Opinion ID: 697334
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Evidence of Planning Activity

Text: 6 The evidence presented at trial showed that Downs selected the day of the killing with considerable care. At the time of the killing, his son and daughter-in-law owned a house on Heising's daily mail route. Without their knowledge, Downs made a copy of the key to their house at some point prior to the killing. By his own admission, Downs decided to use his son's house to engineer some kind of encounter with Heising, in violation of the terms of his probation. Though Downs claimed at trial that he intended the encounter to be no more than a peaceable farewell, the evidence suggests otherwise. 7 Downs selected January 14, 1994, a day when, by virtue of their work schedules, he was certain that his son and daughter-in-law would not be present in their home at the time Heising made her rounds. On January 13, Downs performed at least four preparatory acts. First, Downs rented a minivan with tinted windows, emphasizing to the rental agency clerk the importance of the tinted windows. Later that day, Downs removed the rear seats, disabled the interior dome lights, and taped sheets of black plastic over the inside of the minivan's windows. Second, Downs hid himself along Heising's mail route to verify that a substitute was performing her duties. As a former co-worker of Heising's at the U.S. Postal Service, Downs knew that the presence of the substitute virtually guaranteed that Heising would be back on her route the next day. Third, Downs prepared and mailed four letters to his son's address. Three of the letters were sent first class, two of them addressed in disguised handwriting. The fourth letter, typewritten with a false return address, was sent certified mail, thus ensuring that Heising would knock on his son's door to secure the required signature. Fourth, Downs and a close friend, Margaret Bails, cleared the accumulated snow from his son's ordinarily unused driveway, something Downs had never before done. 8 On the morning of the murder, Downs arose early and departed from Bails's house by 6:00 a.m. The record shows that Downs had in his possession at that time a .410 single-shot sawed-off shotgun, shotgun shells, a .44 five-shot handgun, a quantity of hollow-point ammunition, a sharpened knife, two blankets, two lengths of rope with loops at the ends, and duct tape. After waiting in the minivan at a park for approximately two hours, he telephoned his son and daughter-in-law's house to confirm that both had left for work. By 8:45, Downs had arrived at the house, hid the minivan in the garage, and entered the premises with the copied key. 9 Once inside, Downs covered both sides of the outside screen door with black plastic sheets. Downs loaded the shotgun and placed two extra shells in his pocket. He loaded the handgun with hollow-point bullets and stuck the gun in his belt. Just inside the entry door, Downs waited for Heising with the loaded guns, a large metal club, a length of rope and a roll of duct tape. 10 The evidence of planning thus firmly supports the district court's finding of premeditation.