Opinion ID: 2547611
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: admission of sheckles's out-of-court statement to police under the doctrine of forfeiture by wrongdoing

Text: Appellant next argues that the trial court erred by allowing the Commonwealth to admit into evidence the audio recordings of Troya Sheckles's statement to police investigators. Sheckles was the only eyewitness to the Sawyers murder and the related crimes but, as noted above in footnote 1, she was unavailable as a witness because she was murdered before Appellant's trial began. It is not disputed that Sheckles's out-of-court statement would ordinarily be inadmissible under the hearsay rules and that, in ordinary circumstances, its admission would violate the Sixth Amendment right of confrontation under Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 62, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 L.Ed.2d 177 (2004). However, the Commonwealth claimed that Appellant orchestrated Sheckles's murder to prevent her from testifying against him at trial. It filed a motion to have Sheckles's out-of-court statement admitted into evidence at trial under the forfeiture by wrongdoing exception to the hearsay rule. KRE 804(b)(5) provides that the hearsay rule does not apply to [a] statement offered against a party that has engaged or acquiesced in wrongdoing that was intended to, and did, procure the unavailability of the declarant as a witness. The Sixth Amendment right of confrontation is also subject to the doctrine of forfeiture by wrongdoing. Davis v. Washington, 547 U.S. 813, 833, 126 S.Ct. 2266, 165 L.Ed.2d 224 (2006). (One who obtains the absence of a witness by wrongdoing forfeits the constitutional right to confrontation.) The Commonwealth's motion was heard by the trial court at a pre-trial conference. To sustain its burden of proving that Appellant procured Sheckles's unavailability as a witness, the Commonwealth presented the trial court with an eighty-four page set of documents pertaining to the investigation by police into Sheckles's murder. [4] The prosecutor then outlined for the trial court his theory of how Appellant arranged for Sheckles to be killed. The prosecutor averred that his theory was supported by information gleaned from the stack of documents. There was no formal evidentiary hearing. No live witnesses testified to establish the verity of the documents or to be cross-examined about the contents or preparation of the documents. There was no stipulation of facts or evidence. Appellant argued that the hearsay statement at issue could not be ruled admissible under KRE 804(b)(5) without an evidentiary hearing, and that the of stack of documents, as presented to the court, could not be regarded as evidence without a proper foundation. Over Appellant's objection, the trial court took the matter under submission. Based exclusively upon the documents, tendered without any supporting testimony or foundation, the court found upon reasonable inferences drawn from the documents that Sheckles was killed by Appellant's brother and another individual at the behest of, or at the very least, the acquiescence of [Appellant] in order to prevent her from testifying at Appellant's trial. Written findings were entered accordingly, along with an order granting the Commonwealth's motion to admit into evidence at trial the out-of-court statement Sheckles made to police. At trial, the jury was allowed to hear the out-of-court statement Sheckles had provided to police officers. Appellant's complaint on appeal is two-fold. First, he contends that the hearing held by the trial court was not a proper evidentiary hearing as required by Parker, 291 S.W.3d at 669-670, and that it did not otherwise conform to due process standards. Second, he contends that the information submitted to the court did not sufficiently prove his involvement in the Sheckles murder. Parker holds that when the issue of forfeiture by wrongdoing is raised [the] trial court must hold an evidentiary hearing before ruling on the admissibility of the proposed hearsay, and the proponent of the hearsay must first introduce evidence establishing good reason to believe that the defendant intentionally procured the absence of the declarant. Id. [5] The burden [then] shifts to the party opposing introduction of the hearsay to offer credible evidence to the contrary. Id. The proponent of the hearsay evidence bears the burden of proving its claim by a preponderance of the evidence. Id. Finally, Parker cited Young v. Commonwealth, 50 S.W.3d 148, 167 (Ky.2001) for the following, regarding our standard of review on appeal: [W]hen the determination depends upon the resolution of a preliminary question of fact, the resolution is determined by the trial judge under KRE 104(a) on the basis of a preponderance of the evidence, Bourjaily v. United States, 483 U.S. 171, 175 [107 S.Ct. 2775, 97 L.Ed.2d 144] (1987); and the resolution will not be overturned unless clearly erroneous, i.e., unless unsupported by substantial evidence. Cf. Commonwealth v. Deloney, Ky., 20 S.W.3d 471, 473-74 (2000) (trial judge's findings of fact are not clearly erroneous if supported by substantial evidence). While Parker does specify with particularity the essential elements of due process required for a proper forfeiture by wrongdoing hearing, it clearly states that the proponent of the hearsay must first introduce evidence to establish the factual basis for applying the doctrine. Parker, 291 S.W.3d at 670 (emphasis added). Moreover, implicit in the Commonwealth's burden of proving the issue by a preponderance of the evidence is that evidence is necessary. Thus, while we recognize that the evidentiary hearing to determine the question of forfeiture by wrongdoing is not governed by the Kentucky Rules of Evidence, [6] it should go without saying that the party with the burden of proof must present some evidence to prove the material facts at issue. [7] Without a stipulation by Appellant, it was incumbent upon the Commonwealth to establish that the documents submitted to the trial court were, in fact, what they were purported to be and that the information upon which it relied to make its case was credible. Ordinarily, that would be done by witness testimony, presumably the police investigator who prepared the documents or was otherwise sufficiently apprised of their creation and content, and competent as a witness to authenticate them and answer questions posed by the court or the opposing party. Without even some rudimentary authentication of the documents, the opposing party has no reasonable means to challenge the veracity of the contents of documents and the trial court cannot reasonably accept the documents as evidence worthy of its consideration. We do not say that in all cases this requirement can only be satisfied by the testimony of a live witness. But, we do say that until some manner of accreditation was provided to cloak the information contained in the documents with even a modicum of reliability, the eighty-four-page stack of papers did not become evidence, and findings drawn from it cannot be regarded as being supported by substantial evidence. It is simply not enough to presume the contents of the documents are reliable because they were gathered by the police investigating a homicide. [8] Because the trial court's findings with respect to the forfeiture by wrongdoing doctrine were based exclusively on the unauthenticated documents tendered by the Commonwealth without any evidentiary foundation, we conclude that they are not supported by substantial evidence as required by Young, 50 S.W.3d at 167, and therefore the trial court's decision to admit Sheckles's out-of-court statement was clearly erroneous. It follows that the Appellant's convictions for the crimes associated with the burglary of Sheckles's home, including the Sawyers murder and the Cherry murder must be reversed and remanded for a new trial. Appellant's second argument  that the information contained in the eighty-four pages of documents does not support the finding that Appellant procured Sheckles's death for the purpose of rendering her unavailable to testify at his trial  exposes an additional problem inherent in the trial court's informal method of resolving this issue. We address the point to avoid its repetition upon retrial. Nowhere in the record before this Court does the Commonwealth connect the assortment of facts and circumstances that comprise its theory of Appellant's role in Sheckles's murder to the specific documents where those facts are established. For example, the trial court finds that The Commonwealth has produced evidence that [Appellant's brother] procured a juvenile with the initials S.P. a/k/a Pedro to perform the killing [of Sheckles.] We have been provided no citations to the record, such as it is, to review what that evidence is, short of sifting through the eighty-four pages of documents. The Commonwealth contends that Appellant's involvement in the Sheckles murder is well-documented. If so, it would be a simple matter for the Commonwealth to identify by chapter and verse the parts of documents that establish those facts. Our only means of reviewing the claim that the evidence was sufficient is to examine whole stack of the documents to see if we can ascertain how they support the trial court's findings. That we cannot do. The truncated hearing that was held in the trial court, coupled with the lack of any citations connecting the trial court's finding to any specific source, renders meaningful appellate review impossible. Upon retrial, the Commonwealth bears the burden of proving forfeiture by wrongdoing and we trust that if the issue arises upon remand, the Commonwealth will properly establish at a Parker hearing the authenticity and reliability of the documents upon which it relies, and that the evidentiary hearing will be conducted so as to provide an adequate record of the evidence for appellate review. If upon retrial, the forfeiture by wrongdoing standards as discussed herein are met, Sheckles's statement would be admissible in the Sawyers and Cherry proceeding.