Opinion ID: 697334
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Nature of the Killing

Text: 11 Shortly after 1:30 p.m. on January 14, 1994, Gloria Heising parked her Postal Service Jeep in front of the house. She began her mail route across the street. When Heising finally approached the door behind which Downs hid, Downs kicked open the door, chased Heising into the driveway and shot her in the hip with the sawed-off shotgun. According to eyewitness accounts, as Heising crawled on her back into the street, Downs reloaded and fired off a second shot, missing Heising. Downs dropped the shotgun, then picked it up and again reloaded. Standing over Heising as she pled for her life, Downs prodded her with the shotgun, then fired a bullet into her head just above the right eye. Downs then walked back up the driveway to retrieve from the snow the .44 handgun, which had fallen from his belt during the chase. Calmly, Downs returned to Heising and shot her three times around the heart and once between the eyes. At trial, expert testimony suggested that Heising's heart and lungs were still functioning after the first shotgun bullet to the head and before the handgun shots into her heart. 12 When police arrived, Downs surrendered and confessed to the killing. Police investigators later found the guns hidden in the basement of Downs's son's house under the floorboards of a shower. 13 The nature of the killing thus provides strong evidence of premeditation. Even if we believed (which we do not) that Downs had initially assaulted Heising in the heat of passion--that is, that he had not formed the necessary premeditative intent to kill Heising prior to her arrival at the son's house--Downs's actions between the first bullet and the last convince us that the killing was sufficiently willful, deliberate, malicious, and premeditated to constitute first-degree murder.