State v. Reffitt

• Decision Date: 10 July 1985
• Docket Number: No. 6179,6179
• Citation: 145 Ariz. 452,702 P.2d 681
• Parties: STATE of Arizona, Appellee, v. Fred REFFITT, Jr., Appellant.
• Court: Arizona Supreme Court

Page 681

702 P.2d 681

145 Ariz. 452

STATE of Arizona, Appellee, v. Fred REFFITT, Jr., Appellant.

No. 6179.

Supreme Court of Arizona, In Banc.

July 10, 1985.

Robert K. Corbin, Atty. Gen. by William J. Schafer, III, and Robert Golden, Asst. Attys. Gen., Phoenix, for appellee.

John Antieau, Phoenix, for appellant.

HAYS, Justice.

Appellant-petitioner, Fred Reffitt, Jr., (hereinafter appellant) was convicted of second degree murder, A.R.S. § 13-1104, a class-2 felony, and forgery, A.R.S. § 13-2002, a class-4 felony. The jury found that the second degree murder was a dangerous offense. Because appellant committed this dangerous crime while on release from confinement, he was sentenced to life without possibility of parole for 25 years. See A.R.S. § 13-604.01(A). Appellant pleaded guilty to forgery and was sentenced to four years in prison. These sentences were to run concurrently.

Appellant sought post-conviction relief. See 17 A.R.S. Rules of Crim.Proc., Rule 32. He claimed that he had been improperly denied good time credits and that, as a result, his previous sentence had expired prior to the time of the instant offenses. He argued, therefore, that imposition of enhanced punishment for committing a dangerous crime while on release from prison was improper. See § 13-604.01(A). After an evidentiary hearing, the trial court ruled that appellant's previous sentence had not been miscomputed and denied relief. Appellant seeks review of the denial of his Rule 32 petition. Appellant also appeals from his conviction and sentence for second degree murder. He does not appeal from his conviction or sentence for forgery. This court has jurisdiction. Ariz. Const. art. 6, § 5(3); A.R.S. §§ 13-4031, 13-4035.

FACTS

On the evening of June 17, 1983, appellant and his wife, Dorothy Reffitt, the victim, were quarreling in their home. The dispute concerned appellant's longstanding drinking problem. Appellant had been drinking that afternoon. He became more intoxicated as the evening progressed, until he was staggering and slurring his speech. This dispute continued periodically throughout the evening, until at one point they were shouting at one another. Several times, the victim asked appellant to leave the house. She had ordered appellant to move out of the house during previous disputes, though later she had always withdrawn this demand.

Joyce McQuillen, a friend of the victim, was staying over at the Reffitt house that night. She last saw appellant and the victim in the dayroom. When she retired at about 11:30 p.m., there was no longer any commotion.

Starting at approximately 2:30 in the morning, appellant made several phone calls to his girlfriend, Shirley Moore, asking her to meet him somewhere. In the first phone call, appellant stated that his wife had become intoxicated and passed out on the bed. In a second call approximately fifteen minutes later, appellant said that he couldn't meet Moore because his wife had unexpectedly awakened. In a third call a short time later, he said that he could meet Moore after all because his wife had again fallen asleep. Appellant and Moore eventually agreed to meet at a Denny's restaurant close to Moore's home at 5:00 a.m.

McQuillan slept soundly until 4:00 a.m. She was then awakened by the presence of appellant at her bedside. Appellant still appeared intoxicated. McQuillan went downstairs to fix some coffee in the dayroom. There, she noticed some reddish stains on the floor. The bedding and pillows had been stripped from the dayroom bed and there were red stains on the mattress. The victim's bloodstained dentures were on a table in this room. McQuillan asked appellant: "What happened here?" Appellant explained that there were bloodstains in the room because his wife had hit him in the face and cut his lip. McQuillan could not, however, see any cut on appellant's lip. Appellant then suggested that McQuillan go back to sleep because his wife would not awaken for several hours. McQuillan also noticed that appellant was washing the dayroom bedding and some towels.

When appellant did not appear at Denny's at the appointed time, Moore returned home. Appellant again called Moore, this time asking her to pick him up in her car. McQuillan was present while appellant pleaded with Moore to pick him up, saying, "Babe, come and get me out of this mess." Moore eventually agreed to pick appellant up.

When McQuillan noticed that the victim was not in her bed, she asked appellant, "Where's Dorothy?" Appellant replied that she had left the house the night before after their quarrel. McQuillan concluded that appellant had killed his wife. She therefore waited until appellant went into the bathroom and then ran out to the victim's car. As she was driving away, appellant came running out of the house and yelled at her to stop.

Tina Burton was the victim's daughter by a previous marriage. She had moved out of the Reffitt household only a month before. After she had spoken to McQuillan that morning, she suspected that appellant had murdered her mother. She decided to drive to the Reffitt home. She saw appellant standing at an intersection near the house, where he was waiting for Moore to pick him up. She asked appellant where her mother had gone. Appellant replied that he didn't know and that he was looking for her. Burton then proceeded to the Reffitt home. After finding dried blood in the dayroom, she left the house. She called the Chandler police and asked for their assistance in searching for her mother. She reported the events of that morning and the previous day. She led the police to the Reffitt house and invited them inside. In the backyard, the police found a trail of blood leading to a storage shed. There, covered with a rug, they found the victim's body. There was evidence that the victim's body had been dragged for some distance. The police left the house without seizing any evidence so they could await issuance of a search warrant.

After obtaining a search warrant, the police searched the house. The victim apparently died from nine blows to the head. The scalp wounds received by the victim closely conformed to the head of defendant's claw hammer found in the laundry room. The hammer had a small amount of blood on it. In the dayroom, small droplets of blood were found splattered on the walls, the blinds and the ceiling. There were bloodstains on the dayroom bed and the carpet. In the kitchen, blood was also found on the faucet and in the sink. In the laundry room, the police found many recently washed items, including the dayroom bedding, towels and some clothes. Traces of blood were found on some of the washed articles.

The fingerprints obtained from the claw hammer did not, however, belong to appellant or to any of the other persons tested. Fingernail scrapings obtained from appellant did, though, contain blood of the same type as the victim's.

By evening appellant was arrested. He was interviewed at the Chandler Police Department by Officer Owen Bell. Appellant orally waived his Miranda rights. He also read and signed a waiver card. He told the police that he had trouble remembering the events of the previous night. He recalled seeing his wife lying in a pool of blood but he "didn't know what he hit her with." Appellant agreed to allow the interview to be tape-recorded. When questioning was resumed after a tape recorder was obtained, appellant was again asked if he could recall hitting his wife. Appellant replied, "vaguely [pause] very vaguely." By the end of the interview, he could no longer recall hitting his wife at all. Rather, he maintained that he awoke from a drunken stupor and found her murdered. He inferred that he killed her because he had been arguing with her before and he was the only person present at the scene. He admitted cleaning up the blood in his home. He also recalled dragging his wife's body out into the backyard, though he couldn't recall where he had left the body.

Appellant also described his marital difficulties with the victim. He swore that he loved her. He also, however, referred to her as a "chronic bitcher." He admitted that there had been few days in the last six months when they did not argue, usually about appellant's habitual drinking. He also suspected that his wife was going to leave him. He admitted writing a letter to the victim the day before the murder. In that letter, he describes the victim's threat to leave him the night before and predicts that he will lose her soon.

At the end of the interview, appellant conceded that the interview had been conducted with his permission, without threats of coercion, and that his statements were correct to the best of his knowledge. Appellant was again interviewed by Officer Bell the next day. Appellant again waived his Miranda rights and told basically the same story as before.

At trial, appellant denied ever admitting to the police that he recalled hitting his wife. His defense was that someone else had committed the murder. He argued that the unknown fingerprints on the murder weapon belonged to the real assailant. The jury found appellant guilty of second degree murder.

I. DID APPELLANT'S ILLEGAL ARREST TAINT HIS CONFESSION?

After searching the Reffitt home, the police sought to arrest appellant. They contacted Shirley Moore. She told the police that she had driven appellant to a detoxification center early in the morning. Around noon, she picked up appellant from the center and drove him to a fast food restaurant for a meal. Because appellant complained that he was tired, she drove to a motel. She paid for a motel room and left appellant there. Moore later led the police to this same room. After determining that this motel room was registered in Moore's name, the police decided to enter and arrest appellant. The police cleared the adjacent poolside area. Moore asked the police if she could enter the room and bring appellant out to be arrested. She feared that he would be harmed or...