Court Opinion

ID: 9535027
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:44:46.059001+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:33:09.554385
License: Public Domain

BUSSEY, Presiding Judge,
dissenting:
By his own admission the defendant shot and killed Carroll and Paul Hayden, as they lay sleeping in their beds, stole an automobile and personal property belonging to them and, when first questioned by police, denied any knowledge of their deaths. It is obvious that the jury disbelieved the defendant’s testimony that he was the victim of a homosexual attack by the decedents, but found instead that his motive for killing the sleeping brothers was robbery.
The evidence presented at trial amply supports the jury’s finding of the two aggravating circumstances.
*357The photographs of which the defendant now complains were properly admitted. They were part of a group of six offered by the State, the judge sustained defense objections to the other three pictures. The photos admitted depicted the back of the head of Carroll Hayden, and his shoulders and arms, as he lay face down in bed; and two views of the lower legs of Paul Hayden, as he also lay in bed. The pictures were not particularly gruesome, and supported the State’s theory that the men were slain as they lay sleeping in bed. Moreover, the pictures of Paul Hayden reveal a spent shell casing on the bed near the body, bolstering the State’s evidence that he was shot at very close range.
Neither the unobjected to conduct of the prosecutor, nor the alleged ineffective assistance of defense counsel so prejudicially influenced the verdict of the jury as to require reversal, when measured by the statndards set forth by this Court in Tucker v. State, supra, and the United States Supreme Court in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. -, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674, 1984.
I would affirm the judgment and sentence.