State of Iowa v. Abraham Roberts ( 2019 )

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
No. 18-0575
Filed May 1, 2019
STATE OF IOWA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
vs.
ABRAHAM ROBERTS,
Defendant-Appellant.
________________________________________________________________
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Polk County, Scott D. Rosenberg,
Judge.
A defendant appeals his conviction for murder in the first degree.
AFFIRMED.
Mark C. Smith, State Appellate Defender, (until withdrawal) and Robert P.
Ranschau, Assistant Appellate Defender, for appellant.
Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, and Timothy M. Hau, Assistant Attorney
General, for appellee.
Considered by Potterfield, P.J., and Tabor and Bower, JJ.
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TABOR, Judge.
A Polk County jury found Abraham Roberts guilty of first-degree murder in
the shooting death of his live-in girlfriend, Agnes Yarlee. On appeal, Roberts
challenges the State’s proof he acted with malice aforethought and that the
shooting was willful, premeditated, and carried out with a specific intent to kill.
Because the State presented ample evidence supporting these elements, we
affirm the jury’s verdict.
I. Facts and Prior Proceedings
The jury heard testimony Roberts shot Yarlee five times as she sat on the
couch in the apartment they shared with their infant daughter, Yarlee’s three older
children, and other family members. Their five-month-old was sitting in a bouncy
chair at her mother’s feet when Roberts repeatedly fired the nine-millimeter Smith
& Wesson handgun. No bullets hit the baby, but they struck Yarlee in the knee,
chest, and skull. The head wound was fatal.
Before the shooting, Roberts complained the apartment was a mess.
Yarlee purportedly responded, “my kids ain’t here to clean the house.” Then
Roberts, Yarlee, and Yarlee’s seventy-nine-year-old mother argued so loudly
Yarlee’s three children could hear their raised voices outside the apartment
building. During the argument, Roberts shoved the elderly woman to the ground
as he moved to the bedroom to grab his gun. Scared to go inside, eleven-year-
old C.Y. recalled standing at the open apartment door with her eight- and nine-
year-old brothers behind her. C.Y. saw Roberts tap his leg before he lifted the gun
and shot her mother. C.Y. told the jury her mother didn’t have time to react: “He
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didn’t give her a chance. He just went boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.” C.Y.
then ushered her grandmother from the house and called 911.
Roberts left the apartment before the police arrived. Responding officers
discovered Yarlee’s body on the couch in a large pool of blood. After searching
the apartment the next day, officers found the handgun under dirty clothes in the
laundry hamper. Authorities eventually arrested Roberts in International Falls,
Minnesota, near the Canadian border.
The State charged Roberts with murder in the first degree, in violation of
Iowa Code sections 707.1 and 707.2(1) (2017). A jury heard the case in January
2018. Yarlee’s mother and daughter both offered eyewitness testimony. They
testified Roberts was angry, and the grandmother remembered Roberts telling
Yarlee, “I will kill you,” before he pulled the trigger.
After the State’s case in chief, defense counsel moved for judgment of
acquittal on the charges of murder in the first and second degree and asked the
district court to submit the case to the jury only on the lesser-included offenses of
voluntary and involuntary manslaughter. The court overruled the motion.
Roberts took the stand in his own defense. He testified to drinking more
than half a bottle of gin the day of the shooting. He acknowledged arguing with
Yarlee at the apartment but alleged she was the aggressor, they wrestled over the
gun, and “it automatically went off.”1 According to his testimony, after the first shot,
1
Roberts did not raise an intoxication or justification defense at trial, nor does he mention
those affirmative defenses on appeal.
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he didn’t remember anything until the next morning.2 He told the jury after waking
up at a hotel, he was “lost” and “confused” and just kept driving until he was
stopped by the border patrol.
The jury found Roberts guilty as charged. He appeals the judgment entered
on that verdict, alleging the district court erred in denying his motion for judgment
of acquittal.
II. Scope of Review
We review the district court’s assessment of the sufficiency of the evidence
for correction of legal error. State v. Buenaventura, 660 N.W.2d 38, 48 (Iowa
2003). We will not displace a jury verdict if substantial evidence supports it. Id.Evidence qualifies as “substantial” if a rational trier of fact could apply it to the
elements of the offense to find the accused guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Id.We view the evidence in the light most favorable to the State, entertaining all
legitimate inferences we can fairly and reasonably deduce from the record. Id. We
consider both inculpatory and exculpatory evidence. Id. Evidence is not
substantial if it amounts to only “suspicion, speculation, or conjecture.” State v.
Hopkins, 576 N.W.2d 374, 377 (Iowa 1998).
III. Analysis
The marshaling instruction on first-degree murder required proof beyond a
reasonable doubt of the following elements:
1. On or about the 15th day of April, 2017, the defendant shot
Agnes Yarlee.
2. Agnes Yarlee died as a result of being shot.
2
Roberts, who came to the United States as a refugee from Liberia, testified he
experienced a similar “amnesia event” when he was running from a violent uprising in his
home country.
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3. The defendant acted with malice aforethought.
4. The defendant acted willfully, deliberately, premeditatedly
and with a specific intent to kill Agnes Yarlee.
Roberts does not dispute the State’s satisfaction of the first and second
elements. He limits his argument to the third and fourth elements, contending the
prosecution did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt he “acted with malice
aforethought, premeditation or acted willfully, deliberately, or with the specific
intent to kill.” He points to differing witness accounts of the number of shots fired
and suggests the variation “could indicate that the gunshots occurred in rapid
succession and in the heat of the moment.”
We turn first to the question of whether Roberts shot Yarlee with malice
aforethought. Iowa case law defines this state of mind as “a fixed purpose or
design to do some physical harm to another” harbored by the accused before
taking action. State v. Serrato, 787 N.W.2d 462, 469 (Iowa 2010) (quoting State
v. Gramenz, 126 N.W.2d 285, 290 (Iowa 1964)). The State does not need to prove
the fixed purpose to do harm existed for any particular length of time. Id. Case
law describes the vital interval “as such deliberation as makes a person appreciate
and understand at the time the act is committed its nature and probable
consequences as distinguished from an act done in the heat of passion.” State v.
Hofer, 28 N.W.2d 475, 482 (Iowa 1947).
The State presented eyewitness testimony Roberts was “mad” when he
entered the living room with a handgun and shot Yarlee repeatedly at close range.
The jurors were entitled to believe the forensic evidence showing Roberts fired all
five shots at a downward trajectory toward the victim and disbelieve his version
that the pair were struggling over the weapon when it discharged. See State v.
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Thornton, 498 N.W.2d 670, 673 (Iowa 1993) (reiterating “the very function of the
jury” is to “sort out the evidence” and “place credibility where it belongs”). A
criminalist testified for the State the handgun used in the killing would “only fire one
time for each trigger pull.” Even if those pulls came in rapid succession—as
Roberts suggests on appeal—his use of a deadly weapon in a dangerous manner
permitted the jury to infer he acted with malice aforethought. See State v. Green,
896 N.W.2d 770, 781 (Iowa 2017); State v. Woodmansee, 233 N.W. 725, 736
(Iowa 1930). The State offered substantial evidence in support of the malice-
aforethought element.
We turn next to the question of whether Roberts acted willfully, deliberately,
premeditatedly, and with a specific intent to kill Yarlee. These states of mind “must
exist before and at the time” of the killing. State v. Wilson, 11 N.W.2d 737, 754
(Iowa 1943). “But the inception of their existence need be only but an instant
before the fatal blow.” Id. “Willfully,” as used in Iowa’s murder statute, means
intentionally and not accidentally. Hofer, 28 N.W.2d at 483. Deliberately means
“the act was the result of a purpose formed after weighing the considerations for
and against the doing of the act.” Id. To premeditate means “to think or ponder
upon the matter before acting.” Buenaventura, 660 N.W.2d at 48. Like malice
aforethought, premeditation need not “exist for any particular length of time.” Id.The State can prove premeditation by three categories of evidence: (1) planning,
(2) motive, or (3) the nature of the killing. State v. Helm, 504 N.W.2d 142, 146
(Iowa Ct. App. 1993). Finally, specific intent means the offender “subjectively
desired the prohibited result”—in this case, Yarlee’s death. See State v. Benson,
919 N.W.2d 237, 244 (Iowa 2018).
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The eyewitnesses dispelled any notion the shooting was accidental rather
than intentional. But even without their testimony, the number and location of the
gunshot wounds revealed the willful nature of Roberts’s actions. Likewise, “the
record sufficiently established [Roberts’s] opportunity to premeditate and
deliberate before firing bullets into [Yarlee’s] body at close range.” See State v.
Wilkens, 346 N.W.2d 16, 20 (Iowa 1984).
Finally, although Roberts casts doubt on the credibility of the grandmother’s
recollection he explicitly threatened to kill Yarlee, the jurors were free to believe
her trial testimony. See State v. Shanahan, 712 N.W.2d 121, 135 (Iowa 2006)
(“The jury members were free to give [witness] testimony such weight as they
thought it should receive.” (citing State v. Schrier, 300 N.W.2d 305, 309 (Iowa
1981))). And even without that threat, Roberts’s conduct exuded an intent to kill.
Roberts shot Yarlee in the chest and top of her skull—both locations on the body
vulnerable to mortal injuries. He then hid the handgun in the hamper before fleeing
the apartment. His actions support the jury’s finding he subjectively desired to
cause Yarlee’s death. Viewing the record in the light most favorable to the guilty
verdict, we find substantial evidence to support his conviction for murder in the first
degree.
AFFIRMED.