Brown v. State

2011 Ark. App. 150, 381 S.W.3d 175, 2011 WL 657219, 2011 Ark. App. LEXIS 152
CourtCourt of Appeals of Arkansas
DecidedFebruary 23, 2011
DocketNo. CA CR 10-623
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 2011 Ark. App. 150 (Brown v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Arkansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Brown v. State, 2011 Ark. App. 150, 381 S.W.3d 175, 2011 WL 657219, 2011 Ark. App. LEXIS 152 (Ark. Ct. App. 2011).

Opinion

CLIFF HOOFMAN, Judge.

| Appellant Gregory Brown appeals both of his convictions in Pulaski County Case Nos. CR2008-2319 and CR2009-2424 for second-degree domestic battery, for which he was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for each conviction, with both sentences to run concurrently. Appellant now challenges the sufficiency of the evidence to support his convictions in both cases. In Case No. CR2008-2319, appellant argues that the State failed to prove that he did not act in self-defense, and, in Case No. CR2009-2424, he contends that the State failed to prove that the steel pipe allegedly used in the assault fit the definition of a deadly weapon under Ark.Code Ann. § 5-1-102(4) (Supp.2009). We affirm both convictions.

In Case No. CR2008-2319, Brown was charged with two counts of second-degree domestic battery. The two counts named Robert Brown and Michael Brown, appellant’s ^brothers, as the victims. At the bench trial held on' November 9, 2009, Robert Brown testified that on May 7, 2008, Robert and appellant were at a mutual acquaintance’s home, which was across the street from the house where they lived with their mother. Robert testified that they were drinking and playing cards and that he and appellant got into a “scuffle” over the female acquaintance. Robert stated that appellant hit him first and that at some point during the fight, appellant grabbed a “grass sickle” and hit him with it, cutting Robert right above his left eye. According to Robert, he did not have a gun at the time of the fight, but after appellant cut him with the sickle, he went to his house across the street to get a gun because he “was going to shoot [appellant] in the butt.” Robert stated that the police arrived as he was coming out of the house with the gun and that he then fell off the porch and the gun fell onto the ground, where his brother, Michael retrieved it. Robert testified that he needed stitches for the cut above his eye.

Michael Brown testified that he lived a block down the street from Robert and appellant. He stated that on May 7, he walked down the street toward his brothers’ house and saw Robert lying in the grass in the front yard, bleeding from a cut near his eye. Michael testified that he was trying to help Robert when he heard appellant come up behind him, carrying a sickle. According to Michael, appellant said, “I’ll get you, too,” and then appellant swung the sickle at Michael, who was cut on his hand as he tried to catch the blade. Michael further testified that the police drove by at this time and saw appellant with the sickle and then turned around. While he was waiting with Robert on the porch for the police to return, Michael stated that he saw the gun fall out of Robert’s pocket and that he picked it up and | .^started to put it back in the house but that the police then confiscated the gun. Michael testified that he went to the hospital and had his hand bandaged from the cut caused by the sickle.

According to the testimony of the police officers that arrived on the scene, they saw appellant walking down the street carrying a sickle and arrested him. Officer Sean Ragan testified that he also saw Robert attempt to walk into his house and that he then fell off the porch and a handgun fell out of his pants. Ragan stated that Michael picked up the gun and put it back in the house, where Ragan then recovered it. The officers testified that they did not notice any injuries to appellant from the fight.

In his testimony, appellant stated that he had been working, helping someone paint a house, and that he returned home to grab the sickle so that he could remove vines from the outside of the house they were painting. He testified that he went across the street to his friend’s house while he was waiting on his ride back to work and that he and Robert got into a fight. Appellant stated that Robert hit him first and that they then wrestled in the yard. According to appellant, Robert obtained his injuries from falling into a fence after the fight, not from the sickle, which appellant testified he had left on the porch of his house while he waited on his ride. Appellant also testified that he did not hit Michael with the sickle, but rather that Michael must have cut himself with a razor blade that he was carrying in his hand.

After hearing the evidence, the trial court found appellant not guilty as to the first count of battery against Robert, stating that there was some proof of self-defense in that they were both intoxicated at the time and Robert had admitted that he was going to shoot |4appellant. The trial court found no rationale for striking Michael with the sickle and convicted appellant of the second count of domestic battery in the first degree.

On the same day, the trial court heard Case No. CR2009-2424, in which appellant was charged with one count of second-degree domestic battery against his brother, Michael, stemming from a separate incident. Michael testified that, on June 14, 2009, appellant’s girlfriend was visiting at Michael’s house and that when he left to go to the store, he walked down to appellant’s house to let him know that she was staying at the house. According to Michael, appellant was already angry earlier that day due to the fact that his girlfriend was at Michael’s home, and Michael wanted to be respectful and let him know that she was still there because he had asked her to watch the house while he was out. Michael testified that he knocked on appellant’s door but no one answered, so he turned around to leave, and then appellant came up behind him and hit him twice on the back of the head with a long steel pipe. Michael stated that he was almost unconscious and that he staggered back to his house. Someone had called the police, and Michael stated that they had arrived at his house, along with an ambulance, by the time he walked down there. He testified that he went to the hospital and that his eye was swollen shut, and he had injuries to the back of his head.

Officer Cedric Roy testified that he responded to a disturbance call at appellant’s address but that he first found Michael near his residence one block away with severe swelling to the right side of his face and a bleeding head injury. According to Roy’s testimony, Michael told him that appellant had attacked him, and Roy then went to appellant’s home. When Roy told appellant about Michael’s allegation, appellant admitted that he “beat him |sup” because Michael was banging and kicking on the outside of his house. Appellant denied hitting Michael with a steel pipe, stating that he had only used his hands to beat him. Roy testified that he asked appellant if he minded if he searched the residence and that appellant told him to go ahead. Roy stated that he found a large pipe inside the house, right behind the front door. The steel pipe was then introduced into evidence.

According to appellant’s testimony, Michael came to the house and started beating on the door and window. Appellant stated that he went outside to stop Michael from breaking the window and that Michael had the steel pipe in his hand, so he hit him a couple of times to get the pipe from him. Appellant testified that Michael injured his head either during their scuffle or when he fell off the porch. Appellant admitted in his testimony that the pipe was so heavy, “it would knock a dent in the concrete” if it were dropped and that if it had any force behind it, “it would have cracked the skull.” Appellant stated that this was the reason he tried to get the pipe from Michael, because he did not want him to beat on the window or door with it.

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Related

Allen v. State
2018 Ark. App. 603 (Court of Appeals of Arkansas, 2018)
Wheeler v. State
2017 Ark. App. 540 (Court of Appeals of Arkansas, 2017)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
2011 Ark. App. 150, 381 S.W.3d 175, 2011 WL 657219, 2011 Ark. App. LEXIS 152, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/brown-v-state-arkctapp-2011.