Opinion ID: 2512155
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Testimony of Victim's Wife

Text: Jones' first argument on this direct appeal is that his counsel should have been allowed to question Sandgren about her consultation with a lawyer about the quality of her husband's medical care. He asserts that the district judge's refusal to allow this line of questioning on the ground of attorney-client privilege, see K.S.A. 60-426, violated his due process right to present a defense, namely, that the proximate cause of U's death was medical malpractice rather than his flight from felonious conduct. Jones further asserts that this question is reviewable by this court de novo. Although earlier cases have not been abundantly clear on the standard of appellate review applicable to a district judge's ruling on the existence and effect of attorney-client privilege, we agree with Jones that, when the underlying facts are undisputed, as they are here, the existence and effect of such a privilege is reviewable by us de novo. See Butler v. HCA Health Svcs. of Kansas, Inc., 27 Kan.App.2d 403, 436-37, 6 P.3d 871 (1999). That being said, regardless of whether a privilege existed to prevent disclosure of either the fact of Sandgren's contact with a lawyer or of the content of her discussion with that lawyer, exclusion of any responses Sandgren would have given to questions from defense counsel on this issue, however the questions or responses had been phrased, was inconsequential. Jones' jury heard a great deal of testimony about U's injuries, about the multiple complications that arose from them, and about the dispute among medical experts regarding the causal chain leading to U's death. By comparison, the information Jones hoped to add from Sandgren's testimony would have been minimally probative on the medicine or the causation involved in this case. When a district judge allows a criminal defendant to present evidence supporting his or her theory of defense such that the jury could reach a conclusion on its validity, exclusion of other evidence is not necessarily error. See State v. Lawrence, 281 Kan. 1081, 1086-87, 135 P.3d 1211 (2006); compare State v. Irons, 250 Kan. 302, 309, 827 P.2d 722 (1992) (reversing conviction when motion in limine completely `choke[d] off a valid defense in a criminal action'). Here, the district judge's evidentiary ruling against Jones, even if it could be characterized as legal error, a question we do not decide, was harmless well beyond a reasonable doubt. See Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 24, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967) (harmless error standard for constitutional claims).