State v. Thomas

• Decision Date: 04 October 2017
• Docket Number: No. 2012-2026,2012-2026
• Citation: 152 Ohio St.3d 15,92 N.E.3d 821,2017 Ohio 8011
• Parties: The STATE of Ohio, Appellee, v. THOMAS, Appellant.
• Court: Ohio Supreme Court

152 Ohio St.3d 15

92 N.E.3d 821

2017 Ohio 8011

The STATE of Ohio, Appellee,

v.THOMAS, Appellant.

No. 2012-2026

Supreme Court of Ohio.

Submitted January 10, 2017

Decided October 4, 2017

Charles E. Coulson, Lake County Prosecuting Attorney, and Alana A. Rezaee, Charles F. Cichocki, Patrick J. Condon, and Karen A. Sheppert, Assistant Prosecuting Attorneys, for appellee.

John P. Parker ; and Law Office of Timothy Farrell Sweeney and Timothy F. Sweeney, Cleveland, for appellant.

O'Donnell, J.{¶ 1} Joseph L. Thomas appeals from his aggravated-murder and other felony convictions and the death sentence imposed in connection with the 2010 aggravated murder of Annie M. McSween, and he presents 24 propositions of law for our consideration. Because the tenth proposition of law—involving the admission of irrelevant, prejudicial evidence—is well taken, we reverse the convictions and sentence and remand this matter to the trial court for a new trial.

Factual and Procedural History

{¶ 2} On November 25, 2010, Thanksgiving Day, McSween was working as a bartender at Mario's Lakeway Lounge in Mentor-on-the-Lake, located on Andrews Road on a block bordered by Lakeshore Boulevard to the north and Park Street to the east in Lake County, Ohio. Patrons Matthew Miller and Thomas played pool there that evening, and Miller saw that Thomas wore a pocketknife clipped to his jeans. Other witnesses observed that Thomas was upset with his girlfriend, Linda Roncalli, because her van had broken down and she did not meet him for a Thanksgiving dinner that he had prepared, and from her text messages, Thomas thought she had broken up with him. As the night progressed, Thomas asked McSween and another woman to dance, but they both declined; later, at closing time, McSween had to ask him several times to leave the bar. After the bar's owner promised him more beer the next day, Thomas left without incident.

{¶ 3} The bar's owner left about 2:30 a.m., and only two people remained in the bar: McSween and Chalina Bolden, a woman who was asleep on a futon in the office. On nights when she closed the bar, McSween would return home around 4:00 a.m.

{¶ 4} Between 3:50 and 4:00 a.m. that morning, Mark McCool, who lived within 50 yards of the bar on Park Street, was smoking at an open window in his home when he heard a woman's scream coming from near the bar. He went outside, walked north along Park Street, and looked toward the bar's parking lot, but he did not see or hear anything else.

{¶ 5} Margaret Huelsman and Brian Williams were watching a movie in a house on Park Street that is adjacent to the bar's parking lot when around 4:20 or 4:30 a.m. they heard thuds along the north wall and the front door began to open. Assuming that someone was trying to break into the house, Huelsman shut and locked the door, and Williams pulled a small knife from his belt buckle, looked out the front door window, and asked Huelsman whether she knew a "guy with long hair." (Thomas did not have long hair at the time, and McSween's hair was about shoulder length.) A short time later, Williams walked outside, and when he returned, he told Huelsman that he had not seen anyone.

{¶ 6} Patrolman Scott Daubenmire pulled into the bar's parking lot around 4:30 a.m. for a routine business check. He drove to the back, shining his lights along the building and on boats being stored on an adjacent property, but he did not see anything unusual except for a flat tire on a vehicle.

{¶ 7} Between 5:00 and 5:30 a.m., Robert Jenkins, who lived on Marine Parkway about a half mile from the bar, was awakened by a flashing light on his second-story bedroom wall. He initially thought it was lightning, but when he looked out his window, he saw the silhouette of a tall, thin Caucasian man with short hair standing over a fire in a barrel behind the home of Jenkins's next-door neighbor, Susan Gorsha. Joseph Thomas and Tim Miller, who both lived in Gorsha's house at that time, matched that description.

{¶ 8} Shortly after 8:40 a.m., the owner of a business adjacent to the bar discovered McSween's body, naked except for a pair of socks, in a wooded lot about 150 feet northeast of the bar. Investigators found McSween's car in the bar's parking lot with a slashed tire, her left shoe wedged between the driver's-side front tire and the wheel well, and her keychain on the ground near the tire. They found small amounts of blood on the inside frame of the driver's door, the outside of the driver's-side rear door, and the interior window of the driver's-side rear door. They also found McSween's eyeglasses on the ground 15 to 20 feet from the car.

{¶ 9} About 92 feet northeast of McSween's car, near an excavator stored on the property, investigators discovered McSween's right shoe, her underwear, and a bracelet on the ground. There was a small amount of blood on the excavator's bucket, two large bloodstains on the ground, and a trail of blood leading toward the Park Street house adjacent to the bar's parking lot. Investigators observed bloodstains on the windows, siding, and front door of that house and a pool of blood on the front stoop. They also saw drag marks leading from the front stoop through the gravel driveway and into the grass toward the area where McSween's body was found.

{¶ 10} Investigators collected three partial footprint impressions from the area near McSween's car but did not retrieve any useful DNA or fingerprints from the crime scene. DNA tests showed that all blood recovered from the scene—from the house, the ground, the excavator, and McSween's car—belonged to McSween.

{¶ 11} Two other vehicles parked near the bar had slashed tires, but investigators found no identifiable fingerprints on either vehicle. In addition, the cable and telephone lines to the bar and the thermostat wires running to an air-conditioning unit had been cut on the rear roof of the bar, and the covers of two boats being stored next to the bar parking lot had been cut open. Although investigators found a latent fingerprint inside one of the boats, the record does not reveal that it was analyzed. Patrolman Daubenmire saw footprints inside the boats, but he believed they belonged to another officer who had entered the boats at the crime scene.

{¶ 12} On the afternoon following the murder, a Mentor-on-the-Lake resident found McSween's cell phone in her driveway on the north side of Lakeshore Boulevard, east of Andrews Road. The back of the phone and the battery were missing, and the screen was cracked.

{¶ 13} An autopsy on McSween's body performed by Dr. Daniel Galita revealed that she died between 4:00 and 4:30 a.m. from blood loss caused by a stab wound

to her neck that severed her right carotid artery and right jugular vein. McSween's hyoid bone in her neck was fractured, consistent with manual strangulation, and she had at least five nonlethal cut wounds to the front of her neck. She had been punched in the face, breaking her upper jaw bone and caving in her face, her nose and dentures were broken, and the bridge of her nose had been cut with a knife. She had defensive wounds on her hands and evidence of blunt impacts to her torso and extremities, including a rib fracture, and she had brain hemorrhaging from her head hitting a hard surface. Contusions and linear abrasions appeared on her hips, face, torso, and extremities, consistent with having been dragged over a rough surface. She had been forcefully penetrated, both vaginally and anally, by a penis or smooth cylindrical object, but no semen or sperm was found. The autopsy further revealed that she had been stabbed five times in the back after her death.

{¶ 14} Dr. Galita opined that the stab wounds

on McSween's body were caused by a single-edged knife with a blunt edge of 1/16th of an inch. He explained that it was not possible to determine the exact length of the knife's blade by looking at the depth of the wounds, "[b]ecause in the soft tissue the length of the wound can be shorter or longer than the real length of the blade," but a blunt edge 1/16th of an inch wide would be consistent with a four- to six-inch blade. However, he also testified that although there is "some correlation" between the width of the blunt edge and the length of the blade, a knife could have a longer, narrower blade or a shorter, thicker blade and still have a blunt edge of 1/16th of an inch.

{¶ 15} Thomas's former girlfriend, Linda Roncalli, had often observed him wearing a blue pocketknife clipped to his pants; she described the blade as three to four inches long, and she had last seen it in December 2010 or January 2011, before he lost it. Christine Vanatta, another ex-girlfriend, had also seen Thomas with a blue pocketknife with a blade three or four inches long four years before the murder. Matthew Miller saw the top of a knife when he played pool with Thomas at the bar on Thanksgiving, but he did not describe it as being blue or having any particular length. There is no evidence that Thomas's blue pocket knife had a blunt edge 1/16th of an inch wide, because it was never recovered.

{¶ 16} The autopsy also revealed that McSween had toxic levels of amphetamine

and hydrocodone as well as a lower level of a barbiturate in her body, but Dr. Galita concluded that those drugs did not cause her death. Other evidence confirmed that she tried to obtain drugs to celebrate her 49th birthday—the day she died. Investigators recovered a text message she sent to Alan Thom, her former boyfriend, on the Sunday before her murder: "Its annie this is my new cell # i've been working mega hours and i was hoping u could help me i have money ..... plus friday is my birthday .... please call ......." (Ellipsis points sic.) Detective David Strauss interviewed Thom and learned that he sold methamphetamine and had sold some to McSween in the past, but there is no evidence that he had supplied drugs to her that week.

{¶ 17} The Lake County Crime Lab and the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation ("BCI") tested...