State v. Aaron

57 So. 3d 365, 2011 La. App. LEXIS 8, 2011 WL 93833
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedJanuary 12, 2011
DocketNo. 45,433-KA
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 57 So. 3d 365 (State v. Aaron) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Louisiana Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Aaron, 57 So. 3d 365, 2011 La. App. LEXIS 8, 2011 WL 93833 (La. Ct. App. 2011).

Opinion

CARAWAY, J.

|2Ponald Aaron was charged by grand jury indictment with manslaughter in violation of La. R.S. 14:31. By a 10-2 vote, a jury convicted him of negligent homicide. Prior to trial, the state moved to impose Aaron’s sentence under La.C.Cr.P. art. 893.3, a firearm enhancement statute. Specifically, the state alleged that Aaron actually discharged a firearm during the commission of manslaughter. The trial court imposed a five-year hard labor sentence for the negligent homicide conviction with enhancement under La.C.Cr.P. art. 893.3. Aaron appeals, raising five assignments of error. We affirm the conviction, vacate the sentence, and x-emand for resen-tencing.

Facts

At 1:30 p.m. on April 23, 2005, Aaron called Caddo Pailsh 911 and reported that he had shot a man near his Shreveport home. Shreveport Police Department (SPD) Cox-poral Diana Coleman, the first officer to respond to |sthe scene, saw two cars parked, nose to tail, off of the road. The cars wei'e stopped about 200 feet from the home whei'e Aaron resides with his father and approximately 100 feet down the road from the driveway of the home. The cars were slightly off the road, partly on Aaron’s propei'ty. The home is the last residence located on a narrow dead end residential sti'eet, some distance from the neighboring residences.

The lead car was a Nissan Maxima in which Ronald Jamison was still seated when police aiTived. Jamison had been fatally shot seven times. The windows of both front doors in the Maxima had been shattei-ed. Jamison’s right hand was resting in his lap, holding a beer bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag; he had nothing in his left hand. His car, although running, was in neutral; his light foot was on the accelerator. No weapons were found in Jamison’s car, although he had two serewdilvers between his seat and the console.

The other car at the scene had been driven by Aaron. After the shooting, Aaron left his handgun on the front passenger seat of his vehicle, a Honda Accord. Photos show that the shift knob on the gear shift lever of Aaron’s vehicle was missing.

When the officer arrived, Aaron was standing beside the cars on the street with his father. Aaron, formerly a police offi-[369]*369eer, a martial arts | instructor and world’s super lightweight kickboxing champion, told Corporal Coleman that he was the person who shot Jamison. Coleman said:

He [Aaron] stated that he had come home for lunch and that there was a car in his driveway and that he followed the car to see, to get the tag number off of the car, and that he stopped behind the — no—that he had followed the car to get the tag number off the car, and he asked the guy why he was in his driveway, why was he here. And he said that the guy told him that T can’t park, I can’t drive down this street?’ And he said that they had, you know, some type of verbal jargon there. He said the guy appeared to reach for something,' and the guy told him that he was going to kill him, and so he stated that he shot the guy.

Aaron also stated that he had been concerned that Jamison may have broken into his house and that he had been unable to put his car into reverse during his encounter with Jamison due to the faulty gear shift.

After Jamison was transported from the scene, SPD Detective Shawn Parker arrived. Detective Parker and Aaron’s father walked around the outside of the defendant’s home to check for signs of burglary; they found none. The detective saw that Aaron had several homemade dog cages in the backyard with dogs in them; the defendant raised and sold pit bulls. A chain-type dog collar was found hanging from the rear view mirror of Ja-mison’s vehicle; Aaron had a similar chain-type dog collar in his vehicle as well.1 1 sSPD had responded to four complaints of burglary at the Aaron residence in the years 1991 (two calls), 1994 and 2001.

SPD Sergeant Amy Muller and Corporal David Walls, crime scene investigators, also responded to the scene. Sergeant Muller and Corporal Walls took numerous photos of the scene including the scene as a whole, Aaron’s house and property, and detailed photos of the items .of interest. The photos clearly showed the position and nature of the bullet holes in Jamison’s car. One of these holes grazed the edge of the driver’s side windowsill in a way that makes the angle of the shot clear; the shot passed at a shallow angle from left to right. Sergeant Muller determined that the path of one bullet that traveled through the. driver’s seat was different from three other bullet paths she was able to measure; that bullet appears to have been fired from nearer the front of the Maxima than the others, which were fired from the side. Police found five spent shell casings on the ground outside the cars and three spent shell casings inside the defendant’s car. Measurements showed that Jamison’s driver’s side window was at least partially raised when it was shot out. Sergeant Muller examined the window mechanism and opined that Jamison’s window had been down about half way.

During the investigation, Sergeant Muller parked the Accord next to the Maxima in an effort to determine the position of the cars at the time of | r,the shooting, and Muller took photos of that recreation. The photos show that the cars must have been parked nearly side by side when at least three of the shots were fired.

After the initial investigation, police learned that Aaron was not alone in his car at the time of the shooting and that his [370]*370girlfriend, Jamie McWilliams, was with him. During the search of Aaron’s car, police found “some Bossier court narcotic stuff’ with McWilliams’s name on it. About a week after the shooting, McWil-liams agreed to meet with police and give a statement.

Aaron appeared for testimony before a Caddo Parish grand jury, which later indicted him for manslaughter. Without objection and by apparent agreement, his grand jury testimony was presented by the state in the trial of the case-and read to the jury. In his grand jury testimony, Aaron testified that on the day of the shooting, he and his girlfriend were driving home to meet Aaron’s father for lunch. When they arrived at home, Aaron saw Jamison’s Maxima parked in the circular driveway in front of his home. Neither Aaron nor McWilliams recognized the vehicle. Aaron stated that there had been some suspicious vehicles in the area the night before.

As Aaron approached his home, he did not see anyone moving around the yard, entering or exiting the Maxima. Aaron pulled his car into the 17circular driveway from the other side, approaching Jamison’s car from the front. Neither he nor McWilliams recognized Jamison.

At that point, Jamison backed up and began to leave. Aaron, suspicious of Jami-son’s actions, decided to follow him as he backed out of the driveway in an effort to get the license plate number of Jamison’s vehicle. Once Jamison had backed into the street with Aaron following, Jamison waved for Aaron to exit the driveway and proceed down the street ahead of him. After Aaron waved back for Jamison to proceed, Jamison began to drive away down the street with Aaron’s vehicle following.

Then, abruptly, Jamison pulled to the side of the road and stopped, rolling down his window. Aaron pulled up beside Jami-son slightly to the front of Jamison’s car with the vehicles 3 to 5 feet apart. Aaron testified that he placed his car in park.

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Related

State v. Free
127 So. 3d 956 (Louisiana Court of Appeal, 2013)

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Bluebook (online)
57 So. 3d 365, 2011 La. App. LEXIS 8, 2011 WL 93833, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-aaron-lactapp-2011.