Vinson v. Com., Record No. 990612

• Docket Nº: Record No. 990613.
• Citation: 258 Va. 459, 522 S.E.2d 170
• Case Date: November 05, 1999
• Court: Supreme Court of Virginia

522 S.E.2d 170
258 Va. 459

Dexter Lee VINSON
v.
COMMONWEALTH of Virginia

Record Nos. 990612, 990613.

Supreme Court of Virginia.

November 5, 1999.

522 S.E.2d 172

Elwood Earl Sanders, Jr., Woodbridge (S. Jane Chittom, Richmond, John H. Underwood, III, Portsmouth, on briefs), for appellant

Pamela A. Rumpz, Assistant Attorney General (Mark L. Earley, Attorney General, on brief), for appellant.

Present: All the Justices.

COMPTON, Justice.

On May 19, 1996, Angela Felton was brutally murdered in the City of Portsmouth. Subsequently, during a 1998 eight-day trial, a jury convicted defendant Dexter Lee Vinson, upon not guilty pleas, of the following offenses in connection with the homicide: Capital murder in the commission of abduction with intent to defile, in violation of Code

522 S.E.2d 173

§ 18.2-31(1); object sexual penetration, in violation of Code § 18.2-67.2(A); abduction with intent to defile, in violation of Code § 18.2-48; and carjacking, in violation of Code § 18.2-58.1

The jury fixed defendant's punishment at death for the capital offense based upon the vileness and future dangerousness predicates of the capital murder sentencing statute. Code § 19.2-264.4. Also, the jury fixed defendant's punishment at life imprisonment for each of the noncapital convictions. Following a February 1999 post-trial hearing, at which the trial court considered a probation officer's report, the court sentenced defendant in accord with the jury's verdicts.

The death sentence is before us for automatic review under Code § 17.1-313(A), see Rule 5:22, and we have consolidated this review with defendant's appeal of the capital murder conviction. In addition, by order entered March 22, 1999, we certified from the Court of Appeals of Virginia to this Court the record of defendant's appeals of the noncapital convictions (Record No. 990613). The effect of this certification is to transfer jurisdiction over the noncapital appeals to this Court for all purposes. Code § 17.1-409(A). Those appeals have been consolidated with the capital murder appeal (Record No. 990612).

As required by statute, we shall consider not only the trial errors enumerated by defendant but also whether the sentence of death was imposed under the influence of passion, prejudice, or any other arbitrary factor, and whether the sentence is excessive or disproportionate to the penalty imposed in similar cases. Code § 17.1-313(C).

The facts are virtually undisputed. The defendant, who did not testify at trial, now argues through his attorneys that, although he was present at the scene of the homicide, there are certain "inconsistencies" in the prosecution's evidence on the question whether he was the actual perpetrator of the offenses. However, when there are inconsistencies in this evidence, we shall construe the facts in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, as required by settled rules of appellate procedure.

On May 19, the victim, age 25, and her three children resided with Nethie Pierce and her children in Portsmouth. The victim and her children previously had lived with defendant, age 33, in Portsmouth for "about a year and a half." At the time of the homicide, the unmarried couple had been living apart about three weeks.

About 9:00 a.m. on the day in question, the victim borrowed Pierce's "1988 red Beretta" automobile to take the victim's children to school. "[I]n a hurry to get the kids to school," the victim wore only a "shift-type" robe and underwear. Pierce's 14-year-old daughter, Willisa Joyner, rode with the victim.

About 6:30 a.m. on the same day, Faye Wilson was completing a weekend stay with defendant in a Suffolk motel. Wilson owned a 1988 blue Mercury Tracer automobile, which she allowed defendant to use that morning.

After the victim delivered her children to school, she drove with Willisa to the home she had shared with defendant in order to "get the mail." Upon arrival, Willisa "got out of the car," at which time the victim saw the defendant driving a blue automobile. Willisa reentered the red vehicle when the victim said, "`get back in the car.'" As the victim "started driving," the defendant twice rammed the rear of the red car with the front of the blue car.

The victim stopped the red car and the defendant walked to the driver's side window where the victim was sitting. He then "punched" out the window. Next, defendant "grabbed" the victim, hit her in the face and chest with his hand, and "took her out of the car." The defendant held the victim by the arm and, in the presence of bystanders, "snatched" off her robe leaving her standing in her "underclothes," screaming and bleeding from her nose and mouth.

Next, defendant "took" the victim to the blue car and "made her get in." When the blue car "wouldn't start up," defendant "put her" in the red car "and they drove away." Police officers arrived on the scene after defendant had abducted the victim; they obtained

522 S.E.2d 174

a description of defendant and of the red car

Shortly thereafter, Vertley Hunter noticed from her home a red car, "wrecked in the back," that was "pulled off the street and parked behind" a vacant house in her neighborhood; boards were nailed over the windows of the house. She observed a young "white female" and a young "black man" sitting in the vehicle, with the female sitting in the driver's seat with "her hand outside the window to duck off a cigarette that she was smoking."

According to Hunter, the man "got out on the passenger side of the car and went to the back ... and got a piece of rope out." The man "leaned back into the car" holding the rope. Hunter heard the woman tell the man "to leave her alone so she could go on with her life," and heard her "ask the Lord to spare her life because he was going to kill her." At that time, the man was "[c]hoking her with the rope."

Then, the man "grabbed her by the hair from the back seat of the car and pulled her over the seat ... and he pulled the rope from around her neck at the same time." He then "pulled her down in the floor" and "told her that he was going to kill her." While the woman was still inside the car, the man "slammed the door on her head twice," according to Hunter.

Next, Hunter saw the man kick dirt beside the car to cover blood that was on the ground. He then pulled off "a board" covering a window of the house, raised the window, and climbed inside through the window. Hunter saw the man enter the house twice and wipe blood from his person with a towel.

Hunter watched the events for a period of several hours until the man drove the red car into the woods behind the house and left the area around 11:00 a.m. During her testimony, Hunter identified defendant in open court as the man she observed committing the acts she described.

Janice Green, who also lived near the vacant house, testified that during the morning of May 19, she observed a man "messing around" with a red car in the yard behind the house. She saw the man pull "boards off the house" and enter the home twice. The second time, the man "was dragging" into the house from the car "something heavy"; she "thought it was a rug he was pulling." Green also identified defendant in open court as the man she observed at the vacant house.

On May 20, 1997, Portsmouth detective Jan Westerbeck went to the vacant house and discovered the victim's body inside a recently "busted wall" in one of the bedrooms. The body was nude and partially covered with a brown blanket; feces were found on and under her neck.

Forensic evidence connected defendant with the crimes. His fingerprints were found on the abandoned red car, on the kitchen sink of the vacant house, and on a pane of glass from the house's kitchen window. Also, the victim's DNA was matched to a blood stain found on a pair of blue shorts belonging to defendant. According to the witness Hunter, defendant was wearing a "sky blue short set" when she observed him. An expert placed the odds of the DNA on defendant's shorts being that of someone other than the victim at one in 5.5 billion.

An autopsy performed on the victim's body showed that she bled to death from deep cuts to both forearms, either of which would have been sufficient to cause death. The cut to the right forearm was two inches deep and severed two main arteries; the left forearm bore a similar wound that cut one artery. The victim did not die instantaneously; it "probably would have taken her a few minutes, several minutes to die," according to the medical examiner.

The victim sustained numerous other injuries. For example, there were additional knife wounds on her shoulders, neck, and cheek. There were scratches on her buttocks and cuts on her torso and on one of her legs. She suffered "blunt force trauma" to her head.

Additionally, she sustained significant vaginal injuries inflicted while she was alive. She sustained a laceration of her inner vaginal lip, massive bruising over her vulva area, and a "massive laceration," which tore the tissue separating the vagina from the anus and which tore around her anal opening. In

522 S.E.2d 175

the medical examiner's opinion, the vaginal injuries were not caused by an erect penis; the inner damage that was done in the vaginal area "would have been done by an object being penetrated in Miss Felton."

During the penalty phase of the trial, to prove defendant's future dangerousness, the prosecution presented evidence that defendant had assaulted a police officer in 1987 who was attempting to arrest him; had assaulted a correctional officer in 1988 who was attempting to move him to a cell; and had resisted arrest in 1997 near a Suffolk convenience store so violently that it took eight police officers to subdue him. Additionally, the Commonwealth presented evidence that defendant previously had been convicted of receiving stolen goods, attempted statutory burglary, and two offenses of hit and run with personal injury.

In mitigation, defendant presented testimony...