Opinion ID: 1780462
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: prejudicial errors

Text: There are three prosecutorial errors so substantial that each would require the judgment be reversed. 1) The prosecutor intentionally erased the tape-recorded statements of four witnesses, three of whom testified at trial against the appellant. The defense had sought by pretrial discovery motion to obtain the statements of prospective witnesses. While this motion was pending, the prosecutor, who was aware of the court's policy to order such disclosure ten or twelve days before trial, erased the tapes. The prosecutor stated on the record, when called upon to produce the tapes: They were erased in anticipation of the Court's rulings. . . . I get what I want off of them, make my notes, and erase them. The prosecutor claims he has a right to destroy such tapes. The claim is specious, and his tactics unforgivable. Three of those with tape-recorded interviews testified as witnesses called by the Commonwealth. RCr 7.26(1) states: Before a witness called by the Commonwealth testifies, the attorney for the commonwealth shall produce any statement of the witness in the form of a document or recording in its possession which relates to the subject matter of the witness's testimony and which . . . is or purports to be a substantially verbatim statement made by him. Such statement shall be made available for examination and use by the defendant. We need not decide at what point before the witnesses testified the prosecutor should be compelled to produce these tapes. The critical point is the prosecutor made such notes as would assist him in using these persons as witnesses for the prosecution, and then destroyed the tapes, so that these verbatim statements were not available for the defense at any point. This was misconduct of constitutional proportions under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215, 219 (1963), and its progeny. Brady rules that where the prosecutor withholds evidence on demand of an accused which, if made available, would [or might] tend to exculpate him or reduce the penalty, such is a violation of due process. Id., 373 U.S. at 87-88, 83 S.Ct. at 1197. These verbatim tapes were as such the best evidence of the contents of the witnesses' statements (Lawson, Kentucky Evidence Law Handbook, § 7.15 (2d ed. 1984)), and a summary made by the prosecutor before he destroyed them does not suffice. Prejudice is presumed where the prosecutor destroys evidence. Hilliard v. Spalding, 719 F.2d 1443, 1446-47 (9th Cir. 1983). As stated in United States v. Pollock, 417 F.Supp. 1332, 1349 (D.Mass.1976): Such action passes beyond the line of tolerable human imperfection and falls into the realm of fundamental unfairness. In Pollock , the court held that such action called for dismissal. However, in this case, the testimony of these witnesses, while important, was not essential to the Commonwealth's case. The relief requested and denied was not dismissal or exclusion, but simply an instruction permitting the jury to draw a favorable inference for the defendant from the destruction of the evidence. Reversal with directions to give the requested instruction is the appropriate remedy. In State v. Maniccia, 355 N.W.2d 256, 259 (Iowa App.1984), in similar circumstances, the court held that a missing evidence instruction [3] was sufficient to offset the prosecutor's misconduct. We so hold here. 2) After his arrest the appellant gave a tape-recorded statement to a police officer and the Commonwealth Attorney. Prior to introducing this tape recording, the prosecutor moved for and was permitted, over objection, to furnish his written version of the transcription of this statement to the jury, to assist in listening to the tape. There were approximately 25 instances where the defense disagreed with the Commonwealth's transcribed interpretation of the tape. The Commonwealth Attorney freely conceded that portions of the tape were difficult to understand. He gave this as the reason for furnishing his version of the tape for the jurors' use, when instead it should have been the reason for refusing such use. For example, on page four of the Commonwealth Attorney's transcript the appellant is quoted as saying I shouldn't have been wrong. The trial transcript, made by the official court reporter while listening to the tape as it was played in the courtroom, quotes the appellant as stating at this point, I shouldn't have got drunk. As stated by defense counsel, the Commonwealth Attorney's office has interpreted. . . the tape in a certain manner, and the Defendant has had absolutely no input into how they would view the interpretation of the tape, and they [the jurors] have before them a printed transcript, which is, in fact, the Commonwealth Attorney's version of the tape. We can but agree with defense counsel's further statement that this procedure certainly would sway them [the jurors] as to the proper interpretation of the tape. The trial court's remedy for the problems created by the places in the appellant's tape-recorded statement which were inaudible or difficult to understand, simply made the situation worse. The court's solution was to highlight with a yellow marker the Commonwealth Attorney's version of the questionable remarks. It was prejudicial error to enhance the inaudible or unintelligible portions of the defendant's statement with the Commonwealth's written version, and the error was exacerbated by being highlighted with a yellow marker. It is within the discretion of a trial judge to decide whether because portions of a tape are inaudible or indistinct, the entire tape must be excluded. United States v. Robinson, 707 F.2d 872, 876 (6th Cir.1983). It is not, however, within the discretion of the court to provide the jury with the prosecutor's version of the inaudible or indistinct portions. The trial court's decision to permit the use of the transcript was an abuse of discretion requiring a reversal of the appellant's conviction. The fact that this transcript was admitted in evidence as a Commonwealth's Exhibit, and was available for the jury to use in its deliberations, compounded the error even further. At oral argument before our Court, in responding to a question, the Commonwealth Attorney passed off this tape to us as the court's transcript. But the record contains sworn testimony from the Commonwealth Attorney's secretary establishing that this transcript was prepared by her, not the court, and at the direction of the Commonwealth Attorney. That same transcript contains the sworn testimony of the Commonwealth Attorney explaining why he did this, as follows: Sanborn is difficult to hear at times, because of the movement of his head and body away from the machine, but you can hear him if you pay close attention, and sometimes have to replay it, but you can pick it up. Q. 49. Because of that, did you cause a transcript to be made under your direction and supervision of that conversation? A. I did. The Commonwealth Attorney was in violation of his duties as an officer of this Court when he represented to us at oral argument that this was a transcript prepared by the trial court. 3) The third error which, standing alone, requires reversal is the extensive use of testimony from three different police officers repeating what was told to them by persons whom they interviewed during the course of their investigation, offered under the guise of a so-called investigative hearsay exception to the hearsay rule. Perhaps it would help to state forcefully at the outset that hearsay is no less hearsay because a police officer supplies the evidence. In short, there is no separate rule, as such, which is an investigative hearsay exception to the hearsay rule. As stated in Lawson's Kentucky Evidence Law Handbook, § 8.00 (2d ed. 1984), in distinguishing the verbal act doctrine from hearsay, [a]n extrajudicial statement has a proper nonhearsay use when its utterance (not its substance) is a part of the issues of the case. Emphasis original. One example of this which Lawson provides in explaining a wide variety of miscellaneous situations where this rule applies is the extrajudicial statement to a police officer offered not to prove the fact. . . but rather to explain the basis for the action subsequently taken by the police officer. Manz v. Commonwealth, Ky., 257 S.W.2d 581 (1953). The fundamental premise underlying the use of such testimony is not the admissibility of investigative hearsay but the verbal act doctrine: This is not hearsay evidence; it is not admitted for the purpose of proving the truth of what was said, but for the purpose of describing the relevant details of what took place. Preston v. Commonwealth, Ky., 406 S.W.2d 398, 401 (1966). Its relevancy does not turn on whether the information asserted tends to prove or disprove an issue in controversy, but on whether the action taken by the police officer in response to the information that was furnished is an issue in controversy. The information from other persons in the possession of a police officer at the time he makes an arrest is irrelevant to any issue of guilt or innocence in the trial of a criminal case. Such information may become relevant in a criminal case if the legality of the arrest is at issue. It was relevant in Manz, supra , because the reason for and legality of the police roadblock was at issue. Prosecutors should, once and for all, abandon the term investigative hearsay as a misnomer, an oxymoron. The rule is that a police officer may testify about information furnished to him only where it tends to explain the action that was taken by the police officer as a result of this information and the taking of that action is an issue in the case. Such information is then admissible, not to prove the facts told to the police officer, but only to prove why the police officer then acted as he did. It is admissible only if there is an issue about the police officer's action. Turning to the present case, over objection: 1) Police Trooper Taylor Bright was erroneously permitted to testify about information he received in response to a telephone call he made to investigate the whereabouts of another potential suspect. He testified that he confirmed the suspect was at work at the critical time. 2) A key witness, Sheriff Ray Powell, was permitted to summarize information from interviews with some forty or fifty persons in the Campbellsburg area by testifying to his conclusion based on these interviews. He testified the two brothers whom the appellant blamed for these crimes did not exist. The substance of Powell's testimony was he did not obtain any information from the people whom he interviewed verifying the appellant's alibi; that he had found no information indicating the appellant ran with or had two close friends as he claimed. 3) Detective Robert Perkins, who also investigated the appellant's alibi, was asked whether as a result of his investigation he was led to believe anyone was with the appellant on the night in question, to which he responded, No, no person at all was seen with Pat Sanborn. In each of these three examples we are indeed dealing with investigative hearsay. In each instance the police officer was testifying as to information furnished to him by persons whom he interviewed. The problem is the information was inadmissible because it was hearsay. It was relevant for the truth of what was stated, not for any nonhearsay use to explain the actions of the police officers. The actions taken by the police officers were not at issue.