State v. Aymond

8 So. 3d 795, 8 La.App. 3 Cir. 1292, 2009 La. App. LEXIS 549, 2009 WL 838543
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedApril 1, 2009
DocketNo. 08-1292
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 8 So. 3d 795 (State v. Aymond) 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. Aymond, 8 So. 3d 795, 8 La.App. 3 Cir. 1292, 2009 La. App. LEXIS 549, 2009 WL 838543 (La. Ct. App. 2009).

Opinion

PICKETT, Judge.

FACTS

|,Around 8:00 p.m. on March 19, 2007, the victim, K.C., was sitting on a swing in Kees Park in Pineville, Louisiana, listening to music on her CD player.1 A white man on a bicycle, wearing a dark t-shirt, dark pants, and a baseball cap approached her, and they had a short conversation. K.C. told the man to leave her alone, and he left the area. The man returned, however, and grabbed K.C. by the arm. He said he had a gun and would shoot her if she tried to run or scream.

The man dragged K.C. to a wooded area at the back of the park and told her to remove her clothes. K.C. refused to completely disrobe, but unzipped and dropped her pants. At some point when they first arrived at the wooded area, the man forced K.C. to perform oral sex and ejaculated in her mouth. The man then attempted anal and vaginal sex with K.C. but was able to achieve only partial penetration. He removed his shirt and used it to wipe between her legs and shoved the shirt into K.C.’s vagina. Lastly, he shoved his fingers into her vagina. The man told K.C. to pull up her pants, and he led her through the wooded area. When he started to walk away, K.C. “took off the other direction” and ran to her nearby home.

K.C. testified she had seen this man before the night of the attack, possibly three times. He stopped her once and spoke to her briefly, and about a week later, he stopped her and her husband and spoke to them.

On the night of the attack, Officer Neal Edwards, a patrolman with the Pineville Police Department, saw a white man riding a bicycle on the sidewalk in ^Pineville around 8:10 p.m. The man was wearing a black shirt with gold lettering on it, black pants, a dark blue cap and black shoes. Officer Edwards verbally warned the man about a city ordinance against riding an unlit bicycle at night. At trial, Officer Edwards identified the defendant as the man he saw that night.

Between 7:45 p.m. and 8:15 p.m. on March 19, 2007, Trudy Nelson, a security guard at Louisiana College in Pineville was standing on the porch of the security office when she saw a white man walking his bicycle. The man was about six foot, five inches tall, of medium build, with facial hair stubble and a full head of hair. He was wearing a black t-shirt with a yellow design, black pants and dark tennis shoes, and he had an approximate twenty-six-inch bike with racing handlebars. After a short conversation with Nelson, the man headed north toward the Kees Park area.

[797]*797Nelson carried a radio connected with the Pineville Police Department. When she heard a call about a man on a bicycle attacking a lady in Kees Park, she called the police and informed them about the man she had seen approximately an hour earlier.

KC.’s husband called the police and reported the rape when she got home. Officer Vincent Cyprian of the Pineville Police Department answered the call and questioned K.C. about the incident. K.C. was crying and seemed fearful and shaken. Officer Cyprian then went to Kees Park, but he did not cross the creek into the wooded area where K.C. said she had been raped.

Meanwhile, Detective Tamara Franklin of the Pineville Police Department took K.C. to the Rapides Regional Medical Center to have a sexual examination kit performed by Dr. Francis M. Brian, Jr., the Rapides Parish coroner. Dr. Brian’s examination of K.C. revealed a very large abrasion on her back, abrasions on her knees, what appeared to be a fingerprint on her neck, mud on her feet and organic | ^particulate matter resembling leafy material in the area of her buttocks between her legs. Dr. Brian found K.C. to have a flat affect, not unusual for a rape victim. His observations, the history related by K.C. and his examination were consistent with sexual assault. Although Dr. Brian found no evidence of vaginal or rectal tearing or trauma, and although the lack of tearing can be consistent with consensual sex, he did not consider the lack of tearing or trauma to be unusual in a rape case.

As part of the sexual examination kit, Dr. Brian took swabs of the mouth, vaginal and anal areas, as well as vaginal washings, to look for the presence of DNA other than that of K.C. Those swabs became part of the evidence sent to the North Louisiana Criminalistics Laboratory for DNA testing.

Kelly Raley, a forensic biologist with the laboratory, examined the swabs, washings, K.C.’s pants and the defendant’s jeans and t-shirts for DNA in hopes of comparing a known DNA sample with an unknown one. Her search, however, yielded no sperm or prostate specific antigen (PSA) on K.C.’s pants, the defendant’s clothing, the oral swab or vaginal washings. Although PSA was present on the rectal swab, there was no sperm or amplifiable DNA on it. PSA is a protein found in male seminal fluid, indicating seminal fluid may have been present.

Detective Beau Edmonds was part of the team who answered the call the night of the incident and investigated it. He met a team at the back end of the park, where they found a stereo headset on the creek bank. He returned to the site the next day with Detective Franklin and K.C. and found K.C.’s CD player, CD case and flip-flop shoes. K.C. testified she herself located the items.

Because K.C.’s description of her attacker’s clothing matched the clothing description shown on the field interview with the defendant completed by Officer |4NeaI Edwards the night before, Detective Franklin developed the defendant, Robert Wayne Aymond, Sr., as a suspect and requested a photo lineup from the Louisiana State Police. She gave the defendant’s name to the analyst on duty, who matched him with five others to create a photo lineup. The analyst used a picture of the defendant from the State Police database and emailed the photo lineup to Detective Franklin. She then printed the photographs, labeled each picture with a number, cut out each picture and placed them all in an envelope.

Detective Roy Fore met K.C. at her home, where Detectives Franklin and Ed-[798]*798monds introduced him and left him alone with K.C. to present the lineup. Protocol called for this type of presentation by someone without knowledge of the case so that any type of coercion on Detective Fore’s part was not an issue. Indeed, Detective Fore did not know which photo portrayed the suspect. He opened the envelope, shuffled the six photos and presented them in random order, placing one on top of the other for K.C. to view.

As each photo was presented, K.C. shook her head until Detective Fore presented photo number six. K.C. gave no verbal indication when she saw that photo, but appeared to be upset and about to cry. Detective Fore presented the set of photos again and got the same reaction the second time K.C. saw photo number six. Although K.C. excluded the other five photos and did not exclude the photo of the defendant, K.C. never identified the man in the photo as her attacker. Her reaction to the photo indicated to Detective Fore the man could possibly be the suspect. When Detective Fore told Detectives Franklin and Edmonds of KC.’s reaction, they confirmed the man in photo number six was their suspect. At trial, Detective Fore identified the defendant as the man in photo number six.

|SK.C. testified she told Officer Cyprian she could identify her attacker if she saw him again. She said she never told the police she could not identify her attacker. She learned the defendant’s name when she read it in the newspaper. At one point, K.C.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
8 So. 3d 795, 8 La.App. 3 Cir. 1292, 2009 La. App. LEXIS 549, 2009 WL 838543, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-aymond-lactapp-2009.