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Wooten v. State11/9/2005
e was convicted of first-degree murder rather than second-degree murder in the beating death of his wife. Likewise, the hearsay evidence in the present case that appellant had recently followed and committed a battery upon the victim was prejudicial, and the trial court abused its discretion in admitting it. I would reverse and remand for retrial, and I respectfully dissent.
Hart and Crabtree, JJ., join in this dissent.
Josephine Linker Hart, Judge, dissenting.
I agree with Judge Pittman that the admission of Mrs. Stone's statement through the testimony of Lieutenant Dickerson was inadmissible hearsay that was not subject to any exception, and I would reverse on that point. I write separately, however, because I believe that Wooten's second argument, that the trial court abused its discretion when it excluded the testimony of witnesses that could have provided evidence of his mens rea, is at least as strong a basis for reversal.
There is no dispute that this was a particularly heinous crime; it is difficult to imagine a more brutal homicide, or one that more loudly cries out for retribution. However, the fact that Mrs. Stone was so savagely killed does not excuse the trial court, or this court for that matter, from dispassionately applying the law.
It is worth emphasizing that there is but a single disputed element in this case- Wooten's culpable mental state. I disagree with the majority's contention that the act itself provides "overwhelming" evidence of this element; I believe that the manner in which Mrs. Stone was killed was at least as likely to be the product of "extreme emotional disturbance" as the purposeful mental state that the majority apparently finds self-evident. The distinction is not trivial; in this case, it is the difference between first-degree murder and manslaughter.
Accordingly, I find it unacceptable that the majority has affirmed the trial court's decision to prevent Wooten from putting on his complete defense. Without testimony concerning what Mrs. Stone was capable of when she was rejected by a lover, the testimony of Wooten's expert was essentially presented in the kind of theoretical vacuum that makes it easy to be ignored by a jury. The fact that the trial court crippled Wooten's case is even more egregious because it allowed the rank hearsay of Mrs. Stone's statement to police to be an unassailable characterization of Wooten's relationship with the victim. Whether Wooten's act was that of a cold-hearted brute or a man driven to the brink by a fatal attraction was the jury's call to make. I would reverse and remand this case for the jury to make that call.
I respectfully dissent.
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