Watson v. State, CR
| Decision Date | 27 May 1986 |
| Docket Number | No. CR,CR |
| Citation | 289 Ark. 138,709 S.W.2d 817 |
| Parties | Curtis WATSON, Appellant, v. STATE of Arkansas, Appellee. 85-221. |
| Court | Arkansas Supreme Court |
Linda P. Collier, Conway, for appellant.
Steve Clark, Atty. Gen. by Robert A. Ginnaven, III, Little Rock, for appellee.
The appellant was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole. His two points for reversal are (1) that by virtue of his having to use two of his peremptory jury challenges to remove jurors who should have been dismissed for cause, he was forced to allow two jurors objectionable to him to be seated, and (2) that the evidence was insufficient to show he acted with deliberation and premeditation when he killed his wife and father-in-law. We affirm because the appellant did not make a record showing the manner in which the jurors of whom he complained were objectionable, and because we regard the evidence of premeditation to have been sufficient.
The appellant was forced to exercise two of his peremptory challenges to exclude from the jury two jurors who should have been excluded for cause. To preserve this error for appeal, we require the appellant to show prejudice, i.e., that he was forced to accept a juror against his wishes. Conley v. State, 270 Ark. 886, 607 S.W.2d 328 (1980). No such record was made at the close of the jury voir dire.
During the trial, one of the seated jurors was dismissed for misconduct. An alternate juror was seated. At that point, counsel for the appellant told the court he would have peremptorily challenged the last two jurors seated if he had had any peremptory challenges remaining, although he conceded the last two jurors seated could not have been successfully challenged by him for cause. The court noted that the defense should have made a record of his objection to the two jurors at the close of the jury voir dire, and it was too late to register the objections once the trial had begun.
Whether or not the objection came too late, the appellant did not present to the trial court and has not presented to us any possible basis for finding the last two jurors to have been objectionable. Despite the lack of any abstract of the voir dire of these jurors, we have, in the process of reviewing the record pursuant to our rule 11(f), read their responses to questions on voir dire. We find nothing in those responses which could conceivably have been objectionable to the appellant.
The appellant contends the state's evidence was insufficient to show a "premeditated and deliberated purpose of causing death," an element of capital murder under Ark.Stat.Ann. § 41-1501(1)(c) (Repl.1977) which defines the offense with which he was charged. The appellant admitted on the witness stand that he went to rent a house into which his estranged wife was moving and waited inside the house until his wife and her father arrived. He and his father-in-law argued, and he picked up a pine knot and hit his father-in-law one or more times and then struck his wife as he was leaving. He said he threw the pine knot into a briar patch as he went back to the place where his truck was parked. He admitted having been at the same house the previous day waiting for his wife and her father, but they did not appear.
The state's evidence showed that a moist wood-splitting maul was found in the appellant's pick up truck shortly after the offense...
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