State v. Prater
| Decision Date | 07 March 2017 |
| Docket Number | No. 20130748,20130748 |
| Citation | 392 P.3d 398 |
| Parties | STATE of Utah, Appellee, v. Anthony James PRATER, Appellant. |
| Court | Utah Supreme Court |
Sean D. Reyes, Att'y Gen., Daniel W. Boyer, Asst. Solic. Gen., Salt Lake City, for appellee.
Joel J. Kittrell, Kristina H. Ruedas, Salt Lake City, for appellant.
INTRODUCTION
¶1 A jury convicted defendant Anthony James Prater of aggravated murder and obstructing justice, both first-degree felonies. The jury also convicted Prater on five counts of discharging a firearm from a vehicle, a third-degree felony. At trial, three witnesses testified that Prater confessed to the crime, and one witness testified that he was there when Prater pulled the trigger. Forensic evidence supported the eye-witness's trial testimony. The district court also admitted a letter Prater had authored that suggested he had committed the murder. The district court sentenced Prater to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Prater appeals his convictions, arguing that much of the witness testimony was inherently improbable and therefore the State did not present evidence sufficient to permit a reasonable jury to find him guilty on any of the counts.
¶2 We affirm Prater's convictions.
¶3 In the early morning of November 27, 2007, T.W. drove Vincent Samora to a 7-Eleven. When she parked, T.W. noticed a silver Jeep in the parking lot.
¶4 Ryan Sheppard, the Jeep's owner, sat in the driver's seat. Sheppard was accompanied by his friend Prater. Sheppard recognized Samora, who was sitting in T.W.'s car, and pointed him out to Prater. Prater had been searching for Samora for months. In 2005, one of Prater's colleagues, Christopher Archuletta, shot Samora in the stomach. Samora later identified Archuletta as the shooter to police and testified at Archuletta's preliminary hearing. The State anticipated calling Samora to testify at Archuletta's upcoming trial. Prater had been "waiting to get [Samora]" because of Samora's testimony.
¶5 After a few minutes in the parking lot, T.W. drove to Samora's house. The Jeep followed them. After T.W. parked on Samora's driveway, someone in the Jeep fired shots into T.W.'s car. At least five bullets struck the car; one of the bullets killed Samora. T.W. reported she saw two men in the Jeep.
¶6 After the shooting, Sheppard and Prater went to Donna Quintana's house. Prater lived with Quintana, who was his girlfriend at the time. Sheppard and his girlfriend, Sherilyn Valdez, also stayed at Quintana's house. Sheppard, Quintana, and Valdez later testified that upon hearing a local news channel report Samora's death, Prater celebrated by laughing, jumping up and down, and commenting that Samora was "sleeping with the fishes." Prater instructed Quintana to remove his belongings from the Jeep and clean the vehicle.
¶7 Soon after hearing the news of Samora's death, Prater left for his cousin's house with Sheppard and Quintana because he became nervous that Quintana's neighborhood was getting too "hot." Prater sent Quintana back to her neighborhood with specific instructions to retrieve his gun and throw it into the Jordan River.
¶8 The State charged Prater with aggravated murder, a first-degree felony, in violation of Utah Code section 76-5-202 ; obstructing justice, also a first-degree felony, in violation of Utah Code section 76-8-306 ; and discharging a firearm from a vehicle, near a highway, or in the direction of any person, building or vehicle, a third-degree felony, in violation of Utah Code section 76-10-508.
¶9 At trial, Sheppard identified Prater as the shooter. Sheppard testified that after he and Prater pulled out of the 7-Eleven parking lot, Prater said, "Follow [Samora], I will get out and smash him." Sheppard also testified that shortly after pulling up to Samora's house, Prater fired shots from the Jeep's window. Sheppard testified that Prater laughed when he saw the news that Samora had been killed. Sheppard recalled that Prater said "I knew I got him" and that Samora was "sleeping with the fishes."
¶10 Sheppard revealed that he had initially lied to police and denied any involvement in Samora's murder. Sheppard admitted that the State had offered him reduced charges if he agreed to testify against Prater. Sheppard also revealed a potential motive Sheppard would have had to harm Samora: Sheppard had previously dated a woman who—unbeknownst to Sheppard at the time—was married to Samora. Sheppard also testified that Samora had once thrown a retaliatory punch at him. Sheppard further testified that his current girlfriend, Valdez, had previously dated Samora.
¶11 Quintana testified that when Prater learned from the news that Samora had been killed, Prater celebrated by jumping up and down and exclaiming that Samora was now "sleeping with the fishes." Quintana testified that she cleaned the Jeep and retrieved Prater's items at his request. Quintana also testified that Prater told her where to locate the gun used to kill Samora and that, upon his request; she threw it into the Jordan River.
¶12 Quintana admitted that she "denied knowing anything whatsoever" about the shooting in her first interview with police. Quintana also testified that, in a second interview with police, she did not "tell them the truth about the gun" and that only "half" of what she said was truthful. Quintana admitted that at both the second interview and the preliminary hearing, she had been dishonest when she said, and then testified, that she had discarded a "package" because she knew she had thrown a gun into the river. On cross-examination, Quintana admitted she also lied at the preliminary hearing when she told the court that Prater had told her he was not involved in the shooting. She also confessed that, at the preliminary hearing, she lied about being asked to clean the Jeep. Quintana explained that she lied at the preliminary hearing because she was "scared" after people on both Prater's and Samora's sides threatened to kill her if she said anything. The jury heard that Quintana was arrested for aggravated murder but, after she promised to testify truthfully, she was charged only with obstruction of justice.
¶13 Valdez's testimony corroborated Sheppard's and Quintana's testimony regarding what happened at Quintana's apartment after the shooting. Valdez testified that Prater said he "got [Samora]" and "unloaded ... the whole clip." Valdez testified that Prater told her that he shot Samora and laughed about it. Valdez also remembered Prater's remark that Samora was "sleeping with the fishies."
¶14 Valdez admitted that she lied to police during her first interview by telling them that she and Sheppard had nothing to do with the shooting and were not at Quintana's home on the morning of the shooting. At the first interview, the police told Valdez that she was in danger of losing her children and going to prison because of her involvement with the events. Valdez testified that in a second police interview, after "[Sheppard] wasn't anything to [her]," she told the truth and explained what she saw and heard at Quintana's apartment after the shooting. The jury learned that Valdez faced no charges at any point in this case.
¶15 While Prater was in prison, a housing officer found and collected a couple of envelopes outside Prater's jail cell. When the officer picked them up, Prater said, "give me my letters." The officer refused and kept them as evidence. One of the letters was addressed to "Red," the nickname for Prater's fellow inmate, Marcus Crocker, who had murdered a store clerk and, like Prater, would later receive a life-without-parole sentence.
¶16 The letter to Red explained that Samora Prater wrote,
¶17 In the letter, Prater admitted that he abandoned his gun in an alley before returning to the house and told Quintana to retrieve his items and clean the Jeep. Prater also recounted that he later instructed Quintana to find the gun and dispose of it in the Jordan River.
¶18 The state crime lab found Prater's fingerprints on the letter to Red. A handwriting expert who analyzed the letter testified that he could "neither identify nor eliminate Prater from authoring [the letter to Red] based on the known samples" of Prater's writing.
¶19 After the shooting, detectives found eight 9mm shell casings strewn along the roadside near T.W.'s car. They found six bullet holes in the car and recovered four bullets and some bullet fragments. Lab results showed that the casings and bullets came from the same gun.
¶20 At trial, a police detective testified that the location of bullet holes on three sides of the car indicated that the shooter was moving. Detectives determined that the shooter was likely the front-seat passenger. The detective testified that if the driver were the shooter, the driver would have been forced to either "shoot[ ] a passenger" or "put a bullet through his right rear passenger window"—a result of adjusting his aim while driving the moving vehicle. Furthermore, had the driver been the shooter, the shell casings, which semiautomatics generally eject to the right, would have ended up inside the moving vehicle—not on the roadway where they were found.
¶21 In jail, Prater reconnected with Ali Al-Rekabi, a fellow inmate. Al-Rekabi also knew Sheppard from when they both lived at a halfway house. When Prater...
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