Payne v. Tennessee

501 U.S. 808 (1991)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

Payne (D), was convicted by a jury on two counts of first-degree murder and one count of assault with intent to commit murder in the first degree. He was sentenced to death for each of the murders and to 30 years in prison for the assault. The victims were 28-year-old Charisse Christopher, her 2-year-old daughter Lacie, and her 3-year-old son Nicholas. The three lived together in an apartment in Millington, Tennessee, across the hall from D's girlfriend, Bobbie Thomas. D visited Thomas' apartment several times in expectation of her return from her mother's house in Arkansas but found no one at home. On one visit, he left his overnight bag, containing clothes and other items for his weekend stay, in the hallway outside Thomas' apartment. With the bag were three cans of malt liquor. D passed the morning and early afternoon injecting cocaine and drinking beer. Later, he drove around the town with a friend taking turns reading a pornographic magazine. D returned to the apartment complex, entered the Christophers' apartment, and began making sexual advances towards Charisse. Charisse resisted, and D became violent. A neighbor who resided in the apartment directly beneath the Christophers heard Charisse screaming, '`Get out, get out,' as if she were telling the children to leave.' The noise briefly subsided and then began, '`horribly loud.'' The neighbor called the police after she heard a 'blood-curdling scream' from the Christophers' apartment. The police immediately encountered D, who was leaving the apartment building, so covered with blood that he appeared to be '`sweating blood.'' The officer confronted D, who responded, '`I'm the complainant.'' D struck the officer with the overnight bag, dropped his tennis shoes, and fled. Blood covered the walls and floor throughout the unit. Charisse and her children were lying on the floor in the kitchen. Nicholas, despite several wounds inflicted by a butcher knife that completely penetrated through his body from front to back, was still breathing. Miraculously, he survived, but not until after undergoing seven hours of surgery and a transfusion of 1,700 cc's of blood - 400 to 500 cc's more than his estimated normal blood volume. Charisse and Lacie were dead. Charisse's body was found on the kitchen floor on her back, her legs fully extended. She had sustained 42 direct knife wounds and 42 defensive wounds on her arms and hands. The wounds were caused by 41 separate thrusts of a butcher knife. None of the 84 wounds inflicted by D were individually fatal; rather, the cause of death was most likely bleeding from all of the wounds. Lacie's body was on the kitchen floor near her mother. She had suffered stab wounds to the chest, abdomen, back, and head. The murder weapon, a butcher knife, was found at her feet. D's baseball cap was snapped on her arm near her elbow. Three cans of malt liquor bearing D's fingerprints were found on a table near her body, and a fourth empty one was on the landing outside the apartment door. When eventually apprehended, D had '`a wild look about him. His pupils were contracted. He was foaming at the mouth, saliva. D had blood on his body and clothes and several scratches across his chest. Cocaine residue, a hypodermic syringe wrapper, and a cap from a hypodermic syringe was found in his pocked. His overnight bag, containing a bloody white shirt, was found in a nearby dumpster. D asserted that another man had raced by him as he was walking up the stairs to the floor where the Christophers lived. He stated that he had gotten blood on himself when, after hearing moans from the Christophers' apartment, he had tried to help the victims. He panicked and fled when he heard police sirens and noticed the blood on his clothes. The jury returned guilty verdicts against D on all counts. At sentencing, D presented the testimony of four witnesses: his mother and father, Bobbie Thomas, and Dr. John T. Hutson, a clinical psychologist specializing in criminal court evaluation work. P presented the testimony of Charisse's mother, Mary Zvolanek. When asked how Nicholas had been affected by the murders of his mother and sister, she responded: 'He cries for his mom. He doesn't seem to understand why she doesn't come home. And he cries for his sister Lacie. He comes to me many times during the week and asks me, Grandmama, do you miss my Lacie. And I tell him yes. He says I'm worried about my Lacie.' The prosecutor commented on the continuing effects of Nicholas' experience. D was sentenced to death. The Supreme Court of Tennessee affirmed rejecting D's contention that the admission of the grandmother's testimony and the State's closing argument constituted prejudicial violations of his rights under the Eighth Amendment as applied in Booth and Gathers. The court characterized the grandmother's testimony as 'technically irrelevant,' but concluded that it 'did not create a constitutionally unacceptable risk of an arbitrary imposition of the death penalty and was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.' The Supreme Court granted certiorari.