Patrick Napolean Smith v. State of Alabama.

79 So. 3d 671, 2010 Ala. Crim. App. LEXIS 6, 2010 WL 415243
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Alabama
DecidedFebruary 5, 2010
DocketCR-08-0369
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 79 So. 3d 671 (Patrick Napolean Smith v. State of Alabama.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Patrick Napolean Smith v. State of Alabama., 79 So. 3d 671, 2010 Ala. Crim. App. LEXIS 6, 2010 WL 415243 (Ala. Ct. App. 2010).

Opinion

KELLUM, Judge.

The appellant, Patrick Napolean Smith, was convicted of one count of murder made capital because it was committed during a first-degree robbery, see § 13A-5-40(a)(2), Ala.Code 1975, and one count of murder made capital because it was committed during a first-degree kidnapping, see § 13A-5-40(a)(l), Ala.Code 1975. The jury voted 8 to 4 in favor of life imprisonment, and the trial court sentenced Smith to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

The evidence presented by the State demonstrated the following pertinent facts. On the morning of August 12, 2003, the body of Jeremy Black was found near the Interstate Steel facility in Trinity. The body was lying on the gravel driveway of an abandoned house off Old Trinity Road. During its investigation, the Morgan County Sheriffs Department learned that this house was commonly used for drug sales and prostitution.

Medical examiners determined that Black’s death was caused by multiple gunshot wounds. The examination of his body indicated that Black had been shot nine times; seven gunshots had been feed into Black’s chest, exiting through his back, and two gunshot wounds had been fired into Black’s back, exiting through his chest. The two gunshot wounds to Black’s back were described as “contact wounds,” meaning the barrel of the gun was pressing against his skin when the gun fired. A small copper bullet fragment was recovered from Black’s lung, and one intact copper-jacketed bullet was recovered from one of the exit wounds on Black’s back. At the time his body was found, Black was wearing two t-shirts, a pair of boxer shorts, and one sock.

Tammy Sly, a firearms and tool-marks examiner with the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences, examined bullets and cartridge cases recovered from the crime scene, bullets and bullet fragments recovered from Black’s body, and two handguns — a Ruger .45 caliber pistol and a Colt .45 caliber pistol — discovered during the State’s investigation. Sly determined that the bullets recovered from the crime scene had been fired from these two guns and the shell casings were from the Colt pistol. A bullet recovered from Black’s body during the autopsy was determined to have been fired from the Colt pistol.

Sheriff Gregory Bartlett of Morgan County oversaw the investigation of Black’s murder. Through the course of the investigation, the officers learned that Black was in the business of selling marijuana, and that he had planned to sell marijuana to Marqueze Smith and Patrick Smith the night he was murdered. Cellular telephone records for a cellular telephone belonging to Michelle Matthews, the girlfriend of Christopher Smiley, indicated that at 10:37 p.m. on August 11, 2003, calls were made from Matthews’s phone to Black’s phone, which account was in Black’s mother’s name. Multiple outgoing and incoming calls were logged between the two numbers on the report for late in the night of August 11 and early in the morning of August 12. Using the information obtained from the telephone records, [675]*675an investigator placed a telephone call to one of the numbers found in the call log of Black’s phone around the time of his death. The man who answered the phone identified himself as Smiley. The officer asked Smiley if he would come to the police station to speak with investigators, and Smiley complied.

Ondrama McDaniel Coffee, an acquaintance of Smith’s, testified that she saw Patrick Smith, Marqueze Smith, and Christopher Smiley at her apartment complex, the Summer Place Apartments, in the early morning hours of August 12, 2003. Coffee first saw the three men standing outside the apartment of Kristen Jones, Marqueze Smith’s girlfriend. According to Coffee, she saw Smiley’s car leave the apartment complex at approximately 1:30 a.m. She testified that she could not tell who, if anyone, was in the car with Smiley, but said that neither Mar-queze nor Patrick Smith were at the apartment complex after Smiley left.

Maggie Mae Johnson, a former girlfriend of Patrick Smith, testified that early in the morning on August 12, 2003, Patrick Smith let himself into Johnson’s apartment with a key she had given him. Smith was carrying a bag at the time. One of the guns involved in the shooting was recovered in Johnson’s apartment; Johnson testified that she did not know how the gun ended up in her apartment, nor did she know how the other items recovered from the upstairs room of her apartment, including stereo equipment and speakers from Black’s automobile, got there. Johnson testified that during that time period, only Smith and she had access to the bedroom.

Lauren Allard lived with Black at the time he was killed. On the night he was killed, Allard recalled Black’s receiving a telephone call around 10:30 p.m. or 11:00 p.m. When shown a picture of the interior of Black’s Oldsmobile Cutlass automobile, Allard explained that the stereo and speakers were missing. Allard identified the stereo equipment recovered from Johnson’s apartment as Black’s stereo equipment. Allard admitted that Black occasionally sold drugs.

On August 13, 2003, the day after Black’s body was discovered, Sheriff Bartlett, along with Investigator Terry Kelly and Sergeant John Bili of the Morgan County Sheriffs Office, arrested Smith at Johnson’s apartment, read him his Miranda

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Related

Revis v. State
101 So. 3d 247 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama, 2011)
Reynolds v. State
114 So. 3d 61 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama, 2010)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
79 So. 3d 671, 2010 Ala. Crim. App. LEXIS 6, 2010 WL 415243, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/patrick-napolean-smith-v-state-of-alabama-alacrimapp-2010.