Frederick v. State

2001 OK CR 34, 37 P.3d 908, 72 O.B.A.J. 3509, 2001 Okla. Crim. App. LEXIS 35, 2001 WL 1474982
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma
DecidedNovember 21, 2001
DocketD-1998-293
StatusPublished
Cited by80 cases

This text of 2001 OK CR 34 (Frederick v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Frederick v. State, 2001 OK CR 34, 37 P.3d 908, 72 O.B.A.J. 3509, 2001 Okla. Crim. App. LEXIS 35, 2001 WL 1474982 (Okla. Ct. App. 2001).

Opinion

OPINION

LILE, Judge:

1 1 In 1992, Earl Alexander Frederick, Sr., Appellant, was tried by jury in the District Court of Oklahoma County, Case No. CF-90-734, was convicted of Murder in the First Degree, and was sentenced to death. On August 30, 1995, that conviction was reversed and remanded for a new trial. See Frederick v. State, 1995 OK CR 44, 1 81, 902 P.2d 1092, 1099.

«[ 2 The Honorable Virgil C. Black, District Judge, conducted the retrial before a jury from February 28 through March 6, 1998. Appellant was again found guilty of Murder in the First Degree, 21 O0.8.8upp.1989, § 701.7(A) (Malice Aforethought), and punishment was again set at death. Two statutory aggravating cireumstances were found to exist beyond a reasonable doubt:

1. The murder was committed for the purpose of avoiding or preventing a lawful arrest or prosecution, and
2. The existence of a probability that the defendant would commit eriminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society.

T3 The court imposed the death sentence on March 18, 1998, 1 in accordance with the jury verdict. Frederick is before this Court on direct appeal from this second conviction and sentence.

FACTS

4 Brad Beck was murdered by Frederick on November 11, 1989, in Spencer, Oklahoma. Mr. Beck was partially paralyzed and required a cane for walking. Mr. Beck was house-sitting in Spencer for his cousin, Terri Smith, who was visiting her mother in New Mexico. Frederick, who used many aliases, had been staying with Beck from approximately November 7 through November 11, 1989, going by the name "Jeff."

15 Ms. Smith usually called Beck daily. She had expressed concern that this stranger, Jeff, whom she had never met, had moved into her house while she was gone. When she talked to Beck, for the last time, on *920 Saturday morning, November 11, he told her he would ask Jeff to leave.

T6 Frederick brutally clubbed Beck to death that day and drove his body to a nearby field. He ransacked the house, pulling out drawers looking for valuables. Frederick then drove Beek's pickup some 800 miles to Dumas, Texas, north of Amarillo, where he listed Beck's pickup on a motel registration and used another alias, "Larry Davis." He took with him numerous items stolen from Beck, Terri Smith, and Michael Don Smith.

T7 Three days later, Frederick bludgeoned and shot to death an acquaintance, Mr. Shirley Fox (a 76-year-old disabled man), in Texline, Texas. Texline is on the west edge of the Texas panhandle, nine miles from Clayton, New Mexico, where Frederick had lived for the preceding four years. Frederick parked Beck's pickup in a row of old cars at Fox's house after removing the tag 2 He transferred the property he had stolen from Beck and the Smiths into Mr. Fox's blue 1975 Chevrolet Impala. He ransacked Fox's house, pulling out drawers as be had in Oklahoma, and took two shotguns (including the one he had just used to shoot Fox), a .22 rifle, coin collections, jewelry, and other property.

T8 That evening, Frederick stayed at a motel in Dalhart, Texas, about midway between Texline and Dumas, using another alias, "R.J. Collier," and listed Mr. Fox's Chevy on the motel registration. The next day he drove to Amarillo in the stolen car with the stolen property.

19 Mr. Fox's body was found in his home November 16. He had been beaten with a claw hammer that was found nearby. One of his ears had been mangled and partially torn off by the force of a blow to his head. One of his fingers was almost severed. He had also been shot with his own shotgun at close range. Frederick later told officers he had sold the guns and coin sets in Amarillo for $200. When the shotgun was recovered in Amarillo, it still had Mr. Fox's dried, splattered blood on it. When Beck's pickup was found abandoned at Fox's house November 16, blood smears were found inside the cab that were the same as Beck's blood type. The jury heard testimony in the first stage of the trial that Mr. Fox's car was stolen, but they were not told until the second stage that he was murdered.

10 Beck's mother reported him missing on November 17, 1989. An officer went to Terri Smith's house to look for him, but he was not found. On November 25, officers with the Sheriff's Office crime lab were dispatched to the Smith residence. Captain James Rouse testified that drawers were open and that there was dried blood on the floor furnace grating and on the inside of the front door facing.

{ 11 Late on November 19, police in Amarillo, Texas, spotted a woman driving Mr. Fox's car. Patrolman Ward pulled her over, and she told him she had borrowed the car from a man she had met in a bar a couple of days earlier named "R.J." She gave the police a description of R.J. and told them he was inside the Unique Club. They found a person at that elub who matched the detailed description she had given, and he was arrested. "R.J." turned out to be Frederick, He gave the officers his correct name, Earl Frederick, Sr.

{12 When they drove past Fox's car, Frederick initiated a conversation by asking "if the girls that he had loaned his vehicle to had gotten busted for speeding or something?" Officer Oakley then asked Frederick if that was his car, and "He said that it was." Frederick then volunteered that "he had bought the car a few nights earlier." After Frederick was advised of his rights at the police station, he further stated he had bought the car for $300 from four persons in Cactus, Texas. He gave consent to search his motel room, and the police found numerous items stolen from Smith's house including jewelry, Beck's war medals, and a birth *921 certificate belonging to Terri's brother, Michael Don Smith.

[ 13 The Dallam County District Attorney Investigator, Tim Bell, interviewed Frederick on November 20. He said he had lived in the area near Texline at Clayton, New Mexico. He had married under the name R.J. Forster 3 and had lived there for four years with his wife Nadine Forster. He admitted that he knew Beck, but at first denied that he had killed him. He told Bell that he and Beck had planned to drive Beck's pickup to New Mexico. He said they had changed their plans, and that Beck told him to go on in the pickup, and that he, Beck, was just going to hitchhike to Mexico and "drop off the face of the earth." Frederick admitted he had driven Beck's pickup from Oklahoma City to Dumas, Texline, and Clayton, but claimed Beck had given him the truck. He repeatedly said, if you want to talk to Beck, you will have to go to old Mexico.

[ 14 Frederick signed a statement in which he said he drove Beck's pickup from Clayton to a bar in Texline on November 14, where he met a man named Paul Encenia He denied that he personally had killed Fox, but claimed he was present while Encenia had killed Fox with a hammer. He admitted that he had stolen Fox's car, guns, and coins.

{ 15 The next day, November 21, in Dallam County, Frederick was again advised of his rights and again waived those rights. Paul Encenia had been brought in for questioning based on Frederick's accusation that he killed Mr. Fox.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
2001 OK CR 34, 37 P.3d 908, 72 O.B.A.J. 3509, 2001 Okla. Crim. App. LEXIS 35, 2001 WL 1474982, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/frederick-v-state-oklacrimapp-2001.