State v. Buck

670 S.W.2d 600, 1984 Tenn. LEXIS 926
CourtTennessee Supreme Court
DecidedJanuary 30, 1984
StatusPublished
Cited by257 cases

This text of 670 S.W.2d 600 (State v. Buck) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Tennessee Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Buck, 670 S.W.2d 600, 1984 Tenn. LEXIS 926 (Tenn. 1984).

Opinions

[602]*602OPINION

FONES, Chief Justice.

This is a direct appeal of a death penalty case. Defendant was convicted of criminal sexual conduct, with sentence of life imprisonment, and murder in the first degree with sentence of death. The jury found three aggravating circumstances, to-wit: subsections (2), (6), and (7) of T.C.A. § 39-2-203(i) and no mitigating circumstances. We affirm the conviction of criminal sexual conduct and the sentence. We affirm the conviction of first degree murder but reverse the sentence of death for errors committed during the bifurcated sentencing phase of the trial and remand for a resentencing hearing pursuant to T.C.A. § 39-2-203(k).

We begin with a summary of the material facts adduced on the issue of guilt or innocence of murder.

I.

The victim was Tina Rose Craighead, a married teenager, mother of a nineteen month old boy. She worked the 2:00 to 10:00 p.m. shift at a self-service Texaco station located at Seventh and Willow Streets in Cookeville, Putnam County, Tennessee. On February 15, 1979, she was the only employee present on the premises from approximately 3:00 p.m. until her disappearance was reported to the police by a customer about 7:30 p.m. About 9:15 p.m. the Sheriff of Smith County received a report that a blonde woman was lying in the road on Highway 141, just off interstate 40 approximately thirty-five miles west of Cookeville. The blonde woman was Tina Craighead. She had a distinct ligature mark around her neck and the pathologist testified that the cause of death was ligature strangulation and that it occurred prior to the infliction of extensive traumatic injuries to the entire body. The station manager checked the records and found that $441 in cash was missing.

A tire pattern was impressed upon her socks, blue jeans, and into the skin of her face, scalp, legs, and chest obviously caused by a vehicle running over her body. The scalp was completely torn away from the skull on the left side. She had multiple rib fractures on both sides of the chest and a compound fracture of the left lower leg. The autopsy examination revealed complete disruption of the liver with portions of it in the abdominal cavity. However, the extensive internal injuries resulted in less blood in the abdominal cavity, about one quart, than would have been the case had her death not preceded those injuries, according to the pathologist. Also, he found a fracture of the cornu of the thyroid cartilage, which he testified documented the fact that the ligature strangulation occluded the airway.

Several customers of the station who knew the victim testified to routine purchases and payment to her in the station booth between 7:00 and 7:15 p.m. on February 15, 1979. Two of the witnesses recalled seeing a Renegade jeep with mag wheels in the station during that time-frame and identified pictures of defendant’s jeep as similar to the jeep seen on that date. One of those recalled seeing a man that looked like defendant standing behind the jeep. A third witness who knew defendant and his jeep stopped for the red light at the intersection of Willow and Seventh, looked into the Texaco station and saw defendant standing with his back to his jeep and facing the booth. He observed that defendant was wearing a dark sleeveless jacket and that the jeep was the one he had seen defendant drive on prior occasions. When defendant was brought to Tennessee from Portland, Oregon, where he was arrested, he was wearing a blue, sleeveless down-type vest. A fourth witness entered the station between 7:15 and 7:30 p.m. and filled her car with gas before discovering that no attendant was present. She wrote a note on a check deposit slip advising that she had purchased unleaded gas in the sum of fourteen dollars and that she would be back later to pay with her credit card. She drove about two hundred yards down the street from the station and decided to stop and use a pay phone beside the Tech Food Market to call police. The [603]*603pay phone was not working but she went inside the Tech Food Market and called the police and reported that no attendant was present at the station.

Defendant’s jeep was found in Roseville, Michigan about a week after the murder and was returned to Nashville. Hair samples were removed from the exterior undercarriage of the jeep. The senior microana-lysist at the Tennessee Crime Laboratory made a microscopic comparison of separate hair samples taken from the left rear fender flair and the left rear shock mount with the known hair of the victim and found they were similar in racial origin, coloring, and microscopic structure. Examination of a hair sample taken from the right front seat of the jeep was compared with a known hair sample of the victim, with the same result of compatibility.

All four tires on the jeep were identical in brand, tread and tread wear. The mi-croanalysist compared the pattern on the victim’s sock and jeans with a pattern made from the left front tire of the jeep and found them to be identical.

Elizabeth Hood and Robbie Hood were returning home from a basketball tournament in Carthage when they came upon a jeep sitting on the right side of Highway 141, just off 1-40 with the right tail light burning and the left tail light out. The jeep moved down the road a short distance as the Hood vehicle approached and then pulled further over and parked. The jeep had plastic window curtains and neither Elizabeth nor Robbie Hood was able to see how many persons were in the vehicle.

Ann Hood West, Robbie Hood’s daughter, left Carthage in her own car ten to fifteen minutes after Robbie. She saw a jeep parked at approximately the same place on Highway 141 as described by Elizabeth and Robbie Hood. As she approached the jeep she could see an object in the left lane of the road that could have been a body. The jeep pulled out in front of her at a high rate of speed and although she was going in the same direction at a good speed, it soon disappeared into the night. She also noticed that the left tail light on the jeep was out.

Elizabeth and Robbie Hood and Ann West saw defendant’s jeep at the Tennessee Crime Lab after it was brought there from Michigan and identified it as the same or a similar vehicle that they saw after 8:00 p.m., February 15, 1979, on Highway 141 near the John Lancaster home. The left tail light was out when they examined it at the crime lab.

A left thumb print was lifted from the door to the cashier’s booth of the station the night the victim was murdered. It was later identified by a fingerprint expert from the Tennessee Crime Laboratory as defendant’s.

Defendant was arrested by F.B.I. agents in Portland, Oregon on October 23, 1979. He was using the name of Ernest William Hinton, a friend of his who lived in Rose-ville, Michigan. Defendant was fully advised of his rights, signed a waiver and agreed to talk to Agent James Russell without a lawyer. He told Russell that he knew he was wanted for murdering a young woman in Tennessee but that he did not murder her and knew nothing about it. Defendant told the agent that he left Tennessee because he had stolen $250 from two students who attended Tennessee Tech that he had met at Hunter’s Bar in Cooke-ville. Defendant related that the two young men asked him if he knew where they could buy marijuana or grass.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
670 S.W.2d 600, 1984 Tenn. LEXIS 926, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-buck-tenn-1984.