Stevenson v. Com., 761500
| Citation | 237 S.E.2d 779,218 Va. 462 |
| Decision Date | 07 October 1977 |
| Docket Number | No. 761500,761500 |
| Parties | John Paul STEVENSON v. COMMONWEALTH of Virginia. Record |
| Court | Supreme Court of Virginia |
C. Willard Norwood, Richmond (Norwood & Norwood, Richmond, on brief), for plaintiff in error.
Alan Katz, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Anthony F. Troy, Atty. Gen., on brief), for defendant in error.
Before I'ANSON, C. J., and CARRICO, HARRISON, COCHRAN, HARMAN, POFF and COMPTON, JJ.
I'ANSON, Chief Justice.
On July 16, 1976, a jury found the defendant, John Paul Stevenson, guilty of murder of the second degree and fixed his punishment at confinement in the state penitentiary for a period of 10 years. He was sentenced accordingly.
We granted defendant a writ of error limited to the question whether the trial court erred in admitting into evidence a bloodstained shirt allegedly worn by the defendant on the day of the homicide and in allowing testimony concerning scientific tests run on the shirt.
The evidence, briefly stated, shows that approximately six o'clock in the afternoon of December 2, 1975, the partially clothed body of Lillian M. Keller was found on the bed in her apartment at the Holly Court Motel in Ashland. Her death resulted from multiple stab wounds. Mrs. Keller was manager of the motel, and she occupied an apartment adjoining the front office. Her apartment also adjoined another unit which was the residence of Howard Franklin Bittorf. There was a connecting door between the Keller apartment and the living quarters of Bittorf.
In the early morning hours of December 2, 1975, the defendant, who is Bittorf's brother-in-law and a resident of Baltimore, Maryland, entered Bittorf's apartment through an unlocked door and spent the rest of the night there. That day Stevenson, Bittorf, and Jeffrey A. Taylor, an occupant of another unit in the motel, spent the morning and early afternoon drinking and "riding around" in defendant's automobile.
Taylor testified that when they returned to Bittorf's apartment in the early afternoon, Mrs. Keller was engaged in cleaning the apartment. He left shortly thereafter and went to his room to rest. He said that he did not see the defendant and Bittorf anymore that day, but when he last saw the defendant he was wearing a long-sleeve buttoned shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
There was evidence that defendant and Bittorf left the motel parking lot in defendant's car some time between 4:00 and 4:30 p. m. on the day the victim was found dead.
The police officers who searched the Keller and Bittorf apartments found the defendant's wallet on the floor near the bed in which the victim's body was lying. The wallet contained a Maryland operator's license issued to Stevenson. In Bittorf's apartment, the police found a bloodstained knife and towel. No identifiable fingerprints were found on the knife, and none were detected anywhere else by the police.
On December 5, 1975, police officer Schultze went to the address in Baltimore which was shown on Stevenson's operator's license. There he met two women who identified themselves as the wives of Bittorf and Stevenson. After identifying himself, he told the ladies the purpose of his visit. He asked them if John Stevenson had changed clothes when he arrived home on either the night of the second or the early morning of the third of December. As a result of the answer given by Mrs. Stevenson, Schultze requested her to give him the clothes worn by Stevenson when he returned home from Ashland. Mrs. Stevenson then took Officer Schultze to another Baltimore address and presented him with a knit-type pullover shirt. On December 8, 1975, Schultze took the shirt to the Consolidated Laboratory in Richmond and turned it over to Mary Jane Burton. Over the objection of the defendant, the shirt was admitted into evidence.
Mary Jane Burton testified that she examined the shirt and found a small stain which she chemically identified as human blood. She was able to determine the type of blood in the ABO and EPA systems, but the sample was too small to type it in the Rh system. She said the blood on the shirt was the same type as the blood of the victim in the two systems she was able to type. She further said that 4.7 percent of the population have the same blood type as the victim.
Defendant argues that the trial court erred in admitting the shirt into evidence on the ground that the nonverbal...
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...hearsay because they were out-of-court assertions offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted. See Stevenson v. Commonwealth, 218 Va. 462, 464-65, 237 S.E.2d 779, 781 (1977) (defining hearsay). "As a general rule, hearsay evidence is incompetent and inadmissible," and "[t]he party see......
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...holding that a bloodstained shirt purportedly belonging to Stevenson had been improperly admitted into evidence. Stevenson v. Commonwealth, 218 Va. 462, 237 S.E.2d 779. Stevenson was retried in the same court. This second trial ended in a mistrial on May 30, 1978, when a juror asked to be e......
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