Opinion ID: 2060561
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Admission of tapes.

Text: During the state's case in chief, three tape-recorded statements made by the defendant were played to the jury. There was no question as to their voluntariness. A waiver of constitutional rights was offered into evidence without objection to voluntariness. The only objection made was that the first two statements were irrelevant. The state argued the statements were relevant to show intent and credibility of the defendant. Without first listening to the tapes, the court allowed them to be played to the jury. In the first statement, Wilson claimed to be at the home of Eddie Davis on the night of the alleged murder from 6:30 p. m. until the next day. At approximately 1 a. m., the morning after the shooting, according to Wilson, a man called Sims gave him the gun involved in the crime and he put it back on a shelf in Davis' home. In the second recorded statement, Wilson claimed a man called Big Daddy set him (Wilson) up to rob Kennedy. Big Daddy called Wilson at 9:50 p. m. on March 26, 1971, and told him Kennedy was at a particular tavern. Wilson went to the tavern, and gave a gun he had taken from Davis' house to Sims. Wilson then went outside and broke into a car he thought was Kennedy's. While he was doing this, he saw Kennedy and two women leave the tavern and go into another car, with Sims behind them. Thereafter, he heard gun shots and saw Sims run away. Wilson then ran away himself. In the third recorded statement, Wilson claimed that after leaving a tavern he saw a man get into a car and decided to hold him up. He walked up to the man with a gun in his hand and told the man this was a stickup and to give over all the money he had. When the man reached for something, Wilson hesitated and then fired a shot, telling the man to hurry and hand over his money. After the man replied that he had none, Wilson fired the second shot. The man then drove off, and Wilson put the gun in his back pocket and ran. On appeal, Wilson claims the court committed prejudicial error in allowing these recordings to be played without first listening to them because they were irrelevant. The state argues that any possible error was harmless. Wilson replies it was not harmless because it impeached his credibility. The court erred in allowing the recordings to be played prior to hearing their content outside the presence of the jury. As a matter of authentication, laying the foundation, and determining relevancy, the court should always listen to the tapes to determine their admissibility. [33] The question then becomes whether this error resulted in admission of irrelevant but prejudicial evidence. There is no issue as to the relevancy of the third recorded statement, which could be admitted in the state's case in chief for purposes of showing intent and the attempted armed robbery. The only question concerns the admission of the first two statements. Because they were exculpatory in nature and contained Wilson's denial of involvement or denial of shooting, they cannot go to the matter of intent to murder or even to the fact of the attempted armed robbery. Their only obvious purpose was to impeach Wilson's credibility. While this is a proper purpose, the timing was wrong since Wilson had not taken the stand at that point in the trial. In Paulson v. State [34] this court held that evidence of a former conviction and of other irrelevant facts tending to degrade the accused was error and could not be cured by the fact that the defendant later took the stand, thus opening the door for use of this evidence for impeachment. In the instant case, while the evidence admitted was not so grave as that in Paulson (where it was clearly erroneously admitted evidence of prior crimes), the first two tape recordings were admitted at a point in time when they were irrelevant. However, in light of the overwhelming evidence of Wilson's guilt (and, in fact, defense counsel's statement upon objection to this evidence that the shooting and attempted robbery were admitted, the only question being the degree of homicide) we are satisfied that any error in this regard was not prejudicial.