Wilson v. State, CR

• Decision Date: 26 February 1998
• Docket Number: No. CR,CR
• Citation: 332 Ark. 7,962 S.W.2d 805
• Parties: Dechay WILSON, Appellant, v. STATE of Arkansas, Appellee. 97-873.
• Court: Arkansas Supreme Court

Page 805

962 S.W.2d 805

332 Ark. 7

Dechay WILSON, Appellant, v. STATE of Arkansas, Appellee.

No. CR 97-873.

Supreme Court of Arkansas.

Feb. 26, 1998.

Claudell Woods, Magnolia, for Appellant.

Winston Bryant, Attorney General, Kelly S. Terry, Assistant Attorney General, Little Rock, for Appellee.

NEWBERN, Justice.

Dechay Wilson stands convicted of theft of property, residential burglary, aggravated robbery, and rape. A jury fixed his sentence at one year for theft and thirty years for burglary. Because the jury could not agree on a sentences for aggravated robbery and rape, the Trial Court sentenced Mr. Wilson for those offenses. The sentences were imprisonment for life for rape and sixty years for aggravated robbery. Mr. Wilson argues that the evidence was insufficient to support a finding of guilt. We reject this argument due to the testimony of Mr. Wilson's accomplice that Mr. Wilson committed the crimes and corroborating scientific evidence. Mr. Wilson also contends that the Trial Court erred in sentencing him to life in prison. Although Mr. Wilson makes several arguments in support of that contention, we decline to review all but one of them, as they were not made to the Trial Court. We consider only the argument that the Trial Court should not have sentenced Mr. Wilson due to the Trial Court's awareness that he was not co-operating with defense counsel. The judgment is affirmed.

Helen Morris, the sixty-nine-year-old victim, testified that on the night of April 20, 1996, she was dozing in her living room after coming home from work. She noticed that some items in the room looked as if they had been moved, but she did not see anyone. Then, she saw two men standing in her dining room. One was taller than the other, and each wore something over his head. Mr. Wilson is about the size of the shorter of the two. They asked her where her money was and told her to be still. One threw a quilt over her head while they went through her house and threw items around. After the two men rummaged through her house, the shorter man raped her. Then, the taller man raped her. After raping her, they forced her to look for her purse. When she found the purse, the shorter man grabbed it, emptied it, and counted the money. They left her home with the money.

After the police arrived at Ms. Morris's home, a family member took her to the hospital where she was examined. Oral, vaginal, and rectal swabs, a saliva disk, a blood tube, and pubic hairs were collected.

Jared Woodley, who had pleaded guilty to theft, residential burglary, aggravated robbery, and rape, initially testified that Mr. Wilson did not accompany him. He admitted, however, that in two prior statements to investigating officers and when he entered his guilty plea, he said that Mr. Wilson went with him to the home of Ms. Morris, and that Mr. Wilson stole her money and raped her. Ultimately, Mr. Woodley gave detailed testimony about his and Mr. Wilson's acts, including raping Mrs. Morris and stealing her money at knife point.

Kermit Channell, DNA supervisor for the State Crime Laboratory, testified that the DNA that he recovered from the rectal swab was consistent with the DNA that was recovered from the blood sample from Mr. Wilson. He testified that the probability of someone else leaving that particular stain on the rectal swab is approximately one in 210,000 in the black population. He testified that the DNA that was extracted from the vaginal swab was consistent with DNA from Mr. Wilson, and the probability of someone else leaving that semen would be one in 160,000,000 in the black population. He testified that the population numbers for the rectal swab and the vaginal swab differ because, with the rectal swab, he only obtained results from six of seven possible tests due to a degradation of a particular chromosome, but with the vaginal swab, he obtained results from all seven tests.

Donald E. Smith, a criminalist with the State Crime Laboratory, testified that he discovered a hair fragment in Ms. Morris's home that, in his opinion, was a pubic hair from Mr. Wilson.

1. Sufficiency of the evidence

Following the State's presentation of its case, defense counsel moved for a directed verdict by stating the following:

Judge, I move for a directed verdict and the basis for that is that there's been an insufficient amount of evidence produced at this point by the prosecution to support their charges or to support it going to a jury of the charges that the defendant committed the acts of rape, aggravated--I'm sorry, aggravated robbery, theft of property or burglary. And the basis for this the disparity between the amount of evidence collected versus that actually that purports to point to the defendant as the person committing the acts. (Emphasis added.)

The Trial Court denied the motion. The renewed motion was also denied.

Mr. Wilson argues that the Trial Court erred in denying his motion for a directed verdict because the only evidence that tended to incriminate Mr. Wilson was not credible based on the following: (1) Mr. Woodley gave varying statements about Mr. Wilson's participation; (2) the scientific evidence was not sufficiently specific; and (3) the victim was unable to identify the appellant.

In reviewing a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence, we view the evidence in a light most favorable to the State and consider only the evidence...