State v. Valenti, 20100

• Decision Date: 06 October 1975
• Docket Number: No. 20100,20100
• Citation: 218 S.E.2d 726,265 S.C. 380
• Court: South Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: The STATE, Respondent, v. Richard VALENTI, Appellant.

Page 726

218 S.E.2d 726

265 S.C. 380

The STATE, Respondent, v. Richard VALENTI, Appellant.

No. 20100.

Supreme Court of South Carolina.

Oct. 6, 1975.

Coming B. Gibbs, Jr., and Mark C. Tanenbaum, Charleston, for appellant.

Sol. Robert B. Wallace and Asst. Sol. A. Arthur Rosenblum, Charleston, and Atty. Gen. Daniel R. McLeon and Asst. Atty. Gen. Joseph R. Barker, Columbia, for respondent.

LITTLEJOHN, Justice:

Richard R. Valenti, appellant, was tried before the Honorable Clarence E. Singletary on charges of murdering two teenaged girls. The jury found him guilty on both counts. He was sentenced to two life imprisonments--the two sentences to run consecutively.

Appellant now asks this Court for a new trial, alleging that the trial court erred in five particulars:

1. in refusing to grant motions for a change of venue and a continuance;

2. in refusing to sustain challenges for cause against ten jurors;

3. in admitting into evidence the confessions and admissions of appellant;

4. in charging the M'Naghten Rule relating to insanity instead of charging the test adopted by the American Law Institute; and

5. in refusing to declare a mistrial, or in the alternative, to charge the jury the law governing the disposition of a person found insane, after the solicitor, in his closing argument, said that appellant would be set free if he were found insane.

A review of the facts is necessary to an understanding of the issues. Appellant was arrested at his home on a charge of assault with intent to ravish, unconnected with this case. He was given the Miranda warnings and did not ask to have counsel present. En route to the police station, he expressed a willingness to discuss his desire to bind and gag females.

At the station house, appellant said that he wanted to make a statement. His statement and interrogation were recorded on a tape, with his permission. During the interrogation, appellant confessed to the abduction and strangulation of the two girls, for which he has now been convicted. He stated that he had taken the two girls to an abandoned beach house, had bound and gagged them, and had tied a noose around their necks. The noose was tied to water pipes in a shower stall.

Appellant stated that the girls, by struggling to free themselves, caused the chair on which they were standing to fall, and that the girls died by strangulation. Appellant watched the girls until they died and then buried them in nearby sand dunes.

After his interrogation, appellant agreed to take the police officers to the grave site. While the bodies were being exhumed, appellant took the authorities to the shower stall in which he had hung the girls. Pieces of rope were still hanging from the water pipes.

The remains of the two bodies were found in the grave site pointed out by appellant. The remains were little more than skeletons, making immediate identification difficult. Personal effects (a necklace, a ring and a pair of earrings) later identified as belonging to the girls, were found in the grave.

Ten days prior to trial, appellant moved for a change of venue, or in the alternative for a continuance, on the ground that there had been extensive pretrial publicity prejudicial to a fair trial. After hearing oral arguments and reviewing the publicized materials, Judge Singletary denied the motion. Appellant argues that the denial of this motion was prejudicial to his trial.

In State v. Swilling, 249 S.C. 541, 155 S.E.2d 607, this Court held that the moving party has the burden of showing that prospective jurors have been prejudiced by pretrial publicity. Further, we have held that the decision of the trial judge will not be disturbed absent a showing of abuse of discretion. State v. Lytchfield, 230 S.C. 405, 95 S.E.2d 857 (1957); State v. Fuller, 227 S.C. 138, 87 S.E.2d 287 (1955).

A review of the record fails to reveal that the trial judge abused his discretion. All of the news media witnesses testified that their coverage was factual in nature, and the one editorial published merely extended sympathy to the families of the victims. Additionally, the voir dire examination (discussed in detail in the next issue) revealed that all prospective jurors, with the exception of one who was excused by the court, said that they could give appellant a fair and impartial trial.

Our holding in the recent case of State v. Crowe, 28 S.C. 258, 188 S.E.2d 379, cert. denied, 409 U.S. 1077, 93 S.Ct. 691, 34 L.Ed.2d 666 (1972), is equally applicable here. In Crowe, the factual setting was almost identical. We said in part:

'The trial judge conducted a careful voir dire examination of the jurors to determine the existence of any bias, prejudice, or adverse influence from newspaper publicity and prior discussions of the case in the community. The jurors selected to try the case stated under oath that they were not biased or prejudiced and could give the defendant a fair and impartial trial. It was apparent from the examination of the jurors that the claimed prejudice from newspaper publicity and discussions of the case in the community was not established.'

The second issue raised by appellant is that the trial judge erred in refusing to excuse for cause ten jurors, who stated that they had concluded from the news media that the two girls had died as a result of unlawful means. Appellant argues that since the State had the burden of proving that the two girls were in fact dead and that the girls had in fact died by unlawful means, it was prejudicial to seat jurors who had already formed an opinion adverse to appellant relating to these questions.

A review of the record reveals, to the exclusion of all other reasonable inferences, that the two bodies of the girls exhumed from the grave pointed out by the appellant were those of the two girls with whose wrongful death the appellant was charged. It further reveals, beyond debate, that they died by strangulation. Accordingly, the information which the jurors had attained from the news media concerned uncontradicted facts. The real issue in the case was not whether these girls were dead; and not whether they had been wrongfully killed. The question was whether the appellant was the person who did the deed and whether he was insane at the time. It can hardly be logically argued that the fact that some jurors had information...