State v. Williams

347 So.3d 1023

STATE of Louisiana

v.Arthur WILLIAMS, Jr.

NO. 20-KA-428

Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Fifth Circuit.

April 28, 2021

COUNSEL FOR PLAINTIFF/APPELLEE, STATE OF LOUISIANA Honorable Bridget A. Dinvaut, Justin B. LaCour

COUNSEL FOR DEFENDANT/APPELLANT, ARTHUR WILLIAMS, JR., Bertha M. Hillman

Panel composed of Judges Jude G. Gravois, Marc E. Johnson, and Hans J. Liljeberg

GRAVOIS, J.

Defendant, Arthur Williams, Jr., appeals the sentence the trial court imposed on him after a jury convicted him of aggravated second degree battery. For the reasons fully discussed below, we affirm defendant's conviction and sentence. Further, we remand this matter to the trial court for correction of the Uniform Commitment Order and a specified minute entry.

PROCEDURAL HISTORY

On June 3, 2019, the St. John the Baptist Parish District Attorney filed a bill of information charging defendant, Arthur Williams, Jr., with aggravated second degree battery in violation of La. R.S. 14:34.7.¹ Defendant was arraigned on June 19, 2019 and pled not guilty. On December 11, 2019, a six-person jury found defendant guilty as charged.

On January 3, 2020, the State filed a habitual offender bill of information, alleging defendant to be a fourth-felony offender. On March 9, 2020, the State filed an amended habitual offender bill of information, alleging defendant to be a second-felony offender. On that same date, the trial court adjudicated defendant as a second-felony offender and then sentenced defendant to twenty-four years’ imprisonment at hard labor.²

On June 17, 2020, defendant filed a motion to reconsider sentence, requesting that his twenty-four-year sentence at hard labor be served "consecutively" with his prior life sentence.³ The trial court denied this motion on July 24, 2020. Prior to this ruling, on June 17, 2020, defendant also filed an amended motion to reconsider sentence, wherein defendant moved the court to re-impose his sentence to be served "concurrently" with his prior life sentence. This motion was not ruled upon by the trial court at that time. On July 23, 2020, defendant filed a pro se motion for appeal, which was granted by the trial court the following day.

On July 29, 2020, the State filed a Motion to Reconsider Order Granting Defendant's Motion For Appeal and Designation of Record, arguing that the motion for appeal was untimely because it was filed four months after defendant's conviction and sentence. On August 12, 2020, the trial court issued an order finding that defendant's motion for appeal was timely filed.⁴

On December 9, 2020, defendant filed a Motion to Remand, Suspend Briefing and Reset Briefing Scheduling, which this Court granted on December 18, 2020. This Court ordered the trial court to render a ruling on defendant's amended motion to reconsider sentence and for the trial court to supplement the appellate record with the ruling. Following a hearing on January 11, 2021, the trial court issued a written judgment on January 13, 2021, granting defendant's amended motion and ordering that his twenty-four-year sentence shall run concurrently with any sentence defendant is now serving. The instant appeal followed.

FACTS

On the evening of April 23, 2019, Monica Howard Walker returned home with defendant, her significant other at the time. Upon returning home, she sat on her bed and changed her clothes. Her cell phone then rang, but she did not answer it. She picked it up and placed it back down. When defendant asked who called her, she replied that it was no one. Defendant then asked for her phone, but she would not give him the phone. She testified that she told defendant, "it's somebody I just don't want to talk to," and he replied, "if you don't give me that phone I'm going to show you what I'm going to do." Defendant then retrieved a belt and "whacked" her hand for the first time. When defendant hit her again, she threw the cell phone to him but did not give him the passcode. After he hit her another time, she provided defendant with the passcode. Defendant then went through her messages and called people from her phone.

Defendant continued to hit Ms. Walker with the belt again and again. Ms. Walker, crying, jumped in the corner between her bed and nightstand. Defendant picked up a pipe and accused her of cheating on him.⁵ She denied cheating on him, and she told him that she was tired and wanted to get ready for bed. Defendant then hit her with the pipe on her fingers, breaking two of them. She begged him to stop, and she recalled defendant saying, "b*tch, take your lick." After he put the pipe down, defendant retrieved a clothes iron. He asked Ms. Walker to admit that she cheated on him, or he would burn her with the iron. She testified that after she denied cheating on defendant, he "came at [her] with the iron." Defendant took the iron and laid it on her arm.

Ms. Walker testified that she told defendant that she needed to go to the hospital, but he said that she was not going to a hospital. He also said, "I'm going to make sure you don't get out of here." After suffering the whole night with her injuries, she told defendant to bring her to his mother's house. Defendant said that he would bring her to the hospital because he did not want his mother "fussing" at him. At the hospital, while defendant was looking down at his phone, Ms. Walker indicated to the triage nurse that defendant caused her injuries. The nurse alerted the emergency room staff about the situation. Ms. Walker stated that defendant played on his cell phone and acted like he did not do anything to her.

At trial, Ms. Walker testified that she previously had surgery on her fingers and another surgery was scheduled because her fingers were not healing correctly. She has pins and screws in both of her fingers and goes to therapy three times a week. She indicated that the iron print was still visible on her arm and that it was a constant reminder of what had happened to her. She confirmed that she told the police what occurred and that she provided permission to search her residence. Ms. Walker testified that previously, in February 2019, she went to the emergency room for treatment after defendant burned her with an iron. She did not tell the police at that time about the incident because she was scared. She denied attacking or causing injury to defendant on April 23, 2019. She later confirmed that she and defendant had physically fought previously.

Latoya Mason, a registered nurse in the emergency room at Ochsner–River Parishes, testified that Ms. Walker was her patient on April 24, 2019. She testified that Ms. Walker had a burn to her right forearm and that Ms. Walker's rings had to be cut off because her fingers were swollen. Another person was with Ms. Walker, who was identified as "her old man," and he kept his head down and played with his phone. Ms. Mason explained that she told Ms. Walker that she needed to collect a urine sample, and she took Ms. Walker into the bathroom. She then asked Ms. Walker if the individual in the room was abusing her, and Ms. Walker confirmed that such was the case. She informed Ms. Walker that she had to call the police.

Dr. Claude Craighead, an emergency room doctor at Ochsner–River Parishes, testified as an expert in general medicine. Dr. Craighead testified that he treated Ms. Walker, who had a broken finger, which caused the need for her ring to be cut off, a soft tissue contusion on the outside of her head, and a superficial second-degree burn on her right arm. He recalled Ms. Walker rating her pain as ten out of ten. He denied that Ms. Walker appeared intoxicated.

Deputy Benjamin Teekell with the St. John the Baptist Parish Sheriff's Office was dispatched to the emergency room at Ochsner–River Parishes on April 24, 2019. Deputy Teekell explained that after he separated Ms. Walker from defendant, she told him that she had been beaten with a metal pipe, beaten with a belt with a metal buckle, and burned with an iron. He recalled observing several injuries on Ms. Walker. He testified that Ms. Walker said that defendant attacked her at their home. After Ms. Walker signed a consent to search form, they went to her residence at 169 West 5th Street in Reserve where a metal pipe, a belt with a metal buckle, and an iron were seized from the bedroom. He confirmed that a DNA search warrant was obtained for a buccal swab from defendant. Deputy Teekell testified that on April 24, 2019, he arrested defendant for aggravated second degree battery.

Deputy Jenni Estraca, a crime scene officer with the St. John the Baptist Parish Sheriff's Office, testified that she was dispatched to 169 West 5th Street in Reserve on April 24, 2019. She collected evidence from the residence, including a clothes iron, a belt, a pillowcase, and a metal pipe. On April 25, 2019, she collected a swab for DNA testing from the metal pipe, and she sent the evidence to the Louisiana State Police Crime Lab for further analysis. She processed the pipe and clothes iron for latent fingerprints, and she collected a buccal swab from defendant and Ms. Walker.

Elizabeth Hamilton, a DNA analyst at the Louisiana State Police Crime Lab, testified as an expert in the field of DNA analysis. She testified that she analyzed several items in this case, including a pillowcase, a swab from a metal pipe, two swabs from a clothes iron, and reference samples from defendant and the victim. She testified that the DNA profile obtained from the reference sample of Ms. Walker could not be excluded as the donor of the DNA profile obtained from the swab of the suspected blood taken from the pillowcase. She testified that the DNA profile obtained from the swab of the suspected blood taken from the metal pipe was consistent with the DNA profile obtained from the reference sample from defendant. She also stated that the DNA profile obtained from the swab from the clothes iron was consistent with being a mixture of DNA from a minimum of two contributors with one major...