Opinion ID: 2354297
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Termination of Appellant's employment and failure to return weapon.

Text: Ed Davis, the manager of Diamond Detective Agency and Appellant's former supervisor, testified that he hired Appellant to work as a security guard in April 1999 and provided him with a.38 caliber revolver, serial number 2D59496, which was later identified as the same weapon used to kill Mr. and Mrs. Porter. Davis further testified that he terminated Appellant's employment and thereafter made repeated unsuccessful efforts to obtain the return of the revolver, including the sending of a certified letter to Appellant. Appellant claims that this was improper character evidence under KRE 404(b). We note at the outset that this issue was specifically waived. Before the Commonwealth called Davis to testify, Appellant objected to any testimony from Davis regarding a subsequent civil suit and criminal charge that he filed against Appellant because of the failure to return the weapon. However, Appellant specifically stated that he did not object to Davis's testimony regarding his failure to return the weapon after the termination of his employment. The prosecutor instructed Davis not to mention the civil suit and criminal charge, and Davis complied with that instruction. Nevertheless, the fact that Appellant failed to return the .38 revolver upon the termination of his employment was relevant to identify the weapon as the one used to kill Mr. and Mrs. Porter and to link it to Appellant, thus identifying Appellant as the perpetrator of the murders. See Barth v. Commonwealth, Ky., 80 S.W.3d 390, 402-03 (2001) (evidence that defendant flourished weapon on another occasion before using it in assault and robbery admissible under KRE 404(b)(1) as probative of identity of the weapon and of defendant as perpetrator). Davis's testimony with respect to his unsuccessful attempts to retrieve the weapon was relevant for the same purpose, i.e., to show that the weapon was in Appellant's, not Davis's, possession at the time the crimes were committed. Evidence that Davis terminated Appellant's employment was inextricably intertwined with the evidence of his unsuccessful attempts to obtain the return of the weapon. KRE 404(b)(2). Nor was there a KRE 404(c) violation with respect to Davis's testimony. Appellant made a preliminary objection resulting in the exclusion of certain aspects of Davis's testimony, i.e., that he had sued Appellant and brought criminal charges against him for failing to return the weapon, indicating prior actual knowledge of the substance of that testimony.