Opinion ID: 1809585
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Admission of Evidence of Unadjudicated Murder

Text: Defendant claims the trial court erred in ruling that his confession to an unadjudicated and unrelated murder was admissible at the penalty phase of trial. He also claims he was incompetent at the time of that confession. Before trial, the prosecutor gave notice that she would introduce defendant's confession to the unrelated murder of William Chattman. At a hearing outside the presence of the jury shortly before commencement of the penalty phase, the detective testified that he interviewed defendant on January 21, 1988, while defendant was under arrest for the murder of Fr. McCarthy, about Chattman's 1986 murder. Defendant waived his rights and agreed to talk, making a series of oral admissions followed by a formal statement, in which defendant confessed to killing Chattman. The detective further testified there had been no force, promises, threats or inducements. The trial court ruled the evidence admissible, finding that the confession was competent and reliable and that the evidence was clear and convincing as to defendant's guilt of the unrelated murder. The confession was later read to the jury in its entirety at the penalty phase. The record does not support defendant's claim that he was incompetent in January of 1988 when he admitted killing Chattman. In fact, in April and May of 1989 he was examined by two court-appointed psychiatrists who found him able to assist counsel and understand the nature and object of the proceedings. No evidence of mental disease or defect was found. Although defendant had a stroke in June of 1988, six months after confessing, nothing in the record shows or suggests he was less than fully competent on January 21, 1988, the date he confessed to shooting Chattman. The record also supports a further conclusion that the state met its burden to show affirmatively that the confession was free and voluntary and not made under the influence of fear, duress, intimidation, menaces, threats, inducements or promises. La.Rev. Stat. 15:446; La.Code Crim. Proc. art. 703. The motion to suppress was properly denied. Admission of the confession into evidence at the penalty phase was also proper. The character and propensities of a defendant convicted of first degree murder are the focus of the sentencing phase of a capital proceeding, whether or not the defendant has placed his or her character at issue. La. Code Crim. Proc. art. 905.2(A); State v. Sawyer, 422 So.2d 95, 104 (La.1982). Evidence of unrelated, unadjudicated crimes may be relevant and probative evidence of a defendant's character and propensities. See State v. Jackson, 608 So.2d 949, 954-956 (La.1992), in which this court limited unadjudicated crimes evidence to that which involves violence against the person of the victim and to that conduct for which the period of limitation for instituting prosecution had not run at the time of the indictment of the accused for the first degree murder for which he is being tried. In this case, the unadjudicated offense was a murder, the quintessential crime of violence against the person of the victim. Following a hearing, the trial court found that defendant's connection to Chattman's murder was clearly and convincingly proved, that his confession was otherwise competent and reliable evidence, and that the crime was relevant and substantially probative as to character and propensities under Article 905.2(A). Defendant's final complaint relating to the evidence of the unadjudicated murder was that its admission violated State v. Bourque, 622 So.2d 198 (La.1993), which prohibited the state from introducing extensive proof at a capital sentencing hearing of the defendant's guilt on unadjudicated and unrelated crimes. The present case is factually distinguishable from Bourque. In Bourque, the state introduced evidence of an unadjudicated killing, with eleven of the twelve witnesses at the penalty phases testifying exclusively as to the unadjudicated killing. These included four eyewitnesses to the shooting, technicians who testified on the chain of custody of physical evidence gathered at the scene, and the coroner who testified as to cause of death. During the coroner's testimony, an autopsy picture of the victim was introduced into evidence. Here, there was no mini-trial devoted to proving up guilt beyond a reasonable doubt on the unadjudicated murder. The state called one witness, the detective to whom defendant admitted he had shot Chattman, and that witness simply read the confession to the jury. No other evidence was introduced as to the Chattman murder. The focus of a capital sentencing hearing is the defendant's propensity to commit first degree murder.... State v. Jackson, 608 So.2d 949 (La.1992). Relevant to that inquiry is the defendant's commission of other serious crimes of violence against the person. Bourque does not purport to prohibit the admission of a capital defendant's confession to an unadjudicated crime otherwise admissible under Jackson. The state's presentation of minimal evidence of an unadjudicated murder was scarcely designed to shift the jury's attention from its primary responsibility to determine an appropriate punishment for his murder of Fr. McCarthy, nor would it have reasonably have done so in this case.