Court Opinion

ID: 9587668
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:24:58.658334+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:44:49.119065
License: Public Domain

LUMPKIN, Presiding Judge,
specially concurring:
I concur with the Court’s decision except for the finding of insufficient evidence to support the aggravator of “avoiding lawful arrest or prosecution”. Although we do not have a statement as in Banks v. State, 701 P.2d 418 (Okl.Cr.1985), concerning Appellant’s state of mind at the time of the murder, the circumstantial evidence is sufficient to support the aggravator. As the State notes, Appellant was a convicted felon. He attempted to disguise himself by folding up his eyelids. He killed the decedent after robbing her. Appellant had been at the flea market the day before the murder and dealt with a male sales person. Upon leaving the flea market, Appellant asked his brother if he had seen the “wad of money” the man inside the flea market was carrying. Appellant lured Mr. Newland back to the storage unit and stabbed Mr. Newland after he had robbed the decedent. The pickup Appellant was driving the day of the murder, he had taken, without permission to do so, from the Stallings Construction Company. He tried unsuccessfully to get rid of the pickup, and eventually returned it to the yard of the Construction Co., wiping it clean of fingerprints. This evidence supports a finding that Appellant was attempting to do away with anyone or anything which could identify him as the perpetrator of Mrs. Bush’s robbery and murder. See Fox v. State, 779 P.2d 562, 576 (Okl.Cr.1989).