Johnson v. State

132 So. 3d 616, 2013 WL 6442133, 2013 Miss. App. LEXIS 859
Court of Appeals of Mississippi·Decided December 10, 2013·No. No. 2012-KA-00456-COA·Published·Cited by 3 cases

Opinions

IRVING, P.J.,

for the Court:

¶ 1. A Hinds County grand jury indicted Charles Johnson for murder, unlawful possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and two counts of armed robbery. The indictment also provided that Johnson was a habitual offender and sought an enhancement of the sentence based on Johnson’s use of a firearm. After a two-day trial, a Hinds County jury acquitted Johnson of [619] murder and both armed-robbery charges. The jury, however, convicted him of being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm. The circuit court sentenced Johnson, as a habitual offender, to ten years in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections and also sentenced him to an additional ten years pursuant to the firearm-enhancement statute.

¶ 2. Feeling aggrieved, Johnson appeals and argues that the circuit court improperly restricted voir dire of the jury panel regarding pretrial publicity, erred by allowing a juror to return to deliberations after an allegation of misconduct, erred by prohibiting Johnson from introducing evidence regarding events related to the vol-untariness of his confession, erred in finding that he was a habitual offender, and erred by using the firearm-enhancement statute to enhance his sentence.

¶ 3. Finding no merit to Johnson’s first four issues, we affirm the circuit court’s judgment as to those issues. However, we find that the circuit court erred in enhancing Johnson’s sentence without having allowed the jury to determine whether the facts justified an enhancement in accordance with the firearm-enhancement statute. Therefore, we reverse and render the enhanced portion of Johnson’s sentence.

FACTS

¶ 4. On February 15, 2011, Johnson shot Eugene “Boosie” Roberts as Roberts sat in the passenger seat of a car parked at a home located on Culbertson Avenue in Jackson, Mississippi. As Johnson fled the scene of the shooting in his vehicle, he collided with a vehicle driven by Brenda Davis. He then aimed his gun at her and attempted to take her car, but the car would not start. A FedEx driver, Glen Coleman, witnessed the collision and stopped to see if he could help. As he stopped to offer assistance, Johnson approached him, aimed his gun at Coleman, and demanded the FedEx truck. Coleman complied. Johnson drove the truck to Clinton, Mississippi, where he abandoned it outside the home of Charles and Gabrielle Wells.

¶ 5. The next morning, Johnson turned himself in to Deputy Danny Johnson (no relation to the appellant) of the Hinds County Sheriffs Department. Deputy Johnson transported Johnson to Jackson and released him into the custody of the Jackson Police Department (JPD). JPD Detectives Eric Smith and Felix Hodge interviewed Johnson at JPD headquarters. Detective Smith informed Johnson of Johnson’s rights, and Johnson confessed to killing Roberts but insisted that he did so in self-defense because Roberts and his friends, allegedly members of a local gang, were planning to kill him after robbing him of his drugs and money. He denied trying to take Davis’s ear at gunpoint. He also denied that he used a gun to take the FedEx truck from Coleman. He stated that he only wanted to get back to Clinton, where he thought that he would be safe. Johnson then led Detective Smith and other JPD officers to the gun that he used during the incident. Thereafter, JPD transported Johnson to the Hinds County Detention Center in Raymond, Mississippi, where he was allegedly assaulted by several officers from the Hinds County Sheriffs Department.

¶ 6. Prior to trial, the circuit court conducted a suppression hearing, where both detectives testified. Each of them testified that Johnson was informed of his rights prior to giving his confession and that neither of them threatened Johnson before, during, or after his confession. The court denied Johnson’s suppression motion, and his confession was admitted during the trial.

[620] ¶ 7. During the State’s case-in-chief, Baraka Buckley, who witnessed the shooting, testified that on the day of the incident, she and Roberts were sitting in her car talking. She saw Johnson arrive in his truck. He exited the truck, approached the home and talked with people who were standing around, and thereafter walked to the passenger side of Buckley’s vehicle where he spoke briefly with Roberts. Johnson then pulled out a gun and shot Roberts several times. After the shooting began, Buckley grabbed her son, who was sitting in the backseat of the vehicle, and ran to an abandoned house down the street and remained there until she felt that it was safe to return to her vehicle. She later positively identified Johnson as the shooter.

¶ 8. After closing arguments, the State reported that it had been contacted by Patricia Stamps, Roberts’s aunt, who informed the State that juror Vivian Manning had a preexisting relationship with a member of Roberts’s family. However, the State was not informed of the identity of the family member or the details of the possible relationship with the family member. Johnson requested a mistrial based on juror Manning’s alleged misconduct, which the circuit court denied.

¶ 9. The court allowed the State and Johnson’s counsel to question Stamps. Stamps testified that she knew juror Manning as Vivian Green and that they had spoken to each other outside of the courthouse. According to Stamps, the two only greeted each other. Stamps further testified that Manning did not know Roberts, but had come to Roberts’s grandmother’s house to offer her condolences approximately two months after the incident.

¶ 10. Manning testified that she did not know Roberts. She admitted that she had visited Roberts’s aunt Michelle1 and Michelle’s mother several months before Roberts’s death, but claimed that she was unaware at the time that either woman was related to Roberts. Manning denied visiting Michelle’s mother, who was also Roberts’s grandmother, after Roberts’s death. Manning also testified that she did not know Stamps. Even though both Manning and Stamps testified during the investigative hearing, neither Johnson’s counsel nor the State requested that Stamps appear in the presence of Manning to resolve the question of whether Stamps and Michelle were the same person.

¶11. Manning further testified that even though she knew members of Roberts’s family, she had not discussed the case with any of them before the trial or during the trial; had been a fair and impartial juror throughout the trial; and would continue to be fair and impartial throughout deliberations. The circuit court allowed Manning to return to deliberations. Shortly afterwards, the jury returned with not-guilty verdicts on the murder and armed-robbery charges, and a guilty verdict on the felon-in-possession-of-a-firearm charge.

¶ 12. Additional facts, as necessary, will be related during our analysis and discussion of the issues.

ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION OF THE ISSUES

I. Voir Dire

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Johnson v. State, 132 So. 3d 616, 2013 WL 6442133, 2013 Miss. App. LEXIS 859 (Mich. Ct. App. 2013).

132 So. 3d 616 (Johnson v. State) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

Related

James Lee Brent v. State of Mississippi
247 So. 3d 367 (Court of Appeals of Mississippi, 2018)