Opinion ID: 1607200
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Marlon Beneby Manslaughter

Text: Marlon Beneby died in the hospital on August 21, 1998, from complications of a gunshot wound to his upper back on July 23, 1998. Beneby was shot once in the back, and the bullet lodged in the fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae, causing him to become a quadriplegic. When Beneby arrived at the hospital he was able to communicate, but unable to move. He also had abrasions and some blunt force injuries. Necrosis spread from his spinal cord to his brainstem and he lost the ability to breathe in the first week after the shooting. He developed severe bronchitis in his lungs. Beneby worked as a bombman for John Doe. Herbert Daniels, Eric Mitchell, Carlos Walker, Antonio Allen, and Danny Dunston all testified that Beneby was suspected of selling his own drugs at the John Doe hole. When confronted about this, Beneby blamed the tablemen Dunston and Jeffrey Bullard for supplying these drugs. When Latravis Gallashaw found out that Beneby was stealing from the table by selling his own drugs at the John Dole hole, he shot Beneby. Walker testified that he saw the argument between Beneby and Gallashaw on the night of the shooting. Walker heard a shot, saw Beneby on the ground, and saw Gallashaw hide a gun in his waistband. After the shooting, Walker heard Beneby say, I know I was wrong for what I did. I don't want to die. Tyree Lampley, who was not a member of John Doe, saw Gallashaw shoot Beneby with a 9-millimeter gun. Allen testified that he heard the shot as he was riding up on his bicycle and then saw Beneby on the ground. Allen also admitted that he helped move Beneby from the front yard of the house to the sidewalk and helped clean up the blood in the yard. The John Doe members who were present agreed to act as if Beneby had been riding Allen's bike when he was shot in a drive-by. The officers and emergency personnel who responded to the shooting testified that it appeared as if someone had tried to wash away blood from the scene. Charles Clark testified that Gallashaw admitted to him that he had shot Beneby. Mitchell also testified that during the time that Beneby was in the hospital Gallashaw attempted to pay Beneby to be quiet about the shooting. Smith was convicted of the first-degree murders of Hadley, Pope, Brown, and Wilson; four counts of conspiracy to commit murder (Hadley, Brown, Pope, and Fail), two counts of manslaughter (Lipscomb and Beneby), RICO conspiracy, racketeering, and conspiracy to traffic cocaine and cannabis. A motion hearing was conducted on February 7, 2005, at which the court considered the defense's motion for a new trial, various motions in limine, and challenges to the death penalty and death penalty instructions. As a basis for its motion for a new trial, the defense raised an issue relating to the State's alleged nondisclosure of Mark Roundtree's July 2004 statement in which he stated that he had previously implicated himself in the Hadley murder so that he could be a witness against Smith at this trial. Smith raises this as a claim in his appeal. It is discussed in more detail in the analysis of that issue below. The State explained that it had no report of a July statement by Roundtree, that Roundtree had given a number of inconsistent statements to the police and the defense was aware of these statements, that Roundtree had not been called as a witness and did not provide any evidence that was relied upon to prove Smith's participation in Hadley's murder, and that the defense had informed the jury at trial that Roundtree had been convicted of Hadley's murder. The court denied the defense's motion for a new trial. The court granted the State a protective order to prohibit the defense from asking why the prosecutors had not filed charges against State witnesses who had admitted their involvement in a number of murders. The court ruled that the defense was free to ask whether charges had been filed and to argue this as a mitigating factor to the jury. The penalty phase took place in February 2005 and lasted three days. The State presented several family members who either read or made victim impact statements. The medical examiner who examined the body of Cynthia Brown testified about the process of asphyxiation by smothering. The State also asked the court to take judicial notice of Smith's contemporaneous convictions for violent felonies in this case. The defense presented testimony from Smith's attorney in the federal conviction, the testimony of several State witnesses who had admitted their participation in murders, Detective Alphonso, who testified about Julius Stevens' admissions to the Pope and Wilson murders, the defendant's mother, Willie Mae Smith, who testified about the violent deaths and injuries that had occurred in Smith's life, and the individual who took the various sworn statements of Roundtree about the Hadley murder. The State presented Detective Alphonso and Tricia Geter as rebuttal witnesses. The jury recommended life sentences for the murders of Hadley and Pope and death sentences for the murder of Brown by a vote of ten to two and the murder of Wilson by a vote of nine to three. No additional evidence or argument was presented through a Spencer hearing, [5] and Smith elected not to address the court. However, both sides presented written sentencing memoranda to the court. The court followed the jury's recommendations as to sentencing, imposing life sentences for the murders of Hadley and Pope and death sentences for the murders of Brown and Wilson. In the Brown murder, the trial court found three aggravating factors: (1) Smith had a previous conviction of another capital felony or a felony involving the use of violence, based on the contemporaneous first-degree murder convictions, the manslaughter convictions, and the conspiracy to commit murder convictions; (2) the murder was committed to hinder or disrupt the lawful exercise of a governmental function or the enforcement of laws because Brown was killed to prevent her testimony against Smith in the Johnson murder case; and (3) the murder was cold, calculated, and premeditated (CCP). The trial court gave great weight to these aggravating factors. The sentencing order discusses three statutory mitigating factors: (1) lack of significant history of prior criminal activity; (2) extreme mental or emotional disturbance; and (3) Smith's age at the time of the murder. However, the court assigned little weight to these statutory mitigators, explaining that there either was no evidence to support the mitigator or the evidence presented actually refuted it. [6] The trial court also considered a number of nonstatutory mitigating factors relating to Smith's background and family, [7] which were given little or some weight. In the Wilson murder, the trial court found three aggravating factors: (1) Smith was previously convicted of another capital felony or a felony involving the use of violence based on his contemporaneous convictions of first-degree murder, manslaughter, and conspiracy to commit murder; (2) the murder was committed for pecuniary gain based on the fact that Wilson was killed when her car was ambushed by members of the John Doe gang who were trying to kill her boyfriend Anthony Fail to protect the drug enterprise; and (3) the murder was committed in a cold, calculated, and premeditated manner without any pretense of moral or legal justification, based on the careful, prearranged plan to commit this execution-style murder. The trial court assigned great weight to each of the aggravating factors. The trial court considered the same statutory mitigators as in Brown's murder (lack of significant history of prior criminal activity, extreme mental or emotional disturbance, and the age of the defendant), but assigned them little weight for the same reasons as stated above. The trial court also found the same nonstatutory mitigators regarding Smith's background and family as in Brown's murder. The trial court also considered the fact that Smith did not shoot Wilson himself and never intended for Wilson to be killed, but gave this little weight in light of the overwhelming evidence that Smith ordered the execution of Fail and Wilson was killed as a result of this plan. In both cases, the trial court found that the aggravating circumstances clearly and convincingly outweigh the mitigating factors and imposed death sentences for both Brown's and Wilson's murders. The court imposed upward departure sentences on the noncapital charges based on the following factors: Smith's leadership role in a criminal organization; Smith had committed crimes in order to impede his prosecution for conduct in an underlying arrest; Smith was not amenable to rehabilitation; the murders of Wilson and Brown were CCP; and Smith had committed multiple murders and manslaughter. The court imposed consecutive thirty-year sentences for RICO conspiracy, RICO racketeering, conspiracy to traffic in marijuana, conspiracy to traffic in cocaine, and conspiracy to commit the murders of Hadley, Brown, Pope, and Fail. The court imposed consecutive fifteen-year sentences for the manslaughter of Lipscomb and Beneby.