State v. Reed

• Decision Date: 07 September 2016
• Docket Number: No. 2014-KA-1980,2014-KA-1980
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court
• Parties: State of Louisiana v. Marcus Donte Reed

200 So.3d 291

State of Louisiana

v.Marcus Donte Reed

No. 2014-KA-1980

Supreme Court of Louisiana.

September 7, 2016

Capital Appeals Project, G. Benjamin Cohen, Blythe Taplin, for Appellant

Louisiana Department of Justice, Hon. Jeff Landry, Attorney General, Colin Andrew Clark, Assistant Attorney General; Caddo Parish District Attorney's Office, Hon. James Edward Stewart, Sr., District Attorney, Dale G. Cox, Assistant District Attorney, Suzanne Williams, Assistant District Attorney, Geya D. Prudhomme, Assistant District Attorney, Kelvin Marquez Rodgers, Assistant District Attorney, Jessica Diane Cassidy, Assistant District Attorney, William J. Edwards, Assistant District Attorney, for Appellee.

KNOLL, J.¹

This case is a direct criminal capital appeal of defendant's conviction and death sentence for the horrific murders of three unarmed young brothers. On November 10, 2010, a Caddo Parish grand jury returned a three count indictment against defendant, Marcus Donte Reed, charging him with the August 16, 2010 first-degree murders of Jeremiah Adams, Jarquis Adams, and Gene Adams in violation of La. Rev. Stat. 14:30. Following five days of jury selection, defendant's guilt phase jury trial commenced on September 28, 2013. At the conclusion of the guilt phase on October 1, 2013, the jury returned a verdict of guilty as charged on all three counts. Following the penalty phase trial, the jury unanimously returned a verdict of death, finding the defendant knowingly created a risk of death or great bodily harm to more than one person. The trial court sentenced defendant to death in accordance with the jury verdict and denied defendant's motion for new trial on January 21, 2014.

This is a direct appeal under La. Const. art. V, § 5 (D) by the defendant, Marcus Donte Reed. Defendant appeals his conviction and sentence raising 50 assignments of error. We will address the most significant of these assigned errors in this opinion, and the remaining assignments of error will be addressed in an unpublished appendix. We have conducted a thorough review of the record, the law, and the evidence and have found no reversible error. Accordingly, we affirm defendant's first-degree murder convictions and the imposition of the death sentence.

FACTS

The victims in this case were three brothers. Jeremiah, the oldest of the three, was a handsome 20-year-old, third-semester engineering student at Southern University Shreveport. At 6 feet, 2 inches tall and weighing 205 pounds, Jeremiah was an athlete. While he was in high school, he played football and basketball, and he ran track. He was a father figure to his two younger brothers, Jarquis and Gene, and was an active member of his church where he served as an assistant superintendent, a choir member, and the leader of a little youth group. The day before he died, Jeremiah attended a Sunday afternoon church picnic where he told his great aunt, Clara Adams Morgan, about his plans to assume responsibility for raising his younger brother, Gene, who loved horses and dreamed of being a veterinarian one day. At that time, Gene was living in Shreveport with Bernice Adams, the boys' grandmother and the sister of Clara Morgan. Like the Adams brothers, sisters Clara Morgan and Bernice Adams enjoyed a close relationship, and each helped raise the boys since their births. Although Gene loved his grandmother dearly, he wanted to move out to the country with his great aunt to be with his two older brothers, Jeremiah and Jarquis. Jeremiah was determined to make this dream come true for his little brother. However, as shown by the record evidence, the defendant put an immediate end to all their dreams with his ambush-style killing of the three brothers. On Monday, August 16, 2010, the evening following Jeremiah's heartfelt conversation with his Aunt Clara about Gene, officers with the Caddo Parish Sheriff's Office were dispatched to investigate the reported homicide of four individuals at a residence in a rural, heavily wooded area of southwest Caddo Parish, outside Shreveport, Louisiana. There, officers discovered the bullet-riddled bodies of Jeremiah and his younger brothers, Jarquis, who was 18 years of age, and Gene, who had just turned 13 years of age about a month before. Their bodies were found lying in Jeremiah's silver Chevrolet Malibu parked in the front yard of the home where defendant was residing. The windows were completely shot out. Soon thereafter officers discovered a semi-automatic rifle hidden under the front porch of the residence.²

At 10:28 p.m., officers were dispatched to the scene following a 9-1-1 call received from James Hendrix. During the guilt phase of defendant's trial, James testified that, at the time of the homicides, he resided, along with his wife, his daughter, and his grandson, across the street from the residence where the brothers' bodies were found. Shortly after 10 p.m. , James drove up to his driveway while he was talking on his mobile phone. After exiting his vehicle, he noticed his daughter's boyfriend, Daniel Jackson, running up to the back of his van, “scared to death and crying.” According to James, Daniel “had blood on his hands and a little bit of blood on his clothing.” After asking Daniel some questions, James took Daniel inside and locked him in the bathroom of the home so that Daniel could clean himself and could hide. James then returned outside with his gun and called 9-1-1. The 9-1-1 calls, which were admitted into evidence at the guilt phase, reflect James notified the authorities that Daniel had told him the defendant, Marcus Reed, had killed four people, had “tried to make [Daniel] help him get them in the car,” and had threatened to kill Daniel.

Upon their arrival, officers questioned James and then went to the residence across the street from James' home. The scene the officers observed was terrifically gruesome. Officer Matthew Cowden testified that he received the dispatch at 10:28 p.m. and that he was one of the first officers to arrive at the crime scene. Immediately, he noticed a black male hanging partially out of the driver's side rear door of a silver Chevrolet Malibu. He and two other officers held cover on the house until other responding units arrived. Detective Keith Fox, who led the investigation for the Caddo Parish Sheriff's Office, testified that a stream of gasoline and blood was flowing from the saturated ground around the vehicle down the driveway. Detective Terry Richardson of the Caddo Parish Sheriff's Office also testified that, as he walked down the driveway closer to the scene, he could smell “gasoline, automobile type fluids” and blood, and he observed “a large amount of blood that was actually running in a stream ... from the car down the driveway towards the street.” Detective Richardson recalled that, as he walked closer, he observed

a gray car with one male partially inside and out of the rear driver's door, and his clothes are pulled down as if he had been dragged either in or out. There's another smaller male deceased in the back seat that had very apparent gunshot wounds

. By that time the trunk had already been open to the gray car, and there was a third victim in the trunk.

The photographs admitted into evidence depicting the scene as officers observed it upon their arrival show the male hanging out of the driver's side rear door had a bloodied white cloth covering his face, his genitals were exposed, his left shoe lay on the ground next to his body, the other shoe was on his right foot, his feet alone stretched inside the vehicle, and the rest of his body spread on the ground. At trial, Detective Richardson testified the officers identified this man hanging out of the driver's side rear door as Jeremiah Adams. Detective Richardson testified Gene Adams was identified as the “smaller male deceased in the back seat.” According to Detective Richardson, Gene's body “was still sitting somewhat upright, but he was slumped over with just a massive wound

down the side of his neck and his face. Also there were fingers that were missing.” Indeed, one of Gene's fingers was found in the rear dash next to the vehicle's speakers and behind Gene's head. Although Detective Fox described the yard in which the homicides took place as “very dark” at the time, Detective Richardson explicitly testified the silver Chevrolet Malibu in which the brothers' bodies were found was parked near a light pole which provided enough light to see into the vehicle. Although he could not give an opinion as to whether he could have seen inside the vehicle through its side windows as the windows on the four doors “were all shot out,” Detective Richardson said he could see Gene's body looking through the vehicle's undamaged clear front and rear windows without the aid of additional light. Detective Richardson testified Jarquis Adams was identified as the third victim lying face down in the trunk.

Dr. James Traylor conducted the autopsies of Jarquis and Gene. Dr. Traylor testified Jarquis suffered two perforating gunshot wounds

: (1) one from a bullet that entered Jarquis' upper right chest and exited his left upper back and (2) the other from a bullet that entered Jarquis' left forehead and exited the back of his head in the right parietal region. According to Dr. Traylor, the pathology of Jarquis' forehead wound was consistent with a scenario in which Jarquis was lying on the ground, motionless, while the person stood over him and shot him . Soot found on Jarquis' skin indicated to Dr. Traylor that the muzzle of the gun was within six inches of Jarquis' head when the bullet was fired. According to Dr. Traylor, young Gene suffered wounds from as few as two gunshots to as many as five gunshots. Specifically, Gene received a wound on the left side of his face and wounds to his chest and to the left side of his neck. Gene also suffered a traumatic amputation of his right index finger and wounds to his index finger and thumb on his left hand. Dr. Traylor testified...