Anthony Stanley was sentenced to death by the State of Alabama for the murder of Henry Smith
According to court documents Anthony Smith and his wife would invite Henry Smith over to their home. Henry Smith would be stabbed multiple times and robbed
Anthony Stanley would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
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Anthony Stanley is incarcerated at Holman Prison
Anthony Stanley Case
The evidence introduced at trial showed the following. On Saturday, June 18, 2005, Henry Smith was stabbed to death in an apartment in Tuscumbia that Stanley shared with his wife, Shelly. The crime was discovered the following Monday, June 20, 2005, when the landlord’s son, Ronald Berryhill, cut the padlock on the apartment door. He accessed the apartment because his mother, Swanie Berryhill, the landlord, had been told by Dorothy (“Dot”) Stanley, who actually leased the apartment from Swanie, that her son, Stanley, and his wife, Shelly, had left town and that several dogs remained inside the apartment. The medical examiner and forensic pathologist, Dr. Emily Ward, testified that Smith died as a result of multiple stab wounds and severe head injuries.
Shelly Stanley testified that she and Stanley had been using illegal narcotics, including crack cocaine and OxyContin, for several days, including Friday evening into the early morning hours of Saturday, June 18, 2005. When they exhausted their supply of money and drugs, Stanley directed her to telephone Smith, an individual they knew to carry cash and pills. She called Smith under the guise that she was going to pay him for the pills she and Stanley had obtained from him that Friday night.2 Stanley told her that he planned to rob and kill Smith. When Smith arrived at the Stanleys’ apartment, Shelly, while standing away from the door, called for Smith to come inside. As Smith entered the apartment, Stanley attacked him with an aluminum baseball bat, striking him in the face, the leg, and other parts of his body numerous times.3 Stanley knocked Smith to the floor, took a steak knife from the top of a china cabinet, straddled Smith with his knees on the floor, and repeatedly stabbed him in the back, while Smith begged for his life.4 When the steak knife bent, Stanley got another steak knife and continued to stab Smith.
Shelly testified that, while Stanley was stabbing Smith, she moved Smith’s truck, which Smith had left running outside the Stanleys’ apartment, behind the laundromat so that it was not visible from the road. When she returned to the apartment, she and Stanley searched Smith’s pockets and wallet. Because they found no cash or drugs, Stanley changed clothes, padlocked the apartment door, and left to search Smith’s apartment for money and pills. They ransacked Smith’s apartment, taking cash, change jars, and OxyContin pills, and returned to their apartment to get a 1987 maroon Toyota pick-up truck, which had been loaned to them by another acquaintance, Jonathan Patterson, who testified at trial that he was addicted to drugs and that he often purchased pills from the Stanleys.
Around 9:00 a.m. on Saturday morning, Stanley took Smith’s pick-up truck into the Colbert Heights area of Tuscumbia and abandoned it.5 Shelly followed him in their borrowed pick-up truck. After abandoning Smith’s truck, they drove to Muscle Shoals and checked into a room at the Best Western hotel. They also purchased supplies from a nearby K–Mart discount store with the proceeds from the sale of the stolen OxyContin pills. Sometime that day, Shelly returned to their apartment in Tuscumbia and put a comforter over Smith’s body to prevent the several dogs that were in the apartment from disturbing it. Around noon that day, Shelly visited her daughter, Jenna Mitchell, and told her that she was going to be gone for awhile and needed to tell her and her granddaughter goodbye before she left.6 According to Mitchell, Stanley was not with her mother that afternoon, and her mother was visibly upset and crying.7
The next morning, Sunday, June 19, 2005, Stanley and Shelly checked out of the hotel and returned to their apartment to pack their belongings. While there, they moved Smith’s body to the floor on the other side of their bed and covered the bloodstained floor with another carpet. Jonathan Patterson knocked on the door to retrieve the pick-up truck he had loaned to the Stanleys. When they did not answer the door, Patterson, using his extra set of keys, took his truck. They now were without transportation, and Stanley, who, according to Shelly, panicked, telephoned his mother, Dot, to come pick them up. Dot picked them up and drove them to Stanley’s sister’s house. They stayed there until Monday morning, June 20, 2005. According to Shelly, they used drugs throughout Sunday evening.
On Monday morning, Dot drove Stanley and Shelly to the Colbert Heights area near where they had left Smith’s truck on Saturday. Stanley and Shelly drove Smith’s truck to a friend’s house in Russellville, where they left their duffel bags they had packed on Sunday. While driving back to Muscle Shoals that afternoon, Stanley telephoned his mother, and she informed him that the Berryhills planned to enter their apartment that afternoon because they believed the Stanleys had left town and they were concerned about the dogs that had been left in the apartment. The Stanleys drove back to the Colbert Heights area, abandoned the truck a second time, and spent the next several days hiding in the woods with only a cooler containing their cellular telephones, wallets, and toothbrushes.8
Christie Smith, the victim’s daughter, testified that she tried to locate her father on Saturday and Sunday without success. When she drove by her father’s apartment early Sunday morning, she noticed that neither he nor his truck was there. She realized something was wrong. She returned a second time later that day and noticed the door to the apartment ajar. While Christie waited outside, Janice Berryhill, a family friend who had dated Smith, went into the apartment and discovered that the place had been ransacked.
On Sunday evening, Christie filed a missing-person report with the Tuscumbia Police Department. At the police station, Christie encountered Patterson, who was also filing a police report because his house had been burglarized on or around June 16, 2005, and a shotgun, among other things, had been stolen. Patterson told Christie that he believed Shelly had sold her father, Smith, the shotgun taken from his house. Patterson also told Christie that he last saw Christie’s father on Friday night around 11:00 p.m. when he dropped him off at his apartment.
Patterson, who worked out of town as an engineer for the Tennessee Valley Authority (“TVA”), testified at trial that he believed Shelly had broken into his house sometime earlier, during the week of the murder, because she had done so once before when he was away. In addition, Patterson’s neighbor told him that he had seen the truck Patterson had loaned the Stanleys at his house during the week he was away. When Patterson confronted Shelly on or around Friday, June 17, 2005, she denied that she had stolen the shotgun and other items. Later that evening, Patterson spoke to Smith on the telephone around 9:00 p.m. and Smith had agreed to help him locate the Stanleys because, during their conversation, Patterson and Smith realized that Shelly had sold Patterson’s missing shotgun to Smith for $50. Smith rode with him to look for the Stanleys until around 11:00 p.m., when Patterson dropped Smith off at his apartment.9
On Monday morning, Christie met and talked with Capt. Jim Heffernan of the Tuscumbia Police Department at her father’s apartment regarding the missing-person report. Doug Hendon, also a family friend, accompanied her. Later that day, Capt. Heffernan had a roll-call meeting with the on-duty police officers and informed the officers of the missing-person report regarding Smith. Capt. Heffernan also told the police officers that he was looking for Shelly for questioning concerning a separate incident involving a shotgun and other items that had been stolen from Patterson’s house. He told the officers that Smith and the Stanleys were acquaintances. Capt. Heffernan issued a BOLO10 for the Stanleys.
Around 5:30 p.m. on Monday, one of the officers on a routine patrol, Stuart Setliff, who had taken the missing-person report on Smith from his daughter, saw three people gathered outside the Stanleys’ apartment. Thinking that one of the individuals might be one of the Stanleys or Smith, Officer Setliff stopped, approached the apartment, and learned that the three people there were Swanie Berryhill, the owner of the apartment, her son Ronald Berryhill, and Dot, Stanley’s mother. As noted, the Berryhills had called Dot because they wanted to get into the apartment based on their concern that Stanley and Shelly had left dogs unattended in the apartment. Officer Setliff called Capt. Heffernan, informing him that the landlord was going to cut the padlock on the door of the apartment.11
Ronald testified that he had learned that Stanley and Shelly were leaving town because Shelly had a warrant for her arrest. Ronald stated that he had already knocked on the door on Sunday and earlier in the day on Monday, with no answer, and he had heard dogs barking. After Ronald drove his mother and Dot to the apartment, Dot informed them that she did not have a key to the apartment. Ronald left them at the apartment with Officer Setliff, who had recently arrived, and went to get bolt cutters. When he returned to the apartment, he cut the padlock on the door, and Officer Setliff accompanied him into the apartment.12 Officer Setliff testified that he had informed Ronald before he cut the lock that a missing-person report had been filed on Smith. Ronald testified that he had already learned from Christie on Sunday that her father was missing. According to Ronald, Officer Setliff also informed him that a warrant had been issued for Stanley.
When Ronald and Officer Setliff entered the apartment, they saw a comforter rolled up near the bed, and they exited the apartment. Officer Setliff called Capt. Heffernan. Based on Officer Setliff’s call, Capt. Heffernan drove to the Stanleys’s apartment.13 Capt. Heffernan arrived shortly after Ronald and Officer Setliff exited the apartment. Capt. Heffernan, who also served as the Colbert County Coroner, testified to smelling the odor of decomposition when he arrived at the scene and approached the doorway of the apartment.
Officer Setliff, upon direction from Capt. Heffernan, lifted up a corner of the comforter on the floor, which revealed a dead body lying face down with a knife in its back and several gash wounds on its head. Capt. Heffernan did not know the identity of the body. He ordered everyone out of the apartment and left to obtain a search warrant. Officer Setliff taped off and secured the crime scene. Ronald drove Dot, who was crying, to her house.
At around 9:00 p.m. on Monday evening, Capt. Heffernan returned with a search warrant and additional personnel and searched the apartment. Ronald and Doug Hendon identified the body as Smith’s. Capt. Heffernan discovered that Smith had a knife embedded in his back. Capt. Heffernan also found a bent steak knife, a machete covered in blood, and drug paraphernalia in the apartment. Capt. Heffernan collected the evidence. He and Officer Ricky Joe Little photographed the crime scene. During the search of the apartment, Officer Setliff and Officer Little were called to Dot’s house twice. The second time the officers were called to her house, they were told that Stanley and his wife could be located in the Colbert Heights area of Tuscumbia.
Tuscumbia police officers began looking for the Stanleys late Monday evening, June 20, 2005. Law-enforcement officers found Smith’s truck early Tuesday morning on Valley View Road in the Colbert Heights area of Tuscumbia. Smith’s truck was dusted for fingerprints but revealed no matches. Finally, on Thursday, June 23, 2005, Stanley and Shelly came out of the woods and traveled to Dot’s house with the intention of taking Dot’s car and leaving town. When family members saw them near Dot’s house, however, they decided to surrender to the police.
The retired Chief of Police of Tuscumbia, Wayne Burns, picked them up at Dot’s house at their request and transported them to the police station, where they were arrested for the murder of Smith.14 During the ride to the station, Retired Chief Burns testified that he advised them of their rights and notified the police station that he was bringing them to the station. Chief Burns stated that Stanley’s and Shelly’s clothes were crumpled and dirty like they had slept in them. They indicated to Chief Burns that they had slept in the woods for several days. According to Chief Burns, while being transported, Stanley told Shelly that law enforcement was not going to play them against each other. Once they arrived at the station, officers photographed them. The photographs introduced at trial showed that they both suffered from rashes caused by poison oak. Stanley also had a laceration on his back and what appeared to be a “carpet burn” on his knee.
The evidence at trial revealed that Smith suffered 36 stab wounds; his internal organs were damaged by stab wounds to the abdomen. Samples taken from the knives and machete matched Smith’s DNA. Dr. Emily Ward, medical examiner with the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences, testified that the four visible lacerations on the top of Smith’s head could have been caused by several blows from either a baseball bat or a machete. She testified that his nose was broken, as were his upper and lower jaws. He had stab wounds on his back and right thigh and defensive wounds on his hands.
At the close of the State’s case-in-chief, Stanley renewed his motion to suppress the evidence taken from his apartment. He also renewed his motion to strike Shelly’s testimony on the ground that her testimony was not voluntary, but coerced. Stanley also moved for a judgment of acquittal on the capital-murder charge, arguing that the State had failed to prove a prima facie case of robbery.
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/al-court-of-criminal-appeals/1565501.html
