State v. Delagardelle

957 So. 2d 825, 2007 WL 1079906
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedApril 11, 2007
Docket06-KA-898
StatusPublished
Cited by18 cases

This text of 957 So. 2d 825 (State v. Delagardelle) 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. Delagardelle, 957 So. 2d 825, 2007 WL 1079906 (La. Ct. App. 2007).

Opinion

957 So.2d 825 (2007)

STATE of Louisiana
v.
Wayne DELAGARDELLE.

No. 06-KA-898.

Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Fifth Circuit.

April 11, 2007.

*827 Paul D. Connick, Jr., District Attorney, Twenty-Fourth Judicial District, Parish of Jefferson, Terry M. Boudreaux, Juliet Clark, Assistant District Attorneys, Gretna, LA, for Plaintiff/Appellee.

Jane L. Beebe, Louisiana Appellate Project, New Orleans, LA, for Defendant/Appellant.

Panel composed of Judges EDWARD A. DUFRESNE, JR., WALTER J. ROTHSCHILD, and FREDERICKA HOMBERG WICKER.

WALTER J. ROTHSCHILD, Judge.

Defendant, Wayne Delagardelle, Jr., was charged by bill of information with aggravated burglary, a violation of LSA-R.S. 14:60.[1] At his arraignment, the defendant pled not guilty. Defendant waived his right to a jury trial and was tried in a bench trial where he was found guilty as charged. Defendant filed motions for new trial and for post-verdict judgment of acquittal, which were denied by the trial court.

The trial court sentenced the defendant to 15 years at hard labor with credit for time served. The State subsequently filed a multiple offender bill alleging that the defendant was a fourth felony offender. The State amended the bill to allege second felony offender status, and defendant admitted to the allegations in the multiple offender bill and waived his formal hearing. The trial court accepted the defendant's admission to being a second felony offender. The trial judge vacated the original sentence and sentenced the defendant to 20 years at hard labor without benefit of probation or suspension of sentence. Defendant filed a motion to reconsider sentence, which subsequently was denied. On the same day, the defendant filed a timely motion for appeal.

FACTS

Rosemary Turner McDonald testified that she was upstairs in her bedroom when she was alerted to someone breaking into her house in Jefferson Parish on December 4, 2004. When she went downstairs, she saw the defendant, whom she identified in court, outside kicking in her back door. After the defendant did not respond to her command to stop or she would call the police, McDonald ran out of her front door because she was scared. The defendant locked the front door behind her. She did not give the defendant permission *828 to enter her home. McDonald did not reenter her home until the police arrived.

Deputy Dave Jackson of the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office testified that he responded to a burglary call in Gretna on that date. He encountered McDonald running down the street screaming that someone was inside her house. Deputy Jackson was unable to enter the front door of the McDonald's residence because it was locked. When he went to the rear of the house, he saw the kitchen door was kicked open. Upon entering the house, he saw a single trail of muddy footprints that went through the kitchen, into the living room, and up the stairs. He followed the footprints upstairs to the master bedroom where he found the defendant looking at him from the closet. No one else was in the house. Deputy Jackson ordered the defendant out of the bedroom closet. While the defendant was in the closet, Deputy Jackson was unable to see the defendant's left hand. When the defendant refused to come out, Deputy Jackson grabbed the defendant's arm and pulled him out. After the defendant was subdued with a taser, Deputy Jackson noticed pills falling from the defendant's mouth. He opined that the defendant appeared to be on drugs. Later that same day, Deputy Jackson checked the closet where the defendant has hiding, and found a knife with a black "corrugated" handle and an open pill bottle with the victim's name on it on the floor. The victim's wallet was found on the defendant.

McDonald identified a photograph of her black handled knives that she kept on her kitchen counter top. She did not bring the knife belonging to her kitchen knife set upstairs and throw it into the closet. The knife also was not in her closet before she ran out of the house. The last time she saw the knife before this incident, it was in the knife block on the kitchen counter. McDonald admitted that she never saw the defendant in possession of the knife, because she ran. When the police returned the knife to her after the incident, she cleaned mud off it. She also cleaned muddy footprints off her carpeting. She identified photographs of her carpeting taken after the incident that showed the muddy footprints, not made by her, going up to the master bedroom. McDonald also identified several photographs of her bedroom and its closet in disarray that were not in that condition before she went downstairs on the day of the incident. The photograph of the closet depicted a prescription bottle and a knife. The prescription bottle was full and on her dresser before she went downstairs, not in the closet. When the prescription bottle was returned, the majority of the pills were gone, because they were on the floor or swallowed by the defendant, she opined. McDonald's son lives with her, but he was not home at the time.

DISCUSSION

On appeal, the defendant argues that the trial court erred in denying his motion for new trial alleging insufficient evidence. The defendant claimed that the State failed to prove that he had possession of the victim's knife that was found on the bedroom closet floor. The defendant notes that it is undisputed that McDonald's son also lived in the house. The defendant also contends that the motion for new trial should have been granted because the verdict is contrary to the law and the evidence, and it would serve the ends of justice.

The State argues that the trial court did not err in denying the defendant's motion for new trial, because the evidence presented was sufficient to support the defendant's conviction. The State claims that it proved that the defendant armed himself with a knife after entering McDonald's *829 residence to the exclusion of any reasonable hypothesis of the defendant's innocence. The State contends that the defense's suggestion that McDonald's son, who was not home, had placed the knife in the closet is not sufficiently reasonable that a rational juror could not have found proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

In the present case, the defendant filed a motion for new trial and a motion for post verdict judgment of acquittal. In both, the defendant alleged that the verdict was contrary to the law and the evidence, because there was insufficient evidence to support the conviction. At the motion hearing, as well as on appeal, the defendant alleged that there was no evidence presented to prove the aggravated element of the offense, i.e. that the defendant armed himself upon entering the house and had possession of the knife. The trial court denied defendant's motions after finding that the most reasonable explanation for how the knife got into the closet where the defendant was hiding was that the defendant brought it with him upstairs. The trial judge found that the State proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was armed at the time of his arrest. The trial court also noted that no evidence was presented to show that the defendant was so impaired that he did not know what he was doing.

"[A] motion for a new trial is based on the supposition that injustice has been done the defendant, and, unless such is shown to have been the case the motion shall be denied, no matter upon what allegations it is grounded." LSA-C.Cr.P. art. 851.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
957 So. 2d 825, 2007 WL 1079906, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-delagardelle-lactapp-2007.