Title: Johnson v. State

State: arkansas

Issuer: Arkansas Supreme Court

Document:

Stacey JOHNSON v. STATE of Arkansas

CR 95-427                                          ___ S.W.2d ___

                    Supreme Court of Arkansas
               Opinion delivered October 28, 1996


1.   Evidence -- hearsay -- excited-utterance exception --
     requirements. -- The excited-utterance exception to the
     hearsay rule is defined by A.R.E. Rule 803(2) as a "statement
     relating to a startling event or condition made while the
     declarant was under the stress of excitement caused by the
     event or condition"; the basic requirements of the excited-
     utterance exception are as follows: first; there must be an
     occasion which excites the declarant; second, the statement
     must be uttered during the period of excitement and must
     express the declarant's reaction to the occasion; in practice,
     these tend to merge together; if there was a sudden event that
     startled the declarant, his ensuing utterance will be assumed
     to be his reaction to the stimulus; if the statement appears
     to be excited, it will be assumed that the occasion was
     exciting.

2.   Constitutional law -- Confrontation Clause -- two types of
     protection for criminal defendant. -- The Sixth Amendment
     right of confrontation provides two types of protection for a
     criminal defendant: the right physically to face those who
     testify against him and the opportunity to conduct effective
     cross-examination.

3.   Constitutional law -- Confrontation Clause -- restrictions on
     range of admissible hearsay. -- The Confrontation Clause
     operates in two separate ways to restrict the range of
     admissible hearsay: first, in conformance with the Framers'
     preference for face-to-face accusation, the Sixth Amendment
     establishes a rule of necessity; in the usual case, the
     prosecution must either produce, or demonstrate the
     unavailability of, the declarant whose statement it wishes to
     use against the defendant; second, once a witness is shown to
     be unavailable, his statement is admissible only if it bears
     adequate indicia of reliability; reliability can be inferred
     without more in a case where the evidence falls within a
     firmly rooted hearsay exception; in other cases, the evidence
     must be excluded, at least absent a showing of particularized
     guarantees of trustworthiness.

4.   Evidence -- hearsay -- excited-utterance exception -- request
     to identify followed by deliberate choosing from lineup does
     not qualify as excited utterance. -- The description by a
     police officer of how the victim's six-year-old daughter
     studied seven photographs and selected appellant's photograph
     twice suggested a deliberate and reflective act by the young
     girl rather than conduct associated with spontaneity,
     excitement, or impulsiveness; the evidence was a critical cog
     in the State's case, and the defense was completely thwarted
     in its ability to explore the matter through cross-examination
     of the declarant; the supreme court knew of no case in any
     jurisdiction that stands for the proposition that a request to
     identify followed by a deliberate choosing of an offender from
     a lineup qualifies as an excited utterance.

5.   Evidence -- hearsay -- officer's testimony about child's
     selection from photo lineup should have been excluded as
     unreliable hearsay and violative of confrontation right --
     case reversed and remanded for new trial. -- The supreme court
     held that the testimony by the police officer about the
     victim's daughter's selection from the photo lineup should
     have been excluded as unreliable hearsay and as running
     contrary to appellant's right to confront the witnesses
     against him; the court reversed the trial court on this point
     and remanded the case for a new trial.

6.   Evidence -- hearsay -- excited-utterance exception -- criteria
     to be weighed in considering. -- According to two reports, the
     victim's six-year-old child was hyperactive, scared, and
     excited when she told about the murder of her mother on the
     afternoon after the homicide; in considering the excited-
     utterance exception, the supreme court weighs the following
     criteria: the lapse of time between the startling event and
     the out-of-court statement, although relevant, is not
     dispositive in the application of A.R.E. Rule 803(2); nor is
     it controlling that the declarant's statement was made in
     response to an inquiry; rather, these are factors that the
     trial court must weigh in determining whether the offered
     testimony is within the exception; other factors to consider
     include the age of the declarant, the physical and mental
     condition of the declarant, the characteristics of the event,
     and the subject matter of the statements; to find that Rule
     803(2) applies, it must appear that the declarant's condition
     at the time was such that the statement was spontaneous,
     excited, or impulsive rather than the product of reflection
     and deliberation.

7.   Evidence -- hearsay -- excited-utterance exception --
     statement made by child more than nine hours after discovery
     of mother's body not inconsistent with spontaneity and
     impulsiveness of excited utterance. -- With respect to the
     excited-utterance exception, the supreme court has followed
     the trend toward expansion of the time interval after an
     exciting event, particularly when the declarant is a child; in
     that light, the court did not view the statement made by the
     victim's child more than nine hours after her mother's body
     was discovered and she was removed from the apartment as
     inconsistent with the spontaneity and impulsiveness associated
     with an excited utterance.

8.   Evidence -- hearsay -- excited-utterance exception -- child's
     description of crime other than photo-lineup identification
     admissible at retrial as excited utterance. -- The supreme
     court concluded that the trial court did not abuse its
     discretion in allowing a police officer to testify to what the
     victim's six-year-old daughter told him; accordingly, the
     supreme court held that, at the retrial of the matter, the
     child's description of the crime as related to the officer and
     an employee of the Department of Human Services, other than
     her photo-lineup identification of appellant, would be
     admissible as an excited utterance and did not violate the
     Confrontation Clause.

9.   Evidence -- other crimes, wrongs, or acts -- testimony about
     drug trafficking permissible. -- The supreme court concluded
     that, where a witness testified about the victim's refusal of
     appellant's requests to help transport cocaine and to date
     him, the evidence was permissible under the knowledge and
     motive exceptions to A.R.E. Rule 404(b); the supreme court did
     not view the evidence as unfairly prejudicial under Rule 403;
     the relevance of circumstances that tie the perpetrator to the
     victim and raise a possible motive for the killing is patently
     obvious; the fact that that knowledge came about in the
     context of an attempted drug deal should not be grounds for
     excluding testimony about the proposed transaction.

10.  Evidence -- DNA testimony -- statistical probabilities -- any
     challenge to conclusions of expert is matter for litigation
     and cross-examination -- no error in admitting evidence. --
     Any challenge to the conclusions reached by an expert
     concerning statistical probabilities with respect to PCR
     testing is a matter for litigation and cross-examination;
     there was no error in allowing DNA evidence to be presented to
     the jury.

11.  Evidence -- unduly speculative testimony properly excluded. --
     Where appellant attempted to introduce the testimony of one of
     the victim's co-workers that an African-American from out of
     town had asked the victim for a date and had spent the night
     of the murder in the city where the murder occurred, thus
     creating the inference that he could have been the murderer;
     but where the witness admitted on cross-examination that she
     did not know the victim on a personal basis and had no idea
     whether she actually dated the man in question, the supreme
     court held that the trial court properly found the testimony
     to be unduly speculative and properly excluded it; evidence
     that does no more than create an inference or conjecture of
     another's guilt is inadmissible; there was no abuse of
     discretion.

12.  Criminal law -- capital-murder and first-degree-murder
     statutes pass narrowing requirement -- death penalty limited
     to crimes involving sufficient aggravating circumstances. --
     The supreme court rejected as meritless appellant's argument
     that an unconstitutional overlapping occurs between the
     capital-murder and the first-degree-murder statutes; these
     statutes pass the narrowing requirement by limiting the death
     penalty to crimes involving sufficient aggravating
     circumstances. 

13.  Criminal law -- capital murder -- aggravating circumstance --
     "especially cruel" not vague and overbroad. -- The supreme
     court had previously rejected the argument that the
     "especially cruel" aggravating circumstance, codified at Ark.
     Code Ann.  5-4-604(8) (Repl. 1993), is vague and overbroad
     and violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the
     United States Constitution and Article 2, section 9, of the
     Arkansas Constitution; appellant advanced no argument that
     persuaded the court to interpret the Arkansas Constitution in
     a contrary manner.

14.  Evidence -- evidence abounded that murder was perpetrated in
     especially cruel manner. -- There could be no doubt that
     evidence abounded that the murder was perpetrated in an
     especially cruel manner, given the considerable damage to the
     victim's body, the defensive wounds, the circumstantial
     evidence of rape, and the victim's bloody fingerprint found on
     a linen closet, which suggested that she did not die
     immediately.

15.  Criminal law -- aggravating circumstance -- avoiding arrest
     not overbroad. -- Appellant's overbreadth argument that the
     avoiding-arrest aggravator did not effectively narrow the
     class of persons eligible for the death penalty for the jury's
     purposes had previously been rejected by the supreme court,
     and appellant cited no authority to persuade the court to
     change its position; further, appellant's argument that the
     statute was unconstitutional because it allowed for a finding
     of aggravating circumstances at a lesser standard than "beyond
     a reasonable doubt" was belied by the plain language of Ark.
     Code Ann.  5-4-603 (Repl. 1993), which requires findings of
     aggravators beyond a reasonable doubt and by the penalty-phase
     verdict form returned by the jury in his case.

16.  Criminal law -- narrowing class -- argument not addressed --
     any error was harmless. -- The supreme court did not address
     the avoiding-arrest argument where there was no assurance that
     this particular aggravator would be submitted on retrial, and
     where, in addition, there were two other aggravating
     circumstances found by the jury that clearly outweighed the
     jury's finding of no mitigating circumstances; the error, if
     any, was harmless.

17.  Evidence -- victim-impact testimony -- no objection to or
     request for admonition regarding prosecutor's statements --
     application of victim-impact statute not ex post facto law. --
     Where appellant argued that the victim-impact statute, Ark.
     Code Ann.  5-4-602(4) (Repl. 1993), does not give sufficient
     guidance to the judge and jury as to what comprises victim-
     impact evidence and thus violates the Eighth and Fourteenth
     Amendments to United States Constitution and Article 2,
     section 9, of the Arkansas Constitution; and where he also
     attacked the relevancy of the prosecutor's "victim-impact"
     statements to the penalty phase, claiming that  5-4-602(4)
     had been impermissibly applied retroactively and thus was an
     ex post facto law, the supreme court noted that arguments of
     counsel are not evidence, and the trial court instructed the
     jury accordingly; that there was no objection or request for
     an admonition at the time the prosecutor made these
     statements; and that the court had previously held, with
     regard to the victim-impact statute, that by expanding the
     scope of permissible evidence during the penalty phase, the
     General Assembly had not expanded the scope of punishment or
     added a new aggravating circumstance and that permitting
     victim-impact testimony did not constitute an ex post facto
     law.

18.  Evidence -- victim-impact testimony -- underlying
     constitutionality previously upheld. -- The supreme court had
     previously upheld the underlying constitutionality of victim-
     impact testimony; appellant failed to set forth an argument
     that would convince the court to interpret the provisions of
     the Arkansas Constitution in a different manner.


     Appeal from Sevier Circuit Court; Ted C. Capeheart, Judge;
reversed and remanded.
     Richard Hutto and Mary Ellen Vandegrift, Arkansas Public
Defender Comm'n, by: Deborah R. Sallings, for appellant.
     Winston Bryant, Att'y Gen., by:  Kent G. Holt, Asst. Att'y
Gen., for appellee.

     Robert L. Brown, Justice.
     Appellant Stacey Johnson appeals his conviction for capital
murder and his sentence of death by lethal injection.  He raises
multiple bases for reversal, including an assertion that his
identification in a photo lineup by the victim's six-year-old
daughter was inadmissible hearsay.  We agree and reverse the
judgment of conviction and remand for a new trial.
     Carol Heath was brutally murdered in her duplex apartment in
DeQueen on either the night of April 1, 1993, or the early morning
hours of April 2, 1993.  She was beaten, strangled, and had her
throat slit while her two young children, Ashley, age six, and
Jonathan, age two, were home.  The facts regarding the murder and
its aftermath are gleaned from pretrial and trial testimony.  At
approximately 6:45 a.m. on April 2, 1993, Rose Cassidy, the
victim's sister-in-law, knocked on the victim's door but did not
receive an answer.  Because the door was unlocked, she entered and
found Carol Heath's partially nude body lying on the living room
floor in a pool of blood.  She ran across the street to call the
police and then returned to check on her niece (Ashley) and nephew
(Jonathan), whom she saw looking out the bedroom window.  Cassidy
testified that she asked Ashley what had happened.  Ashley
responded, according to Cassidy: "[S]omebody had broke in, and I
said who, and she (Ashley) said a [b]lack man."  The victim was
white.
     Sergeant Keith Tucker of the DeQueen Police Department
testified that he found Carol Heath's body nude except for a t-
shirt that had been pushed up around her neck.  He stated that her
body was located between a couch which was tilted up on its back
legs and a coffee table which had apparently been moved toward the
middle of the room.  DeQueen Chief of Police James Smith arrived at
the apartment later.  He testified that when he pulled the t-shirt
away from the victim's neck, he saw that her throat had been
slashed.
     Dr. Frank Peretti, an associate medical examiner for the State
Crime Laboratory, testified that Carol Heath's death was caused by
cutting her neck, strangulation, and blunt-force head injuries.  He
stated that her attacker left a four-inch by two-inch cut wound on
her neck that went one-quarter inch into her spine.  He observed
that she had several bruises and abrasions on her head and face,
that she had injuries on her hands and arms consistent with
defensive wounds, that she had a bite mark on the nipple of her
right breast and an abrasion on her left breast, and that there was
a one-quarter-inch contusion on her right labia minora.  Dr.
Peretti could not conclude, based on the physical evidence, that
she had been either sexually assaulted or raped.
     Officer James Behling, a criminal investigator with the
DeQueen Police Department, testified that he observed a pair of
panties next to Carol Heath's right thigh.  He noted an area of
lighter-colored liquid between and around the legs and below the
genital area of the victim.  An empty douche bottle and an empty
"Lifestyles" condom box were found in the bathroom sink.
     On April 5, 1993, Kenneth Bryan found a purse in the woods
between DeQueen and Horatio which he later realized belonged to the
victim.  He took Officer Behling to the location.  Officer Behling
examined the area and found a bloody pullover green shirt, a bloody
white t-shirt, and a bloody towel.  Lisa Sakevicius, an expert with
the State Crime Laboratory's trace evidence section, testified that
hairs microscopically similar to the victim's hair were found on
all three of these items. She further testified that hairs
retrieved from under the victim's left breast, from the floor by
the victim, and from the white t-shirt were of Negroid origin. 
Jane Parsons, a forensic serologist, testified for the State that
no semen was found in connection with the victim.  She admitted
that the finding of semen would be unlikely, if the perpetrator
used a condom and douched the victim.
     DNA evidence was introduced at trial.  Melisa Weber, a staff
molecular biologist at Cellmark Diagnostics, conducted a
Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism [RFLP] test on the green
shirt for the State and testified that to a reasonable degree of
scientific certainty the blood matched that of Carol Heath.  She
also conducted a Polymerase Chain Reaction [PCR] test on several
items, including the white t-shirt found in the park, a cigarette
butt found in the green shirt, and hairs taken from the body of
Carol Heath and near to where the body was located.  With respect
to the white t-shirt, Weber testified that the victim could not be
excluded as the source of the blood and that the probability of
this DNA having come from another Caucasian was 1 in 12,000.  With
respect to the cigarette butt and hairs, Weber opined that Johnson
could not be excluded and that the probability that another
African-American was the donor of the DNA in question was 1 in 250.
     Officer Hayes McWhirter, an investigator with the Arkansas
State Police, talked with the victim's daughter, Ashley Heath, on
the afternoon of April 2, 1993.  Also present at the time was
Cynthia Emerson, a supervisor with the Department of Human
Services.  Officer McWhirter made the following notes from that
conversation and used these notes to refer to when he testified at
the pretrial hearings and at trial:
     Ashley stated her mother and I were on the couch when
     someone knocked on the door.  She got up and opened the
     door.  The picture No. 3, Stacey Johnson, is the one that
     came in the door.  Ashley looked at six different
     pictures of black males.  Mother likes Branson.  He
     works at In Your Ear.  The Black male asked where Branson
     was.  The black male used a girl sounding name.  He had
     on a black hat with something hanging down in the back. 
     He had on a green shirt and sweater.  When they were
     talking, the black male said he had just got out of jail. 
     The black male was mad at mother for dating Branson.  He
     had been over two other times, but it was a while or a
     long time ago.  The black male had about as much hair as
     [McWhirter.]  I saw them fighting.  Then I saw mother
     laying on the floor.  I saw the black male leave and he
     got up and he got in a brown truck, I think.  I saw a
     knife and a gun.  The brown truck was parked beside the
     house.  Mother looked out the window.  When he knocked,
     then she let him in.  While mother was laying on the
     floor, the black male walked into the bath room.  We were
     hiding in the closet.  I came out the door to the bath
     room and the black male had a knife in his hand beside
     mommy.  She was on the floor bleeding.  After he left, I
     went in and saw momma bleeding.  Jonathan looked at mommy
     twice.  She was covered in blood.  We went to bed and
     then this morning when someone knocked on the door, I was
     scared to open the door.  When Rose screamed, I knew she
     saw mommy with blood all over her.  Every time I saw the
     black male, he had clothes on.
Officer McWhirter testified that he handed Ashley a stack of seven
photographs, and she picked Johnson out of the photo lineup twice. 
Johnson was subsequently arrested in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
     Prior to trial, the trial court found Ashley incompetent to
testify due to psychological trauma and, thus, unavailable.  That
finding is not an issue in this appeal.  Johnson then moved in
limine to exclude all statements made by Ashley to Officer
McWhirter and Emerson.  Johnson argued in his brief in support of
the motion that the selection from the photo lineup was one of the
statements to be suppressed because it was the product of Ashley's
reflection and deliberation and was made in response to questions
during a time when Ashley showed no signs of excitement.  After a
hearing on whether her testimony as related by Officer McWhirter
was hearsay, the trial court determined that Ashley's statements to
the police officer and Emerson met the criteria of excited
utterances and were admissible as an exception to the hearsay rule. 
This ruling necessarily embraced Ashley's selection of Johnson from
the photo lineup on the two occasions.  The trial court also ruled
that Ashley's statement to Rose Cassidy qualified as an excited
utterance.  At the same time, the court excluded statements made by
Ashley to EMT personnel and to family even though these statements
were made on the same day and prior to her statements to Officer
McWhirter.  The trial court determined that the statements were not
reliable and did not qualify as excited utterances.
     At trial, a jury found Stacey Johnson guilty of capital
murder.  Following the penalty phase, the jury found the crime to
be aggravated by three circumstances: (1) Johnson previously
committed another felony, an element of which was the use or threat
of violence to another person or creating a substantial risk of
death or serious physical injury to another person; (2) the capital
murder was committed for the purpose of avoiding or preventing an
arrest or effecting an escape from custody; and (3) the capital
murder was committed in an especially cruel manner.  The jury
unanimously agreed that there were no mitigating circumstances and
sentenced Johnson to death by lethal injection.  
     We first address whether Ashley's selection of Johnson's
photograph from a photo lineup qualified as an excited utterance.

                         I. Photo Lineup
     At approximately 3:30 p.m. on the afternoon of April 2, 1993,
Officer McWhirter, accompanied by Cynthia Emerson, a supervisor
with the Department of Human Services, went to Ashley's
grandparents' home to visit with Ashley.  They took Ashley outside,
and she told them what happened to her mother, which was related by
Officer McWhirter at trial.  After the statement, the police
officer showed her seven photographs, one of whom was Johnson.  She
was told to look closely at the photographs.  She went through the
photographs carefully and selected Johnson's picture.  Officer
McWhirter then retrieved the photographs, shuffled them, and showed
them to Ashley a second time.  He asked her to look carefully
again.  She went back through the pictures and again she selected
Johnson as the culprit.  The trial court permitted testimony of the
selection by the police officer as an excited utterance.  We
conclude that allowing this hearsay testimony as an excited
utterance was an abuse of discretion.
     Rule 803(2) of the Arkansas Rules of Evidence defines the
"excited utterance" exception to the hearsay rule: "A statement
relating to a startling event or condition made while the declarant
was under the stress of excitement caused by the event or
condition."  This court has, on numerous occasions, applied this
exception to cases involving the testimony of young children who
may, or may not, eventually testify at trial.  The basic
requirements of the "excited utterance" exception are as follows:
     First there must be an occasion which excites the
     declarant.  Second, the [s]tatement must be uttered
     during the period of excitement and must express the
     declarant's reaction to the occasion.  In practice, these
     tend to merge together.  If there was a sudden event
     which startled the declarant, his ensuing utterance will
     be assumed to be his reaction to the stimulus; if the
     statement appears to be excited, it will be assumed the
     occasion was exciting.
Smith v. State, 303 Ark. 524, 529-30,