Gaddis v. State

1972 OK CR 145, 497 P.2d 1087
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma
DecidedMay 24, 1972
DocketNo. A-17161
StatusPublished

This text of 1972 OK CR 145 (Gaddis 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
Gaddis v. State, 1972 OK CR 145, 497 P.2d 1087 (Okla. Ct. App. 1972).

Opinion

OPINION

SIMMS, Judge:

Howard Gaddis, hereinafter referred to as the defendant, was convicted in 1967 in the District Court of Oklahoma County of the crime of Murder and sentenced to Death in accordance with the jury verdict. The mandatory appeal was perfected to this Court, and, in Case No. A-14,579, Gaddis v. State, Okl.Cr., 447 P.2d 42 (1968), the judgment and sentence of Death was affirmed.

Thereafter, in early 1969, defendant sought a writ of Habeas Corpus in this Court, alleging among other things, that the jurors selected to try his cause were em-panelled contrary to the guidelines established by the Supreme Court of the United States in Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U.S. [1089]*1089510, 88 S.Ct. 1770, 20 L.Ed.2d 776. The application for this writ of Habeas Corpus was denied in Gaddis v. Page, Okl.Cr., 455 P.2d 699 (1969).

Defendant then sought Habeas Corpus in the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma in Howard Gaddis v. State of Oklahoma, United States Western District Case No. 69-393-Civil. On March 18, 1970, the United States District Court entered an order abating the proceedings in said Case No. 69-393-Civil, pending an exhaustion of Howard Gaddis’ state remedies.

On March 9, 1970, pursuant to an application made by the then Attorney General of the State of Oklahoma, G. T. Blankenship, this Court entered an order in Case No. A-17,161 directing an Evidentiary Hearing be conducted in the District Court of Oklahoma County upon two questions raised in Federal Habeas Corpus proceedings. The Order of this Court directing an Evidentiary Hearing be conducted further directed the trial judge conducting said hearing to make findings of fact upon the following specified issues:

1. Were prospective jurors excused from duty because they expressed objection to imposition of the death penalty contra to the provisions of Witherspoon v. Illinois, supra?
2. Was evidence introduced into the trial which had been obtained in violation of a United States Constitutional right prohibiting an illegal search and seizure?

On July 28, 1971, the Honorable Clarence Mills, District Judge in and for Oklahoma County, conducted the Evidentiary Hearing ordered by this Court and at the conclusion of the adversary proceeding, Judge Mills, based upon the evidence presented to him, found in the negative on both issues.

The matter is now before this Court in the nature of an appeal from the trial court’s denial of an application for Post-Conviction Relief.

In regard to question enumerated one, above, it must be emphasized, as it was in Gaddis v. Page, supra,' that the voir dire examination of prospective jurors at time of trial was not reported and was therefore not contained in the original record before this Court.

However, in an attempt to satisfy the order of this Court with regard to the guidelines of Witherspoon, supra, being followed during the empanelling of the jury, the State of Oklahoma and the defendant entered into a written stipulation, which was presented to Judge Mills on August 24, 1971, which stipulation is marked Exhibit One and attached to the transcript of Post-Conviction Evidentiary Hearing. This stipulation reads as follows:

“That in this case, when the jury was being selected and on the voir dire examination, the jurors were advised by the District Attorney that if they found the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt that the law required they could assess one of two penalties — either life imprisonment or death, and that that was the law of the State of Oklahoma. The jurors were then asked that if the State proved the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, would they, the jurors or any particular juror, in a proper case, consider assessing the death penalty. The jurors that were excused for cause if they would refuse to assess the death penalty regardless of the evidence, and those that were excused for cause answered that under no circumstances would they assess the death penalty.
The jurors that had stated that they would never consider assessing the death penalty under any circumstances regardless of the evidence were then asked if they in their mind knew whether or not they could ever consider assessing the death penalty no matter what the law was or the facts were in the case. Each juror that was excused for cause was asked specifically more than once if there could ever be a proper case where [1090]*1090they would consider assessing the death penalty, and each answered in the negative.
Those jurors that were accepted as jurors had stated that in a proper case they would consider the death penalty and that they would require the State to prove a defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and would assume him innocent until the State met that burden.”

We can only conclude after a thorough study of the written stipulation, that the safeguards of Witherspoon v. Illinois, supra, were applied in the selection of the jury, and therefore, defendant was not facing a “tribunal organized to return a verdict of death,” nor does the stipulation present a situation where the “State of Oklahoma has stacked the deck against the defendant.”

We, therefore, hold the negative finding made by the trial judge to the first enumerated question is amply supported by the record and the same is hereby adopted by this Court.

The second issue above designated, involving the constitutionality of the search and seizure of evidence adduced at trial, presents a most unusual situation.

Careful examination of both the case-made of the trial and of the transcript of the Post-Conviction Evidentiary Hearing reflect there were a total of four searches conducted.

As best we can sequentially reconstruct the searches, on January 14, 1967, Officer LeMay of the Oklahoma City Police Department, appeared before a Justice of the Peace in Oklahoma County, and obtained a formal search warrant for the home of the defendant: the premises being generally described in the testimony at trial as 2905 N. Prospect. The testimony adduced at the Evidentiary Hearing disclosed that no items of evidence were removed from the home under the authority of the January 14th search warrant, and therefore, defendant was not prejudiced thereby during the trial of the case.

The second search disclosed by trial testimony was directed toward the recovery of a .380 cal. Llama automatic pistol. Evidence at trial proved that defendant had given the automatic pistol, believed by officers at that time to be the death weapon, to his brother-in-law, Otis Ham-mons, who kept the pistol at Hammons home, 917 N.E. 17th Street, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The record shows that after defendant had been arrested on January 16, 1967, the officers went to Ham-mons’ home where Hammons voluntarily surrendered the .380 cal. Llama automatic pistol to officers.

There is nothing in either the record of the trial or the transcript of the Eviden-tiary Hearing to indicate that defendant lived where the weapon was recovered by officers, or that defendant had any proprietary interest in the property where the weapon was recovered. To the contrary, the record clearly established that defendant lived and stayed at an entirely different address, voluntarily relinquished possession of the gun to his brother-in-law, Hammons.

The .380 cal.

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Related

Jones v. United States
362 U.S. 257 (Supreme Court, 1960)
Collier v. United States
384 U.S. 59 (Supreme Court, 1966)
Witherspoon v. Illinois
391 U.S. 510 (Supreme Court, 1968)
Bumper v. North Carolina
391 U.S. 543 (Supreme Court, 1968)
Alderman v. United States
394 U.S. 165 (Supreme Court, 1969)
Caskey v. State
1972 OK CR 105 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma, 1972)
Gaddis v. State
1968 OK CR 193 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma, 1968)
Dowell v. State
1952 OK CR 75 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma, 1952)
Maxwell v. Stephens
229 F. Supp. 205 (E.D. Arkansas, 1964)
Lindsey v. State
1971 OK CR 327 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma, 1971)
Gaddis v. Page
1969 OK CR 183 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma, 1969)
Holland v. State
1936 OK CR 17 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma, 1936)
Chapman v. State
1970 OK CR 91 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma, 1970)

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Bluebook (online)
1972 OK CR 145, 497 P.2d 1087, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/gaddis-v-state-oklacrimapp-1972.