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State v. Ortiz6/10/2003
e then hit Correa several more times with the nail board before he threw the board over the fence that separated the Family Market Place parking lot from the railroad property. Ortiz said that Correa was still alive when he left the area because he could hear him breathing.
While they were typing up Ortiz's statement, the police gave him a soda and a sandwich. It took the police about two hours to prepare the document containing Ortiz's statement. They then decided to preserve what Ortiz had told them by using a videotape recorder. In front of a camera, the police read the typed statements to Ortiz and asked him whether he agreed with those statements, recording this colloquy on videotape. The entire interrogation took six to seven hours.
The autopsy revealed that Correa died from brain injuries and from skull factures caused by blunt-force trauma and that the manner of his death was homicide. According to the medical examiner who testified at the trial, Correa was five-feet nine-inches tall, weighed 157 pounds,*fn1 had a blood-alcohol level of 0.309 percent, and a urine-alcohol level of 0.435 percent at the time of the autopsy. The medical examiner explained at trial that the victim's blood-alcohol level provided a more accurate reading of Correa's actual level of intoxication at the time of the murder. He also said that although this amount of alcohol in a person of Correa's size "would be a minimal factor in his demise," it would have caused him to be impaired. The medical examiner recounted the multiple lacerations, contusions, and abrasions on the victim's body. He indicated that it was impossible to determine precisely how many times Correa was hit, but given the approximately thirty or so different injuries to his body, the number of blows probably was in the range of four to fifteen:
"[I]t would be unlikely to have a very low number because of the wide distribution of the wounds. There are wounds on the scalp. There are wounds on the lip. There are wounds on the thigh. * * * [S]o the wounds would have to be clustered in certain fields, but it would be impossible to come up with an exact number."
Ortiz testified at his trial and explained that, in September 1999 he was homeless. Like Correa, he sometimes slept at the Family Market Place. Ortiz and his associates survived on money obtained by panhandling. He was friends with Correa for ten to fifteen years, but he said that Correa had a reputation as a violent person. He then provided examples of Correa's previous acts of violence. Correa, he said, once hit him on the head with a big rock because he refused to share his beer with Correa. On another occasion Correa jumped Ortiz and hit him with a crate because Ortiz refused to share his beer with him. Correa also cut Ortiz's leg with a knife on one occasion because Ortiz would not buy him an orange. On another occasion, he saw Correa punch his girlfriend in the face. He even saw Correa attack other homeless people and once saw him inflict what he believed were skull fractures on one of his victims.
On September 21, 1999, the day of the fatal incident, Ortiz testified, he went to talk to Correa because he knew that people were after him. He said that he found Correa sleeping underneath the dumpster behind the Family Market Place. When he woke him, Correa supposedly swung at him with the nail board, striking him on the wrist as he tried to block the blows. After he managed to take the board away from Correa, Ortiz then hit Correa with it because he was afraid Correa would try to kill him.*fn2 When Ortiz started to walk away to dispose of the board, Correa tried to pull him down. Ortiz then turned toward Correa and struck him again a couple of times with the nail board.
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