Appellant Dionne Andrea Baugh appeals the judgment of conviction entered against her after a jury found her guilty of malice murder, theft by taking, and financial transaction card fraud in connection with the death of Lance Herndon.1 1. The victim’s mother found him in his bed after he had not been seen in his office. His head was bloodied and her efforts to revive him were unsuccessful. The medical examiner who performed the autopsy testified the victim had received a single, non-fatal blow to the back of the head that possibly disoriented him, and multiple blows to the front and right side of his face that crushed all the facial bones inward and caused death. When presented with a wrench identified by the victim’s housekeeper as similar to the one on a household counter before the victim’s death and missing since, the medical examiner testified the wrench could have inflicted the fatal blows. DNA found under the victim’s fingernails was determined to be that of the victim and that of appellant. A forensic expert testified that two head hairs and one pubic hair lifted from the victim’s nude body were similar enough to samples obtained from appellant that they could have originated with appellant. A blood spatter expert testified that the assailant was on the bed, possibly straddling the victim, at the time the wounds were inflicted.
The State also presented evidence that appellant, one of several of the victim’s lovers, had been arrested for criminal trespass outside the victim’s home a month earlier and the court date for the charges was the day the victim was found dead. While appellant told police that the victim had visited her in her home the evening before he was found dead, telephone records and witnesses who spoke with the victim as reflected in the records indicated he was at his home at that time. Police found several documents awaiting the victim’s signature in a search of appellant’s purse nine days after the victim was killed. One document stated the car appellant was driving had been purchased by the victim and, in the event of his death, the title should be given to appellant; another was a purported agreement between appellant and the victim acknowledging the existence of their romantic relationship and stating the car would belong to appellant if appellant stayed in the relationship until July 1998; the third unsigned document was the victim’s purported summary of the circumstances of the criminal trespass case against appellant and his desire that the charges be dropped. A laptop computer missing from the victim’s business office in his home and valued at $3500 was found in appellant’s possession without the carrying case the victim insisted be used when it was borrowed. There was also evidence that appellant, giving the name Dionne Herndon, used a credit card issued to the victim to purchase furniture the day the victim was found dead.
