State v. Taylor
| Decision Date | 17 April 1989 |
| Citation | 771 S.W.2d 387 |
| Court | Tennessee Supreme Court |
| Parties | STATE of Tennessee, Appellee, v. Richard C. TAYLOR, Appellant. |
Michael P. Williamson and Thomas W. Watson, Nashville, for appellant.
W.J. Michael Cody Atty. Gen. & Reporter and Miriam Nabors Banks, Asst. Atty. Gen., Nashville, for appellee.
This is a direct appeal from the sentence of death imposed on the defendant, Richard C. Taylor, for the killing of Ron Moore, a Department of Corrections guard working at the Turney Center in Hickman County where defendant was an inmate. The defendant questions the sufficiency of the evidence, rulings by the trial court on pre-trial motions, on voir dire, the admission of evidence, the argument to the jury by the State, and the court's instructions to the jury. The defendant also insists that the sentencing provisions of the Tennessee Death Penalty Act, T.C.A. § 39-2-203, are unconstitutional.
After consideration of the several issues and of the entire record, we are of the opinion that no reversible error was committed in either the guilt or sentencing phase of the trial, that the verdict and sentence are sustained by the evidence, and that the sentence of death under the circumstances of this case is in no way arbitrary or disproportionate. See State v. Sutton, 761 S.W.2d 763 (Tenn.1988) ().
Corrections Officer Moore was stabbed to death on the night of August 28, 1981. It is undisputed that the killer was the defendant, Richard C. Taylor. The issue raised in defense of the murder charge was that defendant was insane at the time of the homicide.
The record shows that Mr. Taylor believed that he had been treated unfairly by Officer Moore on several occasions. Defendant blamed Moore for preventing defendant from receiving a stereo and television set left to him by an inmate who had been transferred from the Turney Center. On the day of the killing, Moore reprimanded the defendant for failing to properly clean the hall. The incident that "set off" defendant, however, occurred an hour or two before the killing when Moore removed a towel that another inmate, Tony Bedwell, had hung over the window in a cell door to dry and pushed the towel under the door. When Bedwell asked Moore what was going on, Moore explained the regulations against covering the window in the cell door. To Bedwell, the incident was "nothing big," but defendant, who had seen what happened, advised Bedwell to "kick [Moore] up the side of his head." Bedwell next saw the defendant when he and Wayne Patterson came to Bedwell's cell to ask if Bedwell had a knife.
Around 9:00-9:30 p.m., the defendant approached Moore as he stood talking to some inmates, cursed and asked Moore, "Now what are you going to do, S.O.B.?" Defendant then grabbed Moore and began to stab him repeatedly with a prison-made knife. Pleading with defendant to stop, Moore retreated down the hall. Defendant continued to hold to Moore and continued to stab him. Other inmates protested and tried to come to the aid of Moore, but were warned off by defendant brandishing his knife.
After the stabbing, defendant returned to his cell block, where he concealed the knife in a closet and changed his clothing. Officer Moore died about forty minutes later in the prison infirmary from internal bleeding caused by a wound that had penetrated his inferior vena cava. He also had suffered potentially fatal stab wounds to the pancreas and the spleen.
Several inmates described defendant's appearance and actions. According to inmate Patterson, the defendant was "hyper" and nervous. After the killing the defendant walked around the hallway "in shock," disoriented, bumping into people and the wall. Patterson said defendant was shaking and trembling, with an "expression on his face like a wild horse." The officers who apprehended defendant after the killing, however, while remarking that he was shaking and stuttering and appeared nervous, said that defendant was not confused, was responsive, coherent and understood their questions. Defendant indicated he understood his rights and signed a waiver but refused to sign a confession or allow his confession to be written down.
The defendant offered to cooperate if the officers would get his blue jeans and television. When asked why he had stabbed Moore, defendant said that he "thought it was his daddy." When asked another time why he had attacked Moore, defendant said he had become angry when he had seen Moore pull the towel from Bedwell's door and made up his mind "that that would be the last time he [Moore] would mess with anybody."
The State introduced in evidence several letters the defendant had written shortly after the killing to friends who were inmates. In them, defendant shows an awareness of his actions and explains his motives for the killing. ;
Taylor, who was twenty-one, had a history of juvenile problems and mental and emotional difficulties that had led to several mental evaluations before the killing of Officer Moore. He had been in the drug and alcohol abuse program at the DeBerry Correctional Institute, a state facility for prisoners with psychiatric problems, before coming to the Turney Center. As a result of his having swallowed broken glass, defendant was incarcerated in West-100, the section of the main penitentiary in Nashville for prisoners with mental problems, from late May 1981, until July 2, 1981, when he was returned to the Turney Center. Defendant had been on several anti-psychotic drugs over this period but there was no record of his receiving any medication on the date of the killing.
Defendant's fellow inmates described him as a loner, moody, and strange. He was characterized as "hyper all the time." One inmate stated, He had been involved in several incidents of violence toward fellow inmates and the prison staff.
Two attorneys described the defendant's excited and disoriented manner when they had met him three or more months after the killing. He told them a "breathing voice" (he described as his father's) had told him to stab Moore. He claimed to have a difficult time remembering what occurred on August 19. Chip Burson, coordinator of psychological services at the maximum security ward at the main prison while defendant was there in June 1981, testified that defendant had been reclusive, agitated, disoriented, and shaky. He was seen talking to himself in his cell, and Burson had felt he should have been transferred to DeBerry.
After reviewing the defendant's history and institutional record, defense expert Dr. Michael Stein, a psychologist who had conducted a six-hour clinical interview of and administered two tests to the defendant on March 30, 1984, diagnosed defendant as suffering from borderline personality disorder, paranoid personality disorder and brief reactive psychosis. He opined that at the time of the killing defendant was suffering from a psychotic episode as the result of a mental disease or defect and could not therefore appreciate the wrongfulness of his acts or conform his conduct to legal norms. Dr. Stein explained that the letters were the defendant's attempt to establish an identity as a "macho convict criminal type" to compensate for the weak sense of identity common to borderline personalities. On cross examination, however, Dr. Stein admitted that defendant also met most of the diagnostic criteria for an antisocial personality.
A second defense expert, Jonathan Lipman, a doctor of pharmacology with a specialty in neuropharmacology (the study of the effect of drugs on the brain), testified about the effect of anti-psychotic or neuroleptic drugs like those taken by the defendant on the brain and about these drugs' side effects, such as shaking and grimacing, indicative of tardive dyskinesia. Dr. Lipman also testified about supersensitivity psychosis, a psychosis caused by the withdrawal of anti-psychotic drugs from someone who had been taking them for some time, and noted that defendant's history indicated he could have been suffering from such a psychosis at the time of the killing.
The State presented the testimony of two experts, Dr. John Filley, a psychiatrist at the Middle Tennessee Mental Health Institute, [MTMHI] who had examined defendant on two occasions, and Dr. Mohammad Rahib, a psychiatrist who had examined defendant in late 1979 and early 1980. Both men diagnosed defendant as having an antisocial personality disorder, and Dr. Rahib stated there was little substantiation for the theory of supersensitivity psychosis. Neither believed defendant was suffering from a mental disease or defect that met the standards of Graham v. State, 547 S.W.2d 531 (Tenn.1977).
In surrebuttal, defendant presented Dr. Jan Mayer, a psychiatrist, who testified that the concept of supersensitivity psychosis was accepted by some members of the...
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