State v. Powers
| Decision Date | 06 January 2003 |
| Citation | 101 S.W.3d 383 |
| Parties | STATE of Tennessee v. Gerald POWERS. |
| Court | Tennessee Supreme Court |
W. Mark Ward, Tony N. Brayton, and Garland Ergüden, Memphis, Tennessee, for the appellant, Gerald Powers.
Paul G. Summers, Attorney General and Reporter; Michael E. Moore, Solicitor General; and Alice B. Lustre, Assistant Attorney General, Nashville, Tennessee, for the appellee, State of Tennessee.
JANICE M. HOLDER, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which FRANK F. DROWOTA, III, C.J., and E. RILEY ANDERSON, JJ., joined.
A Shelby County jury convicted the defendant, Gerald Powers, of first degree felony murder and aggravated robbery. He was sentenced to death for the felony murder charge and to a consecutive thirty-year prison sentence for the aggravated robbery charge. The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and death sentence for the felony murder but reduced Powers' sentence for the aggravated robbery to twenty years. Thereafter, the case was automatically docketed in this Court pursuant to Tennessee Code Annotated section 39-13-206(a)(1) (1997). We entered an order designating the following issues for oral argument:1 1) whether allowing Powers' wife to testify violated the confidential marital communications privilege in Tennessee Code Annotated section 24-1-201(b) (Supp.1998); 2) whether the trial court erred in excluding evidence and restricting cross-examination indicating that other persons might have had the motive and opportunity to kill the victim; 3) whether the deposition of Margaret York was admissible; 4) whether the evidence was sufficient to establish beyond a reasonable doubt the aggravating circumstance in Tennessee Code Annotated section 39-13-204(i)(6) (Supp. 1996); 5) whether the facts underlying Powers' prior violent felony convictions were admissible; 6) whether the trial court erred in not allowing the defense to attack the character of the victim at the sentencing hearing; and 7) whether the sentence of death is disproportionate, and all other issues mandated by Tennessee Code Annotated section 39-13-206(c)(1) (1997). Having carefully reviewed these issues and the issue of identification testimony raised by Powers, we find no merit to his arguments. Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeals.
On April 18, 1996, the victim, Shannon Sanderson, spent the evening gambling at Sam's Town Hotel and Gambling Hall in Tunica, Mississippi. She originally planned to spend her evening at the casino with her husband, Robert Sanderson, to celebrate his birthday. However, an argument occurred between the couple. After leaving her children with their paternal grandparents at approximately 6:30 p.m., Mrs. Sanderson departed for Tunica alone.
Shannon Sanderson played blackjack most of the night and won $5,000. She cashed in her chips shortly after 3:00 a.m. on April 19, 1996, receiving her winnings in one-hundred dollar bills. She was then escorted to her car by a Sam's Town security officer and began the fifty-six mile drive back to Memphis to pick up her children.
At around 4:45 a.m., Shannon Sanderson's former father-in-law, Edward Holland, awoke to the sound of barking dogs. He looked outside and saw Mrs. Sanderson bending over beside her car. He heard her say, "Don't-don't" and thought she was talking to her husband. By the time Mr. Holland dressed and went outside, Mrs. Sanderson was gone, but her car remained in the driveway.
At the same time, the Hollands' next-door neighbors, William and Anna Dillon, were also awakened by the barking. Mr. Dillon looked out his window and saw a person wearing a red baseball cap crouched in the Hollands' driveway near Mrs. Sanderson's car. Mrs. Dillon heard a scream and a thud. When she looked out her living room window, she saw a car parked at the curb with its dome light on. She saw a person behind the steering wheel of the car lean over the seat and push something down in the back. The person then drove away at a high rate of speed.
Another neighbor, Johnnie Rose, was returning from work around 4:30 a.m. when he saw Mrs. Sanderson's car drive by his house. A second vehicle followed her. The vehicle was dark-colored and shaped like a Chevrolet Beretta. He watched the second car turn down his street, turn around in a driveway, and park in front of the Hollands' house. When he was later shown a photograph of the maroon Beretta owned by Powers' wife, he stated that the car in the photograph "looked like" the car he had seen following Mrs. Sanderson.
At approximately 6:40 a.m. on April 19, 1996, Alonzo Jeans, a school bus driver, was heading north on Highway 301 near Eudora, Mississippi. He saw a white male backing into the driveway of an abandoned house. In the ten years he had been driving this bus route, he had never seen anyone coming from or going to that house. Mr. Jeans was later shown a photograph of the maroon Beretta owned by Powers' wife. He confirmed that the car in the photograph was the one he had seen in the driveway.
At approximately 9:30 a.m. on April 19, 1996, Powers returned to his Clarksdale, Mississippi home in his wife's maroon Beretta, after a night of gambling in Tunica. He was wearing the same yellow shirt, blue jeans, red baseball cap, blue denim jacket, and white tennis shoes that he had worn the night before. According to his wife, Sharon Powers, he was in a good mood, but he was also "kind of wired up." He appeared nervous and kept looking out the blinds. Powers told his wife that he had won a large amount of money at the casino and gave her a one-hundred dollar bill from the stack he had in his wallet. Mrs. Powers also noticed that her husband had washed her car and had cleaned and vacuumed its interior.
Mrs. Powers became suspicious and accused her husband of having an affair. After repeated questioning, Powers confessed to kidnapping, robbing, and killing a woman he had seen playing blackjack at Sam's Town the night before. He described in specific detail how he watched the woman play blackjack from the second floor balcony of the casino, followed her home, and abducted her from her driveway. He drove her approximately forty miles to an abandoned house in Mississippi, stopping at one point to move her from the back seat of the car to the trunk. He then stole her jewelry as well as $5,000 in cash. After killing the woman, he threw her purse and his gun into the river behind the site where the Splash Casino had been located. Powers also told his wife that a school bus driver may have seen him at the abandoned house and that a neighbor may have seen him take Mrs. Sanderson from her driveway. He did not believe that either person could identify him.
That afternoon, Powers visited his neighbor, Margaret York, and asked her to provide him with an alibi for the night of April 18, 1996. Laughing, Ms. York agreed to say that he had been with her as long as he "didn't kill anybody." According to Ms. York, Powers' expression did not change when she made this remark, and he left shortly thereafter.
The next evening, Powers and his wife saw a television news report of the victim's abduction. The report described the perpetrator as a man wearing a red baseball cap and driving a maroon Beretta. After hearing the report, Powers packed a bag and left home in his wife's car. Before leaving, he told his wife to tell anyone who asked that he was visiting his mother in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He also told his wife that there was some money buried in the backyard. Soon after he left, Mrs. Powers called the police and told them that her husband may have been involved in Mrs. Sanderson's abduction. However, she did not inform the authorities about his confession.
Powers returned a week later. He retrieved some of the money he had buried and told his wife where he had hidden Mrs. Sanderson's jewelry. As his wife watched, he wrote a note stating that he was leaving because he was not happy with his marriage.
On May 9, 1996, the badly decomposed body of Shannon Sanderson was discovered in a storage room at the back of the abandoned house on Highway 301 in Eudora, Mississippi. The body was clad in the same clothing Mrs. Sanderson had been wearing the night she disappeared. Her jewelry was missing. An autopsy disclosed that Mrs. Sanderson had died from a single gunshot wound to the right side of the head. An examination of the skull revealed that she had also suffered at least one major blow to her face that had knocked out her upper right front tooth, chipped another tooth, and fractured her jaw and other facial bones.
On May 22, 1996, Powers was stopped by an Immigration and Naturalization Services ("INS") agent in Hebronville, Texas, after making a suspicious turn in an apparent attempt to avoid a checkpoint. When ordered to step out of the vehicle, Powers pulled a knife on the agent. The agent was able to subdue Powers. Upon arrest, the agent discovered fourteen one-hundred dollar bills in Powers' pockets. Powers was on parole for a prior offense at the time of his arrest.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI") secured the vehicle at the checkpoint and learned that Sharon Powers was its registered owner. With Mrs. Powers' consent, the FBI searched the Beretta and found a black wool fiber in the back seat that was consistent with the victim's clothing. Subsequently, the FBI interviewed Mrs. Powers. She eventually informed investigators of her husband's confession and led them to the B & W Lounge where Mrs. Sanderson's jewelry was recovered. The jewelry was wrapped in pink plastic wrap that matched wrap from Powers' home. Officers also searched the Splash Casino site, but they did not find Mrs. Sanderson's purse or the murder weapon.
The State also introduced video clips chronologically compiled from Sam's Town surveillance...
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Using traditional privileges
...if valuable, truthful testimony is to be excluded. But see State v. Talarico , 661 N.W.2d 11, 2003 SD 41 (2003) and State v. Powers , 101 S.W.3d 383 (Tenn. 2003). State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company v. Elite Health Centers, Inc. , 399 F.Supp.3d 708 (United States District Court, ......
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Using Traditional Privileges
...if valuable, truthful testimony is to be excluded. But see State v. Talarico , 661 N.W.2d 11, 2003 SD 41 (2003) and State v. Powers , 101 S.W.3d 383 (Tenn. 2003). 79 Idaho: Idaho Code §9-203(7); Minnesota: Minnesota Statutes §595.02(1)(i); Nevada: In re Agosto , 553 F.Supp 1298 (D. Nev. 198......