Dale Robert Yates is serving a life sentence in South Carolina for the stabbing death of a woman he never saw.
Strangely, although he may disagree, Yates is not the victim of some terrible injustice and his case has three times been argued before the United States Supreme Court.
As a result of the last high court decision, he was moved off South Carolina’s Death Row. His story highlights the curious twists of fate that can result from the legal concepts of accomplice liability and transferred intent.
For several weeks, Yates, Henry Davis and another man drove around Greenville County, South Carolina looking for a place to rob. At first, all the group wanted to do was to burglarize some businesses, “sell the stuff and get some money.”
The problem was, according to Yates’s own testimony at trial, they “weren’t having too much luck” at finding a place to burglarize because “a lot of the places had burglar alarms and . . . taped glasses and windows and such.”
The frustrated burglars decided that armed robbery was probably the way to go and they firmed up their plans to commit their crime of violence on Thursday, February 12, 1981.
Yates recalled at his trial that Davis mentioned he had a knife, but Yates decided that wasn’t sufficient.
“We decided that we would need a gun to persuade whoever was behind the counter to give us the money,” he testified, adding that he later procured a handgun from his brother.
The trio spent most of the next day looking for a suitable victim, but finding none, the third man asked to be dropped off at a local mall where his girlfriend worked. He told Davis and Yates to return about 5 p.m. and they would renew their search.
Yates and Davis, however, happened upon Wood’s Grocery in Greenville, S.C., and opted to proceed without their third member. The two robbers entered the store and found Willie Wood standing behind the counter, apparently alone in the store. They confronted the storekeeper and demanded that he empty the cash register, which Willie did, placing the approximately $3,000 cash on the counter.
Davis demanded that Willie bend over the counter, which he refused to do and instead the store owner took a step back and reached into his coat for his own handgun. Davis yelled for Yates to shoot.
Yates fired twice at Willie, who, putting his hands up in a defensive posture, received a shot through his hand that grazed his chest. The other shot missed.
Helen Wood, a postmistress, hearing the noise, came out from her office adjoining the store and shouted, “What’s going on out there?”
Spooked, Yates shouted to Davis, “Let’s go!” ran out of the store and jumped into the passenger side of the getaway car.
Davis, however, was grabbed by Willie Wood and the two men began wrestling.
“He was on my back when we ended at the end of the counter before we got out into the aisle,” Willie Wood testified. “I watched him because he came around the counter and started after me. And I know’d he was going to stab me in the back.”
Wood testified that no sooner was Davis on his back than his mother arrived and attempted to grab him and pull him off.
Wood managed to get the gun out and “started shooting [at Davis] and just pushing him on back until he couldn’t go no further against the shoe boxes there. The last shot I fired, he hollered and hit the floor and the knife fell out of his hand.”
As soon as Davis fell, Willie Wood noticed that his mother was on her hands and knees and she said “I believe I am dying.” and blood appeared to be spurting out of her heart. Helen Wood and Davis each died of their injuries.
Yates testified that he ran out of the store and around the front of the car to the passenger side where he opened the door and got in. After moments passed and Davis did not come out, Yates testified that he thought, “‘Well, he caught Henry. He grabbed Henry. No use me staying here and getting caught.’ So, I jumped over under the wheel, put the car in drive, and left.”
Before Yates was able to escape the vicinity, his vehicle was noticed by officers of the Greenville County Sheriff’s Department who finally stopped Yates after a high speed chase. After stopping his vehicle at the end of the high speed chase, Yates ran with the pistol and money in hand. He ran into some nearby woods where he was apprehended.
Although he killed no one, the State prosecuted him for murder as an accomplice, relying on a theory of accomplice liability because South Carolina does not have a felony-murder statute.
Under South Carolina law, “where two persons combine to commit an unlawful act, and in execution of the criminal act, a homicide is committed by one of the actors as a probable or natural consequence of those acts [sic], all present participating in the unlawful act are as guilty as the one who committed the fatal act.” State v. Johnson, 291 S.C. 127.
In charging the jurors on the issue of malice in this case, the trial judge instructed them on two mandatory presumptions, each of which the Supreme Court of South Carolina has since held to be unconstitutional. The jury was told that “malice is implied or presumed” from the “willful, deliberate, and intentional doing of an unlawful act” and from the “use of a deadly weapon.”
The presumption on the use of a deadly weapon in this case was qualified with the instruction that “when the circumstances surrounding the use of that deadly weapon have been put in evidence and testified to, the presumption is removed.”
Following the instructions of the court on malice and accomplice liability, the jury returned guilty verdicts on the murder charge and on all the other counts in the indictment. The Supreme Court of South Carolina affirmed the conviction.
However, the court fight was just beginning. Yates sought a writ of habeas corpus from the State Supreme Court, asserting that the jury charge “that malice is implied or presumed from the use of a deadly weapon” was an unconstitutional burden-shifting instruction both under state precedent, and under a U.S. Supreme Court decision in Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 U.S. 510, 61 L. Ed. 2d 39, 99 S. Ct. 2450 (1979). While the state habeas petition was pending, the Supreme Court delivered another opinion on unconstitutional burden-shifting jury instructions, Francis v. Franklin, 471 U.S. 307, 85 L. Ed. 2d 344, 105 S. Ct. 1965 (1985). Although Yates brought this decision to the attention of the state court, it denied relief without opinion, and he sought certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court. It granted the writ, vacated the judgment of the Supreme Court of South Carolina, and remanded the case for further consideration in light of Francis.
On remand, the State Supreme Court found the jury instruction unconstitutional, but denied relief on the ground that its decision in State v. Elmore, was not to be applied retroactively. Yates again sought cert review, and again the Supremes granted certiorari “out of concern that the State Supreme Court had not complied with the mandate to reconsider its earlier decision in light of Francis v. Franklin”
On the second remand, the Supreme Court of South Carolina stated it was “acquiescing in the conclusion that the trial judge’s charge on implied malice constituted an improper mandatory presumption.” The court found “two erroneous charges regarding implied malice. Despite this determination that two jury instructions were unconstitutional, the State Supreme Court again denied relief after a majority of three justices found the instructions to have been harmless error.
Yates went back the nation’s highest court for a third time (actually fourth, because the Supremes declined to review his conviction on direct appeal). The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case again.
“Because the Supreme Court of South Carolina appeared to have applied the wrong standard for determining whether the challenged instructions were harmless error, and to have misread the record to which the standard was applied, we granted certiorari to review this case a third time,” Justice Souter wrote.
When all was said and done, the Supremes remanded back to the state and Yates’s death sentence was vacated. He remains in prison convicted of murder, attempted murder and armed robbery.