State v. Sharp

• Decision Date: 28 January 1999
• Docket Number: No. CR-97-0145-AP,CR-97-0145-AP
• Citation: 193 Ariz. 414,973 P.2d 1171
• Parties: , 288 Ariz. Adv. Rep. 36 STATE of Arizona, Appellee. v. Kyle David SHARP, Appellant.
• Court: Arizona Supreme Court

Page 1171

973 P.2d 1171

193 Ariz. 414, 288 Ariz. Adv. Rep. 36

STATE of Arizona, Appellee. v.Kyle David SHARP, Appellant.

No. CR-97-0145-AP.

Supreme Court of Arizona En Banc.

Jan. 28, 1999.

Grant Woods, The Attorney General by Paul J. McMurdie, Chief Counsel, Criminal Appeals Section and Eric J. Olsson, Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Appeals Section, Tuscon, Attorneys for Appellee.

Carla G. Ryan, Tuscon, Attorney for Appellant.

O P I N I O N

McGREGOR, J.

¶1AppellantKyle David Sharp appeals his conviction and death sentence for first- degree premeditated and felony murder.¹We review this case on direct, automatic appeal pursuant to Arizona Revised Statutes("A.R.S.")§ 13-4031.For the following reasons, we affirm Appellant's conviction and sentence.

I.

¶2 On the afternoon of June 30, 1995, Appellant, a 24-year-old Indiana native in the midst of a road trip through the American West, checked into Room 204 of the Sands Motel in Willcox, Arizona.Appellant spent the evening drinking, playing pool, and smoking marijuana at two local bars.After closing time, at approximately 1:30 a.m. on July 1, 1995, Appellant returned to his room and requested extra towels from the motel manager, Judith A. Coughlin.When Ms. Coughlin delivered the towels to Room 204, Appellant held her in the room against her will.He then beat her, stripped her, sodomized her, and ultimately strangled her to death.

¶3 At approximately 2:00 a.m., Ms. Coughlin's ten-year-old stepson, Brandon Coughlin, heard two screams and pounding footsteps coming from the room directly above him, Room 204.When Brandon could not find his stepmother on the hotel premises, he ran one block to a Circle K and expressed his concerns to the store clerk, who called the Willcox Police Department.

¶4 Officer Glenn Childers, the first police officer on the scene, arrived at the Circle K at approximately 2:05 a.m., and immediately drove with Brandon to the Sands Motel.Officer Childers then knocked repeatedly on the door of Room 204, but no one responded.He peered through a gap in Room 204's curtains and observed a shadowy figure by the flickering light of the television set.At that point, someone inside the room slowly closed the curtains.Officer Childers then tried calling Room 204 from the front desk downstairs, but no one answered the telephone.At that time, Brandon gave Officer Childers a master key to the motel's rooms.

¶5 At 2:20 a.m., Officer Childers called his supervisor, Officer Jacob Weaver.Officer Weaver instructed Officer Childers to knock again, identify himself as a police officer, and call back if he received no response.When no one in Room 204 responded to Officer Childers' second knock, he called Officer Weaver, who arrived on the scene at approximately 2:40 a.m.Both officers banged on the door of Room 204 a third time, but still elicited no response.Officer Weaver then called Sergeant Kenneth Farnsworth, who instructed the pair to enter Room 204 with the master key.At 2:50 a.m., Officers Childers and Weaver, accompanied by a police dog, entered Room 204.

¶6 When they entered the room, they saw Appellant lying on the bed, apparently unconscious, and fully dressed except for his shoes.Appellant's luggage sat packed in front of the motel room door.The officers observed a hole in the wall and drywall particles on a nearby table.When Officer Weaver opened the door to the bathroom, he found the victim lying naked on the floor, face down, with a T-shirt wrapped around her neck.The victim had a black left eye and multiple bruises on her body.She was not breathing and had no pulse.Paramedics arrived on the scene within minutes, but were unable to revive the victim.She was pronounced dead at the hospital.

¶7 Upon discovering the victim's body, Officer Childers handcuffed Appellant as he lay on the bed.The paramedics, unable to awaken Appellant, then transported him to the hospital.Ostensibly believing Appellant may have suffered a drug overdose, police searched the bed for evidence of drug use.Officers found the victim's broken and bloodied eyeglasses and a pornographic magazine tucked between the mattresses.

¶8Appellant awakened later that morning, handcuffed to the rails of his hospital bed.Mark Geyer, the registered nurse assigned to treat Appellant, questioned him for approximately thirty minutes.Sergeant Farnsworth, dressed in street clothes and a police department baseball cap, remained in the room while Geyer questioned Appellant and recorded the entire conversation on a microcassette recorder that he placed on the bedstand next to Appellant.During this questioning, Appellant admitted that he called the victim and requested she bring more towels to the room.

¶9 Hospital personnel took blood samples from Appellant and the victim for DNA analysis and drug testing.Semen found in the victim's anus matched Appellant's DNA type, and blood found in Appellant's shorts matched the victim's.Appellant's blood tested positive for alcohol, marijuana, and amphetamine/methamphetamine.²An autopsy showed that the victim had a lacerated anus, revealing she was conscious while being sodomized because the sphincter muscle was not relaxed during the assault.The victim's hyoid bone, the bone in the neck that supports the tongue, was fractured.The medical examiner determined the manner of death to be manual strangulation.

¶10 After a six-day trial, a jury convicted Appellant of kidnaping, sexual assault, and first-degree murder.All twelve jurors found Appellant guilty of both premeditated murder and felony murder.On the first two counts, kidnaping and sexual assault, the judge sentenced Appellant to twenty-one and fourteen years respectively.The judge sentenced Appellant to death on the first-degree murder count, finding that the killing was especially cruel, heinous, and depraved beyond a reasonable doubt and that no mitigating evidence, statutory or non-statutory, was sufficient to overcome the single aggravating factor.

II.

¶11Appellant appeals his first-degree murder conviction on eight separate grounds.For the reasons discussed below, we find none of Appellant's arguments persuasive and uphold the jury's verdict.

A.

¶12Appellant first argues that the trial court should have suppressed evidence officers discovered when they entered Room 204 without a search warrant.A trial court's ruling on a motion to suppress evidence will not be set aside absent a clear abuse of discretion.SeeState v. Fisher, 141 Ariz. 227, 236, 686 P.2d 750, 759(1984).We conclude that the trial court did not abuse its discretion when it admitted the evidence because the emergency aid exception to the warrant requirement justified the officers' entry into Appellant's motel room.

¶13 The emergency aid exception to the warrant requirement allows law enforcement officers to enter a dwelling if they reasonably believe someone inside needs immediate aid or assistance.To fall within the emergency aid exception, a search must be motivated primarily by safety concerns and not by the desire to seize evidence.Id. at 237, 686 P.2d at 760.

¶14 Officers delayed entry into Room 204 for almost forty minutes after Officer Childers obtained a set of master keys.Delay alone, however, does not bar reliance on the emergency aid exception.In Fisher, this court found a forty-five minute delay reasonable because "[t]he trial court could reasonably have inferred that the delay was due to the police officers' reluctance to make a warrantless entry absent good reason to believe there was an emergency."Id. at 238, 686 P.2d at 761.The same reasoning applies here.Officers Childers and Weaver testified at the suppression hearing that they grew concerned because Ms. Coughlin was missing, screams were heard from Room 204, and no one would answer the door or the telephone.Given the cumulative impact of these facts, the trial court did not abuse its discretion when it determined that the officers acted properly when they reasonably believed an emergency existed to justify a warrantless entry into Room 204.

B.

¶15Appellant, citing Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 107 S.Ct. 1149, 94 L.Ed.2d 347(1987), next argues that even if the initial entry into Room 204 was proper, the officers improperly conducted a warrantless search between the mattresses of Appellant's bed.Appellant contends that the trial court abused its discretion when it admitted evidence found during the search because the officers needed separate probable cause to conduct this separate intrusion into Appellant's privacy.In Hicks, the United States Supreme Court held that police actions in moving stereo equipment to locate serial numbers constituted a separate search that had to be supported by separate probable cause, even though the officers were lawfully present in the apartment where the equipment was located.Id. at 326, 107 S.Ct. at 1153.In this case, Appellant's unresponsive state gave police separate probable cause to inspect the immediate area surrounding Appellant for anything that might explain his condition and help medical personnel treat him.

¶16Appellant asserts that police could not have been looking for materials to explain his medical condition because trial testimony suggests that the officers may have thought Appellant was feigning unconsciousness.The record reveals that the officers indeed were uncertain about Appellant's condition.Officer Weaver initially testified that Appellant appeared unconscious, but later testified that Appellant squinted and moved his eyelids while lying on the bed and seemed to stand on his own power when he was being carried from the motel room.Sergeant Farnsworth testified that Appellant walked with officers out of the motel room for approximately ten feet until his feet began to drag.Farnsworth further testified that when paramedics placed ammonia inhalant under Appellant's nose, Appellant tilted his head back and opened his...