State v. Ford

499 P.2d 699, 108 Ariz. 404, 1972 Ariz. LEXIS 346
CourtArizona Supreme Court
DecidedJuly 13, 1972
Docket2313
StatusPublished
Cited by26 cases

This text of 499 P.2d 699 (State v. Ford) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Arizona 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. Ford, 499 P.2d 699, 108 Ariz. 404, 1972 Ariz. LEXIS 346 (Ark. 1972).

Opinion

HAYS, Chief Justice.

This is an appeal by the defendant who was sentenced to life imprisonment after a jury found him guilty of murder in the first degree, committed in Yuma, Arizona.

The evidence is entirely circumstantial and fills nearly five hundred pages of transcript. The victim, Gayla Figueroa, a married woman with two small children, obtained her husband’s permission to visit a Miss Glendora Finley, and left home at about 7:30 that evening in her Volkswagen. She had previously been invited to a party at the home of Linda Gann who had asked her to bring Glendora along. Linda and Betty Coburn arrived at Glendora’s place about 8:00 P.M. to see whether Gay-la and Glendora were coming to the party. While waiting for Glendora to dress, they began drinking beer, and continued until 10:00 P.M., when all four left for Linda’s place in Linda’s car. The party at Linda’s was attended by approximately ten men and women who were all drinking beer or hard liquor. At about 11:00 P.M., Linda and Gayla left and went to get coffee and a snack at a cafe, where they remained until about 1:00 A.M. Sunday. Linda then took Gayla to Glendora’s home where Gay-la got in her car and started for her own home.

Gayla’s husband spent the evening at home. He had fallen asleep watching television. At 1:00 A.M. he was awakened by *407 a loud noise. He checked the children in their bedroom and then went outside, where he saw Gayla’s green Volkswagen unoccupied. As he walked around it, he noticed a hole in the door glass on the driver’s side. He also noticed that a small foreign station wagon with a luggage rack on its top had just backed out of the Figueroa driveway and was driving off. It was too dark to ascertain its color or who was in it. In the Volkswagen were his wife’s keys and her purse, which contained $87 out of the $100 he had given her that day to buy Christmas presents for their children. He returned to his house and went to bed!

Early Sunday morning his father-in-law arrived to awaken Gayla and see that she got to work on time. When it appeared that her bed had not been slept in, the car was again examined, and her father, convinced that the hole in the car’s glass was from a bullet, called the police.

Defendant was stationed at the Marine base near Yuma, but he lived in Yuma, and on that Saturday night he was in Yuma after working hours. Fie owned and drove a small red Opel (foreign) station wagon with a luggage rack on its top. During the evening he drank beer with two male friends from 10:00 until after midnight. During that period he showed them a .38 caliber pistol which he carried and which was loaded with a distinctive type of ammunition called “wadcutter.” These bullets have flat noses and are used for target practice because they cut sharper holes in the target than conventional bullets. Sometime near 12:30 A.M. Sunday, he left his friends. There is no evidence to place him outside the Figueroa house at 1:00 A. M. except Mr. Figueroa’s testimony that defendant’s Opel is the same size and shape as the one he saw driving away shortly after the noise awakened him.

Sunday afternoon Gayla’s naked body was found floating in the backwaters of the Colorado River in a heavy growth of salt cedar trees. Her clothes were never found. There was a narrow path through the growth to the water’s edge where tire tracks were found. The wheelbase and the distance between the two rear wheels closely matched those of defendant’s Opel, which was found several days later at his mother’s home in Salt Lake City. Casts of the tire marks were sent to the F.B.I. laboratory in Washington for comparison with the tires on defendant’s car, but no evidence was introduced to show that they matched.

A closer examination of Gayla’s car revealed that a bullet had passed through the left door glass, through the car, and into the right door, where it was found between the inxier panel and the outside metal skin of the door which was dented from stopping the bullet. The slug proved to be a .38 caliber wadcutter fired from a Smith and Wesson pistol. A clerk from the Marine base testified that she had sold a .38 caliber Smith and Wesson pistol and wad-cutter ammunition to defendant prior to the murder.

A hair on the floor mat of defendant’s car was also analyzed by the F.B.I. laboratory. It could not be proved that it came from Gayla’s head but it was the same type as her hair, and could have been hers. On defendant’s car, authorities were able to find a sprig of salt cedar, of the same type as that which grew near where the body was found, but which also grew in hundreds of other places in the Yuma area.

Defendant did not take the stand, hut he gave a statement to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who apprehended him in Canada. His story indicated that on Saturday night, October 10, he was drinking with three male friends (who testified that all four drank beer from about 10:00 P.M. until 12:30 A.M. when defendant left). Defendant’s statement indicates that he was “feeling remorseful” because of his mother’s pending divorce, so he drove to Phoenix, arriving at “about 3 or 4 in the morning.” There, he found that she had gone back to her home in Salt Lake City, so he drove back to Yuma, arriving there “at 6 or 6:30.” In Yuma, he picked txp his *408 ■wife and daughter and drove hack to Phoenix, leaving Yuma at about 8:00 A.M. Sunday. A Phoenix motel manager testified that all of them checked into her motel at about 10:30 Sunday morning. They shopped for maternity clothes for his wife, but few stores were open on Sunday, so they drove back to Yuma. On the way back, he decided he was going to desert the Marines and go to Canada. He called his superior at the Marine base and told him that his daughter was sick and that he wouldn’t be in for duty Monday. They then drove to Salt Lake City where he left his wife, child and car, and was driven to Canada by his sister and her husband.

While in custody of the Canadian police, he called his wife, who by then was living in Pennsylvania. In that conversation she told him that the car had been impounded and he asked: “Did you clean it up? Did you wash it up ?”

A post mortem was done on Gayla’s body. It disclosed several contusions of the scalp and numerous abrasions all over the body. It indicated that she was dead when she was put in the water. Two fingernails were broken. She died from suffocation, but there was no evidence of manual strangulation. When defendant was apprehended, he had scratch marks on his neck. No examination was made to ascertain whether there was sperm in her vagina which was not lacerated. The head bruises were severe enough to cause unconsciousness but not enough to cause death. There was no bullet wound. The alcohol content of her blood was .02,

Fingernail scrapings were sent to the F. B.I. laboratory but no testimony was introduced as to the results of the analysis. No examination for fingerprints was made of Gayla’s car.

We have set out most of the facts because defendant raises eleven issues which refer to them. The jury, by its verdict, has found that the facts point to defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. It is not within the province of an appellate court to upset a verdict which is supported by substantial evidence. State v. Burrell, 106 Ariz. 100, 471 P.2d 712.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
499 P.2d 699, 108 Ariz. 404, 1972 Ariz. LEXIS 346, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-ford-ariz-1972.