State v. Robert Pugh ( 2000 )

IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS OF TENNESSEE
AT JACKSON FILED
JANUARY 2000 SESSION
March 17, 2000
Cecil Crowson, Jr.
Appellate Court Clerk
STATE OF TENNESSEE, * No. W1999-01260-CCA-R3-CD
Appellee, * SHELBY COUNTY
VS. * Honorable Joseph B. Dailey, Judge
ROBERT E. PUGH, * (Aggravated Robbery)
Appellant. *
FOR THE APPELLANT: FOR THE APPELLEE:
A. C. WHARTON, JR. PAUL G. SUMMERS
District Public Defender Attorney General & Reporter
W. MARK WARD J. ROSS DYER
and Assistant Attorney General
MICHAEL JOHNSON 425 Fifth Avenue North
Assistant Public Defenders Nashville, TN 38103
201 Poplar Avenue
Memphis, TN 38103 WILLIAM L. GIBBONS
District Attorney General
AMY P. WEIRICH
Assistant District Attorney
201 Poplar Avenue, Suite 301
Memphis, TN 38103-1947
OPINION FILED: _______________
AFFIRMED
JOHN EVERETT WILLIAMS,
Judge
OPINION
The defendant, Robert E. Pugh, appeals from his Shelby County jury verdict
of aggravated robbery. He was sentenced as a Range I offender to twelve years
in the Department of Correction. Now on appeal, the defendant asserts as his sole
issue the sufficiency of evidence. After careful review, we AFFIRM the judgment
from the trial court.
BACKGROUND
On April 26, 1996, Joseph Oliver, a co-manager at a Wendy’s restaurant on
1593 Union Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee, was robbed at gunpoint. He testified
that he left the restaurant for the First American Bank on Union Avenue at
approximately 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. to get coins for the restaurant. When he left the
bank, he noticed that a car was following him. The car followed him to the Wendy’s
and pulled behind him. Oliver testified that the car could have been a Chevrolet
Malibu and thought that the vehicle was maroon or a similar color. The vehicle
approached him as he left his vehicle. An individual leapt from the car with a
revolver and demanded money. He threw the money on the ground and the
individual took it.
At trial, Oliver testified that on the day of the robbery he identified the
defendant from a lineup. Further, he identified the defendant in court the day of the
trial. He also identified a gun introduced in evidence as being similar, if not the
same, gun used against him in the holdup. Finally, Oliver testified that, after the
robbery, he entered the restaurant and activated the holdup alarm to which police
vehicles responded.
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Mark Rewalt, of the Memphis Police Department Crime Scene Unit, testified
that he examined a Chrysler, the car the defendant abandoned after police pursuit,
on April 26, 1996, for fingerprints. He testified that he obtained two latent prints,
one from the driver’s side door and one from the back driver’s side door, and
preserved those prints on the appropriate card medium. He identified those latent
prints for the jury.
Cham Payne, an officer of the Memphis Police Department Crime Scene
Unit, testified that he located and preserved latent prints from the hood of the
vehicle, a Chrysler LeBaron. He also obtained a latent print from an empty beer
bottle found in the floorboard of that vehicle. Again, Officer Payne identified the
cards containing those latent prints in court.
Jerry Sims, a latent fingerprint examiner for the Memphis Police Department,
identified these four prints as belonging to the defendant.
Lieutenant Hollis W. Hightower, an investigator on the robbery squad the day
of the robbery, stated that he interviewed the defendant and, after advising him of
his rights, took a statement from the defendant in which he admitted to committing
the robbery. The defendant stated that the car used in the robbery was his brown
1981 Chrysler LeBaron. Further, the defendant explained, on the day of the
robbery, he located Dwayne Jones on the streets of Memphis and at that point, the
two agreed to commit a robbery.1 The defendant stated that he used a .32 caliber
revolver, purchased on the street, to rob Oliver at the Wendy’s. He testified that
approximately ten minutes after the robbery he and Dwayne Jones were pursued
1
Dwayne Jones was arrested on the day of the robbery in the Chryslar Lebaron described
above.
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in the Chrysler by the police. When stopped, he leapt from the car and escaped.
Later that same day, he was arrested and identified as the robber.
ANALYSIS
The defendant’s only presented issue asserts that insufficient evidence
supports the verdict against him. The defendant was convicted of aggravated
robbery. The relevant statues, Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-13-401(a) and § 39-13-402(1)
read:
Robbery. --
(a) Robbery is the intentional or knowing theft of property from the
person of another by violence or putting the person in fear.
Aggravated Robbery. --
(a) Aggravated robbery is robbery as defined in § 39-13-401:
(1) Accomplished with a deadly weapon or by display of any
article used or fashioned to lead the victim to reasonably
believe it to be a deadly weapon. . .
Although the defendant suggests that this Court reweigh and reevaluate the
evidence, our standard of review on sufficiency claims is well-established. When a
defendant challenges the sufficiency of evidence on a jury verdict, our standard of
review is whether, after reviewing the evidence in a light most favorable to the
prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the
crime beyond a reasonable doubt. See Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319
(1979). Questions concerning the credibility of the witnesses, the weight and value
to be given the evidence as well as all factual issues raised by the evidence, are
resolved by the trier of fact, not this Court. See State v. Tuttle, 914 S.W.2d 926,
932 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1995). Nor may this Court reweigh or re-evaluate the
evidence. See State v. Cabbage, 571 S.W.2d 832, 835 (Tenn. 1978). On appeal,
the state is entitled to the strongest legitimate view of the evidence and all
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inferences therefrom. Id. Because a verdict of guilt removes the presumption of
innocence and replaces it with a presumption of guilt, the accused has the burden
in this Court of illustrating why the evidence is insufficient to support the verdict
returned by the trier of fact. See State v. Tuggle, 639 S.W.2d 913, 914 (Tenn.
1982).
This Court must now determine if sufficient evidence supports this conviction
under the pertinent statutes. At trial, the state entered the defendant’s signed
statement, in which he described the robbery, a description consistent with the
victim’s description. This inculpatory statement is a confession. See Helton v.
State, 547 S.W.2d 564, 567 (Tenn. 1997) (A confession is a statement by an
accused admitting that he engaged in conduct constituting a crime.).
The corpus delicti of a crime may not be established by a confession alone.
See Ashby v. State, 124 Tenn. 684, 139 S.W. 872 (1911). The corpus delicti of a
crime requires that the state prove two elements: (1) that a certain result has been
produced, and (2) that the result was created through criminal agency. See State
v. Ervin, 731 S.W.2d 70, 71-72 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1986). The elements of corpus
delicti may be established by circumstantial evidence. Id. at 72. Furthermore, the
question of whether the state has sufficiently proven the corpus delicti is a question
for the jury. Id. at 71. “Only slight evidence of the corpus delicti is necessary to
corroborate a confession and thus sustain a conviction.” See Ervin, 731 S.W.2d at
72 (emphasis added). See Taylor v. State, 479 S.W.2d 659, 661 (Tenn. Crim. App.
1972).
Having reviewed the record and the evidence presented to the jury in this
case, we disagree with the defendant’s proposition that insufficient evidence exists.
Instead, we conclude that a rational trier of fact considering the evidence, including,
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but not limited to, the defendant’s confession, could have concluded beyond a
reasonable doubt that the defendant committed aggravated robbery. Besides the
confession:
(1) The defendant was identified from a lineup as the robber;
(2) The defendant was identified at the trial;
(3) The revolver recovered from the defendant was described as
being similiar to the weapon used in the robbery; and
(4) The defendant’s fingerprints were recovered from a vehicle similar
in description to the robbery vehicle and connected to the robbery.
From all this, we find sufficient evidence to support the jury verdict.
________________________________
JOHN EVERETT WILLIAMS, Judge
CONCUR:
_______________________________
DAVID G. HAYES, Judge
_______________________________
ALAN E. GLENN, Judge
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