Opinion ID: 1527562
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Sentencing Proceeding

Text: As Wiggins elected to be sentenced by a jury, much of the testimony adduced at the trial was repeated. There were, however, some differences between the evidence offered at trial and at the sentencing proceeding. Dr. Korell told the jury that the victim died of drowning and that the manner of death was homicide. She testified that the victim sustained a contusion of the left hand and that it was a traumatic defensive-type injury. She made no mention of the hemorrhage in the victim's neck area. As to the time of death, Dr. Korell said that taking into account a number of factors, including that the body was refrigerated the entire night prior to the autopsy, she could not pinpoint the time of death. She estimated that the victim could have died 24 or 48 hours before she was photographed at the crime scene at 9 p.m. on September 17, or earlier if, as stated by the paramedic, rigor mortis was present at 4 p.m. on that day. Dr. Ann Dixon, the Deputy Chief State Medical Examiner, testified that the victim died at least twenty-four hours before Dr. Felsenberg examined the body at the crime scene and that death could have occurred thirty-six or forty-eight hours prior to that examination, or even farther back than that. Chantell Greenwood testified that the victim was wearing a red pleated skirt and a long-sleeved white blouse when she last saw her on September 15 in the apartment hallway. She said that on that date, at approximately 5:40 p.m., she heard the victim and a painter exchange a few words in the hallway. Chianti Thomas reiterated her testimony about her visit to Shanita, the victim's neighbor, on September 15. She told the jury that the girls had difficulty locking the door behind them; that they enlisted the help of the victim; that a man appeared on the scene at that time; and that she observed a brief exchange of words between the victim and the man she later identified as Wiggins. Thus, Chianti's trial testimony differed from her testimony at sentencing in her identification of Wiggins. Before the trial, Chianti had selected Wiggins's photograph from a group of photographs that the police had shown to her. She was, however, unable to make an in-court identification. At the sentencing hearing, however, when the prosecutor asked Chianti, [a]nd whose picture did you pick, she made an in-court identification of Wiggins. Dr. Silvia Camparini, an expert pathologist, testified for the defense that the body had not been dead more than twenty-four hours when Dr. Korell performed the autopsy at 9 a.m. on September 18. In its sentencing determination, the jury concluded beyond a reasonable doubt that Wiggins was a principal in the first degree to the murder of Florence Lacs, and that one aggravating circumstance had been proven, namely, that Wiggins committed the murder in the course of robbing the victim. The jury unanimously found by a preponderance of the evidence that one mitigating circumstance existed, namely, that Wiggins had not been previously convicted of a crime of violence. An additional mitigating circumstance was found by one or more of the jurors, but fewer than all twelve, namely, Wiggins's background. The jury unanimously found that the State proved by a preponderance of the evidence that the proven aggravating circumstance outweighed the mitigating circumstances and it imposed the death penalty.