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IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS OF TENNESSEE AT JACKSON
September 11, 2007 Session STATE OF TENNESSEE v. DERRICK SETTLES
Appeal from the Criminal Court for Shelby County No. 03-02541 Arthur T. Bennett, Judge

No. W2006-02350-CCA-R3-CD - Filed November 26, 2007

The Defendant, Derrick Settles, was convicted of two counts of first degree murder and two counts of possession of over .5 ounces of marijuana with the intent to sell. The jury sentenced him to life without the possibility of parole for one murder conviction, and the trial court ordered a consecutive life sentence for the other. The trial court also merged the possession offenses into a single conviction and imposed a concurrent sentence of one year for that conviction. In this appeal, the Defendant argues that the trial court erred by denying his pretrial motions to suppress the evidence recovered from a search of his apartment and his confession because he lacked the intellectual capacity to validly consent to the search or effectively waive the rights guaranteed him by Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 479 (1966). Following our review, we affirm the judgments of the trial court. Tenn. R. App. P. 3 Appeal as of Right; Judgment of the Criminal Court Affirmed; Remanded for Correction of Clerical Error DAVID H. WELLES, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which JOHN EVERETT WILLIAMS and ALAN E. GLENN , JJ., joined. William D. Massey, Lorna S. McClusky (on appeal); Mary K. Kent and Larry Nance (at trial); Assistant Public Defenders, Memphis, Tennessee, for the appellant, Derrick Settles. Robert E. Cooper, Jr., Attorney General and Reporter; Sophia S. Lee, Assistant Attorney General; William L. Gibbons, District Attorney General; and Dean Decandia, Assistant District Attorney General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee.

OPINION Factual Background

Jamie Crawford and Shawn Williams were both shot in the head at close range and killed during the early morning hours of December 5, 2002, in Memphis. Four days later, the Shelby County Sheriff's Department discovered the murder weapon and thirteen small bags of marijuana in the nineteen-year-old Defendant's apartment. After the Defendant was arrested, he gave a statement admitting that he had killed both victims. A grand jury indicted him for two counts of first degree murder and two counts of possession of marijuana with the intent to sell or deliver. Subsequently, the Defendant filed pretrial motions to suppress both the evidence recovered from his apartment and the inculpatory statement he gave to police, arguing that he did not validly consent to the search or effectively waive his Miranda rights. The trial court denied these motions,1 and the Defendant elected to have a jury trial. State's Evidence Officer Louie Hall of the Shelby County Sheriff's Department testified that he received a call at approximately 4:35 a.m. on December 5, 2002, regarding two suspicious people sitting in a vehicle located at 5301 Farm View Drive in Memphis. When he and his partner arrived at that location, they found a maroon, "older model Cadillac" sitting stationary with the engine running and the headlights on, and they observed two people (one male, one female) in the front seats who they initially thought were sleeping. When Officer Hall rapped on the driver's-side window, they did not stir. The female was in the driver's seat, and the male was in the passenger's seat. When Officer Hall opened the driver's-side door, the female occupant's arm fell out. He felt for a pulse, and there was none. He saw blood coming out of their noses, so he called for an ambulance before securing the scene. When the emergency medical technicians arrived, they confirmed that the car's occupants were dead. Officer Hall spoke with the resident of 5301 Farm View Drive. The resident had woken up to hear a car running outside. After going out to the car, seeing blood, and being unable to wake up the car's occupants, the resident called the sheriff's department. On cross-examination, Officer Hall testified that the car was parked in front of the only house on Farm View Drive and confirmed that it was "out in the country" in the Reagan Farm subdivision. Officer Hall turned off the headlights and the engine but did not touch anything else inside the car. The two victims were later identified as Shawn Williams and Jamie Crawford. Mrs. Dollann Williams testified that Shawn Williams was her son and that he was twentyfour years old when he died. Mrs. Amy Finnie testified that Jamie Crawford was her daughter, and that she was nineteen years old when she died. According to Mrs. Finnie, the victims were dating each other at the time they were killed.

The trial court held several pretrial evidentiary hearings during which expert testimony regarding the Defendant's intellectual capacity was presented on the issue of whether he consented to the search of his apartment or effectively waived his Miranda rights. This evidence and the trial court's rulings are detailed in the analysis section of this opinion.

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Forensic pathologist Dr. Teresa Campbell, testifying as an expert, stated that she conducted autopsies on both victims. Shawn Williams had three gunshot wounds that were all inflicted at a very close range, and Dr. Campbell determined that his death was caused by "[m]ultiple contact and near gunshot wounds to the head and neck." Jamie Crawford died from a single gunshot wound to the back of her head. Toxicology reports indicated that neither victim had drugs or alcohol in their system. Dr. Campbell recovered all four bullets from the victims. Paulette Sutton, the Director of Investigations for the Memphis Medical Examiner's Office, testified as an expert in bloodstain pattern analysis. She examined the interior of the car in which the victims were found and concluded that the bloodstain pattern on the backseat and rear windows was consistent with someone shooting the victims from the driver's side of the backseat while leaning forward toward the center of the car. Lieutenant John Mills, a detective with the homicide division of the Shelby County Sheriff's Department, testified that he arrived at the crime scene after the victims were pronounced dead by medical personnel. He described how the victims appeared when he arrived: [I]f you [were] just looking at them, you'd think they both were asleep. Both their heads were tilted to the left in a relaxed position. The car was in park. The male on the right, his arm was on the console, his other arm was in his lap, and his feet were crossed. However, they were bleeding from their mouths, noses and the backs of their heads. After the bodies were identified and removed, the vehicle in which they were discovered was delivered to a crime-scene laboratory for forensic processing. Bloodstain analysis was conducted, but no identifiable fingerprints were recovered from the car. Also, the blood in the car was analyzed and determined to have come only from the two victims. Lieutenant Mills interviewed the victims' families in an attempt to "get some leads." After talking with an ex-girlfriend of Shawn Williams, he learned that the Defendant was friends with Mr. Williams and decided to interview him "[t]o follow-up, to get him to point us in a direction so we could close--get the loop smaller of who was with these two people that night." At that time, the Defendant was not a suspect but was considered a potential witness. Lieutenant Mills and another detective, Sergeant Raymond Sides, as well as some uniformed officers from the Memphis Police Department's Metropolitan Gang Unit, went to the Defendant's apartment. On the way there, Lieutenant Mills discovered that an unrelated warrant had previously been issued for the Defendant's arrest for aggravated burglary. On arrival, they showed a picture of the Defendant to the apartment complex's maintenance man and a neighbor to confirm that the Defendant lived in apartment number seven. When they knocked on the apartment's door, there was no answer, but "one of the officers with [Lieutenant Mills] said that a male just looked out the side

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window curtain and closed it." At that point, the maintenance man gave them a key to the apartment because he was worried the policemen would "kick the door in." They used the key to enter the apartment, and one of the uniformed officers found the Defendant hiding in a closet. The Defendant then consented to a search of his apartment, and "a silver .357 Smith and Wesson" magnum revolver, "a black automatic pistol, and 13 bags of a leafy green substance" were discovered under the bathroom sink inside a space within the wall that had been "kicked out." In addition, a box of "baggies" and a scale were found on a table in the bedroom, and there were two boxes of ammunition2 on a shelf in the closet. The Smith and Wesson revolver held six bullets, but when it was discovered it contained only two live rounds. Four cellular telephones were also recovered from the apartment. Lieutenant Mills testified that in his eighteen years of experience working in the "patrol division," he learned that people who sell drugs "use scales to get the correct amount [of drugs] in each bag, they use baggies, and seal them up and tie a knot in them." He opined that the thirteen sealed bags discovered in the Defendant's apartment "were basically the same size" as bags of drugs normally prepared for sale and said that they were all "almost exactly" the same weight. Officer Murray Wilson of the Memphis Police Department testified that in the evidence room of the Memphis police station, he tested the "green leafy substance" recovered from the Defendant's apartment and confirmed that it was marijuana. In addition, Erica Moody Katherine, a special agent forensic scientist with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, testified as an expert in controlled substance identification. Ms. Katherine examined the thirteen bags of "a green leafy substance" recovered from the Defendant's apartment and concluded that they contained 20.6 grams of marijuana. Lieutenant Mills further testified that after the search, he took the Defendant to the police station "for processing and to talk to him." As they walked out of the Defendant's apartment, his girlfriend, Kayla Cunningham, approached them and then agreed to also go "downtown" and give a statement. Lieutenant Mills took Ms. Cunningham's statement first, and she indicated that the Defendant was responsible for the murders of Shawn Williams and Jamie Crawford. Lieutenant Mills testified that they asked the Defendant some preliminary questions regarding his educational background, marital status, and whether he wore glasses and that they then read the Defendant his Miranda rights and explained them to him before he agreed to give a statement. The Defendant signed a waiver of his Miranda rights before answering questions concerning the murders. According to Lieutenant Mills, the Defendant was "calm" and "collected"; he did not appear to be intoxicated and did not have the odor of burnt marijuana on him.

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The ammunition found in the closet was not the same caliber as either handgun recovered from the apartment.

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An audiocassette tape recording of the Defendant's statement was then accepted into evidence and played aloud. Copies of a fifty-nine-page transcript of the Defendant's statement were also passed out to the jurors so they could read along. In the Defendant's statement, he said that he received "disability" payments but supplemented his income by selling drugs. Specifically, he said that he dealt marijuana but did not sell "crack" and that by doing so, he made "a little extra . . . a hundred dollars here, a hundred dollars there." The Defendant also said in his recorded statement that Shawn Williams and Jamie Crawford came over to his house at approximately 7:30 p.m. on December 4, 2002. At first, the three of them smoked marijuana and "just killed some time." However, "around" 11:30 p.m. or 12:30 a.m., the Defendant, who did not own a car, offered Mr. Williams twenty dollars to drive him to an unspecified location so that he could sell a "SKS" assault rifle.3 Mr. Williams reluctantly agreed to go with the Defendant to sell the gun, but Ms. Crawford drove his car because Mr. Williams was "high" and "sleepy." The Defendant explained in his statement that as they drove, he attempted to contact his buyer on the telephone but said that the individual was "bullshitting" by not answering the telephone even though he was home; so they drove to his house anyway. They arrived at the house and, despite the fact that there were not any lights on, the Defendant decided to get out of the car and "check and see who [was] in the house." He explained that he had a .357 Smith and Wesson pistol in his pocket and that Mr. Williams was also armed with a "long, black" pistol that resembled a "Desert Eagle." In his statement, the Defendant described what happened after he exited the car: A: I got to the house. I said I was talking to myself I am going to knock on the door [sic]. I got out of the car. I was walking towards door [sic]. As I was walked [sic] to the door I was never going fast. I was trying to listen [to] them to park the car. Because I had the loaded [rifle] in the car . . . . Did you take it up to the door up [sic] with you? Naw. The only thing I took to the door with me was my pistol and my handcuffs because I didn't [. . . .] Ok. You left the [rifle] in the car? Yeah in the car.

Q: A:

Q: A:

According to the Defendant's statement, he purchased the rifle earlier that evening from an individual whose name he could not recall for $80 and planned to sell it for $150 or more. To garner the profit, he obtained bullets for the rifle and loaded it because he knew he could sell it for more money if it was loaded.

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Q: A: Q: A: Q: A:

Where? In the backseat with them. You left it loaded in the backseat? Yeah. You are . . . you are walking up to the front door? Yeah. And the whole time I constantly [sic] looking back because I am trying to listen to see if they going [sic] to park. So I go to the door. I knock on the door two times real quick because it like they fixing back out of the driveway on me [sic]. So I knocked on the door real quick two times and ran back to the car and said, "Man, (inaudible)." [Mr. Williams] put the pistol on me and grabbed the [rifle]. Alright. By that time, I knocked the [rifle] out of the way and just shot him real quick. ....

Q: A:

Q: A: Q: A:

Alright. Where did you shoot him at [sic]? In the head. And what did he do then? He died. He was dead. ....

A. Q: A: Q: A:

. . . I shot him in the back of the head like wow . . . wow . . . real quick. Just two times? Yea. Two times. Now. What about the driver girl, Jamie? What was she doing? I shot both of them. I didn't take a chance.

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Q: A:

You think she had a weapon? Naw but I knew they was in it together [sic] they were going around setting people's up for about a couple of months now. Just going around setting people up.

On the audiotape recording, the Defendant further stated that he had "jumped back in" the car on the driver's side and was "pretty much" behind the driver's seat when he shot the victims. After the shootings, he took Mr. Williams's pistol and the assault rifle and ran. He stashed those weapons "by some woods" but came back later the same night to retrieve them. He threw the shell casings from the four spent bullets in a ditch "[b]ecause [he] was scared and [he] already knew it was evidence." The next day, the Defendant sold the rifle for $150 and Mr. Williams' pistol for $200, but he did not know to whom he sold them. He also stated that he told Ms. Cunningham the day after the killings that he was "real spooked" because he had "shot two people." Regarding the location where the shooting occurred, the Defendant stated that he was "not even for sure" which house the supposed buyer lived in but that he only followed directions provided by an unknown person. He stated that he "[n]ever knew who lived there." Thomas Sesson testified that he lived at 6288 Farm Hill Drive, next to 5301 Farm View Drive where the victims were found dead. On December 5, 2002, he was driving home from work at his usual time, approximately 1:10 a.m., when he saw a "burgundy Cadillac" sitting in the driveway of 5301 Farm View Drive "with the lights on bright." The car was parked, but he did not notice whether anyone was in the car. Later, he learned from a neighbor that the car's two occupants had been shot and killed. Sergeant Raymond Sides, also a detective with the Shelby County Sheriff's Department, testified that he delivered the handguns discovered in the Defendant's apartment and the bullets recovered from the victims' bodies to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. Steve Scott, a special agent forensic scientist with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation's Firearms Identification Unit, testified as an expert in firearms identification, and he stated that he was able to match bullets recovered from the victims' bodies to the .357 caliber Smith and Wesson magnum revolver recovered from the Defendant's apartment. He detailed the microscopic-comparison process utilized to determine whether a certain bullet was fired from a specific gun and stated that, based on his testing, at least one bullet recovered from each victim in this case "had been fired through the barrel of [the Smith and Wesson revolver taken from the Defendant's apartment] and no other revolver in the world." Defense Proof Christin Lee testified that he was the Defendant's friend and had known him for eleven years. He stated that on December 4, 2002, he arrived at the Defendant's apartment with another friend, Michael Jones, at approximately 5:30 p.m. and did not leave until approximately 2:00 a.m. the following morning. Mr. Lee testified that the Defendant's brother, Gary, "and a girl named Star and -7-

a dude named Tyron" were all at the Defendant's apartment that night with the victims. Mr. Lee explained that this group "was all over at [the Defendant's] house sitting down playing, playing video games, playing beats--playing beats on the drum machine. We was [sic] just sitting around drinking and having fun. Then we stayed there the rest of the night after everybody had left." Further, Mr. Lee testified that the victims left the gathering after a "guy named Bear" but that he did not recall at what time that was. According to Mr. Lee, the Defendant's mother came by the apartment that night and was upset that the Defendant was having the gathering because "she had just paid the rent." However, he and the Defendant, along with Michael Jones, stayed at the apartment until they went to a Krystal restaurant at approximately 2:00 a.m. and ate "for a minute." Mr. Lee stated that Mr. Jones and the Defendant dropped him off at his house after they ate at Krystal. On cross-examination, Mr. Lee admitted that he had visited the Defendant in jail "a lot," and they had discussed the fact that Mr. Lee would testify for him at his trial. He also confirmed that he had never before approached the police or the district attorney's office with information about the Defendant's alibi even though the Defendant had been in jail awaiting trial for over three years. Michael Jones testified that he had known the Defendant since 1998 when they were in high school together. Mr. Jones stated that he was at the Defendant's apartment on the evening of December 4, 2002. He said that the victims were there, as well as "Gary, Star, some other girl, and Bear" and that they were all "[p]laying video games and rapping and drinking beer." Mr. Jones did not know Mr. Williams but learned his name that night. According to Mr. Jones, the victims left the apartment with Gary and Star after the Defendant's mother "came by," but he and Mr. Lee stayed until 2:00 a.m. when the three of them went to Krystal. After eating, he drove Mr. Lee home and then took the Defendant back to his apartment at approximately 3:00 a.m. Mr. Jones also confirmed that, even though he had information about the Defendant's alibi, he did not approach anyone other than the victim's mother about it until "probably about" one week before his trial. He admitted on cross-examination that he had visited the Defendant in jail but denied that they ever discussed his case. He did say however that he had discussed the case with Mr. Lee "somewhat." The Defendant did not testify, and after deliberating, the jury convicted him on all counts. Sentencing Subsequently, an initial sentencing hearing was held in order for the jury to receive evidence on whether certain aggravating factors were present during the Defendant's murder of Jamie Crawford. After the hearing and further deliberation, the jury unanimously found that the State had proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Defendant's murder of Jamie Crawford (count two of his indictment) was knowingly committed while the Defendant had a substantial role in committing a first degree murder. See Tenn. Code Ann.

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