Opinion ID: 3049501
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: trial: state’s witnesses at penalty phase

Text: From March 23 to April 7, 1998, Johnson was tried on charges of malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, aggravated battery, and rape. The jury found Johnson guilty of all charges. At the penalty phase, the State called eleven witnesses. Lynwood Houston, a sheriff’s deputy in Miller County, investigated Johnson’s escape and testified about it. The jailer on duty, Sheffield, allowed Johnson to come into the control room to use the telephone. Once there, Johnson snatched the pistol out of Sheffield’s holster and hit Sheffield in the head with it. Johnson fled the jail, taking Sheffield’s pistol with him. On cross-examination, Deputy Houston admitted that Johnson committed no crimes after his escape that Houston knew of, and that Johnson did not try to run or resist arrest when he was recaptured. Deputy Houston did not know how long Brooks Sheffield was in the hospital after Johnson hit him with the gun, but Sheffield did return to work for the county after the assault. Deputy Houston knew that after his injury, Sheffield did some work for the city too, and may have 11 directed the public works efforts around the courthouse square. Dr. Peggy Rummel, the emergency room physician who treated Sheffield, testified that Sheffield “came to the emergency room with his head bleeding, and he stated at the time that he had been struck on his head with a gun butt during an assault by an escaping prisoner.” Sheffield was 76 years old but was in good health except for his head injury. Dr. Rummel examined Sheffield, closed the wound, and sent Sheffield to get a CT scan “to make sure that no brain damage had resulted from the blow to his head.” The injury came from a “pretty significant blow” that “caught the skin and had just literally scalped and peeled it down to where he had exposed bone and this was bleeding very heavily.” It required 21 staples to close. Dr. Rummel opined that the injury resulted from a glancing blow and, with the amount of force that was used, a direct blow “would have crushed [Sheffield’s] skull.” Dr. Rummel, who knew Sheffield personally, testified that after this incident, Sheffield “was just not the same man any more.” Sheffield was “a very unhappy man afterwards” and “stayed home and stayed to himself.” Seven months after Johnson’s escape, Sheffield “suffered a stroke on that side and it was a bleed of one of the major arteries in that area and it had disastrous consequences for him.” Sheffield died several weeks later. Dr. Rummel testified, though, that she 12 “[could ]not in all honesty tell you that there was a one hundred percent no doubt about it direct relationship” between the head injury and Sheffield’s stroke seven months later.7 On cross-examination, Dr. Rummel admitted that Sheffield drove himself to the hospital after receiving the head injury and that the CT scan taken after the assault revealed no internal bleeding in Sheffield’s brain. The State called Johnson’s former probation officers, who testified Johnson received probation in September 1984 after pleading guilty to financial transaction card fraud, four counts of financial transaction card theft, and theft by receiving stolen property.8 One officer testified that of the thousand persons he had supervised as a parole officer, Johnson’s attitude was one of the ten worst. Johnson was “[v]ery resistant to supervision” and was rated a “maximum risk individual.” Another officer confirmed Johnson had a negative attitude and failed to comply with the terms of his probation. 7 Similarly, the State’s penalty-phase closing argument suggested that the injury Johnson inflicted may have caused Sheffield’s death, but admitted it may not have and maybe Sheffield would have died anyway: [Johnson] slugged a seventy-six year old deputy in the head, so severely that if it had been a direct blow it would have killed him. What did happen to him? Several months later, he suffered a stroke on the same side of his body that he got that hit; his health just kept going straight on down and he died and Mr. Lane or Mr. Jones may say, well, he didn’t kill him, and maybe he didn’t and maybe he would have died anyway, but that happened at the hands of this man, Marcus Ray Johnson, and there’s no dispute of that, doing anything he could to get out of lawful confinement. (Emphasis added.) 8 The State admitted certified copies of Johnson’s convictions, plea, and sentence. 13 The State closed its penalty-phase case with powerful victim impact testimony from five witnesses: Sizemore’s then-eight-year-old daughter, mother, two sisters, and stepfather. The State also showed the jury a video of the scene where Sizemore’s body was found. Sizemore’s daughter described getting out of bed one morning when she was four years old and realizing her mother wasn’t there and would never come back. She testified she still cried in school, and she wanted the man who killed her mother punished for taking her mother away from her. Sizemore’s mother and stepfather described Sizemore’s kindness, generosity, adventurous spirit, and passion for being a mother. Sizemore’s mother testified that Sizemore’s death “left a hole in our hearts that time won’t heal.” She described her emotional struggle in raising her eight-year-old granddaughter while wondering if she will “learn to hate because of this” or “be distrusting or holding emotions of this trauma inside to the point that it destroys her ability to be a loving person.” Sizemore’s sisters testified that Sizemore was their role model and best friend. Sizemore was fearless and passionate and the most dedicated mother they knew. Sizemore was full of life and did not want to die. One sister testified about how heartbreaking it was to see the wistful look on Sizemore’s daughter’s face 14 when she looked at other families. This sister wished it was she who had died instead of her sister because “it would have been easier than the daily hell I go through thinking about the last hours of my sister’s life.”