Opinion ID: 2272236
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Admissibility of KASPER Report

Text: Appellant first argues that reversal is required because the trial court refused to allow him to introduce or refer to a Kentucky All-Schedule Prescription Electronic Reporting (KASPER) record to impeach Kustes, who testified against him at trial. This Court disagrees. The issue here is not whether Appellant can invade the KASPER privilege to receive exculpatory information or to use any such information in his defense. He clearly can under Commonwealth v. Bartlett, 311 S.W.3d 224 (Ky.2010). However, Bartlett does not make a KASPER report necessarily admissible. It can still be excluded under our rules of evidence, such as for lack of relevance, just like anything else. Because the question here is about the admissibility of evidence, the trial court's decision must be reviewed for an abuse of discretion. E.g., Commonwealth v. English, 993 S.W.2d 941, 945 (Ky.1999). A trial court abuses its discretion if its decision was arbitrary, unreasonable, unfair, or unsupported by sound legal principles. Id. The report here was offered to impeach Kustes. Appellant began his defense by calling Kustes, who had already testified against him during the Commonwealth's case in chief. Defense counsel asked Kustes about a prescription she had for Lortab, which she had said was in her purse the night of the robbery. Counsel asked her if she refilled her prescription as indicated, which would have been every two weeks. Kustes replied that she did. Counsel then asked: So, if I were able to show you a KASPER report regarding you, at which point the prosecutor objected and the attorneys approached the bench. At the bench conference, the court examined the report and asked defense counsel pointedly: How is this probative and relevant? Defense counsel explained how he wanted to use it for impeachment purposes. In particular, he responded that it was probative and relevant, because, again, it goes to impeachment testimony. She says she gets refills every two weeks, but under this report here, she got one that was sooner, a lot sooner, than two weeks there, so it's impeachment material. The court then sustained the prosecutor's objection. Defense counsel complained: Again, she clearly stated that she gets refills every two weeks. Again, this would go to directly impeach that, Your Honor. The report was not admissible for impeachment because it was extrinsic evidence. KRE 608(b) provides: Specific instances of the conduct of a witness, for the purpose of attacking or supporting the witness' credibility ... may not be proved by extrinsic evidence. Applied here, the [sjpecific instances of the conduct of a witness is the frequency Kustes received Lortab refills, attacking ... the witness' credibility is her failure to recollect or tell the truth about the refills, and the prohibited extrinsic evidence is the KASPER report at issue here. The trial court's ruling was therefore correct under KRE 608(b). On appeal, Appellant now claims that the report would have been admissible not for impeachment purposes, but to directly support his defense theory. Apparently, Appellant's theory was that Kustes was selling him Lortab, and after the drug sale went sour, she made up the story about the robbery to get revenge. Indeed, counsel mentioned this at a pre-trial conference to get discovery of the report. And during the Commonwealth's case in chief, defense counsel did ask Kustes if she met Appellant that night to sell him Lortab. (She denied doing so.) Nevertheless, counsel did not explain to the court that the KASPER report would be used for anything other than impeachment. In fact, after the court ruled the report would be inadmissible to impeach Kustes, the court explained: I don't know what context you're going to use it in, so I'm not going to make a blanket ruling [on its admissibility] until I know what grounds you believe it's admissible on. This begs for the response that the report would be used to support this defense theory, if it were going to be explored any further. Yet, defense counsel responded that it was admissible for impeachment. However, even assuming that Appellant tried to introduce the report to support this defense theory, it would still be inadmissible. As the trial court pointed out, the only entries on the KASPER report showing a sooner-than-biweekly refill post-date the date of the events related to the indictment. Thus, the report could not directly show that Kustes had any extra Lortab to sell the night of the robbery; at most, it could show her character as an excessive prescription refiller to prove she may have gotten an extra refill on a prior occasion (despite this not being in the report). However, this would run afoul of KRE 404(b), which provides: Evidence of other crimes, wrongs, or acts is not admissible to prove the character of a person in order to show action in conformity therewith. Consequently, there was no error.