United States v. Anthony Steven Wright, Also Known as Tony Zappa

340 F.3d 724, 62 Fed. R. Serv. 455, 2003 U.S. App. LEXIS 17747, 2003 WL 22004838
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
DecidedAugust 26, 2003
Docket02-3445
StatusPublished
Cited by28 cases

This text of 340 F.3d 724 (United States v. Anthony Steven Wright, Also Known as Tony Zappa) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Anthony Steven Wright, Also Known as Tony Zappa, 340 F.3d 724, 62 Fed. R. Serv. 455, 2003 U.S. App. LEXIS 17747, 2003 WL 22004838 (8th Cir. 2003).

Opinion

JOHN R. GIBSON, Circuit Judge.

After a two-week trial, a jury found Anthony Steven Wright guilty of two federal offenses. He was convicted on Count I of kidnaping in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1201 (2000) and on Count II of knowingly brandishing a firearm in furtherance of a ciime of violence in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A) (2000). The district court 2 sentenced Wright to a term of life imprisonment on the kidnaping count and a term of seven years on the firearms count, with the two sentences to be served consecutively. On appeal, Wright argues that the evidence is insufficient to support his two convictions, that the district court erred by allowing inadmissible hearsay evidence, that the district court erred in failing to impanel a fair and impartial jury, and that the district court erred by sentencing him as a career offender. We affirm both Wright’s conviction and sentence.

We recite the facts in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdict. At approximately 7 p.m. on April 6, 2001, Wright approached seventeen-year-old Anne Sluti in the parking lot of the Hilltop Mall in Kearney, Nebraska. He pointed a gun at her and ordered her into his blue Suburban, which was parked next to her car. He grabbed her and pushed her into the driver’s side of the Suburban. She slid across the seat and got out of the car on the passenger side, but Wright caught her and repeatedly hit her with his fists. As he pushed her back into the Suburban, she screamed for help, but he kept hitting her until she blacked out. 3 A number of people in the parking lot heard Sluti screaming and saw Wright beating her. Two of the witnesses called 911 on their cell phones. .One of the callers, Janet Hadwiger, testified that she saw that “the front passenger door was open and that the girl was bracing herself to not go into that vehicle,” that Wright hit Sluti “really hard,” that he “just kept hitting her,” maybe a “dozen” times. The other caller, Carrie Bran, stated that she heard “frightful” screaming and that when she turned to look, she saw a man hitting a girl and that he kept hitting her until he finally pushed her into the car and drove off. 4

Upon receiving these emergency calls, Kearney police officer Michael Bogard arrived at the mall parking lot and found Sluti’s belongings lying on the ground, including mittens, music CDs, and her purse, which contained her identification. Bo-gard contacted Sluti’s parents and told them about the assault in the parking lot; Sluti’s mother, Elaine Sluti, was able to confirm that the belongings left behind were in fact Anne’s.

With Sluti lying on the floorboard, Wright traveled north from Kearney, Nebraska. At some point, Sluti came to and sat up in the seat. They arrived at a gas station in Ainsworth, Nebraska at approxi *728 mately 10:15 p.m. Wright made Sluti get back on the floor of the Suburban. He used one chain to bind Sluti’s hands behind her back and another chain to bind her feet and ordered her to remain on the floor and to be quiet. Wright went into the station and asked for directions. Brandon Doke, a customer at the station, spoke with Wright and looked outside and saw the Suburban but was unable to see anyone in the vehicle.

Wright continued to travel north from Ainsworth to Springview, Nebraska, which is thirteen miles from the South Dakota border. While driving down the road, he accidentally rolled the Suburban into a ditch. Wright wrapped a chain around one of Sluti’s wrists, and they walked from the Suburban to a nearby farmhouse, where he cut the phone line and stole a pickup truck parked out front. He was not able to pull the Suburban out of the ditch with the pickup truck, so he drove into town with Sluti in the passenger seat of the pickup truck and stole a front-end loader, which Wright used to get the Suburban out of the ditch. While Wright was busy with the Suburban, Sluti was able to remove the chain on her wrist and throw it in a ditch. The chain was later discovered by a neighbor who turned it over to the local sheriff.

Wright took Sluti and left Nebraska, passed through South Dakota, and the next day, stopped the Suburban in a field. Sluti testified that she believed the field was in Wyoming. He used duct tape to bind Sluti’s hands tightly behind her back and duct-taped her legs together in several places and then blindfolded her. Wright told Sluti, “Well, I’ll make you a deal. If you can get the tape off, I’ll let you go.” Sluti hopped over to a barbed-wire fence where she attempted to cut the duct tape off her wrists with the barbed wire. Instead, in the process, she cut her wrist and hand. She told him that her shoulders hurt from being bound so tightly and asked him to take the tape off. He responded, “No, you whine too much.” After watching her struggle, Wright removed the duct tape from around her legs. He tried to remove the duct tape from her wrists first with a key, then a glass shard, and then a razor blade, but still was unable to get the tape off, so he tried to burn it off with a lighter. In the process, he burned her arm.

Later that evening, between 9:50 and 10:00 p.m., Wright told Sluti to call one of her friends but not her parents and tell the friend that she had gone on vacation. Wright held his ear closely to the phone, so he could monitor the conversation. Slu-ti called home and asked for “Elaine.” Unbeknownst to Wright, Elaine is Anne’s mother. A friend of the family answered the phone and spoke to Anne briefly. When Anne made no mention of being on vacation, Wright became angry and made her hang up. He then told her to call another friend. Anne called Jenessa Caha. When Caha asked where she was, Anne was forced to hang up the phone again.

The next morning, on April 8, 2001, Wright duct-taped Anne Sluti’s legs and wrists and placed duct tape across her eyes. He then drove her to a remote location, near Livingston, Montana, and cut off her clothes with a knife. She pleaded with him not to rape her and told him she was a virgin. He raped her. He told her afterwards he was going to take her to the mountains and rape her four times a day.

Later that morning, Wright took Sluti and they entered Mark Wesen’s cabin, just west of Livingston. Wright stole Wesen’s Remington model 721 rifle from the cabin. They then went inside a nearby cabin. While Wright was upstairs, Sluti found a telephone. She turned on the water and *729 turned up the radio and then dialed 911 and asked for help. Sluti told the 911 dispatcher that she was from Nebraska and that she had been kidnaped. Wright discovered Sluti on the phone and started yelling at her. Wright immediately took items from the cabin, loaded up the Suburban, and ordered Sluti to get in and he down on the seat. As they drove away, he started yelling at her, asking her why she called the police, and saying something like “I might as well shoot you in the head now 5 ’ and “It’s all over for you.” By the time the sheriff and SWAT team arrived at the cabin, Wright and Sluti were gone.

After leaving Livingston, Wright took Sluti to Belgrade, Montana.

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Bluebook (online)
340 F.3d 724, 62 Fed. R. Serv. 455, 2003 U.S. App. LEXIS 17747, 2003 WL 22004838, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-anthony-steven-wright-also-known-as-tony-zappa-ca8-2003.