Roberts v. State

387 So. 2d 302, 1980 Ala. Crim. App. LEXIS 1331
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Alabama
DecidedAugust 19, 1980
Docket4 Div. 788
StatusPublished

This text of 387 So. 2d 302 (Roberts v. State) 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
Roberts v. State, 387 So. 2d 302, 1980 Ala. Crim. App. LEXIS 1331 (Ala. Ct. App. 1980).

Opinion

LEIGH M. CLARK, Retired Circuit Judge.

Appellant was convicted of murder in the first degree of Violet Lence Roberts, his wife. They had been married approximately two years. During a large part of that time their marital relationship was stormy. There is no contention on appeal that the evidence was not sufficient to support the verdict of the jury. We are clear to the conclusion that there is no reasonable basis for such a contention, even though mystery to some extent hovers over the undisputed facts and circumstances. Seldom, in real life or in fiction, have they ever been so macabre. We merely summarize some of them that may be needed for the purpose of a better understanding of the only issue raised by appellant, and the reasons for the judgment of this court as hereafter shown.

According to the testimony of William Howard Metcalf, who was then employed with the Houston County Bridge and Road Department, he was operating a motor grader in the vicinity of Highway 231 in Houston County, on January 22,1979, a few miles south of Dothan, when something yellow lying in a field attracted his attention. He stood up and observed the outline of a human body. He immediately called for help, which call was relayed to the Sheriff’s Department. According to other undisputed evidence, law enforcement personnel arrived promptly at the scene of the body. They found the body of a white female, apparently about forty years of age, wearing a peach-colored blouse and a pair of yellow slacks. Her head had been bludgeoned, and she had been stabbed in the back ten or eleven times. A state toxicologist and death investigator of the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences came to the scene before the body was removed. He performed an external autopsy of the body before its removal; thereafter, at the morgue he performed an internal autopsy. His conclusions were stated on trial that he observed partial rigor mortis for the first time at 11:15 A.M. when the body was at the morgue and full rigor mortis by 3:00 P.M. He said that there were eleven stab wounds in the back and that her skull had been fractured into various small pieces. Some of the stab wounds had entered the left lung, and one had punctured the liver. He said she died either from the stab wounds or the blows upon her skull. There were other wounds about the body.

News of the finding of the obviously murdered body was diffused promptly and extensively by the usual media, which included an appeal from the law enforcement authorities that they be informed by anyone who could identify the body. The body was not identified until it was viewed by the mother of the victim on January 29, 1979. [304]*304On the same day, officers, equipped with a search warrant, searched the apartment of defendant and the victim. It was found that there had been recent painting, particularly a part of a couch, with black paint. There was a paint bucket in the apartment. Various tools were found in the apartment. Many of the contents of the apartment were examined by a criminalist with the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences, a specialist in serology, who testified that as to many of the items the tests made by her were negative as to the presence of blood, but they were positive as to a part of the fabric from the living room sofa or couch, a hunting knife, a claw metal-handled hammer and paper from a waste basket in the bathroom.

The mother of the victim, who lived in Key West, Florida, testified that defendant had brought Mrs. Roberts by automobile to the mother’s home about January 6, 1979, left her there to visit her mother, returned to Key West in about two weeks, then left with his wife to return to Dothan on January 21 at about 7:00 A.M. She said that about 7:00 P.M., defendant called her and told her of their arrival at Dothan. She said she asked for Violet, and he told her that she was bringing in her plants on account of the cold. She said also that he called her on the telephone on January 24 and on January 25, telling her on January 24 that Mrs. Roberts was “Okay” and on January 25 that he had taken her to a doctor, that she had a stomach virus.

There was evidence that defendant was at work on Monday, January 22, 1979, and that he was in Dothan until the latter part of that week, but that thereafter, he was elsewhere for weeks until he was returned . from Brenham, Texas, to answer the charge of murdering his wife. At Brenham, he was operating a grey Chevrolet owned by his wife. Pictures were taken of the tread of a tire of the automobile and of the tire tracks of an automobile that led to the body of the victim as it was found on January 22 in the field near Highway 231. The pictures were introduced in evidence. They bear a striking resemblance. Tools and various items from the automobile were tested for blood. The tests were negative. Among the items in the trunk of the automobile were a room deodorizer and a leather sheath commonly used for carrying a hunting knife.

As shockingly incredible as the circumstances stated are as to the murder of Mrs. Roberts, particularly as to what happened to her a short time before her body was found, they are “incredible” in the weakened sense only of the word, that is, extremely extraordinary or unusual. They call to mind what was said by the Old Man outside the castle the morning after the night of the bloody murder of King Duncan:

“Threescore and ten I can remember well;
“Within the volume of which time I have seen
“Hours dreadful and things strange; but this
“Hath trifled former knowings.”

Macbeth, Act II, Scene II

Defendant did not testify, but his extraordinarily lengthy statements in question and answer form, were admitted in evidence over his objection and notwithstanding his motion to suppress, which was denied. It is to this action of the trial court that the only issue raised by appellant is addressed and to which we now direct our attention.

Soon after the identity of the murdered woman had been established on January 29, 1979, a warrant for the arrest of defendant for the murder was procured. Soon after officers learned of defendant’s whereabouts in Brenham, Texas, they went to Brenham and interviewed him while in custody there. The officers from Alabama who questioned him were Houston County Sheriff A. B. Clark, Lieutenant Joe Pitts and District Attorney Mike Brown. A statement was taken from him on February 14 at Brenham, another statement on February 15 at Bren-ham, and on February 20,1979, a statement was taken from him at Dothan, Alabama. The record shows that all three of the named officers participated in the question[305]*305ing of defendant in both statements in Brenham and that Sheriff Clark and Lieutenant Pitts conducted the interrogation in Dothan. The combined statements constitute eighty-nine pages of the transcript. They are shown twice, once on the hearing of the motion to suppress and the other on the trial of the case before the jury. Perhaps the core of the basis of appellant’s contention that the trial court was in error in admitting defendant’s statements, which unquestionably included many inculpatory admissions but which did not contain a confession, can be best summarized by the following quotations from appellant’s brief:

“We admit the Defendant was given the Miranda warnings. (R. 113) Several times as a matter of fact.

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Bluebook (online)
387 So. 2d 302, 1980 Ala. Crim. App. LEXIS 1331, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/roberts-v-state-alacrimapp-1980.