State v. Williams

• Decision Date: 24 May 2019
• Docket Number: No. 17-1989,17-1989
• Citation: 929 N.W.2d 621
• Parties: STATE of Iowa, Appellee, v. Antoine Tyree WILLIAMS, Appellant.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

929 N.W.2d 621

STATE of Iowa, Appellee,

v.Antoine Tyree WILLIAMS, Appellant.

No. 17-1989

Supreme Court of Iowa.

Filed May 24, 2019

Rehearing Denied July 15, 2019

I. Introduction.

This is the third case we decide today concerning a defendant’s right to an impartial jury drawn from a fair cross section of the community. An African-American defendant was charged with first-degree murder in Floyd County, a county that is approximately 2.3% African-American in population. See Iowa Code §§ 707.1, .2(1)(a ) (2017). The decedent was also African-American. The jury pool of unexcused jurors, however, contained only one African-American. The district court overruled the defendant’s motion to strike the jury panel. Later, the court declined to permit defense counsel to individually voir dire the prospective jurors on a sequestered basis concerning their racial attitudes. During trial, the court also refused to admit into evidence the decedent’s prior criminal record or other bad acts unless the defendant knew about them. Further, the court declined to give the defendant’s proposed implicit-bias instruction, noting that it had not been previously reviewed by an Iowa court and that its subject matter was essentially covered by the latest version of an instruction promulgated by the Iowa State Bar Association. Lastly, the court did not allow the defendant to assert a "stand your ground" defense because it had not become effective until after the alleged murder had been committed. The jury found the defendant guilty of second-degree murder. See id. § 707.2.

On appeal, we find that the district court’s voir dire ruling and its decision not to give the implicit-bias instruction were within the court’s discretion. We also agree with the district court that when asserting self-defense, the defendant generally may not offer proof of prior bad acts not known to the defendant as a way of proving the allegedly aggressive character of the other party. And we agree that the stand your ground defense does not apply to crimes committed before that law took effect. However, we believe further consideration of the defendant’s fair-cross-section claim is warranted in light of the decisions we are filing today in State v. Lilly , ––– N.W.2d ––––, ––––, 2019 WL 2236099 (Iowa 2019), and State v. Veal , ––– N.W.2d ––––, ––––, 2019 WL 2236417 (Iowa 2019). Therefore, we conditionally affirm the defendant’s conviction and sentence while remanding for further proceedings consistent with Lilly , Veal , and this opinion.

II. Facts and Procedural History.

Late in the day on June 30, 2017, Shaun Biehl and his ex-girlfriend Jocelyn Simmons were spending time at her apartment in the Clarkview Apartments in Charles City. Biehl and Simmons were no longer in a romantic relationship but remained friends. Their four-year-old daughter also lived in the apartment. While Biehl was there, Nate Fleming dropped in several times. Fleming was a relatively small man who weighed 146 pounds and was five feet, seven inches tall. According to Biehl, Fleming was not upset or angry when he came by. Both Biehl and Simmons were also familiar with Antoine Williams, another resident of the Clarkview Apartments. Williams was a large man who weighed approximately 300 pounds and was six feet, seven inches tall.

Around 8:10 p.m., Biehl put his and Simmons’s daughter to bed. Biehl and Simmons sat down to watch television. After watching a full episode of a show, Biehl remembers hearing two gunshots outside and running to a window that overlooked the Clarkview Apartments parking lot. Biehl saw Williams standing outside Fleming’s red Chevy Equinox with his arm extended into the open driver’s side door. Biehl heard two more shots and saw muzzle flashes. He then saw Williams pull Fleming’s body out of the vehicle, throw him on the ground, get in the truck, and drive off.

Biehl called 911 on his cellphone and rushed outside to try to render assistance. Others also came to the scene. Fleming was on his back, bleeding with bullet wounds

in his chest area, and gasping for air. Meanwhile, Biehl spotted Williams driving back toward the group in the Equinox. Biehl told everyone to run and ran himself. Williams sped past the group in his vehicle and continued out of the complex. Fleming died at the scene.

Simmons likewise recalled being with Biehl at the apartment the evening of June 30. Fleming came by a couple of times to see her, and he was not upset or angry, although he smelled of alcohol. Simmons also remembered hearing shots and rushing to the window after their daughter had been put to bed. The first thing she saw was Williams holding a gun and standing over Fleming’s body. After that, she saw Williams get into the red Chevy Equinox and drive away. Simmons too ran outside, and observed Fleming lying on the ground bleeding and then losing consciousness. She put a pillow under his head.

Christopher Vierkant, who was familiar with Williams, lived next door to the Clarkview Apartments. On the evening of June 30, around 8:30 or 9:00 p.m., Vierkant was outside with his children. He saw Williams walk past and said hello to him. According to Vierkant, Williams was focused on a red car that he was walking toward. Vierkant saw an African-American man in the red car with his hands on the wheel but could not see the man’s face. Vierkant did not hear any talking or arguing between Williams and the man in the red car. He then saw two flashes and heard two bangs. At the time, he thought these were just fireworks. Vierkant ran back outside later after the police arrived at the apartment complex.

After the police arrived, they found two .380 caliber shell casings on the ground at the scene. They were also later able to track down the abandoned red Equinox, but Williams had moved on to Chicago, Illinois. On July 5, Williams was arrested there. On July 7, Williams was interviewed in Chicago by a special agent with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation. When asked about the evening of June 30, Williams initially claimed that he had hung out with a group that included Fleming and then gone over to an ex-girlfriend’s apartment and stayed there for the night. Williams claimed he did not learn until several days later that Fleming had been shot. Williams steadfastly denied having anything to do with Fleming’s death, saying, "No, sir, that’s crazy."

Later, questioning became more pointed. Williams was asked, "Do you think that law enforcement knows that you were involved in -- in [Fleming’s] death?" Williams acknowledged at that point that he had shot Fleming in the parking lot of the Clarkview Apartments. He said that he had been approaching the Chevy Equinox when Fleming "said something that triggered him." Williams said he was standing a few feet from the open window of the car when he shot Fleming. He shot "however many bullets he had in his gun." Williams also admitted he "never saw [Fleming] with a gun that night."

Williams admitted that after he shot Fleming, he opened the car door, pulled Fleming out, and got into the vehicle and drove away. Williams said that he later broke Fleming’s cellphone into pieces and threw them away. He also retrieved two shell casings from the car and discarded the gun he had used to shoot Fleming. Williams said he had purchased the gun from Ed Brown and had kept it under the sink in his apartment.

Williams went on with this version of events. He claimed that earlier that evening of June 30, when Fleming, Williams, and others were hanging out at the apartment complex, Fleming had questioned the group whether they had something to do with a beating Fleming had recently received. Before Fleming left in his vehicle, he allegedly told others in the group, "You better not be standing here when I get back." Williams told the investigator he went to retrieve his gun after Fleming left. Williams added that he should have let the matter go. As Williams put it, "I did it, I did it, and I shouldn’t have done it."

Williams did not claim in the interview that he had acted in self-defense. To the contrary, he said, "[I]t’s on me. That’s on me."

An autopsy report determined that Fleming died from multiple gunshot wounds

. Fleming’s body contained six gunshot wounds, which were caused by between four and six bullets. Four bullets were recovered from Fleming’s body. One of the wounds had gunpowder stippling, which meant that the gun had been discharged within eighteen inches of Fleming’s body. Fleming’s blood alcohol concentration at the time of his death was .242.

On July 19, a trial information was filed in the Iowa District Court for Floyd County, charging Williams with first-degree murder. See Iowa Code §§ 707.1, .2(1)(a ). On August 24, Williams moved to change the venue from Floyd County. On September 11, the district court denied the motion, indicating that the majority of the media articles had been factual and that it did not believe prospective jurors would have a predisposition about the case. The court did instruct the clerk, however, to bring in an additional jury panel to ensure there would be sufficient numbers from which to select a jury. On September 18, Williams filed a notice that he intended to rely on the defense of self-defense/justification at trial. See id. § 704; Iowa R. Crim. P. 2.11(11)(c ).

Trial was scheduled to begin October 10. On October 2, Williams, who is African-American, filed a motion to challenge the jury panel. Williams’s motion noted that African-Americans represent 2.3% of the Floyd County population according to the 2016 census, yet only two of the 166 potential jurors who submitted questionnaire responses for two jury pools for October through December 2017 self-identified as African-American. (One of these two had been excused.) Williams also reported tallies for the last four years:

In the calculations overall in the [last] four years, there were 1,404 jurors, of which, 452 did not respond to the race question. Of the 952 remaining jurors, in this four-year

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