State v. Williams
| Decision Date | 16 September 2016 |
| Docket Number | No. C–150249.,C–150249. |
| Citation | 71 N.E.3d 592,2016 Ohio 5827 |
| Parties | STATE of Ohio, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. William WILLIAMS, Jr., Defendant–Appellant. |
| Court | Ohio Court of Appeals |
Joseph T. Deters, Hamilton County Prosecuting Attorney, and Judith Anton Lapp, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, for plaintiff-appellee.
Raymond T. Faller, Hamilton County Public Defender, and David Hoffman, Assistant Public Defender, for defendant-appellant.
{¶ 1} Defendant-appellant William Williams, Jr., appeals from his convictions for two counts of aggravated murder with firearm specifications, one count of aggravated robbery with a firearm specification, and one count of having a weapon while under a disability. We affirm Williams's convictions, but remand this cause for resentencing.
{¶ 2} Shortly after 1 a.m. on April 13, 2013, Cincinnati police officers responded to reports of gunfire in the area of the Winton Terrace apartment complex. A few minutes later, police received another call reporting that two people appeared to have been shot in a car in the Winton Terrace parking lot. When police arrived at the scene, they discovered victims John Martin and Brandi Fields, dead, in Martin's Jaguar sedan. The front driver's side door was open. Martin, who was in the driver's seat, had been shot once in the back of his head. One of the pockets in his pants had been turned inside out, and he had no personal items on him. Fields was in the front passenger seat. Her body was facing Martin and leaning against the passenger-side door, with her feet up on the passenger's seat. She, too, had been shot. Her personal effects were largely undisturbed. Neither victim had a cell phone on them.
{¶ 3} Police collected evidence from inside of the car, including a gin bottle and cigarette butts. A cigarette butt was also discovered outside of the car, as was what appeared to be "fresh spit." The saliva was found on the pavement outside of the front driver's side door. It was collected as evidence.
{¶ 4} Later ballistic testing revealed that the bullets found in each victim had been fired from the same gun. The saliva collected at the scene matched Williams's DNA profile, as did DNA lifted from cigarette butts found inside and outside of the car. Williams's DNA and fingerprints were found on the bottle of gin recovered from the back seat of Martin's car.
{¶ 5} Forensic pathologist Karen Looman, M.D., examined Martin's and Field's bodies. According to Dr. Looman, Martin was killed by a single gunshot wound to the back right side of his head. The location of his wound and the path that the bullet had traveled was consistent with somebody in the rear passenger seat shooting him. Dr. Looman testified that Fields, who had been facing Martin when she was shot, had gunshot wounds in her right arm and left hand, and that these wounds were consistent with Fields having thrown her arms up into a defensive position. Fields was also shot above her right eyebrow, and at the tip of her nose. The gunshot wounds to her face were fatal. The location of Fields's wounds was consistent with someone firing a gun from outside of the driver's side door. Dr. Looman believed that Fields and Martin had been shot where they were found.
{¶ 6} Even before the evidence at the scene had been processed, police developed Williams as a suspect in the shooting deaths of Martin and Fields based on the tracking of Martin's cell phone. Within days after the shootings, police discovered that on April 13, 2013, at 11:33 p.m., a SIM card had been put in and then quickly taken out of a cell phone that had belonged to Martin. The SIM card belonged to a cell phone registered in Skye Bazel's name. Bazel was Williams's fiancée. On April 16, 2013, police tracked the cell phone containing the SIM card in Bazel's name to a house where Williams and Bazel were staying, and they took Williams in for questioning.
{¶ 7} Williams told police that he had purchased Martin's cell phone for $50 from an individual named Greg Summerland who was also known as "Joker." Williams gave police several stories concerning when he purchased the phone, before finally settling on "probably before noon" on April 13, 2013.
{¶ 8} Police also questioned Williams in connection with the shootings. Williams admitted that he was with Martin in the hours before Martin and Fields were killed, but claimed that Fields was never in the car with them. He said that he and Martin had driven around that day in Martin's Jaguar and had "got a bottle, drunk, chilled, whatever." He said that he had been in both the front and the back seats of the Jaguar. Around 11 p.m. on April 12, 2013, Williams, who did not have his own cell phone, used Martin's cell phone to call Bazel. Williams told police that after he had spoken with Bazel at 11 p.m., Martin had driven him to meet Bazel at the Winton Terrace apartments, where Bazel lived. According to Williams, after he met with Bazel he did not return to Martin's car and did not see Martin again that night. Williams claimed that he tried to return home after speaking with Bazel, but that his father would not let him in, so he picked up Bazel and went to his cousin Catherine Williams's house. He did not know what time they arrived.
{¶ 9} After giving his statement to police, Williams was held in the Justice Center on a receiving stolen property charge. While he was there, he made several phone calls to Bazel. These telephone calls were recorded, and they were played at trial. In the calls, Williams discussed with Bazel the story that he had told the police about how he had acquired Martin's cell phone. He often ended his sentences with "you feel me?" In one call, Williams said to Bazel, After one such statement, Bazel answered "that's good." At several points in these conversations, Bazel became angry over the fact that a woman had been killed. During one of her outbursts, she stated "Oh no, you know you have to deal with it."
{¶ 10} Police interviewed Williams again on May 9, 2013, this time at Williams's request. Williams again claimed that after he had met with Bazel around 11 p.m. on April 12, 2103, he never returned to Martin's car. Williams pointed out on a diagram the place where Martin had parked his car when he had dropped Williams off. The parking spot was the same parking spot where Martin's car was found following the shootings. Williams surmised that after Martin left him, he had picked up Fields and later returned to the same parking spot.
{¶ 11} The state presented evidence at trial that Williams was with both Martin and Fields on the night of the shootings, and not just with Martin, as Williams had claimed. Lisa Jones, Fields's mother, testified at trial that she and Fields were at home together on the evening of April 12, 2013. Jones knew Martin well because he and Fields had a child together. Jones watched from her window as Fields left for the night around 9:30 p.m. She saw Martin in the front seat of his Jaguar. As Fields approached the car, Jones saw a man "with wild hair" get out of the front seat and get into the back seat of Martin's car. Jones later identified Williams as the man "with wild hair" after she saw a story on the news about the shootings.
{¶ 12} In further support of the state's theory that Williams had been with Martin and Fields most of the evening, the state submitted cell phone text message records into evidence at trial. According to these records, a text message, "bay," was sent from Martin's cell phone to Field's cell phone at 12:52 a.m. on April 13, 2013. The response was "Yes, hun." And the reply to that was "Love you." The state argued that these text messages suggested that someone else was with Martin and Fields, and that they were texting these messages to keep them private. Just minutes after the texts were sent, the call came into police reporting that gunshots had been fired in the area of the Winton Terrance apartments. The next activity on Martin's phone came at 11:33 p.m. on April 13, 2013, when Bazel's SIM card was inserted into Martin's cell phone.
{¶ 13} At trial, Bazel testified that, a little after 11 p.m. on April 12, 2013, she met Williams at the top of her street in the Winton Terrace apartment complex. According to Bazel, Martin had driven Williams to meet her, she and Williams had talked, and then had gone their separate ways. Bazel thought that Williams was going back to Martin's car, but did not know for certain whether he had. Williams called Bazel a few hours later, and asked her to meet him at Catherine Williams's house. Bazel testified that she did not drive with Williams, but that she met him there sometime between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m. on April 13, 2013.
{¶ 14} On the afternoon of April 13, 2103, Bazel and Williams went shopping, together. Williams spent hundreds of dollars on numerous items, including a $389 engagement ring for Bazel. Photographs of the smiling couple with shopping bags were taken on a cell phone that police later discovered had belonged to Martin.
{¶ 15} Catherine Williams was called as a state's witness. When she had spoken with police following the shooting, she had told them that Williams had arrived at her house between 12:30 a.m. and 2 a.m. on April 13, 2013. At trial, Catherine Williams testified that Williams had arrived at her house between 11:30 p.m. on April 12 and 12:15 a.m. on April 13. Over defense counsel's objection, the state impeached Catherine Williams's credibility with her prior inconsistent statement to the police concerning the time that Williams had allegedly arrived at her place.
{¶ 16} State's witness Andre Wilson also did not testify as the state had expected....
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