Opinion ID: 2499553
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 10

Heading: issue 6: cumulative errors

Text: Next, Gilliland unpersuasively argues that even if one of the trial court's errors alone does not require reversal, then the cumulative effect of the errors denied him a fair trial, requiring reversal. In a cumulative error analysis, an appellate court aggregates all errors and, even though those errors would individually be considered harmless, analyzes whether their cumulative effect on the outcome of the trial is such that collectively they cannot be determined to be harmless. [Citation omitted.] In other words, was the defendant's right to a fair trial violated because the combined errors affected the outcome of the trial? State v. Tully, 293 Kan. 176, 205, 262 P.3d 314 (2011). Where, as here, the errors found by this court are not constitutional in nature, we examine whether there is a reasonable probability the aggregated errors would have affected the outcome of the trial. Ward, 292 Kan. at 569-70, 256 P.3d 801. In making the assessment of whether the cumulative errors are harmless, an appellate court examines the errors in the context of the record as a whole considering how the trial court dealt with the errors as they arose (including the efficacy, or lack of efficacy, of any remedial efforts); the nature and number of errors committed and their interrelationship, if any; and the strength of the evidence. See Tully, 293 Kan. at 205-06, 262 P.3d 314; Ward, 292 Kan. at 569-70, 256 P.3d 801. In this appeal, we have found two errors: (1) The trial court applied the wrong standard in determining if evidence within the ambit of the rape shield statute was inadmissible and (2) the trial court erred in giving an erroneously worded Allen -type jury instruction. These errors were unrelated and unlikely to have impacted one another. See State v. Martinez, 290 Kan. 992, 1017, 236 P.3d 481 (2010) (two trial errors were harmless, unrelated, and were not, in combination, so prejudicial as to deny the defendant a fair trial). And, as we have already stated, we find nothing in the record to suggest the Allen -type instructional error had any impact. Even factoring in the potential of some impact, we do not believe that potential changes the harmless error analysis we conducted as part of our discussion of the error regarding the rape shield statute. Consequently, we conclude the cumulative errors were harmless and did not have an effect on the jury's verdict.