State v. Prudholm

• Decision Date: 16 January 1984
• Docket Number: No. 82-KA-1528,82-KA-1528
• Citation: 446 So.2d 729
• Parties: STATE of Louisiana v. Eric Frank PRUDHOLM.
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court

Page 729

446 So.2d 729

STATE of Louisiana v. Eric Frank PRUDHOLM.

No. 82-KA-1528.

Supreme Court of Louisiana.

Jan. 16, 1984.

William J. Guste, Jr., Atty. Gen., Barbara Rutledge, Asst. Atty. Gen., Henry N. Brown, Dist. Atty., James M. Bullers, Asst. Dist. Atty., for plaintiff-appellee.

R. Judge Eames, Baton Rouge, for defendant-appellant.

DENNIS, Justice.

Defendant, Eric Frank Prudholm, was convicted by a jury of armed robbery, La.R.S. 14:64, and aggravated rape, La.R.S. 14:42. He was sentenced to serve fifty years at hard labor without benefit of parole, probation or suspension of sentence for armed robbery and life imprisonment for aggravated rape. We affirm.

In this opinion we refer to the victims of the crimes as Mr. and Mrs. Victim in order to protect the identity of the woman who was raped.

On June 8, 1981, at approximately 5:15 a.m., Mrs. Victim was brutually raped by two black men in her motel room in Bossier City, Louisiana. Mrs. Victim, her husband, and their two children were guests of the Drummer's Inn. In the early morning hours Mr. Victim was forced from the bathroom of his motel room at gunpoint by a black man. Mr. Victim was forced to lie on his children's bed while another black man raped his wife on the adjacent bed. During the rape, Mr. Victim's car keys and wallet were thrown to a third black man standing near the door of the room. After the rape was completed, Mr. Victim's captor switched places with the first rapist and raped Mrs. Victim again. The third man left the motel room, presumably to search the car for valuables. Two of the men then bound the family securely and left the scene, taking with them Mr. Victim's wallet and some jewelry.

After a brief struggle, Mr. Victim freed himself and phoned the police. Several officers arrived and collected physical evidence from the scene, including several partial fingerprints and the bedclothes from the bed on which Mrs. Victim had been raped. The officers also obtained a description of the perpetrators of the crime from her, but because she was in an emotional state of shock this description was limited to general characteristics including height, skin tone, and hair style and length.

Mrs. Victim was taken to a local hospital and examined by the coroner of Bossier Parish. Test results revealed that Mrs. Victim had recently had sexual contact, and the presence of live sperm suggested that this contact was more recent than the voluntary intercourse she had engaged in with her husband the previous evening. The coroner noted that Mrs. Victim was in an emotional but coherent state and that while she could answer specific questions she could not fully assist him in showing him where her assailants had touched her. Several physical samples were taken from Mrs. Victim, including blood, saliva, vaginal washings, and pubic hair.

In late August, policemen presented Mrs. Victim with a photographic line-up at her home. She identified James Gladney, a co-defendant in this case, as one of her assailants. Gladney had become a suspect after his arrest for another offense. In September, three and one-half months after the attack, Mrs. Victim was presented with two more photographic line-ups from which she identified the defendant as the other man who raped her and co-defendant Reggie Hicks as the third participant in the robbery. Mrs. Victim testified that she broke down in tears when she saw Prudholm's photograph. Prudholm and Hicks had become suspects due to their association with Gladney.

The three co-defendants were tried jointly. Mr. Victim testified that he was unable to provide any identification of the perpetrators of the crime because during most of the time the crime was in progress he was facedown on the bed. Mrs. Victim provided the central piece of state's evidence by positively identifying Gladney and Prudholm as the men who raped her and Hicks as the third man present in the room. She testified that there was sufficient light in the motel room to see the three men. Although it was dark outside when Mrs. Victim awakened she was able to see all three men while the outside door was open. During part of the time the assailants were in the victims' room, an outside light shone in through the open door. Further, Mrs. Victim testified that light from the bathroom door permitted her to see Prudholm while he held a gun on her husband on the adjoining bed prior to his raping her.

The remaining evidence against the defendant consisted of testimony by a criminologist who had examined the samples taken from Mrs. Victim, the physical evidence secured from the motel room, and blood, saliva and pubic hair samples taken from the three co-defendants. Of the partial fingerprints taken, only two were of sufficient clarity to be useful. However, of these two, neither contained more than three of the minimally required eight "points" or traits for a positive identification. The three points did not match any of the three codefendants.

Five negroid pubic hairs found on the bed sheet taken from the motel room were compared with samples taken from the codefendants. Of these, four did not come from any of the codefendants, but one was sufficiently similar to support the conclusion that it could have come from Prudholm.

The laboratory samples taken from Mrs. Victim revealed that one of her attackers was a secretor ¹ and had blood type B. The other was possibly a secretor with blood type O, but because Mr. Victim was also a secretor with blood type O, it was impossible to be certain. Comparison of these findings with the samples taken from the codefendants revealed that both Gladney and Prudholm could have been among the rapists, the former being a secretor with blood type B and the latter a secretor with blood type O. Hicks was found to be a non-secretor.

The defendant filed a motion for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence which refutes the victim's identification. A hearing was held on this matter, and the following testimony was adduced.

Mrs. Sue Prudholm, the defendant's mother, testified that the defendant lived with her in Compton, California. She testified that the defendant did not leave California to come to Louisiana until July 5, 1981, well after the June 8 attack upon the victims. She said a birthday party was held for Prudholm and his younger brother at her home on June 27 and Prudholm attended. She stated that Prudholm came to Louisiana against her wishes on July 5 with Fredrick Hicks, codefendant Hicks' brother. After Prudholm was arrested in September and formally charged on October 1, his mother allegedly attempted unsuccessfully to contact Prudholm's court appointed attorney, and she came to Louisiana for the scheduled trial of her son on November 24, 1981. When the trial date was continued, she returned to California with the belief that she would be contacted when her son was to be tried.

Defendant's brother-in-law, William Harold McKinney, Jr., a self-employed contract machinist with a Bachelor of Arts in History and a Masters of Arts in theater from UCLA, corroborated Mrs. Prudholm's testimony. McKinney stated that he knew Prudholm was in California throughout June of 1981 because he could remember three specific instances in which he saw him: (1) June 6, 1981 at the Kool Jazz Festival in San Diego, (2) one week later at the National Technical School in Los Angeles, where Prudholm had gone to observe McKinney while he was teaching auto mechanics, and (3) the birthday party at Mrs. Prudholm's home. McKinney also testified that there were many occasions in June on which he saw Prudholm, but he could pinpoint no dates. At that time McKinney was dating Prudholm's sister, and he frequently visited the Prudholm home.

Reggie Hicks, the codefendant who was convicted of armed robbery but not for rape, testified at the hearing on the motion for a new trial. He recanted his trial testimony that he had not been present during the commission of the crimes, and admitted his complicity in the affair. He stated at the hearing on the motion that he was guilty of the robbery, but that Prudholm was not present during the commission of the crimes. He named as his accomplices and as the rapists Gladney and Kirk Johnson. Hicks described Johnson as a light skinned black man, about five feet eight or nine inches tall, who had a long afro. Johnson's appearance matched Prudholm's with the exception that Prudholm had large acne pocks on his face and tattoos on his forearms and at the time of the rape, Prudholm did not wear his hair in an afro, as described by Mrs. Victim to the police; rather his hair was worn in a Jeri curl, a style resembling Caucasian hair which has been permed.

Aside from the live witness testimony educed at the motion for a new trial, defense introduced affidavits of several relatives among them defendant's grandmother, two sisters and an aunt who all stated that they had seen and talked to Prudholm in California during June and early July. Fredrick Hicks executed a statement which said that he and his wife left Louisiana for California on June 23, 1981 and returned on July 5 accompanied by Eric Prudholm.

Prudholm's trial attorney, M. Randal Fish, was called as a witness at the hearing on the motion. He testified that Prudholm had told him that he possibly was in California at the time of the offense, but that he could not remember with any certainty when he came to Louisiana with Hicks. Prudholm had told him that it was late spring or early summer. The attorney stated that his pursuance of the possible California alibi was limited because his investigator had been terminated due to budget cuts in his office. The attorney spoke with Fredrick about the travel dates from California to Louisiana and Hicks suggested that his employer would know the dates. Hicks' employer told the attorney that April, not late June, was the time when Hicks took time off. Further, the trial counsel thought that his secretary had checked...