RENDERED: JANUARY 5, 2024; 10:00 A.M.

TO BE PUBLISHED

Commonwealth of Kentucky

Court of Appeals

NO. 2022-CA-1388-MR

COMMONWEALTH OF KENTUCKY APPELLANT 

v. 

APPEAL FROM FAYETTE CIRCUIT COURT

HONORABLE JULIE M. GOODMAN, JUDGE

ACTION NO. 20-CR-00945

TYRONE ANTOINNE HARTSFIELD APPELLEE 

OPINION

REVERSING

AND REMANDING

**   **  **

BEFORE: ACREE, COMBS, AND ECKERLE, JUDGES.

COMBS, JUDGE: The Appellant, Commonwealth of Kentucky (Commonwealth), 

has invoked KRS1 22A.020(4) to appeal the trial court’s order denying its motion 

in limine which sought to exclude the statement of a police officer on a recorded

1 Kentucky Revised Statutes. 
-2-

body camera video regarding the victim’s truthfulness. After our review, we 

reverse and remand.

As a preliminary matter, we first address the notice of appeal. The 

Commonwealth appeals as a matter of right pursuant to KRS 22A.020(4). “[A]n 

interlocutory appeal, under KRS 22A.020, must be taken within 30 days from the 

date of notation of service of the judgment or order appealed.” Commonwealth v.

West, 147 S.W.3d 72, 73 (Ky. App. 2004). The notice of appeal was timely filed 

on November 22, 2022, but it incorrectly identified the date of the order appealed 

from as November 9, 2022, instead of November 4, 2022. This error does not 

affect the validity of the appeal, and we decline to take any action in that regard as 

permitted by the appellate rules. CR2 73.02(2), now RAP3 10(B).

On November 10, 2020, a Fayette County Grand Jury indicted the 

Appellee, Tyrone Hartsfield (Hartsfield), for first-degree rape, first-degree 

sodomy, first-degree strangulation, fourth-degree assault, third-degree terroristic 

threatening, and for being a first-degree persistent felony offender (PFO). 

Prior to trial, the Commonwealth filed a motion in limine asking the 

trial court to “prevent witness’s opinion about the truth of the testimony of another 

witness, specifically opinions of Lexington Police Officers heard in the Body 

2 Kentucky Rules of Civil Procedure.

3 Kentucky Rules of Appellate Procedure.
-3-

Worn Camera worn by the Officers.” In response, Hartsfield requested that the 

Commonwealth’s motion be denied and explained that “Defendant does not plan 

on presenting the police testimony at issue as expert witness testimony, but rather 

as lay witness testimony of opinion.”

The matter was heard on October 27, 2022. 

On November 4, 2022, while ruling on various motions, the trial court 

entered an order denying the Commonwealth’s motion in limine concerning the 

body camera footage, reciting as follows:

All charges [in the indictment] stemmed from alleged 

events occurring on or about September 6, 2020, at the 

Ramada Inn in Fayette County, Kentucky.

At the time of the arrest, an officer responding to 

the scene from the Lexington Police Department (LPD) 

interviewed both the Defendant and the alleged victim. 

According to the parties, both interviews were recorded 

by a body camera worn by one of the responding officers. 

The Commonwealth seeks to exclude the portion of 

that evidence during which one of the officers can be 

heard stating, under his breath, that he did not 

believe the alleged victim’s account of the night’s 

events. The Commonwealth seeks to exclude that 

portion, on the grounds that those comments amount to 

inadmissible opinion testimony by a lay witness that 

another witness’s testimony is untruthful.

. . . 

It is generally impermissible for a witness to 

characterize the testimony of another witness as “lying” 

or otherwise, Lanham v Commonwealth, 171 S.W.3d 14, 

23 (Ky. 2005), as that determination is ordinarily within 
-4-

the exclusive province of the jury. Moss v. 

Commonwealth, 949 S.W.2d 579, 583 (Ky. 1997); see 

KRS 608(a). 

KRS 701, in turn, allows for opinion testimony by 

a lay witness under the following circumstances:

If the witness is not testifying as an expert, the 

witness’ testimony in the form of opinions or inferences 

is limited to those opinions or inferences which are:

(a) Rationally based on the perception of the 

witness;

(b)Helpful to a clear understanding of the witness’ 

testimony or the determination of a fact in 

issue; and

(c) Not based on scientific, technical, or other 

specialized knowledge within the scope of Rule 

702.

In Lanham v. Commonwealth, the Kentucky 

Supreme Court expanded upon the aforementioned rules 

and held that portions of a defendant’s videotaped 

interrogation, in which the officer repeatedly stated that 

the defendant was lying, were admissible subject to an 

admonition to the jury that the officer’s comments are 

“offered solely to provide context to the defendant’s 

relevant responses,” and not offered as evidence to prove 

that the defendant was in fact lying during his 

interrogation. 171 S.W.3d 14, 26-28 (Ky. 2005). . . .

In regard to the Commonwealth’s Motion in 

Limine as to the bodycam footage portraying on-scene 

interviews of both the alleged victim and the Defendant, 

the Court holds that the facts in Lanham v. 

Commonwealth are sufficiently similar to the facts in 

the case at bar to be controlling authority over the 

issue at hand. See 171 S.W.3d 19 (Ky. 2005). 
-5-

Both Lanham [sic] and the present case involve 

situations wherein a party is seeking to exclude sections 

of a videotape depicting an interview, by a police officer. 

Id. In both cases, the officer made comments regarding 

his opinion of the interviewed person’s truthfulness. Id.

Unlike Lanham, in the case at bar the Commonwealth is 

attempting to exclude some of the bodycam footage, not 

the Defendant. For the same reasons the court in Lanham 

found it to be relevant and the best evidence, the Court 

here finds it to be equally relevant. Additionally, the 

bodycam footage in its entirety provides context both for 

the questions asked to the alleged victim and the alleged 

victim’s responses to those questions, without it having 

to be played in a disruptive, piecemeal fashion to the 

jury. Id. at 27-28. The officer’s comments are not 

evidence that the alleged victim was in fact lying during 

her police interview, but instead seeks only to put her 

responses in proper context. The fact that the officer’s 

videotaped comment indicates skepticism toward the 

alleged victim’s story does not by itself amount to an 

improper characterization of one witness by another 

witness as “lying” because, as in Lanham, the comments 

at issue were not made to any particular person and 

therefore “the officer is not trying to convince anyone . . . 

that the [witness] was lying.” Id. at 27.

While the Court does recognize that the holding in 

Lanham was based partially on the fact that the officer’s 

comments were part of a well-recognized interrogation 

tactic of criminal defendants aimed at getting them to tell 

the truth, the comments here are similar in that they 

involve an attempt by a responding officer to find 

probable cause, with the hope of eliciting responses 

sufficient to justify an arrest. Id. at 27.

In summary, therefore, the Court holds that the 

bodycam footage may be played to the jury in its entirety. 

Furthermore, if the Commonwealth requests an 

admonition to the jury, an appropriate one will be given.
-6-

(Emphases added) (footnotes omitted).

The Commonwealth appeals. It contends that the trial court’s ruling 

allowing the body camera footage “runs afoul of our Supreme Court precedent and 

Kentucky’s evidentiary rules on opinions that officers may provide to a jury.” Our 

review of the rulings of a trial court on evidentiary issues is governed by the abuseof-discretion standard; i.e., whether the court’s decision was arbitrary, 

unreasonable, unfair, or unsupported by sound legal principles. Carson v.

Commonwealth, 621 S.W.3d 443, 446 (Ky. 2021) (footnote omitted). 

The Commonwealth principally argues that the trial court misapplied 

Lanham. In Lanham, the appellant argued that the trial court had improperly 

allowed the Commonwealth to play an unedited version of his audiotaped custodial 

interrogation of a defendant during which the detective repeatedly questioned

Appellant as to whether Appellant was being truthful. Id. at 19. Our Supreme 

Court noted that it is generally improper for one witness to characterize the 

testimony of another witness as being either deceptive or truthful. 

The Lanham case involved the particular context of custodial 

interrogation involving statements by police designed to elicit admissions rather 

than direct testimony by a police officer in a courtroom. The statements of the 

interrogating police officer in Lanham were suggestive rather than testimonial. 

The statements in the case now before us, however, are wholly testimonial in 
-7-

nature. The Lanham Court articulated this issue as follows: “Whether this rule 

applies to non-testimonial statements . . . by a police officer during an interrogation 

of a criminal suspect as part of the overall interrogation technique . . . is a different 

and far more complex question.” Id. at 19. Because the issue was one of first 

impression in Kentucky, the Lanham Court examined decisions from other states 

and concluded as follows:

[S]uch comments are part of an interrogation technique 

aimed at showing the defendant that the officer 

recognizes the holes and contradictions in the defendant’s 

story, thus urging him or her to tell the truth.

This last point is perhaps most important, at least 

for the purpose of developing a rule that will address 

future instances of similar evidence. Almost all of the 

courts that have considered the issue recognize that this 

form of questioning is a legitimate, effective 

interrogation tool. And because such comments are such 

an integral part of the interrogation, several courts have 

noted that they provide a necessary context for the 

defendant’s responses. We agree that such recorded 

statements by the police during an interrogation are a 

legitimate, even ordinary, interrogation technique, 

especially when a suspect’s story shifts and changes. We 

also agree that retaining such comments in the version of 

the interrogation recording played for the jury is 

necessary to provide a context for the answers given by 

the suspect.

Id. at 27. Significantly, the Court in Lanham noted that its “holding in this case, 

and the rule that it establishes, is limited to the types of comments in this case, 

i.e., accusations by an officer that a defendant is not telling the truth.” Id. at 
-8-

29 (emphasis added). The context of custodial interrogation versus courtroom 

testimony is a critically discrete and serious distinction as the Court recognized.

By contrast, the case before us involves comments by an officer about 

the victim’s truthfulness -- an even more unique twist to the admissibility issue. 

The parties have not cited any published authority directly on this point, and we 

have not located any. However, we have located two unpublished decisions 

holding that it was error to allow a jury to hear the portion of the defendant’s taped 

interview in which the officer made statements about a victim’s truthfulness. We 

find the reasoning in those decisions both relevant and persuasive.

In Clark v. Commonwealth, No. 2006-SC-000379-MR, 2008 WL 

4692347 (Ky. Oct. 23, 2008), the trial court allowed an audiotape of the 

defendant’s interview to be played for the jury, which included the police officer’s 

remarks that he believed that the victim (L.C.) was telling the truth:

In listening to this tape, the jury not only heard Clark’s 

responses to Officer Combs’s questions, but also heard 

Officer Combs’s interrogation technique, which involved 

disclosing his opinion to Clark about the truthfulness of 

L.C.’s allegations. During the interview, Officer Combs 

stated that he believed “[L.C.] was telling the truth when 

she accused [Clark] of sexually abusing her and that he 

had never doubted what [L.C.] had told him had 

happened -- what had indeed occurred -- and that he 

could tell who was telling the truth.” Clark objected to 

the admission of these statements at trial. The trial court 

overruled Clark’s objection, agreeing with the 

Commonwealth that these statements were admissible 

because they reflected the context from which Clark 
-9-

answered Officer Combs’s questions. On appeal, Clark 

argues that the introduction of Officer Combs’s 

statements constituted reversible error because Officer 

Combs was permitted to vouch for the truthfulness of 

L.C., another witness at trial. . . .

Id. at *4 (square brackets in original). 

Our Supreme Court agreed that the court had erred and explained as 

follows:

Officer Combs did not simply accuse Clark of lying, but 

rather, professed to know who was telling the truth and 

stated that the truthful person was L.C., whose 

allegations he had never doubted. Thus, Officer Combs’s 

statements go significantly further than those at issue in 

Lanham, and their admission cannot be justified based on 

the holding in that case.

This Court has long condemned the practice of 

allowing one witness to vouch for the credibility of 

another witness. Bussey v. Commonwealth, 797 S.W.2d 

483, 484-485 (Ky.1990); Moss v. Commonwealth, 949 

S.W.2d 579, 583 (Ky.1997) (stating that “[a] witness’s 

opinion about the truth of the testimony of another 

witness is not permitted.”); Dickerson v. Commonwealth,

174 S.W.3d 451, 472 (Ky.2005). As noted previously, in 

expressly stating that he knew who was telling the truth, 

that he believed L.C.’s accusations were true, and that he 

never doubted what L.C. had told him, Officer Combs 

vouched for the credibility of L.C. who also testified at 

trial. Thus, the trial court erred by admitting the audio 

recording of Clark’s interview without first redacting 

Officer Combs’s statements regarding his belief in L.C.’s 

veracity and his ability to tell who is and who is not 

telling the truth. Furthermore, this error cannot be 

deemed harmless in Clark's case because the 

Commonwealth relied heavily on L.C.’s testimony to 

prove that Clark was guilty of rape, sodomy, and sexual 
-10-

abuse. The fact that Officer Combs was permitted to

improperly vouch for L.C.’s credibility likely affected the 

result of this proceeding and constitutes grounds for 

reversal.

Id. at *5 (emphasis added) (footnote omitted).

In Jackson v. Commonwealth, No. 2009-CA-001120-MR, 2011 WL 

112427 (Ky. App. Jan. 14, 2011), another panel of this Court concluded that the 

detective’s statements that the defendant was lying were admissible under 

Lanham. However, the detective’s statements about the victim’s credibility were 

not:

In a related argument, Jackson contends that the 

court erred in allowing an additional portion of the taped 

interview to be played. In that portion the detective 

states that [the victim] “has no reason to lie because she’s 

embarrassed about it.” Jackson asserts that this portion 

of the tape served to improperly bolster [the victim’s]

credibility. He further argues that this type of evidence is 

not admissible because it does not fall within the holding 

of the Lanham case.

. . .

The first question is whether any error occurred. In 

resolving this issue, we begin by looking at the Lanham

case. While the Court in the Lanham case addressed 

circumstances where the questioning officer made 

statements relating to the defendant’s credibility and held 

that such statements were admissible, it did not address 

circumstances where the questioning officer made 

statements relating to the victim’s credibility. . . .

. . .
-11-

“Generally, a witness may not vouch for the 

truthfulness of another witness.” Stringer v.

Commonwealth, 956 S.W.2d 883, 888 (Ky. 1997). See

also Lanham, 171 S.W.3d at 23. Since our Supreme 

Court has not extended the holding of the Lanham case to 

this circumstance and has even specifically limited its 

holding to the circumstances present in that case, we 

decline to extend the rule as well. Thus, we conclude 

that it was error for the court to allow that portion of the 

taped interview as evidence.[4]

Jackson, 2011 WL 112427, at *3 (emphasis added).

We also decline to extend the rule in Lanham to the circumstances in 

the case before us. We hold that any comments made by an officer on the body 

camera video relating to the victim’s credibility are inadmissible, and we conclude 

that the trial court erred in holding “that the bodycam footage may be played to the 

jury in its entirety.” We need not address the remainder of the Commonwealth’s 

arguments.

Accordingly, we reverse that portion of the trial court’s order of 

November 4, 2022, denying the Commonwealth’s motion in limine to exclude the 

body camera footage. We remand this matter to the trial court with the instruction 

to enter an order granting the Commonwealth’s motion in limine as to the body 

4 However, in Jackson the error was not preserved and the Court concluded that it did not rise to 

the level of palpable error: “[C]onsidering the whole case, there is not a substantial possibility 

that the result would have been any different had that portion of the taped interview not been 

admitted.” Id. at *4.
-12-

camera footage and prohibiting the introduction of any footage containing an 

officer’s statements regarding the victim’s credibility.

ALL CONCUR.

BRIEFS FOR APPELLANT:

Daniel Cameron

Attorney General of Kentucky 

 

Melissa A. Pile

Assistant Attorney General 

Frankfort, Kentucky

BRIEF FOR APPELLEE:

Emily Holt Rhorer

Lexington, Kentucky