Ferrell v. State

810 So. 2d 607, 2002 WL 393849
CourtMississippi Supreme Court
DecidedMarch 14, 2002
Docket2000-KA-01716-SCT
StatusPublished
Cited by13 cases

This text of 810 So. 2d 607 (Ferrell 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
Ferrell v. State, 810 So. 2d 607, 2002 WL 393849 (Mich. 2002).

Opinion

810 So.2d 607 (2002)

Thomas L. FERRELL
v.
STATE of Mississippi.

No. 2000-KA-01716-SCT.

Supreme Court of Mississippi.

March 14, 2002.

*608 J. Boyce Holleman, Tim C. Holleman, Gulfport, for Appellant.

Office of the Attorney General by Jean Smith Vaughan, for Appellee.

Before SMITH, P.J., WALLER and COBB, JJ.

WALLER, Justice, for the Court.

¶ 1. Thomas L. Ferrell was charged by a Pearl River County, Mississippi, grand jury with the murder of Jonathan Scott "Scotty" Watkins under Miss.Code Ann. § 97-3-19. He was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 20 years in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections.[1] On appeal, we reversed and remanded for a new trial. The second trial was held in Lamar County, Mississippi, after a change of venue due to pretrial publicity. The jury again returned a verdict of manslaughter, and Ferrell was again sentenced to 20 years in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections.

¶ 2. On appeal Ferrell contends that the verdict was against the overwhelming weight of the evidence and that he was given a harsher sentence after having the first verdict and sentence reversed on appeal for having successfully exercised his constitutional right to access to the courts. We find no merit in these claims and affirm.

FACTS

¶ 3. Thomas L. Ferrell and his wife, Jennifer, hosted a backyard barbecue for several friends. Scotty Watkins, although uninvited, appeared at the party with his girlfriend. About 10:45 that night, a police officer arrived at the Ferrell home to check out neighbors' complaints about loud music. He noted that Watkins was "extremely intoxicated."

¶ 4. C.J. Robinson testified that Watkins was "starting to get loaded" and was showing other party guests how to do choke holds. Later, Watkins told Ferrell to let him have Ferrell's gun and he would kill everybody there. He threatened Ferrell. Watkins got into a fight with Narada Dasal, and Ferrell broke the fight up and told Watkins to leave. After Ferrell told Watkins to leave several times to no avail, Ferrell fired several warning shots with his handgun. Ferrell and Watkins began scuffling on the floor. Watkins tried to get the shovel to hit Ferrell with it. They rolled down the kitchen steps. Watkins was on top of Ferrell when the gun went off.

¶ 5. Jennifer Ferrell, the appellant's wife, testified that Watkins, who was uninvited to the party, was drunk, and "liked to fight," hurt one of the guests' feelings and she left. After Ferrell asked Watkins to leave, they began to yell at each other, and Watkins said, "[G]o ahead and take your damn gun out and I'll shoot every M.F. in here." She heard several gunshots and found Ferrell and Watkins fighting in the kitchen. She went out on the front porch and then went to the back yard. She saw Watkins on top of Ferrell outside the steps. Watkins was choking Ferrell, and then the gun went off. Ferrell was lying on his back, and Watkins was crouched over him, choking him, when the gun was fired.

¶ 6. Bryan Patterson testified that the fight moved to the backyard when Ferrell and Watkins rolled down the kitchen steps. *609 Ferrell was on the bottom, with Watkins on top. Watkins rolled off Ferrell and jumped up. Ferrell jumped up and pulled the gun out. Both men were standing when the gun was fired. On cross-examination, Patterson stated that Watkins was standing and Ferrell was in the process of standing up when he fired the gun. The men were five or six feet apart. Watkins was not armed, and Patterson stated that he never saw Watkins with a baseball bat and that Watkins never choked Ferrell.

¶ 7. Vyron Hayden testified that Ferrell was standing in the kitchen door leading to the living room and Watkins was standing in the kitchen when he saw them arguing. Hayden was outside when he heard gunshots inside the house. Hayden went inside and saw Ferrell hit Watkins with a shovel or a baseball bat. Watkins took the object away from Ferrell, and they continued to fistfight. They stumbled down the kitchen steps, both of them stood up and continued to fight. Watkins hit Ferrell a few times, and Ferrell fell backwards. He caught himself and stood back up. As he was standing up, he pulled out a gun and shot Watkins. Watkins was not armed. He never saw Watkins choke Ferrell.

¶ 8. Narada Dasal testified that after Ferrell and Watkins were fighting for a short while, Ferrell retrieved a shovel and "attacked" Watkins. Watkins got the shovel away from him, and they continued to fight with their fists. They rolled out the back door. As Ferrell was getting up, Watkins was reeling backwards, and Ferrell shot him. Watkins was not armed. After the shooting, Ferrell placed the gun under the couch in the living room. He then called 911 and stated, "I just shot somebody at my house. He's trying to kill me." When he was arrested, Ferrell stated that he did not mean to shoot Watkins, but he was forced to shoot Watkins because Watkins was trying to kill him. Watkins showed the arresting officer where he had put the gun.

¶ 9. When other officers arrived, they found two people performing CPR on Watkins, who was lying on the ground in the back yard. There was a gunshot wound to the left side of the chest, just beside the nipple. There was no pulse, and the pupils were unresponsive. After the paramedics removed Watkins, there was a large pool of blood where he had lain. There was a trail of blood from the house to where Watkins had lain. Watkins died later that night.

¶ 10. The officers found several spent casings, bullets and bullet holes in the house where Ferrell had fired the warning shots. There was an open box of ammunition with nine rounds left in it on an end table in the living room. A small shovel was found inside the doorway to the kitchen on the floor. They found no baseball bat that night. However, when officers returned to the house the next day, they found a baseball bat.

¶ 11. A sheriff's deputy testified that the night of the shooting, law enforcement officers took pictures and a videotape of the entire house. They found a baseball bat in the bedroom and a chain saw and a weedeater in the utility room. This testimony was supported by photographs and the videotape. The next day when law enforcement officers returned to the house, the chain saw and the weedeater were missing from the utility room and the exact same baseball bat that was in the bedroom the night before was in the utility room.

¶ 12. Stephen T. Hayne, M.D., a forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy on Watkins's body, testified that Watkins *610 was 5'7" tall and weighed 155 pounds.[2] There were three types of injuries on the body: contusions (bruises) on the right leg and the left knee; abrasions (scrapes) on the forehead, the nose, the lower lip, the right ear, by the right eye, on the right and left arms, near the left shoulder, the abdominal area, and both legs. Some of these wounds were consistent with defensive posturing injuries. Dr. Hayne also found a wound from a gunshot which entered the chest and exited the back. The gunshot moved down at an approximate 20-25 degree angle and to the left from the chest to the back. To achieve that angle, the shooter must have been above and slightly right of the target. It was "highly unlikely" for the angle to have been achieved by the shooter lying on the ground and the target being on top of him and strangling him. Dr. Hayne determined the wound to have been created by a near contact gunshot.

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Bluebook (online)
810 So. 2d 607, 2002 WL 393849, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/ferrell-v-state-miss-2002.