Opinion ID: 1417845
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: griffin murder

Text: Between 10:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. on 24 November 1995, Ronald Webb, Anthony Sheppard, and Ricky Griffin (Griffin) were at Crockett's Barber Shop in Winston-Salem. As the three men were leaving the barber shop, defendant approached Griffin. They began arguing, and Griffin pulled a knife on defendant. After a brief skirmish, Griffin apologized, and they went their separate ways. On 25 November 1995, around 2:30 a.m., Donald Brooks saw Griffin talking with defendant on a street corner near Griffin's house. Griffin was a drug dealer who also stole property and sold it to make money. Griffin frequently dealt with defendant. During this encounter, Brooks testified that Griffin was attempting to sell a telephone to defendant. According to Brooks, defendant told Griffin he did not want the telephone, but he did want marijuana. Griffin told defendant he would return to his house and page Larry Cason to get some marijuana. Brooks then asked defendant to take him home, and the two men left in defendant's Volkswagen automobile. Soon thereafter, Griffin's brother, Randolph Griffin, saw Griffin in the kitchen of their residence in Winston-Salem. Griffin told his brother he was trying to page defendant and Cason. Telephone records indicate that six calls were placed from the telephone at Griffin's residence during the early morning hours of 25 November 1995 between 2:47 a.m. and 2:55 a.m., including two calls to defendant's pager and four calls to Cason's pager. According to Randolph Griffin, when he left to go upstairs to his bedroom, his brother was still in the kitchen. Thereafter, he heard three gunshots outside his house. When he ran outside to see what had happened, he found his brother lying in a pool of blood in front of the house. Randolph Griffin called 911, and law enforcement and emergency rescue personnel arrived within a few minutes. Griffin was transported to the hospital and pronounced dead shortly thereafter. At the crime scene, law enforcement officers found a 9-mm shell casing on the ground approximately fifteen feet from the victim's body. On 27 November 1995, Randolph Griffin was raking the front yard of his house when he found two additional 9-mm shell casings on the ground. He called law enforcement, who came and retrieved the shell casings. According to Cason, on 25 November 1995, after receiving the second page from Griffin, he returned the call from a residence where he was playing cards. He told Griffin he did not have any marijuana to sell. Thereafter, Cason testified he left the card game and was driving home when he received the third page from Griffin. At that point, Cason pulled over and called Griffin from a pay telephone but received no answer. He then decided to go see what Griffin wanted. When he arrived at Griffin's house, he saw Randolph Griffin holding his brother in the front yard. Each of the telephone calls placed to and from the Griffin residence was confirmed by telephone records. Dr. Patrick Lantz, a Forsyth County medical examiner, performed an autopsy on Griffin's body on 25 November 1995. Lantz determined Griffin died as a result of three gunshot wounds to the head: two wounds were about one inch apart in front of the victim's right ear, and one wound was to the left side of his head. The two wounds on the right side of the face were surrounded by stippling, which is caused when gunpowder comes out of the barrel of a gun, strikes the skin's surface, but does not completely burn. Because of the presence of stippling, Lantz determined these two shots were fired from a range of approximately two feet or less. The third wound, on the left side of the face, did not have stippling present. Therefore, Lantz could not determine the distance from which the shot was fired. Further, projectiles recovered from Griffin's body were determined to be from a medium-caliber handgun, possibly a 9-mm handgun.