Conners v. State

92 So. 3d 676, 2012 WL 2924389, 2012 Miss. LEXIS 339
CourtMississippi Supreme Court
DecidedJuly 19, 2012
DocketNo. 2011-KA-00406-SCT
StatusPublished
Cited by115 cases

This text of 92 So. 3d 676 (Conners v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Mississippi Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Conners v. State, 92 So. 3d 676, 2012 WL 2924389, 2012 Miss. LEXIS 339 (Mich. 2012).

Opinions

CHANDLER, Justice,

for the Court:

¶ 1. A Pike County jury convicted James Richard Conners Jr. of two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a firearm by a felon. The Circuit Court of Pike County imposed two life sentences for the 'murder convictions and two ten-year sentences for the possession-of-a-firearm-by-a-felon convictions, with all sentences to run consecutively. Conners appeals, arguing that the admission of two forensic reports at his trial violated his right of confrontation under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution and constituted plain error. He also argues that he received ineffective assistance of counsel due to counsel’s failure to make a Confrontation Clause objection to the admission of the forensic reports, and due to counsel’s failure to object to gruesome photographs and evidence of Conners’s past criminal activity and gang affiliation.

¶ 2. This Court finds that the trial court erred by admitting the forensic test reports without live testimony from the analysts who performed the tests, but that the error was harmless. We further find that Conners did not receive ineffective assistance of counsel, because he cannot show that he was prejudiced by any deficient performance by counsel. Therefore, we affirm.

FACTS

¶ 3. On the morning of January 20, 2010, Kathleen Theriot called her grandmother, Sandra Conners. Sandra lived with her husband, Kenneth Conners, and his brother, Conners. The only functional telephone in their trailer was a land line. Although Kathleen lived in Houma, Louisiana, and Sandra lived in Pike County, Mississippi, the two spoke on the phone daily. On this occasion, Sandra told Kathleen she was going to sleep and would call Kathleen back later. However, Sandra never returned Kathleen’s call. Kathleen called Sandra’s house many times that day and the next, with no answer. On January 22, 2010, Kathleen got in touch with a friend’s mother who lived in Pike County, Jennifer Brooks. Brooks agreed to check on Sandra.

[680]*680¶ 4. When Brooks arrived, she knocked on the side of the trailer and heard a dog barking inside. When no one came out, she walked around the outside of the trailer. She left and informed Kathleen. Kathleen drove up with her husband and uncle, Albert Touzet, arriving at the trailer at about 4:30 or 5:00 p.m. They noticed that all the occupants’ vehicles were parked outside. Kathleen gave Touzet the set of keys that was kept in a nearby RV, but he was unable to unlock the trailer door. Kathleen and her husband walked around the outside of the trailer, yelling and banging on it. They heard a dog barking inside, the sound of a television, and then the sound of footsteps moving quickly from one side of the trailer to the other. At that point, they called the police.

¶ 5. Lieutenant Mike Milholen with the Pike County Sheriffs Department responded. He walked around the trailer, banged on it, and yelled “Sheriffs Department,” but no one came out. He opened an unlocked window, moved the blinds and curtain, and saw a body in the living room lying beside the front door. Chief Detective Davis Haygood arrived with other officers, and forced entry to the trailer by kicking in the front door. Detective Hay-good testified that the dead bolt of the front door had been locked from the inside.

¶ 6. Once inside, the officers found the bodies of Kenneth and Sandra Conners. Kenneth’s body was just inside the front door. Kenneth had sustained multiple shotgun wounds, including one that almost had severed his neck. Sandra’s body was in the kitchen. She had sustained a single shotgun wound to the back that had severed her spinal cord. The investigating officers determined from the position of Kenneth’s body that it had been moved to that location. They discovered blood under the front porch of the trailer and damage from shotgun blasts both outside and inside the trailer that indicated Kenneth had been shot as he stood in the front door. A sawed-off Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun was found on a table near Kenneth’s body.

¶ 7. The investigators also encountered a chihuahua dog running around the inside of the trailer, barking. Several officers then traveled down a short hallway and through a bedroom door that was tied open with a string. In the room they found Conners lying on a bed watching “Seinfeld” on television. Conners told them that, two days previously, two men from Louisiana had'arrived to buy drugs from Kenneth and Sandra. Conners said he was in his bedroom with the door closed when he heard gunshots. He left his bedroom and encountered one of the men in the hall. The man hit him in the ribs and then in the mouth, dragged him to his room, and forced crushed pills down his throat. Conners stated that he had passed out from the pills and did not awaken until the police broke down the door two days later. Conners was very ill and was sent to the emergency room of a nearby hospital, where he spent several days in the intensive care unit being treated for conditions including low blood pressure, kidney failure, pneumonia, and pancreatitis.

¶ 8. The investigators found a 9mm handgun in a drawer in Conners’s nightstand and many knives located throughout his bedroom. They also found a damp shirt and pair of pants that had been laid out to dry in Conners’s room. Testing did not reveal blood on these items. Testing conducted on wet rags found in a trash can in the kitchen revealed a partial DNA profile. Blood found on the door of Con-ners’s bedroom was determined to be Kenneth’s. A gunshot-residue test of Con-ners’s hands was consistent with gunshot [681]*681residue, although other sources for the particles could not be excluded. Finally, the officers found a gun case in Conners’s bedroom that was compatible with the 12-gauge shotgun. The case had shotgun shells inside that were found to b'e consistent with several spent shells collected in the living room and kitchen. While there were no fingerprints on the shotgun, DNA was found on the shotgun, and testing showed neither Conners nor Sandra could be excluded.

¶ 9. Two neighbors testified that, at 4:00 p.m. or 5:00 p.m. on the afternoon of the murders, they had heard about four gunshots in rapid succession. They did not call the police, because they thought it was someone hunting. One of these neighbors stated that she had seen Kenneth checking the mail at about 10:30 a.m. or 11:00 a.m. that morning. Kenneth had picked up prescriptions from the pharmacy at 2:00 p.m. on the afternoon of the murders. The defense established that, although several days before the murders, multiple prescriptions for oxycodone and Oxycontin had been filled for Conners and Sandra, no controlled substances were found at the scene.

¶ 10. After Conners’s release from the hospital, he gave a three-hour statement to the police in which he recounted the same version of events he had told at the scene. This tape was played for the jury at trial. Conners first said he had never seen the sawed-off shotgun, but later said he had cleaned it for Kenneth. Conners said that no weapon had ever been stored in the gun case. He stated that he was undergoing pain management treatment with opiate drugs due to several old gunshot wounds and motorcycle injuries. He admitted that he had over-medicated himself on the morning of the murders by taking double his prescribed dose of morphine, along with a muscle relaxer and his blood-pressure medication. He thought the crushed-up drugs that the drug dealers had shoved down his throat had been opiates. When asked if it was possible that he could have committed murders, he said he did not think so.

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Bluebook (online)
92 So. 3d 676, 2012 WL 2924389, 2012 Miss. LEXIS 339, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/conners-v-state-miss-2012.