State v. Shaheed, Unpublished Decision (9-28-2001)

CourtOhio Court of Appeals
DecidedSeptember 28, 2001
DocketAppeal No. C-000414, C-010072, Trial No. B-0000465, B-0000209.
StatusUnpublished

This text of State v. Shaheed, Unpublished Decision (9-28-2001) (State v. Shaheed, Unpublished Decision (9-28-2001)) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Ohio Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Shaheed, Unpublished Decision (9-28-2001), (Ohio Ct. App. 2001).

Opinion

DECISION.
The defendant-appellant, Altone Ali Shaheed, brings the appeal numbered C-000414 from his conviction in the case numbered B-0000465 and the appeal numbered C-010072 from his conviction in the case numbered B-0000209. These appeals have been consolidated by this court.

In the case numbered B-0000465, Shaheed was charged with aggravated robbery and aggravated murder, with each count accompanied by a firearm specification. In the case numbered B-0000209, he was charged with carrying a concealed weapon. A jury found Shaheed guilty of all charges and specifications.

The two cases have some factual links. At about 8:00 p.m., on December 25, 1999, Mabel Malcolm Washington was at work in a small grocery store operated by Cornell Hope at 516 West Liberty Street in Cincinnati. Hope was in the store's lavatory when he heard Washington exclaim, "Somebody is trying to rob us." Almost contemporaneously, he heard two gunshots, and he immediately emerged from the lavatory to find Washington prone on the floor, with her head and upper body in a pool of blood. As Hope stood beside Washington's body, he was confronted by an individual he later described to police investigators as a short, young black male, about one hundred and thirty pounds in weight, wearing a black coat, black pants, black gloves, and a black mask. The man ordered Hope to give him the contents of the store's cash register. Hope gave the man some four to five hundred dollars from his cash drawer and approximately fifty one-dollar bills from his pocket. Hope then turned his attention to Washington, and the robber fled on foot. Hope summoned police and medical personnel, but Washington died at the scene. An autopsy showed that a bullet had entered the left side of Washington's neck, had crossed part of her spine and fractured a vertebra, and had passed through her esophagus, a carotid artery, and her jugular vein, before exiting from her body.

On January 4, 2000, at about 2:00 a.m., a uniformed Cincinnati police officer, Kenneth Grubbs, was patrolling in a marked vehicle when he received a radio call to assist in the pursuit of a person who had fled after being stopped by a fellow officer. As Officer Grubbs approached an intersection at which he had a green light, a male pedestrian started to cross the street in violation of the "Don't Walk" signal. Officer Grubbs was forced to apply his brakes to avoid hitting the pedestrian. When the officer asked the pedestrian why he had not obeyed the signal, he received no response. When he asked for some identification, the pedestrian said that he had none. Because he intended to issue a citation for "jaywalking," Officer Grubbs instructed the pedestrian to stand on the sidewalk and to keep his hands where he could see them. The pedestrian then turned his back to Officer Grubbs and brought his hands to his waistband, prompting another warning. Eventually, the pedestrian produced a form of identification and placed it in the officer's hands. When Officer Grubbs then placed his hands on the pedestrian to guide him to the police car so that the identification could be verified, the pedestrian put one of his hands in a pocket of the oversized black coat he was wearing, prompting another warning to keep his hands in sight. That, however, did not prevent the pedestrian from again moving a hand toward the pocket. Officer Grubbs then noted bulges in the sleeves of the coat, and the pedestrian told him that he had an umbrella in one of them and a videotape in the other. By then another officer had arrived to assist Officer Grubbs, as the pedestrian was handcuffed and patted down. The pat-down search produced an unloaded .44-caliber revolver. A bullet of the same caliber was found in a pocket, along with a black mask, a black hat, black gloves, and the videotape. As a consequence, the pedestrian, identified as the defendant-appellant, Shaheed, was charged with carrying a concealed weapon, viz., the handgun recovered from his person.

After Shaheed was lodged in jail, events occurred that provided a factual basis for his indictment for aggravated murder and aggravated robbery. Fragments of a bullet were recovered from the pool of blood on the floor and elsewhere within Hope's store. An expert witness testified at trial that two of the three pieces of lead found at the scene of the crimes were once the same bullet. The expert stated that, while the bullet could have been fired from a weapon the caliber of which might have ranged from .38 to the extreme of .50, it was consistent with having been fired from a firearm of the same type as that recovered from Shaheed. Hope had given initial investigators a .38-caliber handgun that he kept for personal protection, but it was "dirty" and had not been recently fired.

Shaheed admitted that he had taken the .44-caliber revolver without permission from a box beneath his father's bed. Shaheed's father testified that he had had the weapon since 1980 and had kept it, along with seven bullets for it, in a box beneath his bed. He was not aware that his son had taken it until police questioned him on January 4, 2000. At that time, four of the seven bullets for the gun remained in the box. When police experts test-fired the revolver, it was found to be operable. Shaheed told police that he had fired one round from the gun in the air on New Year's Eve.

After Shaheed was jailed, his "girlfriend," Eutivia Lee, told police that she had received a telephone call from Shaheed at about 11:00 p.m. the night of the robbery and murder, in which he sounded "strange" and "desperate" and had asked to see her. He came to her apartment at 9:00 a.m. the next day, and she watched him count "a lot of money" that he had spread out on her bed. When she asked him, "[D]id you rob someone?", Shaheed answered, "Yeah, something like that," and he later said, "[There was] so much blood * * * she wasn't moving fast enough * * * I shot her."

Another witness, Marquis Gray, testified that Shaheed had come to his house on New Year's Day, "acting weird," wearing black gloves, and talking about "robbing another store." Gray testified that, in the course of their conversation, Shaheed had said, "I got away with murder * * * I shot that bitch downtown," and that he had displayed a "large gun" that he referred to as "heat" and that he had pulled "out of his pants," while indicating his intention to use it to intimidate "everybody" in a proposed robbery.

At trial, the prosecution adduced testimony from two men who were jailed in the same unit with Shaheed. Michael McDonald and James Krueger testified, in varying terms, that Shaheed had admitted that he had killed Mabel Washington, but had stated that he wished that he "hadn't" and that he "did not mean to shoot her."

Shaheed was represented by a public defender, Perry L. Ancona, who afforded what we see to be outstanding, exemplary assistance of counsel in what was obviously a difficult case. Mr. Ancona's cross-examination of the state's witnesses was aggressive and wide-ranging, exploiting the frailties of witnesses for the state and testing the opinions of the experts and their methodologies. With what Mr. Ancona had in hand, his performance was a textbook example of what can be done to require the prosecution to prove the guilt of an accused beyond a reasonable doubt.

Basically, Shaheed's defense was one of alibi, although not formally made by pre-trial notice. He testified that he had eaten lunch at his father's house sometime between 11:00 a.m. and noon on Christmas Day and had then gone to his own home, where he remained alone until the next day. Ultimately, the court instructed the jury on the defense of alibi, noting in its charge to the jury that the "defendant claims that he was at some other place at the time of the offense."

Clearly, Mr.

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Bluebook (online)
State v. Shaheed, Unpublished Decision (9-28-2001), Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-shaheed-unpublished-decision-9-28-2001-ohioctapp-2001.