Case Name: Robert BAXTER, Plaintiff-in-Error, v. STATE of Tennessee, Defendant-in-Error
Court: Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals
Jurisdiction: Tennessee
Decision Date: 1973-05-11
Citations: 503 S.W.2d 226
Docket Number: 
Parties: Robert BAXTER, Plaintiff-in-Error, v. STATE of Tennessee, Defendant-in-Error.
Judges: DWYER, J., concurs.
Reporter: South Western Reporter Second Series
Volume: 503
Pages: 226–233

Head Matter:
Robert BAXTER, Plaintiff-in-Error, v. STATE of Tennessee, Defendant-in-Error.
Court of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee.
May 11, 1973.
Certiorari Denied by Supreme Court Nov. 19, 1973.
James P. Diamond and H. T. Etheridge, Jr., Jackson, for plaintiff-in-error.
David M. Pack, Atty. Gen., and Robert H. Roberts, Asst. Atty. Gen., Nashville, Whit LaFon, Asst. Dist. Atty. Gen., Jackson, for defendant-in-error.

Opinion:
OPINION
OLIVER, Judge.
Convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to 99 years in the penitentiary, Baxter has duly perfected an appeal in the nature of a writ of error to this Court.
The defendant's only complaint with respect to the sufficiency of the evidence to warrant and sustain the verdict is reflected in his first Assignment of Error charging there was no evidence that his killing of the deceased was "willful, deliberate, malicious, and premeditated."
Since this Assignment necessitates consideration of the material evidence, we summarize it briefly. Shortly after 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, September 11, 1971, the defendant inquired at a garage in Jackson whether the deceased, Norris Attaway, was working there. From there he drove the intervening half-mile to the city dump where the deceased was operating a bulldozer. After stopping his car in a position headed toward the highway, Baxter shot the deceased twice with a single barrel shotgun. The deceased started crawling on his hands and knees toward his co-worker asking him for help. When this co-worker ran to meet the deceased, he got up and ran to his co-worker and embraced him and got behind him so that the co-worker was between him and the defendant. The defendant then ordered this co-worker to get the deceased from behind him and said he was going to shoot. Notwithstanding the deceased and his co-worker both were begging the defendant not to shoot him again, when the deceased broke away from his co-worker and started running and fell, the defendant got out of his car and reloaded the shotgun and shot the deceased again. And although both the deceased and the co-worker continued to plead with the defendant not to shoot him, he deliberately re-loaded his shotgun and shot the deceased again. As he returned to his car, Baxter told the deceased that he would come back and give him some more if he heard of him speaking to his wife, and threatened to give the co-worker "some of it" if he heard of him telling what had occurred. He then got in his car and drove away. The deceased expired at the hospital that night.
After shooting the deceased, the defendant went to the cafe where his wife was employed and told her he had shot the deceased four times at the city dump. He then went outside and got his shotgun and came back in and asked her if she wanted to die there, and then shot a hole through the wall. He then ordered all the customers out of the cafe and made her get in the car with him and then fired the gun into the air and told her he was going to take her out into the woods and kill her. She escaped when he stopped at a stop sign. He gave no appearance of being intoxicated, although he had been drinking. He surrendered at the Jackson Police Station on October 3, 1971 after, as he stated, he had flown to Canada, to New York, and back to Jackson.
According to this record, the defendant had left his wife nine times and she had left him once within their marriage of a little more than two years. He left her in June of 1971 because he did not want to pay the doctor bill for delivery of their baby, and did not return until two weeks after the baby was born on July 28, and during that time he did not call her or furnish her any support while she was living with her parents. They were still separated at the time of this killing. He had asked her one or two times to come back to him and she agreed to do so on the Wednesday before the shooting if he would get a house, but thereafter he drew a knife on her. He had accused her several times of running around with the deceased and other men, "That's all he ever talked about was somebody." On the Wednesday before this homicide he accused her of keeping company with the deceased. She testified that on four or five occasions the deceased took her home when she got off from work at midnight while she was living with her parents, since this was on his way home, and that she had never run around with him or kept company with him or had any affair with him; that the last time he took her home was a week or two before he was killed; that one time before the baby was born the defendant came to the cafe and she refused to ride home with him because he said he was going to whip her, and he then asked the deceased to take her home; that she had known the deceased four or five years and one time he helped her get her car started on a grocery store parking lot; that the defendant asked her numerous times to quit her waitress job and she told him she was not going to do so because she had to work to support herself and the baby. Wednesday before the killing he tried to get the manager to fire her and opened a knife and started around the end of the bar threatening to cut the manager's head off, but stopped when the manager confronted him with a pistol.
The defendant did not testify. He presented his brothers James and Les, his brothers-in-law Phillip M. Morphias and Thomas L. Robertson and his cousin Mrs. Elaine Rose and Mrs. Reba Williams, whose collective testimony was that he was intoxicated from the early morning hours until about noon the Saturday the homicide occurred. Les Baxter testified that about a week later, in response to a telephone call from the defendant he went to Lyons, New York and brought the defendant home and he surrendered.
So, this is not a case where the defendant suddenly found out about his wife's infidelity and proceeded immediately or within a short time to kill her paramour in the heat of passion. Instead, it is all too plain from this record that this defendant cared nothing for his wife of two years, had left her nine times during their marriage and practically deserted and abandoned her, continually tantalizing her, nevertheless, with accusations of promiscuity with the deceased and other men. There is no proof in this record that the defendant's wife was ever unfaithful or that he had any knowledge whatever to the contrary or any reasonable ground to believe otherwise.
This record simply does not support the defendant's theory and insistence that his killing of the deceased was not a willful, deliberate, malicious, and premeditated act, and that, instead, it was done under the heat of passion produced by adequate provocation which disturbed his reason and caused him to act without due deliberation or reflection and upon impulse rather than judgment. Even if he had at times worked himself into a passion because of suspicion, wholly unfounded under this record, he had ample time for his passion to subside.
Armed with a single barrel shotgun, this defendant simply started out to hunt the deceased and found him at his place of employment and methodically proceeded to shoot him four times, re-loading the gun each time, the last two shots being fired while the deceased lay wounded and helpless upon the ground begging for his life. The element of premeditation and deliberation may be inferred from the circumstances of the killing. Tooley v. State, 1 Tenn.Cr.App. 652, 448 S.W.2d 683. Deliberation and premeditation may be inferred from the manner in which the killing was committed, and repeated shootings, blows, and other acts of violence are sufficient evidence of premeditation. Green v. State, 1 Tenn.Cr.App. 719, 450 S.W.2d 27 (concurring opinion). In this case, as in Green, the defendant deliberately shot the deceased repeatedly after he fell from the first shot.
Furthermore, the law is well settled that if premeditation exists, it is immaterial that the defendant was in a passion when that design was executed. Presley v. State, 161 Tenn. 310, 30 S.W.2d 231.
There is no merit in the defendant's Assignment complaining that the trial judge erroneously overruled his motion for a continuance. That motion, made orally by defense counsel after the trial jury had been empaneled and sworn, was predicated upon the averment by counsel that two absent subpoenaed witnesses would testify that the deceased "was going with the defendant's wife." Patently, having elected to rest his case upon the testimony of others concerning his unsoberness during the 12 hours or more preceding the killing, and having eschewed giving the jury the benefit of his own knowledge about his condition during that period of time, and about his wife's alleged infidelity upon which he now bases his claim that his slaying of the deceased was not premeditated murder but the result of passion engendered and provoked by her unfaithfulness, he is in no position now to complain that he was denied a continuance. For, under those circumstances, obviously there is no merit to his argument that those witnesses "would corroborate the defendant in his contention that he was in a state of mind at the time of killing that he did not know what he was doing and that he was laboring under adequately aroused passion so great at the time of the killing to obscure his reasoning." He voiced no such contention in his trial. Nor did any of his witnesses say he was so drunk at any time before the killing that he did not know what he was doing, and he expressed no such contention.
Furthermore, there is no proof in the record that the two absent witnesses, because of which he sought a continuance, told the defendant on the day before the killing, or any other time, that his wife had been keeping company with the deceased.
Beyond that, as stated, the continuance motion was oral, and it was not supported by an affidavit. Continuances for the purpose of obtaining evidence not then available or in reach must be supported by a filed affidavit specifying the testimony relied on. T.C.A. § 19-413; Mitchell v. State, 92 Tenn. 668, 23 S.W. 68.
It is elementary that a motion for a continuance is addressed to the sole discretion of the trial judge, and that his judgment will not be disturbed in the absence of a clear showing of gross abuse of his discretion to the prejudice of the defendant. Moorehead v. State, 219 Tenn. 271, 409 S.W.2d 357; State ex rel. Carroll v. Henderson, 1 Tenn.Cr.App. 427, 443 S.W.2d 689.
The burden rests upon a party assigning errors in connection with matters of continuance to show that the action of the court was prejudicial. Appellate courts will look to the result of the trial before them. The only test that may be applied is whether one has been deprived of his rights and whether an injustice has been done. The reviewing court will consider the entire record for the purpose of determining whether or not the judgment rendered was proper. A reversal will be ordered on account of denial of a continuance only if the appellate court is convinced that the complaining party did not have a fair trial and that a different result would or might reasonably have been reached had there been a different disposition of the application for a continuance. Tennessee Procedure in Law Cases, Higgins & Crownover, § 885. Upon this record we cannot say that the trial court abused its discretion to the prejudice of the defendant in denying his motion for a continuance.
Likewise without substance is the defendant's final Assignment that the trial judge erroneously refused to permit a psychologist to testify as an expert as to his mental condition, since he did not interpose the defense of insanity. The proffered psychologist was a member of the staff of Central State Psychiatric Hospital to which the defendant was sent before trial for mental evaluation. She testified apart from the jury that she participated in the examination of the defendant and agreed with the hospital staff's conclusion and report that he was not insane and knew right from wrong and was competent to advise with counsel in his own defense. In the presence of the jury she identified the staff report and stated she was a member of the unit which rendered it and that it represented her opinion also. The trial judge committed no error in declining to allow the psychologist to go further.
Affirmed.
DWYER, J., concurs.