State v. McKinney

• Decision Date: 26 March 2002
• Docket Number: No. W1999-00844-SC-DDT-DD.,W1999-00844-SC-DDT-DD.
• Citation: 74 S.W.3d 291
• Parties: STATE of Tennessee v. Timothy McKINNEY.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

74 S.W.3d 291

STATE of Tennessee v. Timothy McKINNEY.

No. W1999-00844-SC-DDT-DD.

Supreme Court of Tennessee, at Jackson.

March 26, 2002.

William Gosnell, C. Michael Robbins, and William D. Massey, Memphis, Tennessee, for appellant, Timothy McKinney.

Paul G. Summers, Attorney General and Reporter; Michael E. Moore, Solicitor General; Gordon W. Smith, Associate Solicitor General; William L. Gibbons, District Attorney General; Phillip Gerald Harris and David Henry, Assistant District Attorneys General, for appellee, State of Tennessee.

OPINION

E. RILEY ANDERSON, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which FRANK F. DROWOTA, III, C.J., and JANICE M. HOLDER and WILLIAM M. BARKER, JJ., joined.

The defendant, Timothy McKinney, was convicted of premeditated first degree murder and attempted second degree murder. The jury imposed a death sentence for the first degree murder after finding that evidence of an aggravating circumstance, i.e., the defendant was previously convicted of a felony whose statutory elements involved the use of violence to the person, outweighed evidence of mitigating circumstances beyond a reasonable doubt. The trial judge imposed a sentence of twelve (12) years for the attempted second degree murder, to run consecutively to the death sentence.

After the Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the convictions and the sentences, the case was automatically docketed in this Court. We entered an order specifying six issues for oral argument,¹ and we now hold as follows: (1) the trial court did not commit error by denying the defendant's motion to introduce expert testimony on the issue of eyewitness identifications; (2) the jury's verdict form was sufficiently clear to demonstrate that the jury found the prior violent felony aggravating circumstance relied upon by the prosecution; (3) the evidence was sufficient to sustain the prior violent felony aggravating circumstance found by the jury; (4) the trial court's refusal to allow defense counsel to refer to evidence from the guilt phase of the trial during his closing argument in the sentencing phase of the trial did not affect the jury's determination to the prejudice of the defendant and was harmless error; (5) the trial court did not commit error in admitting victim impact evidence during the sentencing phase; and (6) the sentence of death was neither arbitrary nor disproportionate. We also conclude that the evidence was sufficient to support the jury's findings that the prior violent felony aggravating circumstance had been established beyond a reasonable doubt and that it outweighed evidence of mitigating factors beyond a reasonable doubt. Finally, we agree with the Court of Criminal Appeals' conclusions with respect to the remaining issues, the relevant portions of which are included in the appendix to this opinion. Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeals.

BACKGROUND

Guilt Phase

The evidence in the guilt phase of the trial of Timothy McKinney for premeditated first degree murder and attempted second degree murder is summarized as follows:

On the night of December 25, 1997, the victims, Donald Williams and Frank Lee, were working as security guards for Crumpy's, a nightclub in Memphis, Tennessee. Both Williams and Lee were off-duty Memphis police officers.

The defendant, Timothy McKinney, was attending a party at the nightclub. Later that night, the defendant, who was wearing a black derby, multi-colored sweater, gold vest, dark pants, and gold shoes, left the club and became upset when he could not find his car in the parking lot. Although Williams and Lee assured him that his car was in the parking lot, the defendant screamed, "My car's been stolen somebody's going to pay for it, or I'm going to come back and shoot up the club or blow it up." Williams urged the defendant to calm down and stop making threats. The defendant replied that "he didn't care about going to jail" because he had just finished serving twenty-three months.

Shortly thereafter, a friend of the defendant's, Yarron Young, came out of the club and found the defendant's car in the parking lot. While Young was outside, Lee separated the defendant and Williams. Young testified that the defendant was speaking loudly and was drunk, and that he heard the defendant say he would "be back." Another witness, Stephon Spencer, talked to the defendant near his car. The defendant told Spencer that "he had gotten into it with a security guard" and that the guard had hit him. Spencer did not see any sign that the defendant had been injured.

The defendant then drove out of the parking lot, but later returned and tried to re-enter the club. Lee told the defendant that he was not permitted back into the club and offered to go inside and find his friends. The defendant refused the offer and instead waited outside the club beneath a light pole. Lee testified that the defendant "just sat there and looked at us all night." Williams called the Memphis Police Department and requested that a patrol car investigate. Although the defendant eventually left, he returned yet again and parked his car in the lot.

Memphis police officer Ronald Marshall arrived at the scene on an unrelated matter, and Williams spoke to him about the defendant. When McKinney again tried to enter the club, Officer Marshall stopped him, placed him in a patrol car, and asked him why he had returned to the club. The defendant told Marshall that he "did not want any trouble." Marshall took the defendant's driver's license and gave it to Williams, who wrote down the defendant's name, date of birth, and address. When Williams said that he did not want an arrest to be made, Marshall told the defendant to leave the scene, and he complied.

Joyce Jeltz testified that later, around 2:30 or 3:00 a.m. on the morning of December 26, she saw a man running toward Williams and Lee with a gun against his right leg, and she saw the man shoot Williams "point blank in the back of his head." Jeltz said that the man was wearing brown pants and an unbuttoned vest. She later selected two men from a photographic array whom she believed could have been the shooter; one of the men was the defendant.

Lee testified that he heard the gunshot, saw Williams on the ground, and then saw the defendant "eye to eye" from a distance of five or six feet in the well-lighted area. Although the defendant had a gold bandana over the lower part of his face, he still wore the multi-colored sweater and dark pants. Lee pursued the defendant and exchanged gunshots with him before the defendant drove from the scene in the same vehicle he had been using throughout the evening. Lee later identified the defendant from a photographic array, specifically pointing to his "lazy" or "droopy" eyes, and he testified that he had "no doubt" that the defendant was the shooter and the man he had chased from the scene.

Williams was given CPR at the scene and then transported to the hospital. The gunshot to his neck had transected his spine, resulting in paralysis and an inability to breathe. Williams was placed on an artificial ventilator and contracted pneumonia and other infections. He died on January 29, 1998.

After the shooting, on December 26, 1997, the defendant went to Stephon Spencer's house and told him, "They said I shot a police officer." Thereafter the defendant telephoned his parents and two lawyers, but then left Spencer's home. On December 27, 1997, police officers found the defendant at a Memphis apartment. Later that day, officers found the defendant's hat, sweater, vest, and vehicle license plate inside his girlfriend's house. Ballistics tests later revealed particles of gunshot residue on the defendant's vest.

Although the defendant did not introduce any evidence at trial, he challenged the identification testimony of Lee and Jeltz² and attempted to develop an alibi defense. The jury, however, convicted the defendant of the first degree premeditated murder of Donald Williams and the attempted second degree murder of Frank Lee.

Sentencing Phase

After the conviction of McKinney for the premeditated first degree murder of Donald Williams, the trial moved into the sentencing phase for the offense. In sentencing, the State relied upon the aggravating circumstance in Tenn.Code Ann. § 39-13-204(i)(2) (1997), i.e., that the defendant had a prior conviction for a felony whose statutory elements involved the use of violence to a person. The State introduced evidence to show that the defendant had pled guilty to aggravated robbery on May 1, 1994 in Memphis, Tennessee.

The offense of aggravated robbery, in pertinent part, is the intentional or knowing theft of property from the person of another by violence or putting the person in fear, accomplished with a deadly weapon or by display of any article used or fashioned to lead the victim to reasonably believe it to be a deadly weapon. See Tenn.Code Ann. § 39-13-402(a) (1997). The indictment to which the defendant pled guilty had charged that the defendant and a co-defendant "violently" robbed the victim.

In addition to evidence of the prior violent felony aggravating circumstance, the State presented victim impact evidence. First, the victim's widow, Sharon Williams, testified that the personal and financial loss suffered by her and her two daughters had been "devastating." The children were eight and ten years of age when the victim was killed.

Memphis police officer Michael J. Clark then testified about the victim's career as a police officer from 1982 until his death. Clark said that Williams spent most of his career in uniform patrol and had served as interim vice-president of the Memphis Police Association. Clark also said that Williams was a member of the association's negotiating teams, and he described Williams as a "mediator," rather than a "big, let's lock `em up, policeman.'" Clark told the jury that Williams had worked to obtain a school security assignment, which...