Case Title: Ross v. State

Citation: 

Docket Number: 

State: nevada

Court: Nevada Supreme Court

Date: 2007-09-06T00:00:00Z

Document:
Ross v. State1996 WY 168930 P.2d 965Case Number: 95-178Decided: 12/20/1996Supreme Court of Wyoming
Lawrence Michael ROSS,

 Appellant 
(Defendant),

v.

The STATE of Wyoming, 

Appellee 
(Plaintiff).

Appeal from District 
Court of Carbon County, Kenneth E. Stebner, J.

Sylvia L. Hackl, 
State Public Defender; Deb Cornia, Appellate Counsel; Gerald M. Gallivan, 
Director, Defender Aid Program, Delia Reeves, Student Intern; and Dan 
Erramouspe, Student Intern, for Appellant.

William U. Hill, 
Attorney General; Paul S. Rehurek, Deputy Attorney General; D. Michael Pauling, 
Senior Assistant Attorney General; and Colleen K. Coebergh, Special Assistant 
Attorney General, for Appellee.

Before 
TAYLOR, C.J., and THOMAS, MACY, GOLDEN,* and LEHMAN, 
JJ.

* Chief Justice at time of 
oral argument.

TAYLOR, Chief 
Justice.

[¶1]      Appellant 
complains that his conviction for child abuse was obtained by the impermissible 
introduction of his wife's conviction for failure to protect their child - a 
crime arising out of the same circumstances. Appellant also scores the 
introduction of prior bad acts evidence, allegedly in violation of W.R.E. 
404(b), and complains of prosecutorial misconduct. Failing to show prejudice 
from the introduction of his wife's conviction, and unable to establish improper 
introduction of prior bad acts evidence or prosecutorial misconduct, appellant 
offers no valid basis upon which to overturn his conviction. We 
affirm.

I. 
ISSUES

[¶2]      Appellant, 
Lawrence Michael Ross (Ross), identifies three arguments:

ARGUMENT I

The trial court erred 
when it allowed statements about Misti Dawn Ross' previous misdemeanor 
conviction to be presented to the jury when those statements could not be used 
for the purpose of inferring the appellant's guilt, nor could they be used for 
impeachment purposes.

ARGUMENT II

The district court abused 
its discretion when it allowed testimony of prior bad acts into evidence without 
adequately reviewing its admissibility under W.R.E. Rule 404(b) and applicable 
Wyoming law or its prejudicial weight under W.R.E. Rule 403 and its applicable 
Wyoming law.

ARGUMENT III

The appellant was denied 
his right to a fair trial due to prosecutorial misconduct.

[¶3]      The State 
identifies essentially the same issues:

I.          
Whether plain error was committed when testimony regarding Misti Dawn 
Ross's nolo contendere plea was admitted in the State's case in 
chief.

II.          
Whether the district court erred in allowing testimony regarding prior 
injuries to the child victim.

III.         
Whether prosecutorial misconduct was committed which denied to appellant 
his right to a fair trial.

II. 
FACTS

[¶4]      In September of 
1994, five and one-half month old Richard Ross was taken by his mother to the 
doctor's office because of an injury to his arm. The injury was diagnosed as a 
broken arm and set. Precautionary x-rays, however, revealed additional fractures 
involving the child's other arm, his left collar bone, and nine ribs, all in 
various stages of healing. The amount of force necessary to cause such injuries 
was quantified by reference to similar injuries seen in children thrown from a 
car in the course of a collision or having fallen from a second or third-story 
window.

[¶5]      Ross subsequently 
acknowledged that he seldom held his son; but, when he did, "the baby would cry 
and scream * * *." When that happened, Ross' wife would ask for the child but 
Ross would refuse, his son screaming as Ross "held him tighter and tighter." 
Confronted with the extent of his young son's injuries, Ross admitted to being 
under a great deal of stress, indicating that he would "hate to think that those 
injuries occurred" on those occasions when he held the boy "too tight." Ross' 
wife initially maintained that her son's broken arm had come from falling off a 
bed onto a carpeted floor. When told of the seriousness of her son's injuries, 
however, Mrs. Ross eventually admitted that Ross would hold her son "really 
tight. He would squeeze him."

[¶6]      Prior to Ross' 
trial, his wife pled guilty to failure to protect their son and was sentenced to 
five years of supervised probation. Ross was charged with child abuse in 
violation of Wyo. Stat. § 6-2-503(a)(ii)(A) (1988), although only the 
information's recitation of the date upon which the offense was alleged to have 
occurred made it clear that the charge concerned the child's broken arm, rather 
than the larger course of conduct which had resulted in the boy's numerous other 
broken bones.

[¶7]      The State 
notified Ross and the district court, well in advance of trial, of its intention 
to call a medical expert to testify concerning the victim's prior injuries, 
characterizing such testimony as W.R.E. 404(b) "course of conduct evidence." 
Following a defense motion in limine seeking exclusion of the prior 
injury evidence, the district court ruled that evidence would be admissible 
under either W.R.E. 404(b) or a "res gestae theory so long as there is shown by 
testimony or other evidence to be a nexus between [Ross'] conduct or actions and 
the injuries." While excluding x-rays of the earlier injuries as unduly 
prejudicial, the district court ruled during trial that a nexus between Ross' 
conduct and those injuries had been sufficiently demonstrated to allow admission 
of the expert's testimony.

[¶8]      A jury trial 
culminated in a verdict of "guilty," and this appeal timely 
followed.

III. STANDARD OF 
REVIEW

[¶9]      Decisions 
regarding the admission or exclusion of evidence are within the sound discretion 
of the trial court. Taylor v. State, 642 P.2d 1294, 1295 (Wyo. 1982). Absent a 
pretrial motion to suppress or objection at trial, admission of evidence must 
amount to plain error in order to presage reversal. Urrutia v. State, 924 P.2d 965, 969 (Wyo. 1996).

This court will find 
plain error when the record clearly shows the incidents alleged as plain error, 
and appellant has demonstrated the violation of a clear and unequivocal rule of 
law, that a substantial right has been denied and that appellant has been 
materially prejudiced. Lobatos v. State, 875 P.2d 716, 721 (Wyo. 
1994).

Trujillo v. 
State, 880 P.2d 575, 578 (Wyo. 1994).

[¶10]   A trial court's decisions regarding admissibility 
of uncharged misconduct evidence are entitled to great deference on 
appeal. James v. State, 888 P.2d 200, 203 (Wyo. 1994). If a legitimate rationale 
can be shown for the admission of such evidence, we will not find abuse 
of discretion. Dean v. State, 865 P.2d 601, 606 (Wyo. 1993). Our analysis of 
whether uncharged misconduct evidence has been properly admitted employs the four-part 
test articulated in United States v. Herndon, 982 F.2d 1411, 1414 
(1992), aff'd on appeal after remand, 34 F.3d 1077 (10th Cir. 1994). Vigil v. 
State, 926 P.2d 351, 356-57 (Wyo. 1996).

[¶11]   A trial court's decision to grant 
or deny motions for mistrial is reviewed under an abuse of discretion standard. 
Miller v. State, 904 P.2d 344, 351 (Wyo. 1995). This is no less true when such a 
motion is precipitated by alleged prosecutorial misconduct. Hodges v. State, 904 P.2d 334, 343 (Wyo. 1995). An abuse of discretion has been described as a ruling 
which "`exceeds the bounds of reason under the circumstances. In determining 
whether there has been an abuse of discretion, the ultimate issue is whether or 
not the court could reasonably conclude as it did.'" Miller, 904 P.2d  at 351 
(quoting Duffy v. State, 730 P.2d 754, 757-58 (Wyo. 1986)).

[¶12]   Finally, claims that a prosecutor 
has overstepped the bounds of permissible conduct are settled by reference to 
the entire record, and depend upon whether a defendant's case has been so 
prejudiced as to effectively deny his right to a fair trial. King v. State, 780 P.2d 943, 951 (Wyo. 1989).

IV. 
DISCUSSION

A. PRIOR CONVICTIONS OF 
WITNESS

[¶13]   The State's opening statement 
promised the jury evidence that Ross' wife had previously admitted guilt to a 
misdemeanor charge of failing to protect her son from his father. When that 
promise was fulfilled, the absence of a timely objection by Ross' trial counsel 
would not appear sufficient to save the State's case from reversal, predicated 
on the rule of Kwallek v. State, 596 P.2d 1372 (Wyo. 1979). Kwallek, as 
reaffirmed by Urrutia, contemplates situations in which two individuals are 
prosecuted for different offenses arising out of the same circumstance, 
rendering "the fact that one has pleaded guilty * * * inadmissible against the 
other." Kwallek, 596 P.2d  at 1375. The Kwallek rule is predicated on notions of 
fundamental fairness:

The rationale is that 
evidence of a witness' guilt for an offense which arose out of a circumstance 
leading to the defendant's trial implies that the defendant is also guilty. Such 
an implication violates a defendant's right to have a trial on its own merits. 
Kwallek, 596 P.2d 1372.

Wells v. State, 
846 P.2d 589, 595 (Wyo. 1992).

[¶14]   Employing plain error analysis, it 
is readily apparent that the Kwallek rule is as clear and unequivocal as is the 
violation thereof on the record of these proceedings. There is no question that 
Ross' right to a fair trial includes the right not to be convicted in whole or 
in part on the basis of his wife's plea of guilty to failure to protect the 
victim. The question remains, however, of whether Ross was truly prejudiced by 
the State's introduction of his wife's guilty plea when that guilty plea was the 
very lynchpin of his defense.

[¶15]   Ross' trial strategy was first 
articulated during voir dire when his counsel asked a prospective juror: 
"Did you read in the paper that both the husband and the wife were accused of 
this [child abuse]?" During opening statement, counsel for Ross promised to 
create doubt as to whether it was Ross or his wife who actually abused their 
son. Ross' theory was that Mrs. Ross had been the "real abuser," but had 
engineered a plea agreement with the prosecutor in return for her testimony 
implicating Ross. Central to such a theory was elucidation of Mrs. Ross' plea 
bargain, through her testimony. That is what Ross' attorney promised the jury 
and what he gave them during cross examination of Mrs. Ross. As part of his 
strategy, Ross' attorney even went so far as to have Ross' wife admit that both 
she and her husband had been charged with neglect in a juvenile court 
action.

[¶16]   Given Ross' theory of the case, it 
is apparent that what truly would have prejudiced his defense would have been a 
refusal on the part of the State to talk about his wife's conviction. No 
prejudice has been shown and, therefore, no plain error can be predicated upon 
the district court's admission of testimony which provided the very foundation 
of Ross' theory of the case.

B. PRIOR INJURIES TO THE 
VICTIM

[¶17]   In his second argument, Ross 
objects to testimony concerning the prior injuries sustained by his son as "bad 
acts evidence improperly admitted and presented to the jury," in violation of 
W.R.E. 404(b). Initially, we note that none of the witnesses who discussed the 
victim's prior injuries suggested to the jury that those injuries were caused by 
prior behavior of Ross. Mrs. Ross testified that she observed Ross holding their 
son too tightly, but no one expressed an opinion as to Ross' culpability with 
respect to the earlier injuries.

[¶18]   More important to our resolution of 
this issue was the State's notice to Ross, prior to trial, of an intent to 
introduce evidence of the prior injuries and the district court's subsequent 
ruling that such evidence was admissible, under either W.R.E. 404(b) or a res 
gestae theory.

[¶19]   Prior to promulgation of our rules 
of evidence, the concept of res gestae was applied to overcome hearsay 
objections to contemporaneous statements which shed light on "`any of what may 
be termed real or natural facts and circumstances in any way connected with the 
transaction and from which any inference as to the truth of the disputed fact 
can reasonably be made.'" Johnson v. State, 8 Wyo. 494, 504, 58 P. 761, 763 
(1899).

[¶20]   Such hearsay objections would, 
nowadays, likely be overcome by rules of evidence permitting admission of 
present sense impressions and excited utterances. W.R.E. 803(1) and (2). See 
Horton v. State, 764 P.2d 674, 677 (Wyo. 1988). Though passe' in Wyoming, res 
gestae is treated, elsewhere, as a broader concept, embracing other 
"evidence which does not constitute a portion of crimes charged but has a 
natural, necessary, or logical connection to the crime." State v. Gadelkarim, 
256 Kan. 671, 887 P.2d 88, 101 (1994). See also People v. Rollins, 892 P.2d 866, 
872-73 (Colo. 1995). Certainly, there may be those instances where particular 
evidence, though possibly manifesting the existence of additional crimes, is 
relevant by virtue of being inseparable from, or inextricably intertwined with, 
the charged offense. 1 Christopher B. Mueller & Laird C. Kirkpatrick, 
Federal Evidence § 111 at 628 (2d ed. 1994).

[¶21]   In the instant case, the 
inseparability of the child's prior injuries was manifested by the manner in 
which the authorities became aware of the offense. Although Ross was charged for 
breaking his son's arm, the treating physician initially had little reason to 
suspect abuse upon presentation of a child with a broken arm. Only after the arm 
was set, when precautionary x-rays were taken, did the physician suspect abuse 
and notify the authorities. When, as here, the victim is unable to speak for 
himself, one broken bone might well be viewed as an unfortunate but isolated 
accident, unless and until viewed in the context of multiple broken bones in 
various stages of healing. 

[¶22]   Characterization of the prior 
injuries as part of the res gestae does not, however, render that 
evidence admissible. The district court employed commendable caution in 
analyzing evidence of the child's prior injuries as "prior bad acts" evidence 
under W.R.E. 404(b). Admissibility of such evidence is determined by the 
four-part Vigil/Herndon test:

"Such evidence is 
admissible if: 1) the evidence is offered for a proper purpose; 2) the evidence 
is relevant; 3) the probative value of the evidence is not substantially 
outweighed by its potential for unfair prejudice; and 4) upon request, the trial 
court instructs the jury that the similar acts evidence is to be considered only 
for the proper purpose for which it was admitted."

Vigil, 926 P.2d  
at 357 (quoting Herndon, 982 F.2d at 1414).

1.         
Proper purpose. Ross hotly contested the identity of his son's abuser, 
claiming that his wife was the "real abuser." Having done so, he is poorly 
situated to claim that the prior bad acts evidence could not properly be 
admitted on the issue of the real abuser's true identity. Specifically, the 
evidence concerning the great amount of force necessary to infliction of such 
injuries permitted the jury, as finder of fact, to infer that it was Ross, and 
not his wife, who perpetrated such forceful abuse upon their son.

2.         
Relevance. From our discussion of the res gestae characterization made by 
the district court, it should be clear that the victim's prior injuries in this 
case were relevant to the charge upon which Ross was tried, thus fulfilling the 
second prong of the Vigil/Herndon test:

[Such] evidence was 
relevant for the purpose of demonstrating a "complete story," part of the 
history of the event, and as a "course of conduct." Crozier v. State, 723 P.2d 42 (Wyo. 1986).

Vigil, 926 P.2d  
at 358.

3.         
Probative value versus prejudicial effect. Affronts to children 
inevitably carry the potential for inflaming the passions of a jury. See, e.g., 
Britton v. State, 845 P.2d 1374, 1376-77 (Wyo. 1992). In this case, the district 
court was appropriately cognizant of such potential and took care to restrict 
admission of prior injury x-rays on the basis of potentially prejudicial impact. 
The line drawn by the district court represents a sensitive balance between the 
State's need for evidence probative of the abuser's identity and the right of 
Ross not to have his case prejudiced.

4.         
Limiting instruction. Finally, Ross made no record of a request for a 
limiting instruction if, in fact, one was requested. The responsibility for 
presenting this court with an adequate record rests with the appellant and it 
is, therefore, unnecessary to address the fourth prong of the Vigil/Herndon 
test. Madrid v. State, 910 P.2d 1340, 1344 (Wyo. 1996).

[¶23]   To the extent that the victim's 
prior injuries may be construed as indirect evidence of Ross' prior bad acts, we 
hold such evidence properly admissible under the Vigil/Herndon test.

C. PROSECUTORIAL 
CONDUCT

[¶24]   Ross accuses the State of having 
irrevocably prejudiced his case during opening statement through display of an 
x-ray to the jury and employment of inflammatory rhetoric. He offers no 
authority on point, reminding us only that prosecutorial statements calculated 
to inflame, prejudice or mislead the jury are not permitted in the context of 
closing argument and implying that a similar standard should govern opening 
statements. James, 888 P.2d  at 207.

[¶25]   When the prosecutor tried to show 
an x-ray to the jury during his opening statement, Ross' trial counsel 
immediately objected. The district court noted, for the record, its doubt that 
the jury had seen any image, given a delay between the time the "view box" 
switch was thrown and the moment at which an image became visible. Nonetheless, 
the district court issued an immediate curative instruction to the jury and 
reserved its decision on Ross' motion for a mistrial. Later, when the x-ray in 
question was admitted, the motion for mistrial was denied.

[¶26]   It is true that the prosecutor's 
opening statement was subject to several other objections, each of which the 
district court sustained. At issue, however, was neither unduly inflammatory 
rhetoric nor appeals to passion or prejudice. What Ross' counsel and the 
district court found objectionable was the prosecutor's use of argument. The 
prosecutor's opening statement did not overstate the evidence, but ill-advisedly 
discussed what the jury might logically infer from that evidence.

[¶27]   As it had done with the "view box" 
incident, the district court reserved ruling on Ross' motions for a mistrial, 
conditioning final determination upon whether the prosecutor could produce, at 
trial, the evidence upon which his inferential conclusions were predicated. We 
are unpersuaded of any need, here, to depart from the rule that the trial judge 
is best situated to plumb the potential for injury arising from prosecutorial 
misconduct. Christian v. State, 883 P.2d 376, 381 (Wyo. 1994). Here, the 
district court ruled that the evidence promised by the prosecutor was eventually 
delivered in admissible form, negating any prejudice arising from the 
prosecutor's opening statement. That decision fully complied with our rule that 
alleged prosecutorial misconduct must be viewed in the context of the entire 
trial, and we find no abuse of discretion in the district court's denial of 
Ross' request for a mistrial.

[¶28]   Ross' next assignment of error 
stems from the district court's ruling concerning the victim's rib injuries. The 
district court agreed that testimony concerning the child's broken ribs would be 
admissible, but also ruled that x-rays portraying the multiple broken ribs were 
of sufficiently prejudicial impact to outweigh any probative value they might 
possess. The ruling permitted the State's medical expert to testify as to the 
child's broken arm, using an x-ray depicting both the arm and rib injuries as a 
"demonstrative exhibit," provided the x-ray would not go to the jury room and 
the expert would curtail any further discussion of the rib injuries. Shortly 
after that rather intricate ruling, in response to the prosecutor's question as 
to why the demonstrative x-ray was taken, the medical expert again impinged upon 
the forbidden topic of the broken ribs:

This x-ray was taken to 
delineate some of the fractures that he had in his rib cage, to see how they 
were healing, and to see if any -

[Defense 
objection].

[¶29]   Ross' appellate brief alleges the 
prosecutor intentionally elicited the foregoing "highly prejudicial" 
testimony. This allegation flies in the face of defense counsel's 
acknowledgment, at trial, that this final mention of the broken ribs was 
unintentional. This argument also ignores trial counsel's agreement that the 
problem was sufficiently addressed by the district court's refusal to allow the 
x-ray to be admitted as an exhibit.

[¶30]   Similarly, Ross' charge that the 
prosecutor's closing argument misstated testimony from a police officer ignores 
the district court's immediate review of the transcript of earlier proceedings 
and settlement of the record in favor of the prosecutor's questioned 
statement.

[¶31]   Finally, Ross objects to the 
prosecutor's ridicule of the theory that the victim could have broken both arms 
in a fall from a bed onto a carpeted floor:

He is a baby, flesh and 
bone. He is not a super ball. He didn't bounce and then gain velocity and speed 
and then hit harder on the other side, impossible, and you know it is 
impossible.

[¶32]   This argument was founded upon the 
testimony of the medical expert:

The force required to 
break bones is great. You have to have a very large force, and to get a force, 
you either have to have a real heavy mass or a weight, or something moving very 
fast, so if you consider an infant rolling to the floor, he is not moving fast, 
so he doesn't have a high acceleration * * * neither [the child's] weight nor 
the height that he fell could contribute to the huge force it takes to break a 
bone.

[¶33]   Like defense counsel, a prosecutor 
may review the evidence and argue inferences thereon. "The purpose of closing 
arguments is to allow counsel to offer ways of viewing the significance of the 
evidence." Browder v. State, 639 P.2d 889, 893 (Wyo. 1982). That to which Ross 
now objects was fair argumentation based upon facts of record and we are unable 
to characterize it otherwise.

V. 
CONCLUSION

[¶34]   By their very nature, crimes 
against individuals often evoke a more passionate response than crimes against 
property. Such is doubly true when the victim is a defenseless child. A guilty 
verdict based on admissible evidence is not, however, subject to reversal simply 
because the nature of the crime may ignite the passions of the fact 
finder.

[¶35]   Affirmed.

THOMAS, J., files a specially 
concurring opinion in which GOLDEN, J., joins.

THOMAS, Justice, concurring 
specially (in which GOLDEN, J. joins).

[¶36]   I agree the Ross conviction should 
be affirmed, and I concur in the result reached by the majority opinion. 
Consistently with my special concurring opinion in Urrutia v. State, 924 P.2d 965 (Wyo. 1996), I would hold that the failure to object is fatal to an 
assertion on appeal that trial error occurred in connection with the admission 
into evidence of the guilty plea of Ross' wife.

[¶37]   In the concurring opinion in 
Urrutia, I said:

The conclusion of the 
majority opinion is that a clear and unequivocal rule of law was violated, but 
that Urrutia failed to establish material prejudice. I quote from Kwallek, 596 
P.2d at 1376:

As a general proposition, 
courts have found that prejudice results where the accused made timely 
objection[5] and has requested curative action by the trial court which refused 
or failed to eliminate the disclosure.

[5]        It is well 
established that the accused must register timely objection to the disclosure. 
State v. Marshall and Brown-Sidorowicz, P.A., 2 Kan. App. 2d 182, 577 P.2d 803, 
817, and cases cited therein (1978).

I believe the Kwallek 
rule is clear in requiring a timely objection to the disclosure of a guilty plea 
by another person who has been charged with an offense arising out of the same 
circumstances. It is my rationalization of Kwallek that, in the absence of an 
objection by the defendant, there is no error. Hence, under the plain error 
doctrine, no clear and unequivocal rule of law was violated. (Emphasis in 
the original.) If Kwallek is not as clear as I read it, it is at best equivocal, 
and for that reason the rule of the case does not meet the plain error 
requirement.

The reason, as I see it, 
why an objection is required to such a disclosure is that the circumstances of 
the trial are themselves inherently equivocal. When the prosecution seeks to 
introduce this evidence to blunt the effect of its being introduced on 
cross-examination, the defendant may well prefer that it come in at that 
point. It may be preferable as a matter of tactics to cross-examine about 
the details of the conviction and why the witness was able to make a deal with 
the prosecution.

Urrutia, 924 P.2d  at 971 (Thomas, J., concurring specially) (emphasis added.)

[¶38]   This case serves as a crystal 
illustration of the principle I was endeavoring to articulate in Urrutia. I 
quote from the majority opinion:

The question remains, 
however, of whether Ross was truly prejudiced by the State's introduction of his 
wife's guilty plea when that guilty plea was the very lynchpin of his 
defense.

Ross' trial strategy was 
first articulated during voir dire when his counsel asked a prospective 
juror: "Did you read in the paper that both the husband and the wife were 
accused of this [child abuse]?" During opening statement, counsel for Ross 
promised to create doubt as to whether it was Ross or his wife who actually 
abused their son. Ross' theory was that Mrs. Ross had been the "real abuser," 
but had engineered a plea agreement with the prosecutor in return for her 
testimony implicating Ross. Central to such a theory was elucidation of Mrs. 
Ross' plea bargain, through her testimony. * * *

Given Ross' theory of the 
case, it is apparent that what truly would have prejudiced his defense would 
have been a refusal on the part of the State to talk about his wife's 
conviction.

[¶39]   I submit that this discussion 
demonstrates the wisdom found in footnote 5 of the opinion in Kwallek v. State, 
596 P.2d 1372 (Wyo. 1979), which the majority of the Court continues to ignore. 
It appears that it may be regarded as dictum, and that is true because the 
material facts in Kwallek encompassed an objection. The footnote stands, 
however, as a clear articulation of the rule that would apply in the absence of 
objection. Given the dynamics specifically disclosed in this case, but present 
by implication in every instance in which no objection is voiced to a guilty 
plea by another person charged with an offense arising out of the same 
circumstances, we should not recognize a claim of plain error because of the 
admission of such evidence. If any error is to be considered under such 
circumstances it would have to relate to a claim of ineffective assistance of 
counsel.