Commonwealth v. Miller

897 A.2d 1281, 2006 Pa. Super. 91, 2006 Pa. Super. LEXIS 584
CourtSuperior Court of Pennsylvania
DecidedApril 24, 2006
StatusPublished
Cited by26 cases

This text of 897 A.2d 1281 (Commonwealth v. Miller) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Superior Court of Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Commonwealth v. Miller, 897 A.2d 1281, 2006 Pa. Super. 91, 2006 Pa. Super. LEXIS 584 (Pa. Ct. App. 2006).

Opinion

OPINION BY

TAMILIA, J.:

¶ 1 In June, 2003, appellant Sarita Miller was arrested and charged with the brutal murder of Rita Nagle. After a jury trial, she was convicted of first degree murder, 1 robbery, 2 forgery, 3 criminal trespass, 4 possessing instruments of crime, 5 access device fraud, 6 and theft by unlawful taking. 7 She was sentenced, on October 15, 2004, to a life term plus an aggregate, concurrent sentence of eighteen years and three months to forty-one years. This timely appeal followed.

¶ 2 Appellant first argues the evidence presented was insufficient to sustain her conviction for first degree murder. Specifically, appellant contends her drugged condition on the day of the murder negated her ability to form the requisite specific intent. She also maintains, “[t]he Commonwealth failed to sustain its burden of proving that appellant was not in a drugged condition and capable of forming specific intent to kill at the time of the incident.” Appellant’s brief at 17.

¶ 3 This implicates a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence.

The standard we apply in reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence is whether, viewing all the evidence admitted at trial in the light most favorable to the verdict winner, there is sufficient evidence to enable the factfinder to find every element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. In applying the above test, we may not weigh the evidence and substitute our judgment for that of the fact-finder. In addition, we note that the facts and circumstances established by the Commonwealth need not preclude *1285 every possibility of innocence. Any doubts regarding a defendant’s guilt may be resolved by the fact-finder unless the evidence is so weak and inconclusive that as a matter of law no probability of fact may be drawn from the combined circumstances. The Commonwealth may sustain its burden of proving every element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt by means of wholly circumstantial evidence. Moreover, in applying the above test, the entire record must be evaluated and all evidence actually received must be considered. Finally, the trier of fact while passing upon the credibility of the witnesses and the weight of the evidence produced, may believe all, part or none of the evidence.

Commonwealth v. Zingarelli, 839 A.2d 1064, 1069 (Pa.Super.2003), appeal denied, 579 Pa. 692, 856 A.2d 834 (2004) (citations and quotations omitted).

¶ 4 To successfully prosecute a charge of first degree murder, the Commonwealth must establish the defendant acted with a specific intent to kill and that the killing was willful, deliberate and premeditated. Commonwealth v. Cuevas, 574 Pa. 409, 832 A.2d 388 (2003). A specific intent to kill may be proved by wholly circumstantial evidence and may be inferred by the defendant’s use of a weapon on a vital part of the victim’s body. Commonwealth v. Fletcher, 580 Pa. 403, 861 A.2d 898 (2004); Commonwealth v. Hanible, 575 Pa. 255, 836 A.2d 36 (2003), cert. denied, 543 U.S. 835, 125 S.Ct. 248, 160 L.Ed.2d 55 (2004).

[W]hen asserting a diminished capacity defense to first degree murder, a defendant attempts to negate the element of specific intent to kill and, if successful, first degree murder is reduced to third degree murder. Diminished capacity is an extremely limited defense, which requires extensive psychiatric testimony establishing a defendant suffered from one or more mental disorders which prevented him form formulating the specific intent to kill. Only where a defendant admits liability and contests the degree of guilt is a diminished capacity defense available.

Cuevas, supra, at 418, 832 A.2d at 393 (citations omitted). Voluntary intoxication or a drugged condition is not a defense to a criminal charge, but may be introduced, “whenever it is relevant to reduce murder from a higher degree to a lower degree of murder.” 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 308, Intoxication or drugged condition. In order for intoxication to negate the specific intent to Mil necessary for first degree murder, the evidence presented must show defendant was unable to form the specific intent because he or she was so overwhelmed or overpowered by drugs to the point of having lost his faculties at the time of the crime. Fletcher, supra.

¶ 5 Initially, we note that evidence of intoxication places no additional burden on the Commonwealth. Commonwealth v. Tucker, 267 Pa.Super. 243, 406 A.2d 785 (1979). Contrary to appellant’s argument, therefore, the Commonwealth was not required to “disprove” her intoxication at the time of the crimes. Via multiple witnesses and a plethora of physical and expert evidence, the Commonwealth proved that after the victim refused appellant’s request for money to buy crack cocaine, appellant retrieved a hammer and knife, bludgeoned the victim nine times in the head, stabbed her in the throat and chest 25 times, stole and used the victim’s checks, credit cards and vehicle, and left her corpse to be discovered by family members days later. *1286 Appellant initially denied having committed the murder, pinning the crime instead on a friend, Charles Curtis, who had helped her spend her spoils after the murder. When challenged by the police, however, appellant admitted she did hit the victim once in the head with the hammer, but purportedly only upon threat of death by Curtis.

¶ 6 Nowhere in her statement offered to police did appellant contend she was under the influence of drugs or alcohol on the day her cohort allegedly forced her to hit the victim in the head with the hammer. N.T, 8/18/04 at 16. Nevertheless, in support of her intoxication defense to first degree murder, appellant offered testimony by Dr. Steven E. Samuel, a psychologist who met with her one year after the murder, in June, 2004, and who testified appellant suffered from cocaine and marijuana dependency, and was addicted at the time of the murder. N.T., 8/23/04 at 42, 47. As for whether appellant was “high” on the day of the murder, Dr. Samuel testified, “I can only tell you what she said and that she got high all week before this occurred and she told me for several days after this occurred, that’s exactly and the extent of what she told me.” Id. at 87.

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Bluebook (online)
897 A.2d 1281, 2006 Pa. Super. 91, 2006 Pa. Super. LEXIS 584, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/commonwealth-v-miller-pasuperct-2006.