State v. Savoy

Decision Date21 June 1982
Docket NumberNo. 81-KA-2924,81-KA-2924
Citation418 So.2d 547
PartiesSTATE of Louisiana v. Dora Mae SAVOY.
CourtLouisiana Supreme Court

William J. Guste, Jr., Atty. Gen., Barbara Rutledge, Asst. Atty. Gen., Morgan J. Goudeau, III, Dist. Atty., Robert Brinkman, Asst. Dist. Atty., for plaintiff-appellee.

Lawrence B. Sandoz, III, Leslie J. Schiff, Sandoz, Sandoz & Schiff, Opelousas, for defendant-appellant.

AUGUSTINE, Justice Ad Hoc *.

The defendant, Dora Mae Savoy, was charged by grand jury indictment of March 9, 1981 with the second degree murder of Francis Sam, Jr. A jury of twelve heard this case on June 24-26, 1981 and returned a verdict of guilty as charged. The defendant was later sentenced to life imprisonment. On appeal, she raises ten assignments of error.

By the first assignment of error, appellant urges that her conviction should be reversed and a judgment of acquittal entered by this court, due to the State's failure to bear its burden of proving her guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

I.

Francis Sam, Jr. and Dora Mae Savoy lived together in a common-law arrangement in Sunset, Louisiana. On the night of February 10, 1981, Ms. Savoy shot and killed Francis Sam, Jr. with one bullet to the chest. The shooting took place on the front porch of the couple's residence. There were no witnesses other than the defendant herself.

Joseph Sam, the victim's brother, testified that on the night of February 10, he and John Eric Lewis had just left a pool hall and were walking towards the defendant's and victim's residence when a shot was fired. The men continued walking in the direction of the shot, and upon reaching the sidewalk in front of Savoy's house, the defendant called out to them. They saw the defendant Savoy on the front porch, standing over Francis Sam's body. The victim's feet were toward the front door of the residence; his head was almost on the top of the steps leading up to the porch. According to John Lewis, the defendant appeared to be very shaken, and told him that Francis Sam had accidentally shot himself while playing with a gun.

Joseph Sam, John Lewis and Dora Mae Savoy carried the victim from the front porch and placed him in the victim's pick-up truck parked in the front yard. Savoy then drove the victim to the Sunset Police Station, unaccompanied by either Joseph Sam or John Lewis. She still carried the pistol in her left hand while driving the truck with her right. When she neared the station, she threw the gun out of the driver's window and into a ditch on the opposite side of the street.

Upon arrival at the police station, Savoy gave a brief, unsolicited account of the incident to Officer Tim Allman. She told him that "Tatoo" (Francis Sam, Jr.) had just shot himself accidentally and was out in the truck, perhaps dying. She gave no further explanation. When Officer Allman went to the truck to determine the victim's condition, he found no vital signs. Upon being informed of Francis Sam's death, Savoy became hysterical and ran from the police station, finally collapsing about a block and a half away.

Shortly afterward, Officer Boss removed the victim's body from the front passenger seat of the truck. While doing so, he discovered a closed, sheathed knife on the floorboard. It belonged to the victim, and was later to become a key piece of evidence in the prosecution's case.

Later that night, Detectives Roy Mallet and Rene Spryer arrived at the station and, after advising the defendant of her Miranda rights, conducted an interrogation. This time, Savoy gave a different account of the shooting, stating, in essence, that Francis Sam was shot by another man in an argument over whiskey.

The next afternoon, Savoy gave a written statement to Detective Robert Daly, wherein she admitted for the first time that Francis Sam was killed while struggling with her over a gun. She stated that she and the victim had argued at a bar earlier that night, and that he came home drunk and threatening. She refused to allow him in the house, she said, but the victim was persistent in his efforts to get in, even to the point of repeatedly kicking on the doors, while cursing her the whole time. Looking out on the porch, Savoy saw that Francis Sam was armed with a knife. In response, Savoy said she went to her purse and retrieved her own gun. When she again looked out through the front door, Francis Sam thrust the knife at her, then grabbed her by the neck. A struggle ensued, each party armed and wrestling with the other. During the fight, as Savoy told it, the gun went off. Francis Sam fell to the porch, shot in the chest. Joseph Sam and John Lewis then came upon the scene and helped her put the victim in the truck. The defendant drove alone with him to the police station. Savoy admitted that along the way, she became scared and threw the gun out of the truck.

Detective Daly noted during the taking of this statement that the defendant showed no signs of having been in a struggle--her clothes were not torn, her body had no obvious bruises or cuts. Their suspicions about Ms. Savoy growing, policemen returned to the scene for further investigation. On the way, they combed the streets of the route to the police station taken by Savoy the night before. They found Savoy's discarded weapon in a ditch. Further inspection of the scene itself revealed no more significant evidence.

The coroner's examination did reveal evidence of some value. It was discovered that the bullet which killed Francis Sam was fired from a distance of between six inches and four feet and had a horizontal trajectory through the victim's body. Although the coroner removed a bullet from the body, subsequent ballistics tests were unsuccessful in matching the bullet with the defendant's gun, due to the lack of identifying striations on the pellet.

The above-stated facts comprised the whole of the State's case-in-chief against Dora Mae Savoy. There were no witnesses to the shooting--the evidence was entirely circumstantial.

II.

After the State rested its case, the defendant took the stand and told yet another version of the facts--her fourth. While she maintained that Francis Sam had been shot in a fatal struggle over the gun, she gave a markedly different account of the events leading up to the shooting. Savoy told the jury that on the night of February 10, she and the deceased had a heated argument at a bar. The dispute concerned whether Francis Sam was sober enough to drive home. Savoy kept the keys to Sam's truck, despite his violent protest, and went home to cook supper. Later that night, when Francis Sam returned home (with the assistance of a Sunset policeman), the argument resumed inside the house. Savoy retreated to her own bedroom and locked the door. There she finished supper while Francis Sam banged and kicked the bedroom door, angrily demanding that she come out and continue the fight. After a while, he tired of badgering her and left the house, or so she thought. It was late by that time, and Savoy decided to secure the house for the night. As she entered the living room to lock the front door, she reached into the sofa to retrieve the gun which she had customarily hidden there. Holding the gun in her left hand, she was about to latch the door with her right, when Francis Sam suddenly burst through the door and attacked her with a knife. In the struggle for control of the weapons, Savoy's gun discharged, firing a bullet into Francis Sam's chest.

The remainder of the defendant's testimony was similar to the statement she had previously given to Officer Daly, except for the remarkable explanation as to why the gun happened to be found in the ditch; she stated that while driving the truck and at...

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46 cases
  • State v. Snyder
    • United States
    • Louisiana Supreme Court
    • April 14, 1999
    ...conflicting accounts given by defendant after the murder do not constitute affirmative, substantive evidence of his guilt, State v. Savoy, 418 So.2d 547 (La.1982), but they undoubtedly undercut the reasonableness of the principal defense theory of The State theorized that defendant was a re......
  • State v. Lloyd
    • United States
    • Court of Appeal of Louisiana — District of US
    • January 14, 2015
    ...lap. The photos of the interior of the victim's car do not show any weapons.Finally, we distinguish the instant case from State v. Savoy, 418 So.2d 547 (La.1982), which was cited by the defendant. Savoy shot her common-law husband. There were no witnesses and the state's case consisted enti......
  • State v. Cann
    • United States
    • Court of Appeal of Louisiana — District of US
    • September 24, 1986
    ...convict is not raised to the level of legal sufficiency merely because a defendant or his witness is found incredible. See State v. Savoy, 418 So.2d 547 (La.1982); State v. Shapiro, 431 So.2d 372, 388 (La.1982); State v. McFadden, 476 So.2d 413 (La.App. 2d Cir.1985), writ The majority concl......
  • State v. Tillman
    • United States
    • Court of Appeal of Louisiana — District of US
    • March 4, 2009
    ...Finally, Tillman asserts that his inconsistent statements to the police are not sufficient to support his conviction, citing State v. Savoy, 418 So.2d 547 (La.1982). In analyzing sufficiency of the evidence arguments this Court has In assessing the sufficiency of evidence to support a convi......
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