State v. Singleton

117 So. 3d 306, 2013 WL 3197487, 2013 La. App. LEXIS 1287
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedJune 26, 2013
DocketNo. 48,114-KA
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 117 So. 3d 306 (State v. Singleton) 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. Singleton, 117 So. 3d 306, 2013 WL 3197487, 2013 La. App. LEXIS 1287 (La. Ct. App. 2013).

Opinion

MOORE, J.

It Charged with attempted second degree murder, Billy T. Singleton was found guilty of aggravated battery and sentenced to eight years at hard labor. He now appeals, urging the evidence was insufficient to convict and the sentence is excessive. We affirm.

Factual Background

Singleton’s victim was his wife, Sheron-da. Sheronda testified that in October 2010, their relationship was “not good,” and she recently told him she wanted a divorce because he was having an affair with another woman. Singleton admitted the affair but insisted he had broken it off about two months earlier.

On October 12, 2010, Singleton drove Sheronda from their home in Bernice, ostensibly to go to a car dealer in Minden and make a down payment on a 2007 Malibu. However, Singleton turned off Hwy. 2, saying he wanted to check on his mother’s “sinking” grave; Sheronda protested that he was not going the right way to the cemetery, and he replied, “It’s gonna be over.” He turned onto a remote oilfield access road, stopped the car and then pulled a .38 cal. RG revolver from under the driver’s seat. The two wrestled over the gun and, ultimately, three shots were fired, but the pair gave divergent accounts of what happened.

Sheronda testified that she never got possession of the gun, but jumped out of the car, begging him not to shoot her; he then exited the car, ran around the back and confronted her on the passenger side. Despite her pleas, he shot her in the chest. He then turned the gun on himself and pulled the trigger, but it would not fire. He pointed the gun at the ground and tried | ¡.again, and this time it fired; he then pointed it' at his own chest and fired successfully. He dropped the gun; Sher-onda picked it up and threw it into the woods. Singleton then took out his cell phone and called his sister; he handed the phone to Sheronda, and she told the sister it was true, Singleton had shot her and [308]*308then shot himself.1 She was certain that both shots were fired outside the ear. After she tossed the gun, Sheronda called 911.

Singleton testified that they had been arguing, in part over her cell phone; he reached under the seat where he had stashed a gun, grabbed it and placed it on the seat between them. He insisted he did this only to scare her, but she reached for the gun and they wrestled over it. She got her hand on the handle and the gun discharged accidentally, striking her. He jumped out of the car and ran to the passenger door to check on her, but she shot him point-blank through the open window. He fell and lost consciousness. He maintained that Sheronda’s bullet wound was purely accidental.

Shortly after 4 p.m., Claiborne Parish 911 received a call from Sheronda reporting that Singleton had shot her and then turned the gun on himself. Because they were so deep in the woods, the operator told Sheronda to get in the car and “lay on the horn” to help the responders find them. EMTs arrived, and Sheronda and Singleton were airlifted to LSU Medical Center in Shreveport.

Detective Keel of the Claiborne Parish Sheriffs Office arrived shortly after the EMTs. He saw Sheronda standing in the front passenger door and Singleton lying on the ground. He did not interview them except to ask |3Sheronda where she had thrown the gun; she pointed into the woods. With the aid of a canine officer, they located the revolver, which had three cartridges fired from the chamber. Det. Keel found a bullet hole in the passenger door armrest and a bullet inside the door itself; it appeared that the bullet had entered the car door from a downward angle. He testified there was no evidence the gun had been fired inside the car. He verified lab reports showing the bullet recovered from the car door had been fired from the RG revolver found in the nearby woods.

Dr. Mary Edens, a professor of emergency medicine at LSU, treated both victims at the LSU emergency room. She testified that Sheronda had one gunshot wound to the right side of her chest, below the clavicle, and another to the right del-toid; because the wound was close to the lung and several arteries, it could have been lethal. Singleton had a wound to the left side of his chest, and another to the scapular area on his back; he had a collapsed lung. Because Dr. Edens had no training in forensic medicine, she would not state which wounds were entrance or exit.

It transpired that five days before the shooting, Singleton had been at the Union Parish Courthouse when he approached Det. Derian Brown, an investigator with the Union Parish Sheriffs Office, and said he “had a friend that he worked with that told him [Singleton] that he was going to shoot his wife and then turn around and kill himself.” Singleton then asked Det. Brown, “Would my friend get in trouble if — by making these kind of threats toward his wife[?]” Det. Brown replied yes, he could get in trouble if she reported it, and asked for the name of the person Singleton was preferring to, but Singleton replied he “did not want to get his friend in trouble,” and then left the building. Det. Brown testified that at the time, he did not realize Singleton might have been talking about himself. Singleton acknowledged talking to Det. Brown, and admitted he “was lying about the friend,” but maintained he had really been talking about his ex-girlfriend.

The state charged Singleton by bill of information with attempted second degree [309]*309murder and aggravated assault with a firearm; however, the state dismissed the aggravated assault charge and proceeded to trial before a 12-member jury in May 2012. After a three-day trial, the jury returned a verdict of guilty of the lesser included offense of aggravated battery. In July 2012, the court sentenced him to eight years at hard labor, with credit for time served (about 1 % years). He filed a motion to reconsider sentence, which was denied.

Singleton now appeals, raising two assignments of error.

Discussion: Sufficiency of the Evidence

By his first assignment of error, Singleton urges the state failed to present sufficient evidence to support the verdict of guilty of aggravated battery. He concedes that the case hinges on credibility— his version of the shootings versus Sheron-da’s — but contends that her testimony was “so inconsistent and incredible as to warrant review and acquittal” under the Jackson standard, as the courts stated in dictum in State v. Richardson, 425 So.2d 1228 (La.1983), and State v. Lewis, 577 So.2d 799 (La.App. 2 Cir.), writ denied, 582 So.2d 1304 (1991). In support, he shows that there was no evidence of any prior physical violence between him and Sheron-da, 15and no evidence that he was referring to himself when he spoke to Det. Brown at the Union Parish courthouse, thus defeating the proof of motive to harm Sheronda. He also argues that the bullet recovered from the door was traveling in a downward direction, a forensic fact inconsistent with Sheronda’s claim that he shot her while she was standing next to the car; he suggests the more logical finding would be that the gun discharged in the car during a struggle, as he testified. He concludes that the proof of an accident undermines the verdict of aggravated battery.

The standard of appellate review for sufficiency of the evidence is whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Jackson v. Virginia,

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Bluebook (online)
117 So. 3d 306, 2013 WL 3197487, 2013 La. App. LEXIS 1287, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-singleton-lactapp-2013.