State v. Patrick

721 So. 2d 94, 1998 WL 749155
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedOctober 28, 1998
Docket31380-KA
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 721 So. 2d 94 (State v. Patrick) 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. Patrick, 721 So. 2d 94, 1998 WL 749155 (La. Ct. App. 1998).

Opinion

721 So.2d 94 (1998)

STATE of Louisiana, Appellee,
v.
Donnie Ameal PATRICK, Appellant.

No. 31380-KA.

Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Second Circuit.

October 28, 1998.

*96 J. Wilson Rambo, Louisiana Appellate Project, Monroe, for Appellant.

Richard Ieyoub, Attorney General, Robert W. Levy, District Attorney, Stephen K. Hearn, Jr., Assistant District Attorney, for Appellee.

Before NORRIS, BROWN and GASKINS, JJ.

GASKINS, Judge.

Following a jury trial, the defendant, Donnie Ameal Patrick, was convicted of attempted first degree robbery, a violation of La. R.S. 14:27 and 14:64.1. The trial court sentenced the defendant as a second felony offender to serve 25 years imprisonment at hard labor without benefit of probation, parole or suspension of sentence. The defendant appealed. We affirm his conviction and sentence.

FACTS

Daksha Desai was an owner of the Pines Motel on Highway 80 in Ruston, Louisiana. Just after 8:00 p.m. on January 1, 1997, she saw a man approaching the motel office. At about the same time as the man entered the office, the telephone rang and Ms. Desai answered it. While she spoke on the telephone, she observed the man for several minutes. When she hung up the phone, she asked the man if she could help him, and he said: "Just give me all the money you have or I shoot you." Although Ms. Desai had already seen his face for several minutes, he then placed a white cloth diaper across his face.

According to Ms. Desai, the man pointed at her with one hand. The defendant kept his other hand below the desk so she could not see it. Although she never saw a weapon in his possession, she testified that she thought he had one in either his pocket or the hand which she could not see.

Instead of giving the man money as he demanded, Ms. Desai exited the office through the nearby kitchen door. She attempted to call police but had trouble operating the hotel's telephone. She saw the man *97 flee from the office and go to the car wash next door. Cortez Anderson, a 13-year-old boy walking near the car wash, saw the man running behind him. Anderson watched as the man climbed into a truck which was parked in a stall at the car wash. Anderson testified that the man was wearing a longsleeved striped shirt.

When Ms. Desai[1] got through to the police, she gave them a description of the man and his clothing, including a description of his shirt. She recalled describing it as longsleeved and multi or mixed colors with a stripe. The colors she remembered mentioning were purple, red, blue, probably green and yellow. According to the dispatcher, Ms. Desai said that the shirt had red and blue stripes. The call was dispatched at 8:19 p.m. Police came to the area minutes later and began their investigation. An officer saw the Anderson boy running toward his home and stopped him. Anderson described the man and his truck to police, and the officer then took Anderson to the motel.

At 8:30 p.m., Officer Curtis Hawkins of the Ruston Police Department pulled over a pickup truck on Highway 80 matching the general description of the robber's vehicle. The defendant was driving the truck. The defendant said that he had no driver's license and lied to the officer about his name. The officer performed a pat-down search for weapons and found none; no weapons were found inside the truck. However, on the seat of the truck, the officer found a multicolored striped shirt and a white cloth diaper.

Minutes later, officers took Anderson from the motel and drove him to view the defendant. Anderson positively identified the defendant as the person he had seen running into the car wash and also identified the truck. Anderson noticed that the defendant had changed out of his multicolored striped shirt into a T-shirt.

An officer then took Ms. Desai to view the defendant. She testified that before she saw the defendant, officers told her that they had a suspect they would like her to see. The officer who took Ms. Desai to view the defendant testified that he did not tell her that Anderson had already identified the defendant and could not have told her because he did not have that information. Ms. Desai identified the defendant as the would-be robber, and she also noticed that he had changed out of his long-sleeved striped shirt into a T-shirt. She made her identification before police showed her the striped shirt. Both witnesses recognized the striped shirt as the one that the robber had worn. Ms. Desai also identified the diaper found in the truck as the item the robber used to cover his face.

The defendant testified and denied that he tried to rob the motel. He explained that he went to Wal-Mart, where at about 8:00 p.m. he had an acquaintance return a chamois for a refund, and then went to a gas station where he bought gas, cigarettes and a Coke shortly before police stopped him. He admitted that he lied to Officer Hawkins about his name but explained that he did so because his driver's license had been revoked. He also testified that the officer threatened to hit him with his flashlight if he lied a second time. On cross-examination, he gave an excruciatingly detailed account of his activities around the time of the crime. The prosecutor queried the defendant in minute detail about the places he visited, his actions at the various places, his route, all of the pertinent times involved and the amount of money he obtained from the return at Wal-Mart.

Rebuttal evidence from prosecution witnesses totally refuted the defendant's alibi. A Wal-Mart employee testified that store records showed that the only return of a chamois that day occurred at 6:15 p.m. (The robbery occurred just afer 8:00 p.m.) The defendant's acquaintance, who returned the item to Wal-Mart because the defendant had no identification, testified that he and the defendant left the store immediately after making the return. An employee of the gas station where the defendant claimed to have stopped after 8:00 p.m. testified that he closed the store about 10 minutes before 8:00 p.m. on the night of the crime and documented that closing with register tapes. Finally, Officer Hawkins testified about the distances *98 and driving times between the Wal-Mart, the gas station and the point of arrest. The drive time between the gas station and the point of arrest was about seven minutes. The officer stopped the defendant at 8:30 p.m.

A unanimous jury convicted the defendant of attempted first degree robbery. The trial court subsequently sentenced him as a second offender to serve 25 years imprisonment at hard labor without benefit of probation, parole or suspension of sentence.

SUFFICIENCY OF EVIDENCE

In his first two assignments of error, the defendant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence with which he was convicted.[2] In particular, he contends that the evidence was legally insufficient to prove that: (1) he led the victim to reasonably believe he was armed, and (2) he was the perpetrator of the offense.

When the defendant challenges both the sufficiency of the evidence and one or more trial errors, the reviewing court first reviews sufficiency, as a failure to satisfy the standard of Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979), will moot the trial errors. State v. Hearold, 603 So.2d 731 (La.1992); State v. Adams, 30-815 (La.App.2d Cir.6/24/98), 715 So.2d 118.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
721 So. 2d 94, 1998 WL 749155, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-patrick-lactapp-1998.