Logan v. State ( 1998 )

IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS OF TENNESSEE
AT KNOXVILLE FILED
MAY 1997 SESSION
January 12, 1998
Cecil Crowson, Jr.
Appellate C ourt Clerk
STATE OF TENNESSEE, )
)
Appellee, ) No. 03C01-9610-CR-00387
)
) Hawkins County
v. )
) Honorable
)
WILLIAM JAMES LOGAN, ) (Possession of cocaine with intent to
) sell and tampering with evidence)
Appellant. )
For the Appellant: For the Appellee:
Heiskell Winstead John Knox Walkup
205 Highway 66 South Attorney General of Tennessee
Rogersville, TN 37857 and
Peter M. Coughlan
Assistant Attorney General of Tennessee
450 James Robertson Parkway
Nashville, TN 37243-0493
C. Berkeley Bell, Jr.
District Attorney General
113J W. Church Street
Greeneville, TN 37743
and
Douglas Godbee
Assistant District Attorney General
Hawkins County Courthouse
Rogersville, TN 37857
OPINION FILED:____________________
AFFIRMED
Joseph M. Tipton
Judge
OPINION
The defendant, W illiam James Logan, appeals as of right from his
convictions by a jury in the Criminal Court for Hawkins County for possession of less
than .5 grams of cocaine with the intent to sell and tampering with evidence, both Class
C felonies. As a Range I, standard offender, the defendant received concurrent six-
year sentences. He contends that there is insufficient evidence to support his
convictions. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.
Detective Dan Quillen of the Kingsport Police Department testified that he
and four other officers executed a search warrant on the defendant’s residence at
around 8:00 a.m. on April 12, 1996. He said that officers knocked on the back door of
the home and that for over a minute, there was no answer. He said that eventually he
heard a man and a woman’s voice from inside the house yell, “just a minute.” Detective
Quillen said that a woman answered the door and that Sergeant Anderson announced
that the officers were from the police department and had a search warrant.
Detective Quillen said that officers found the defendant sitting on a toilet
in a bathroom. The officers asked the defendant to get off of the toilet, and the
defendant refused and told them to let him finish using the bathroom. Detective Quillen
said that the officers removed the defendant from the toilet and found sixteen small zip-
lock bags containing white powder. Detective Quillen testified that all of the bags had a
white powder in them and that there was also a larger zip-lock bag floating in the toilet.
Officer Quillen said that while the defendant was being handcuffed, the defendant
admitted that all of the cocaine in the toilet was his. Officer Quillen said that he went
outside and retrieved his camera. He took two photographs of the white powder in the
zip-lock bags before removing it from the toilet.
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Detective Quillen also testified that officers recovered money from a
bedroom in the house. He explained that $2,400.00 was found in a shoe in the closet
of the bedroom, $330.00 was found on top of a television, and $94.00 was found in a
vase in the bedroom. Pictures of the money and the toilet containing plastic bags of
white powder were introduced into evidence along with the money, plastic bags, and
white powder.
On cross-examination, Detective Quillen admitted that the defendant told
him that the cocaine was for his own personal use because he was a cocaine addict.
Although officers did not find any drug paraphernalia for ingesting cocaine, they also did
not find any small zip-lock bags other than those that were found in the toilet.
David Holloway, a forensic chemist with the Tennessee Bureau of
Investigation, testified that he determined that the powder that was in the zip-lock bags
contained cocaine. He explained that it was difficult to determine the weight of the
powder because the powder was very wet when he received it. After the powder dried,
he determined that it weighed .11 grams. Agent Holloway said that several of the
plastic bags did not have any powder in them but that approximately four of the bags
did.
Sergeant Wayne Anderson testified that he and his drug dog, Ike, helped
search the defendant’s residence. Sergeant Anderson said that he yelled, “search
warrant” very loudly when the defendant’s wife answered the door to the house. He
said that he found the defendant sitting on the toilet and ordered the defendant to show
his hands. Sergeant Anderson said that the defendant loudly grunted twice and then
reached toward the handle on the back of the toilet. As the defendant was reaching
toward the handle, Sergeant Anderson grabbed him by his right shoulder and pulled
him off of the toilet. Sergeant Anderson said that the defendant never flushed the toilet.
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Sergeant Anderson explained that his drug dog, Ike, is trained to find
drugs and money that has been in or around drugs. He said that he took Ike into a
bedroom in the house and that Ike ran around the room and quickly ran over to a large
vase that had money in it and a lamp on top of it. Sergeant Anderson said that Ike
knocked the lamp off of the vase before he could get Ike stopped. Sergeant Anderson
said that the dog went into the closet and tried to push a pair of shoes across the closet
floor. He said that he pulled the dog out of the closet and told other officers that the
dog alerted that there was something in the corner of the closet. Sergeant Anderson
explained that the dog also tried to stand up near the television. He said that the dog
tried to get his nose under the tongue of a shoe that was neatly placed against the wall
of the room and that the dog alerted that something was near the dryer in the house but
that nothing was found in those places.
Detective David Street of the Kingsport Police Department testified that he
followed Sergeant Anderson and Ike as they searched the defendant’s residence. He
said that he recovered $94.00 out of a vase in the bedroom, $2,400.00 from a shoe in
the bedroom closet and $400.00 under a box on the television. Detective Street also
testified that he found papers relating to the defendant’s social security disability
benefits and Eyvelda Logan’s approved application for Aid to Families with Dependent
Children (AFDC). The AFDC application shows no monthly income and no accountable
resources. Detective Street also found a check stub that indicated that Eyvelda Logan
received public assistance. Detective Street identified various receipts he found in the
home, some of which show that the defendant paid cash for items and services.
Deborah Hale, a friend of the defendant’s, testified that she shared a
checking account with the defendant and received his social security checks. She
explained that the defendant had to have a named representative payee due to his drug
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addiction. She said that the defendant used some of the money in the account to buy
and sell automobiles. Ms. Hale said that in January 1996 she withdrew $2,000.00 from
the account and gave it to the defendant because he was going to buy a car. Ms. Hale
said that she never saw the defendant buy or sell cocaine.
I
First, the defendant contends that the state failed to prove beyond a
reasonable doubt that he had an intent to sell the cocaine. The defendant argues that,
at most, the proof at trial established that he possessed the cocaine for his own
personal use.
Our standard of review when the sufficiency of the evidence is questioned
on appeal is "whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the
prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the
crime beyond a reasonable doubt." Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319, 99 S. Ct.
2781, 2789 (1979). This means that we may not reweigh the evidence, but must
presume that the jury has resolved all conflicts in the testimony and drawn all
reasonable inferences from the evidence in favor of the state. See State v. Sheffield,
676 S.W.2d 542, 547 (Tenn. 1984); State v. Cabbage, 571 S.W.2d 832, 835 (Tenn.
1978).
When viewed in this light, the evidence shows that the defendant
possessed several small bags of cocaine. Although the defendant was not working
because he was disabled and the woman living with him reported to AFDC that she had
no income, police found over $2,800.00 in the defendant’s residence. A dog trained to
detect traces of drugs on money alerted police to three different places where the
money was located. Under these circumstances, the jury was justified in concluding
that the defendant possessed the cocaine with the intent to sell it.
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II
Next, the defendant contends that there is insufficient evidence to support
his conviction for tampering with evidence because the state failed to prove that he
knew that an investigation was pending against him and failed to prove that he tried to
alter or destroy evidence. The defendant asserts that because he did not flush the
toilet, he did not take any steps to alter or destroy the cocaine found in the bags in the
toilet. In support of his argument, he cites State v. Patton, 898 S.W.2d 732 (Tenn.
Crim. App. 1994), in which this court held that mere abandonment of evidence does not
constitute evidence tampering within the meaning of T.C.A. § 39-16-503.
Under T.C.A. § 39-16-503, the offense of tampering with evidence is
defined as follows:
(a) It is unlawful for any person, knowing that an investigation
or official proceeding is pending or in progress, to:
(1) Alter, destroy, or conceal any record, document or thing
with intent to impair its verity, legibility, or availability as
evidence in the investigation or official proceeding . . . .
The indictment in this case charges the defendant with knowingly destroying cocaine
with the intent to impair the investigation that he knew was in progress.
Initially, we agree with the defendant that mere abandonment of evidence
does not amount to tampering under the statute. The defendant in Patton was charged
with throwing down a bag of marijuana while he was fleeing from law enforcement
officers. This court affirmed the trial court’s dismissal of the indictment, concluding that
mere abandonment of evidence does not amount to tampering under the statute.
Unlike Patton, though, the defendant in the present case did not merely
abandon the cocaine. The defendant altered the cocaine by throwing it into water and
then concealed the cocaine by sitting on the toilet. However, we are mindful that the
defendant was not charged with altering or concealing the cocaine. The indictment
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alleges that he tampered with evidence by destroying the cocaine. Thus, we must
determine whether the state proved that the defendant “destroyed” cocaine.
As a starting point, we note that the term “destroy” is neither defined in the
criminal code nor in the case law interpreting T.C.A. § 39-16-503. However, we
recognize that the provisions of the criminal code are to be construed by the fair import
of their terms. See T.C.A. § 39-11-104. This includes relying upon the natural and
ordinary meaning of the language used. See, e.g., State v. Williams, 690 S.W.2d 517,
529 (Tenn. 1985). "Destroy" is a verb that means to ruin or to put out of existence.
See Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary 314 (10th ed. 1996); American Heritage
Dictionary 196 (1975). For something to be destroyed within the context of T.C.A. § 39-
16-503, its evidentiary value must be ruined. See Spector v. State, 746 S.W.2d 945
(Tex. Ct. App. 1988) (interpreting “destroy” in a similar statute).
When viewed in the light most favorable to the state, the evidence
sufficiently establishes that the defendant destroyed cocaine while he knew that an
investigation was in progress. The proof shows that the officers knocked on the
defendant’s door several times. The officers eventually heard the defendant and a lady
yell, “just a minute.” Once the lady answered the door, Sergeant Anderson notified the
defendant that an investigation was in progress by loudly yelling, “search warrant.” The
officers found the defendant sitting on a toilet that had sixteen small zip-lock bags in it.
Detective Quillen testified that each of the bags contained white powder. The
photographs in evidence corroborate this testimony. The defendant admitted to the
police that the cocaine in the toilet was his.
Detective Quillen testified that he removed the bags and placed them into
an evidence bag. The defendant stipulated to the chain of custody of the zip-lock bags.
However, Agent Holloway testified that only four of the bags contained a white powder
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when he received them. From this proof, the jury was justified in concluding that the
defendant successfully destroyed the contents of twelve of the bags by placing them in
the toilet. That is, the evidentiary value of the contents of those bags was destroyed.
In consideration of the foregoing and the record as a whole, the
defendant’s convictions for possession of cocaine with the intent to sell it and tampering
with evidence are affirmed.
Joseph M. Tipton, Judge
CONCUR:
Joe B. Jones, Presiding Judge
Curwood Witt, Judge
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