State v. Williams

• Decision Date: 05 April 1983
• Docket Number: No. 277A82,277A82
• Citation: 301 S.E.2d 335,308 N.C. 47
• Parties: STATE of North Carolina v. Douglas WILLIAMS, Jr.
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court

Page 335

301 S.E.2d 335

308 N.C. 47

STATE of North Carolina v. Douglas WILLIAMS, Jr.

No. 277A82.

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

April 5, 1983.

Rufus L. Edmisten, Atty. Gen. by Ralf F. Haskell, Asst. Atty. Gen., Raleigh, for the State.

H. Vinson Bridgers and Edward B. Simmons, Tarboro, for defendant-appellant.

MITCHELL, Justice.

The defendant brings forward assignments of error relating to the guilt-innocence determination phase and to the sentencing phase of his trial. Having carefully considered each of these assignments, as well as the entire record before us, we find no prejudicial error in either phase of the defendant's trial. Therefore, we do not disturb the defendant's conviction or the sentence of death.

I.

The evidence presented by the State during the guilt-innocence determination phase of the trial tended to show that Adah Herndon Dawson was approximately one hundred years old in August, 1981. She lived in a house on her farm in Edgecombe County. She was visited by Rosella Spencer from approximately 3:30 to 4:00 p.m. on 1 August 1981 and appeared to be all right at that time. At approximately 8:00 p.m. on that date Adah Dawson talked by telephone with Lester Andrews for approximately fifteen minutes at which time she advised him that she was all right.

On the evening of 1 August 1981, Rosella Spencer went to a party at the home of her brother Clifton Edwards. Edwards' house was located in a field approximately one-half mile behind the Dawson home. A path leading to the Edwards home goes directly by the Dawson home. While attending the party in her brother's home, Rosella Spencer observed the Dawson home and noticed that the lights in the kitchen and breakfast room were on at approximately 10:30 p.m. At about the same time, Spencer observed the defendant at the party talking to her sister. She noticed what appeared to be a liquor bottle in the defendant's front pocket but did not see the defendant drinking or know whether he had been drinking. Spencer last noticed the defendant at her brother's home when he went outside sometime between 11:00 p.m. and midnight. Spencer left her brother's home between 1:30 and 2:00 a.m. and noticed that the light in the Dawson kitchen was off at that time while the light in the breakfast room was still on. At approximately 8:00 a.m. on Sunday morning 2 August 1981, Spencer's brother Clifton Edwards saw Adah Dawson's dogs running loose. He went to the Dawson home to put the dogs in their pen. He noticed that the screen porch door was unlatched and the wooden door to the Dawson home was open. He went inside and saw the body of the victim Adah Dawson lying on the floor in the kitchen. He then ran back to his home and called his sister Rosella Spencer. After receiving a call from her brother at approximately 8:05 a.m., Spencer went to the Dawson home. She went inside and saw the victim lying on her back on the kitchen floor. Spencer observed that the victim's dress was up to her waist and that there were no clothes on the lower half of her body. There were numerous wounds to the victim's face and head.

Members of the Edgecombe County Sheriff's Department arrived at the Dawson home at approximately 8:45 a.m. on 2 August 1981. They asked Rosella Spencer to reenter the Dawson home with them because of her familiarity with the home. After entering the home, Spencer noticed that the weights to a cuckoo clock which hung in a front hall were missing. A drawer in the victim's bedroom was out of the dresser and her pocketbook, papers and other items were lying on the bed and floor. Other drawers were out in another room and screwdrivers and other items were strewn on the floor. A padlock used to keep the door to another room locked had been broken. A flashlight which the victim always kept on the nightstand in her bedroom was on a dresser in the room in which the screwdriver and other items were found on the floor. Spencer also observed that the drapes in the victim's bedroom, which were normally kept open, were closed over the window with a table pushed up to the window. Spencer had never known the victim to close the bedroom curtains in this manner. The curtains in the bathroom were also pulled together and were held shut by a cup placed in the window. Spencer had never known the victim to close these curtains in this manner.

Deputy Sheriff Jerry Wiggs of the Edgecombe County Sheriff's Department arrived at the Dawson home at approximately 8:45 a.m. on 2 August 1981. As he entered the home, Wiggs saw that the screen door to the porch had been torn away at the bottom. He saw the body of the victim on the floor. He also saw a large puddle of blood on the floor together with a puddle of melted ice cream which was between the victim's legs. The victim's head was against the refrigerator and her dress was pulled up Chief Deputy Sheriff Tom Moore arrived at the Dawson home at approximately 9:45 a.m. When he entered the home, he saw the victim's body on the kitchen floor. His testimony tended to corroborate the testimony of Deputy Wiggs. Deputy Moore also observed blood on the screen door to the kitchen, a pair of glasses on the porch floor just outside the kitchen door, and the telephone off its cradle in the kitchen. He also observed that the handle to the mop located at the lower portion of the victim's body extended between the victim's legs. Deputy Moore observed the general disarray of the house as described by the other witnesses.

to her waist with a mop lying over her vagina. He also saw a metal object in the shape of a pine cone on the floor near her leg and another near the upper part of her body. These objects were later identified as the weights from the clock in the hallway. Wiggs observed red and brown spots on the refrigerator, red spots on the wall and blood smeared on the floor. The blood was smeared across the floor from the door to the victim's body.

Deputy Moore also observed that a person would be required to go through a fenced-in area outside the home in order to enter the porch from the outside of the home. While examining this fenced-in area, he noticed that a part of the fence was pushed down at the top. A chair was beneath the pushed down portion of the fence on the side closest to the home. On the other side of the fence from the chair, Deputy Moore found the victim's checkbook and key ring and some paper money and change.

Deputy Moore saw the defendant for the first time on 2 August 1981 while the defendant was sitting outside the Dawson home in Alcoholic Beverage Control Officer James Johnson's car. State Bureau of Investigation Agent Jim Wilson was also present at that time. The defendant was informed of his Miranda rights at that time and made a statement indicating that he had been to a party at one of the houses on the Dawson farm the night before where he had taken pills and consumed a pint of Vodka. The defendant stated he had gone home around 1:30 or 2:00 a.m., returned to the party later and finally returned home at approximately 3:00 a.m. He denied having been to the Dawson home on the night of 1 August 1981. After making this statement to the officers, the defendant went home.

A few hours later, Deputy Moore and Agent Wilson went to the defendant's home and asked for his tennis shoes. The defendant gave them the shoes and gave them permission to take the shoes to the Dawson home to compare them with the shoe prints found there. After making the comparison, Moore and Wilson returned to the defendant's home and told him that, based upon the results of the comparisons made, they wanted to take him to the Sheriff's Department in Tarboro for questioning. The defendant voluntarily went with them. When they arrived at the Sheriff's Department, the defendant was again given the Miranda warnings. He then agreed to talk with the officers and signed a written waiver of rights form. The officers told the defendant that a comparison had revealed that his tennis shoes made the shoe prints found at the Dawson home. The defendant thereafter made a statement to the officers. He first indicated that he had gone to the Dawson home with someone else but later admitted that he had gone there alone. The defendant stated to the officers that he was "crazy drunk" from taking "speed" and drinking Vodka on that night. He stated that he had gone to the Dawson home looking for a place to sleep and had pulled open the screen door leading to the porch off the kitchen. He had not thought that anyone lived in the home and was surprised by the presence of the victim when he went inside. The defendant stated that the victim Adah Dawson threw a handful of salt at him as he was entering the house. He struck her several times with a stick he had picked up on the porch, and she fell toward him. He laid her on the floor and then went through the house looking for anything he could find. He washed some blood off of his clothing in one of the bathrooms. After going through the house, he went back into the kitchen and forced a mop handle into A forensic pathologist, Dr. Lewis Levy, performed an autopsy on the body of the victim Adah Dawson. During the course of the autopsy, he found numerous lacerations to the skin of the neck, face, scalp, ear, arms, vagina and rectum together with fractures of the face, skull, pubic bones and hip bone. Among numerous other injuries, he observed a laceration at the superior portion of the vagina which entered posterially into the rectum with a communicating tear in that area. Dr. Levy testified that in his opinion the fractures to the public bones were caused by a large amount of pressure applied to that area. He described the laceration to the victim's vagina as a tear inside her body continuing from her vagina to her rectum. The deepest part of her vagina cavity was torn with the tear extending through and into the rectum. Dr. Levy testified that these injuries were consistent with a stab or jab into the vagina cavity and...