State v. Wilks
| Decision Date | 24 April 2018 |
| Docket Number | No. 2014–1035,2014–1035 |
| Citation | 2018 Ohio 1562,154 Ohio St.3d 359,114 N.E.3d 1092 |
| Parties | The STATE of Ohio, Appellee, v. WILKS, Appellant. |
| Court | Ohio Supreme Court |
Paul J. Gains, Mahoning County Prosecuting Attorney, and Ralph M. Rivera, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, for appellee.
McGarry Law Office and Kathleen McGarry ; and John P. Parker, Cleveland, for appellant.
French, J.{¶ 1} Appellant, Willie Wilks Jr., was convicted of the aggravated murder of Ororo Wilkins and the attempted murders of Alexander Morales Jr. and William Wilkins Jr. A jury recommended, and the trial court imposed, a sentence of death. In this appeal as of right, we affirm appellant's convictions and death sentence.
I. TRIAL EVIDENCE
A. Argument at appellant's home
{¶ 2} Evidence introduced at trial showed that around noon on May 21, 2013, Morales and William Wilkins Jr. (nicknamed "Mister") drove to the Youngstown home of Mary Aragon, Mister's mother, to borrow money from her. But appellant, who was Aragon's boyfriend, had both of her bank cards, so the three of them went to appellant's nearby home to get the cards.
{¶ 3} Aragon knocked on the door and asked appellant for the cards; he agreed to give them to her but did not bring them outside. Mister then knocked on the door and asked appellant for the cards. Appellant told Mister that he would get them and asked Mister to come to the corner of the house.
{¶ 4} Appellant soon came outside and gave Mister one card but not the other. Appellant then asked Mister to walk to the back of the house with him. Mister observed appellant "fidgeting in his pants" as if he had a weapon. Mister became angry, they exchanged words, and Mister tried to start a fight.
{¶ 5} Appellant entered his house. He returned with a 9 mm handgun, chased Mister down the street, and pointed the gun at him. Mister did not believe that appellant would shoot him because people were around. Mister taunted appellant and called him names. When appellant saw Morales, appellant put the gun in his pocket. Morales introduced himself, and appellant said, "You better get your boy." Morales replied that they had come just to get the bank cards and did not want any trouble. Appellant handed the second bank card to Morales, and Morales, Mister, and Aragon left.
B. Mister's phone call with appellant
{¶ 6} Later that afternoon, Mister, Morales, and two other individuals played basketball at a nearby playground. About 45 minutes after they started playing, Mister placed a phone call to Aragon. Mister asked his mother,
{¶ 7} Appellant got on the phone with Mister, and they had a heated discussion. Appellant told Mister that he was going to kill him. Appellant asked Mister where he was, but Mister refused to tell him. Mister called appellant a name and hung up.
C. Murder of Ororo and attempted murders of Morales and Mister
{¶ 8} Later in the afternoon that same day, Mister and Morales drove to Mister's home, which was a short distance from Aragon's home. Mister was living with his girlfriend, Renea Jenkins, their three children, and Renea's mother.
{¶ 9} Upon arriving, Morales and Mister joined a gathering on the front porch. Soon thereafter, Mister went inside the house to his upstairs bedroom and Renea, her sister and brother, Shantwone and Antwone Jenkins, and Renea's two older children also went inside. Ororo Wilkins, Mister's sister, remained seated on the porch with Morales, who was holding Renea's five-month-old daughter.
{¶ 10} "[N]o more than ten minutes" after he and Mister arrived, Morales saw a "dark-color blue/purplish * * * Dodge Intrepid" near the house. Appellant exited the car, walked toward the porch, raised an "AK" rifle, and asked where Mister was. Morales turned with the baby to go inside the house. Appellant shot him in the back, and Morales dropped the baby and fell just inside the house. Appellant then shot Ororo in the head when she went to pick up the baby. Morales ran to the back of the house and collapsed in the kitchen.
{¶ 11} Mister witnessed the events from his upstairs bedroom. After hearing a car "skidding," he looked out the window and saw a car "like a purple Intrepid" parked in front of the house. Two people were in the front seats, and appellant was in the back. Appellant was wearing a hooded shirt with the hood up. Mister saw appellant walk toward the front porch carrying "some kind of rifle" and then saw appellant shooting toward the porch.
{¶ 12} Mister screamed, and appellant looked up and fired at him. Appellant's hood came off, and Mister made eye contact with him. Mister was not hit by the gunfire and went downstairs. But the car was gone when Mister got to the porch.
{¶ 13} Renea called 9–1–1. On the recording of the 9–1–1 call, Mister can be heard repeatedly yelling, "He killed my sister" and "I watched him kill my sister." When police officers arrived at the scene, they found Mister holding Ororo's body in his arms, and Officer Jessica Shields heard him scream, Officer Melvin Johnson found Morales lying in the kitchen doorway. Morales told the officer that appellant did the shooting.
{¶ 14} Mister told Officer Shields that a black Dodge Stratus had squealed to a halt outside the house, causing him to look out the window. He told her that he then saw appellant jump out of the back seat with a big gun, which he thought was an AK–47.
{¶ 15} Investigators found a single 7.62 x 39 mm shell casing on the front porch. There was also a bullet strike near the front-door window and a bullet strike on the upper-story siding.
{¶ 16} Police broadcast a BOLO (be-on-the-lookout) request for appellant and for a dark-colored Intrepid and/or a silver minivan registered to his mother. They later learned that appellant had purchased a 2004 purple Dodge Stratus four days before the shooting.
D. Appellant's arrest
{¶ 17} On May 22, 2013—the day after the shooting—the police received a tip that appellant was driving a silver minivan. The minivan was spotted in Youngstown that afternoon. Appellant was driving the minivan and was the only person in the vehicle. The police followed appellant into a residential area, where he abandoned the vehicle and fled. He was apprehended after a short chase on foot.
{¶ 18} When the police searched appellant, they found a little over $2,000 in cash and one of Aragon's bank cards. They found a fully loaded 9 mm handgun in the van, and they recovered a 9 mm magazine near the van. Appellant's hands were swabbed for gunshot residue ("GSR") at the police station.
{¶ 19} Police never recovered appellant's purple Dodge Stratus. And although Mister later identified the other two occupants of the car in a police photo array, the police were unable to find them.
E. Autopsy results
{¶ 20} Dr. Joseph Ohr, the Mahoning County medical examiner, conducted Ororo's autopsy. He testified that Ororo died from a gunshot wound to the head. The bullet entered the side of her head between her eye and ear and exited at the back of her head. The exit wound was "five, six centimeters" by "two and a half centimeters" in size. Dr. Ohr said that the damage to Ororo's head was "consistent with a very fast moving bullet, regardless of the caliber."
{¶ 21} Dr. Ohr also found a gunshot wound in the heel of Ororo's left hand. No soot was found that might have shown that the muzzle was near Ororo's hand when the gun was fired. Dr. Ohr said that it was possible that Ororo's hand was raised and that the same shot caused both wounds.
F. Forensic evidence
{¶ 22} Martin Lewis, a forensic scientist in the trace-evidence section of the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation ("BCI"), examined the samples collected from appellant. He testified that "particles [were] highly indicative of gunshot primer residue * * * on both of the samples."
{¶ 23} Joshua Barr, a forensic scientist in the firearms section of BCI, examined the 7.62 x 39 mm cartridge. He testified that this cartridge is most commonly fired by an SKS (a semiautomatic carbine) or an AK–47 rifle. The police never recovered the murder weapon, however.
{¶ 24} Barr also examined two lead fragments found at the scene, but they were unsuitable for microscopic comparison. A lead fragment removed from Morales was also unsuitable for testing.
II. CASE HISTORY
{¶ 25} Appellant was indicted on nine counts. Count 1 charged that appellant, purposely and with prior calculation and design, committed the aggravated murder of Ororo. Count 1 included a death-penalty specification for a course of conduct involving the purposeful killing of, or attempt to kill, two or more persons, under R.C. 2929.04(A)(5).
{¶ 26} Count 2 charged appellant with the murder of Ororo by improperly discharging a firearm into a habitation. Counts 3 and 4 charged appellant with the attempted murders of Morales and Mister, respectively. Counts 5 and 6 charged appellant with felonious assault. Count 7 charged him with discharging a firearm into an occupied structure. Counts 1 through 7 each included a firearm specification. Counts 8 and 9, charging appellant with having a weapon while under a disability, were severed from the other counts and later dismissed.
{¶ 27} Appellant pleaded not guilty to all the remaining charges. A jury found appellant guilty of all charges and specifications.
{¶ 28} Appellant was sentenced to death for the aggravated murder of Ororo. He was also sentenced to 11 years in prison for each attempted-murder count and 9 years for the firearm specifications, for a total of 31 years. The trial court ordered the prison sentences to run consecutively to the death sentence.
{¶ 29} Appellant now appeals his convictions and his death sentence, raising 19 propositions of law. We address appellant's propositions of law out of order.
III. ANALYSIS
A. Failure to present exculpatory evidence to the grand jury
{¶ 30} In proposition of law No. III, appellant argues that his...
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