State v. Whitt

• Decision Date: 09 March 2010
• Docket Number: No. ED 92578.,ED 92578.
• Citation: 330 S.W.3d 487
• Parties: STATE of Missouri, Respondent,v.Jamel WHITT, Appellant.
• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals

330 S.W.3d 487

STATE of Missouri, Respondent,

v.Jamel WHITT, Appellant.

No. ED 92578.

Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District, Division Four.

March 9, 2010.

Timothy Forneris, St. Louis, MO, for appellant.Chris Koster, Atty. Gen., Daniel N. McPherson, Jefferson City, MO, for respondents.GARY M. GAERTNER, JR., Judge.

Introduction

Jamel Whitt appeals from the trial court's judgment, following a bench trial, convicting him of two counts of the Class A felony of murder in the first degree degree in violation of Section 565.020 RSMo 2000.¹ We affirm.

Factual and Procedural Background

The complaint charging Defendant was filed April 24, 2005. On or about April 25, 2005, the trial court issued the following order:

Defendant appears confined in open court having been unresponsive to the Public Defender's efforts to interview him, having been on overnight suicide watch and having acted out in court in a manner to suggest the need for a mental evaluation. Whereupon the court orders the Public Defender's office to represent the defendant, that he be taken for a psychiatric examination, that he be provided his prescribed medications ... as determined necessary and that he be maintained on a suicide watch.

The trial court also granted Defendant's Motion for Appointment of Psychiatrist, continued the cause, and committed Defendant to the Department of Mental Health (DMH) for a mental examination pursuant to Sections 552.020 and 552.030. Defendant's cause was removed from the trial docket and placed on the Mental Examination Docket on April 25, 2005.

At a certification hearing held on July 25, 2005, Defendant filed a Motion to Declare the Defendant Incompetent. Based on a previously-filed psychiatric evaluation report and the record, the trial court found that Defendant lacked the mental fitness to proceed and ordered the cause suspended. The court ordered that the Defendant be committed to DMH; and ordered DMH to evaluate Defendant's mental ability and capacity within six months, and to submit to the trial court a progress report within 30 days of the evaluation. The cause was placed on the Mental Inactive Docket.

On August 30, 2006, the trial court took up the Review of Competency to Stand Trial filed by DMH and Fulton State Hospital. After considering a Pre–Trial Mental Evaluation report prepared by Erica Kempker, Psy. D. (Dr. Kempker) and Jeffrey S. Kline, Ph.D., dated August 2, 2006, the trial court found Defendant remained incompetent to proceed to trial and ordered Defendant's continued commitment to DMH with reevaluation within six months.

In February of 2007, the Director of DMH filed a Motion to Proceed, indicating that the staff of Fulton State Hospital where Defendant was being treated had determined that Defendant's unfitness to proceed no longer endured and that Defendant had the capacity to understand the proceedings against him and to assist in his own defense. Defendant filed an objection to the motion to proceed on February 21, 2007, requesting the court to order a second private examination. On March 15, 2007, the trial court continued the cause to allow Defendant to undergo a private evaluation.

On or about June 19, 2007, the State and Defendant jointly filed an agreement as to DMH's Motion to Proceed, indicating that Defendant had no additional witnesses to present regarding his competence, that both parties agreed Dr. Kempker's report contained sufficient information for the court to make its ruling, and that both parties agreed to submit the report without the necessity of a hearing.

In an order dated June 26, 2007, the trial court found that Defendant was no longer incompetent due to active schizophrenia and was no longer incompetent due to mild mental retardation, and that Defendant had the capacity to understand the proceedings against him and the nature of the judicial process. The court determined Defendant was able to assist in his defense and granted the Motion to Proceed. In making its determination, the trial court relied particularly on Dr. Kempker's report, noting that she had evaluated Defendant on February 8, 2006; July 31, 2006; and January 24, 2007.

The trial court noted that Dr. Kempker's last evaluation made no mention of mild mental retardation, but rather contained diagnoses of Antisocial Personality Disorder and Borderline Intellectual Functioning. The trial court indicated that this most recent evaluation concluded that Defendant had the capacity to understand the proceedings against him and the nature of the judicial process, and that Defendant was in full remission. Additionally, the trial court noted “that a strong suspicion of malingering appears in the diagnosis section. There are apparent inconsistencies in the defendant's psychotic symptoms, level of functioning and vocabulary skills. It appears the defendant displays lower functioning skills during evaluations than he does in regular daily interaction with others.”

On February 29, 2008, upon Defendant's request, the trial court ordered Fulton State Hospital to permit Dr. Richard Scott contact visits with Defendant for the purposes of a private pretrial psychological evaluation. On June 3, 2008, upon Defendant's request, the trial court ordered the hospital to permit Dr. Robert Gordon contact visits with Defendant for a private pretrial psychological evaluation.

Defendant waived jury trial, and the cause proceeded to a bench trial on or about January 26, 2009. Prior to the commencement of the proceedings on January 26, the trial court examined Dr. Kempker on the record. In response to the trial court's inquiry as to whether she had an opportunity to observe Defendant or had Defendant under the observance of her staff since the completion of her January 24, 2007 report, Dr. Kempker stated that the treatment team at Fulton State Hospital had continued to observe Defendant and document his behaviors since that time. Dr. Kempker stated that she had reviewed this documentation and nothing contained in it would lead her to believe that Defendant was mentally incompetent to assist in his trial. Dr. Kempker testified that there had been no changes in Defendant's condition since January 24, 2007, and stated that she had seen Defendant casually in the Fulton State Hospital since January 24, 2007, and had continued to engage in consultations with Defendant's treatment team, the members of whom agreed Defendant was competent.

Following additional questioning of Dr. Kempker by the State and by Defendant, Defendant and the State both indicated they knew of no reason that Defendant was not competent to stand trial. Defendant's only asserted affirmative defense was defense of others, and Defendant specifically indicated that he was not raising the defenses of diminished capacity, incompetency to assist at trial, or not guilty by reason of insanity.

As pertinent to the issues on appeal, the following evidence was adduced at trial. Police Officer Theophilus Buford (Buford) testified on behalf of the State. On April 25, 2005, Buford was employed as a police officer with the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department and received a call concerning a possible homicide. Buford responded to the call and proceeded to 4730 Lewis Place. When he arrived at that location, he approached Defendant, who was talking on a telephone.

Buford asked Defendant to finish his call; when Defendant hung up, he told Buford that he wanted to talk with someone because he had just killed his grandmother's boyfriend. Buford then read Defendant his rights, took him into custody, and placed Defendant in the back seat of his patrol car.

After Defendant indicated that he understood his rights, he continued to speak to Buford. Defendant told Buford that after Defendant had come home to the apartment where he lived with his grandmother and had found his grandmother “on the floor choked out,” he had gone after her boyfriend with a knife. Defendant told Buford that after he had initially stabbed the boyfriend, Defendant returned and stabbed him a couple more times in the stomach because he was upset. Defendant then changed clothes, threw the clothes he had been wearing away, and left the apartment. Defendant told Buford that he believed that his grandmother was dead and that she was cut. Defendant also told Buford that the boyfriend was dead.

George Weindel (Weindel) testified that on April 24, 2005, he was a police officer assigned to the Evidence Technician Unit, Laboratory Division of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. On that date, he was called to the scene of a double homicide in an apartment on the eighth floor of the building at 711 North Euclid. In the course of processing the apartment, Weindel photographed the scene and the victims, and seized numerous objects. The male victim, Rodney Staples (Staples) was found lying on the floor of the apartment's kitchen area. The female victim, Mary Morant (Morant) was found lying in a hallway of the apartment, between the kitchen and the bedroom.

Among the items seized from the apartment by Weindel was a blood-stained carving knife with an 8–inch blade. Weindel also retrieved an 11–inch serrated electric knife blade; a bloody, bent kitchen knife with a five-and-a-half-inch blade and a broken tip; a bent and bloody spatula; a bloody butcher knife with a 9–inch blade; and a pair of bloody scissors.

When Weindel photographed Morant, he took a closeup of the blood that was on the bottom of her socks and the bent knife lying at the bottom of her feet. Morant's feet were in the kitchen and her head was at the doorway leading to the bedroom. A telephone was lying next to Morant's right shoulder. Weindel photographed some injuries to Morant's hands and wrist area. Morant also had injuries on one of her legs. Morant's underwear was bloodstained.

Staples was discovered lying in a pool of blood and broken glass with a substantial injury to his left shoulder. Staples's penis had been cut off and was...