Court Opinion

ID: 9845678
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:26:14.339402+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:16:18.240216
License: Public Domain

JOHN ROLL, Court of Appeals Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent.
Jimmy Lee Mathers, along with Fred Lawrence Robinson and Theodore Washington, was convicted by a jury of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, two counts of aggravated assault, first-degree burglary, and armed robbery. Mathers argues that insufficient evidence exists to uphold his convictions. Our standard of review is whether any rational trier of fact could find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt based upon the evidence presented. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 324, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 2791-92, 61 L.Ed.2d 560, 576 (1979). In evaluating the evidence, we must view the evidence in the light most favorable to sustaining the verdicts, State v. Arredondo, 155 Ariz. 314, 316, 746 P.2d 484, 486 (1987), including making all reasonable inferences which support the ver*72diets. State v. Girdler, 138 Ariz. 482, 488, 675 P.2d 1301, 1307, cert. denied, 467 U.S. 1244, 104 S.Ct. 3519, 82 L.Ed.2d 826 (1984). If substantial evidence exists to support the verdicts, they must be upheld. State v. Moseley, 119 Ariz. 393, 402, 581 P.2d 238, 247 (1979). Substantial evidence is evidence which is more than a scintilla of evidence. State v. Clabourne, 142 Ariz. 335, 345, 690 P.2d 54, 64 (1985).
Substantial evidence, that is, more than a scintilla of evidence, exists to support Mathers’ convictions. I believe that it is critical that the evidence presented at trial be viewed as a whole rather than viewing each piece of evidence in isolation.
The evidence showed that Robinson was obsessed with his commonlaw wife, Susan. When Susan had separated from Robinson on earlier occasions, Robinson used ruses and/or heavy-handed tactics to regain her. On one occasion, when Robinson found Susan in Pacoima, California, he told her that if she did not return to Banning, California, with him, no one would ever find her body. On another occasion, he sent two armed men to a Hollywood residence where Susan was staying. That time, the two men held a child and one of Susan’s sisters at bay while Robinson entered the home, found Susan hiding in a closet, and informed her that he had planned to have everyone in the house killed, but had changed his mind. In January 1987, Mathers accompanied Robinson on a trip from Banning to Philadelphia so that Robinson could once again compel Susan to return to Banning with Robinson. After Robinson successfully used a ruse to lure Susan to him, Susan agreed to accompany Robinson back to Banning. Susan warned her aunt and uncle that harm could come to them should they resist her returning to Banning with Robinson. In February 1987, Susan obtained Robinson’s permission to go to Yuma, Arizona, to visit her father and stepmother for one week. Susan failed to return to Robinson. Robinson phoned her at the Hill home at least twice. During this time, Susan wrote to Robinson and warned him to stay away from the Hill’s residence because her stepmother, Sterleen, had obtained a peace bond against him. Unbeknownst to Robinson, Susan eventually left the Hill residence to live with a grandmother in Pacoima, then with a sister in Pasadena.
This, then, is the background for the events of June 8, 1987. That day, Mathers was at Robinson’s house in Banning. Yuma is 175 miles from Banning. Robinson said he was leaving to look for Susan. Mathers said that he was going to Arizona to take care of business. Around the time this statement was made, Mathers helped load firearms and his dufflebag into Robinson’s car. After the firearms were loaded into the vehicle, he left California in Robinson’s car with Robinson and Washington about 6:00 p.m. That Mathers’ Arizona business required the presence of firearms was a fair inference for the jury to draw. Just hours later, one of those firearms was used to kill Sterleen Hill and maim Ralph Hill at their Yuma, Arizona residence.
At about 11:45 p.m. that evening, LeSean, the Hills’ teenage son, answered a knock at the door of their Yuma residence. A man identified himself as James. Whether Mathers would have used his real name was a question for the jury. LeSean vacillated in his testimony as to whether “James” was black or white. However, no lights were on outside the house, the night was dark, no street lights were in the vicinity, and only the television set illuminated the inside of the house. Obviously, visibility was limited. The jury and the trial judge saw and heard this witness and were in the best position to evaluate his testimony-
“James” forced his way into the house and was joined by a second man. The two intruders demanded drugs and money from Mr. and Mrs. Hill. Ultimately, the couple was forced to lay face down on the floor. One person stood over the couple while a second intruder, who wore a bandana on his head and had a moustache, rifled through drawers, apparently searching for the drugs and money the two men demanded. Ralph Hill heard the voice of someone who entered the room say, “We better get the kid.” The evidence can be viewed as indicating the presence of three individuals: (1) the black man with the moustache and *73wearing the bandana, who rifled through the dresser drawers; (2) the person who stood over the couple and who inferentially possessed the shotgun; and (3) the person whose voice was heard in the background. The number of intruders and their identities was a matter for the jury to resolve. Sterleen and Ralph were then shot in the back. Nothing of significant value was taken from the house. No evidence showed that Washington or Mathers knew that Susan’s parents lived at that house; Robinson, however, had been to the house before. There is absolutely no evidence that Robinson believed Susan’s parents would have drugs or money. There was evidence that Sterleen’s warning to the violent and volatile Robinson had been communicated to Robinson and that Robinson believed Susan was still staying at that residence. The jury could reasonably have concluded that Robinson was not one of the two men who repeatedly demanded drugs and money from the elderly couple.
The jury could reasonably have inferred from the evidence that Robinson malevolently sent Mathers and Washington to the Hills’ home after suggesting that the occupants thereof possessed drugs and money. The jury also could reasonably have concluded that Robinson’s dispatch of the two intruders resulted from the couple’s sheltering of Susan and from Sterleen’s issuance of a warning toward Robinson. Viewed in any other light, this case lacks rhyme or reason, for Robinson knew well that the Hills had neither drugs nor money.
Shortly after the murder took place, Robinson was arrested driving near the Hill home and Robinson’s footprint was found near the residence. Mathers’ dufflebag was still in Robinson’s car. From this fact, the jury could have reasonably concluded that Mathers had travelled to Yuma with Robinson and had not severed his contact with Robinson until Robinson fled the crime scene and was arrested. Ralph Hill told police that one of the assailants was a black man, with a moustache, who wore a bandana. Washington had a moustache and wore a bandana on his head earlier in the day. Just hours after the murder, Washington placed phone calls from Yuma to his girlfriend. Later that day, Mathers was encountered walking toward Banning and away from Yuma. Mathers said that he was coming from Arizona and that Robinson was in Yuma. The jury could reasonably have concluded that Mathers knew Robinson had been in Yuma because Mathers himself had also been in Yuma and Mathers was walking because he, like Washington, lost his transportation when Robinson was arrested.
Although no one identified Mathers as being in the Hills’ home the night of the murder, no eyewitness identification placed Robinson or Washington in the home either.2
Certainly, other inferences can be drawn from these various pieces of circumstantial evidence. It can be argued that each piece of evidence was nothing more than a random event having no connection with any other occurrence. Most certainly, this is what all three defense lawyers tried to tell the jury. However, on appeal, we are obligated to view the evidence in the light most favorable to upholding the verdicts, Arredondo, supra, and must make all reasonable inferences which support the verdict. Girdler, supra.
This court has previously recognized that conduct before and after an offense are circumstances from which one’s participation in the criminal offense may be inferred. State v. Villegas, 101 Ariz. 465, 468, 420 P.2d 940, 943 (1966). See also People v. Moore, 120 Cal.App.2d 303, 260 P.2d 1011 (1953), cert. denied, 347 U.S. 978, 74 S.Ct. 791, 98 L.Ed. 1117 (1954). In Villegas, this court also emphasized the improbability that individuals planning a crime would bring along a nonparticipant, ignorant of their plans, who might later “decide that he would oppose their criminal *74action or later inform against them.” Villegas, 101 Ariz. at 468, 420 P.2d at 943.
Substantial evidence against Mathers existed from which the jury could reasonably have concluded that he was one of the participants in the murder of Sterleen Hill and the attempted murder of Ralph Hill. I would affirm Mathers’ convictions.

. Ralph Hill was unable to identify Robinson or Washington in a photo lineup. This lineup was conducted shortly after he was severely injured and still hospitalized. Testimony indicated the possibility he had the incorrect glasses when he viewed the photo lineups. The jury properly weighed the credibility of this evidence.