something got to be done." On another call, McFarland reported that she had talked to Williams and Henderson and they had denied setting up Brownlee, but McFarland said she knew the couple had been involved by the way they were acting. During a call just before Brownlee was released, when the subject of Williams came up, McFarland urged Brownlee not to talk about it, saying, "You never know about this phone."

McFarland's activities while Brownlee was jailed

{¶ 8} McFarland maintained some contact with Williams and Henderson even after her arrest. On October 27, 2015, McFarland called Henderson from Brownlee's cell phone and left two messages in which she accused Henderson and Williams of working with detectives and being snitches. But she also met with Williams and Henderson and got a ride from them to the county jail to add money to Brownlee's commissary account.

{¶ 9} With Brownlee in jail, McFarland sought help from Motley; she suggested that they sell drugs together to raise money to post Brownlee's bond. McFarland saw Motley every day while Brownlee was in jail, and together they raised money for Brownlee by selling drugs.

{¶ 10} Motley later testified at McFarland's trial; although he was the state's witness, the state confronted him at points with prior testimony and with a previous written statement he had prepared about the events concerning Williams's death. Motley testified that McFarland would vent to him about Brownlee being in jail. In discussions about the informants, McFarland told Motley that "they" needed to be "f[—-]ed up." And she communicated with Motley about the gun that would become the murder weapon.

Events after Brownlee's release

{¶ 11} On November 10, 2015, Brownlee was released from county jail. He and McFarland almost immediately went back to selling drugs together. On or around November 12, Brownlee and McFarland delivered crack to one of Brownlee's customers, Dwayne Jackson. Jackson testified that McFarland told him, "Watch out for Rob, they're snitching."

{¶ 12} Sometime between Brownlee's release from jail on November 10 and Williams's murder on November 14, Brownlee and Motley met in a hotel room in Willoughby and discussed what to do about Williams; McFarland was also in the hotel room. Motley testified that Brownlee told him to "go rough the dude up, beat him up" and that Brownlee offered to pay Motley's accomplices.

{¶ 13} Henderson testified at McFarland's trial. She stated that the night before the murder, Williams received a threatening call from Brownlee saying that he was out of jail and would be coming for him and that Henderson and Williams were going to see their graves. According to Henderson, other threatening calls followed. A truck appeared at Williams's apartment complex that evening, and four people got out and started staring up at Williams's apartment window, where he was standing. Henderson called police to the apartment and filed a police report. After the police left, Henderson called a friend who also lived in the complex and she and Williams went there to stay until morning.

{¶ 14} In the early hours of November 14, while at the friend's apartment, Henderson got a call from McFarland. Henderson testified that the call came between 4:00 and 5:00 a.m., but telephone records revealed that no calls had come from Brownlee's phone after 3:11 a.m. Henderson told McFarland that she and Williams had been getting threatening calls, and McFarland laughed it off. When Henderson told McFarland that the calls had come from Brownlee, McFarland denied Brownlee had made the calls and claimed she had been with him all night. Henderson testified:

When she called, she just asked, she was like, How you-all doing? And I was like, What you mean? I'm like, How do you think we're doing? We've been getting threatening calls all night. And she was like, What you mean? And I was like, Mann [Brownlee's nickname] been calling Rob phone threatening us. And she was like saying what and whatever, and I was like talking about we going to die and he out of jail now, he coming to see us, whatever, whatever. And she was like, You sure that was Mann? And I said, Yeah, it was his phone. I said, It came from you-all phone. And she was like, He ain't made no calls like that. But she was like, I've been with him the whole time. And I said, Well, they came from you-all phone unless somebody else had you-all phone.

{¶ 15} Henderson testified that McFarland said she had to end the call because Brownlee was coming. After that call, Henderson and Williams returned to their own apartment. Henderson testified that they did not sleep much and that at around 10:00 a.m., Williams went out to take a walk down the hallway.

The shooting

{¶ 16} Williams was shot as he walked down the hallway outside his apartment. Motley was the shooter. He had two other people with him, his brother Raymond and another acquaintance, Rahkee Young. All three snuck into the apartment complex and put on masks and gloves after they got inside. Motley testified that he had placed tape over the door peepholes of the apartments near Williams's apartment (although DNA tests revealed his brother's DNA on the tape) so that those neighbors could not see what was going on in the hallway. The three hid in the stairwell at the end of the hall behind a door. Surveillance video shows that when Williams left his apartment and was walking down the hallway, Motley and Young emerged from behind the door and approached Williams. Williams stopped and turned,...