Opinion ID: 2343112
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Admissibility of Detective's Testimony About Cosby's Question

Text: Cosby argues that the district court erred by excluding Hanson's testimony about Cosby's question: `Did you find the gun on him?' On appeal, Cosby muses about whether a question can ever qualify as an out-of-court statement, and he persists in his arguments that he offered the testimony not to prove the truth of the matter asserted, but to show the ineffectiveness of the police investigation and his state of mind. The standard of review for admissibility of hearsay evidence is as follows: The standard this court applies in reviewing a district court's decision involving the admission or exclusion of evidence is guided by the level of discretion that the district court could exercise in making that decision under Kansas law. For example, [ State v. ] Gunby [, 282 Kan. 39, 144 P.3d 647 (2006),] explained that when the `legal basis' of the district court's decision is raised on appeal, appellate courts review such questions de novo. 282 Kan. at 47-48 [144 P.3d 647]. If the decision at issue is one where the district court is afforded greater discretion, such as the balancing of a piece of evidence's probative value versus the risk of undue prejudice under K.S.A. 60-445, then the district court's decision will not be overturned on appeal if reasonable minds could disagree as to the court's decision. See State v. Miller, 284 Kan. 682, 722-24, 163 P.3d 267 (2007) (Luckert, J., concurring). State v. Boggs, 287 Kan. 298, 307, 197 P.3d 441 (2008). In this case, Cosby challenges the legal bases for the district judge's exclusion of evidence, and we therefore review Cosby's arguments under a de novo standard. K.S.A. 60-460 defines hearsay as [e]vidence of a statement which is made other than by a witness while testifying at the hearing, offered to prove the truth of the matter stated. Out-of-court statements not offered to prove the truth of the matter stated are not hearsay. See State v. Becker, 290 Kan. 842, 846, 235 P.3d 424 (2010) (citing Boldridge v. State, 289 Kan. 618, Syl. ¶ 12, 215 P.3d 585 [2009]). The theory behind the hearsay rule is that when a statement is offered as evidence of the truth of the matter stated, the credibility of the declarant is the basis for its reliability and the declarant must therefore be subject to cross-examination. Becker, 290 Kan. at 846, 235 P.3d 424. If a statement is offered merely to demonstrate that it was made, it is not hearsay. State v. Harris, 259 Kan. 689, 698, 915 P.2d 758 (1996). If relevant, such a statement is admissible through the person who heard it. Harris, 259 at 698, 915 P.2d 758 (citing State v. Getz, 250 Kan. 560, Syl. ¶ 2, 830 P.2d 5 [1992]). Cosby first asks philosophically whether a question such as his to Hanson can ever qualify as an out-of-court statement. There are certainly questions that impart little or no information about the questionerWhat color was the couch? for examplebut Cosby's was not one of them. Indeed, the question was loaded with significance for a defendant who fired three shots into his victim's chest in front of a roomful of eyewitnesses. It implied that Martin had a gun or that Cosby believed he did, at least when Cosby asked the question 2 days after the crime. See United States v. Summers, 414 F.3d 1287, 1298-1303 (10th Cir.2005) (How did you guys find us so fast? implied guilt, wonderment at ability of police to apprehend perpetrators of crime so quickly). The interrogatory form of Cosby's out-of-court statement does not protect it from hearsay challenge. Cosby's second argument is that his question was nonhearsay because it was not offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted but to demonstrate the inadequacy of the police investigation. This argument lacks merit. In order for jurors to infer that the police investigation was sloppy or incomplete because it failed to discover a gun, they would first have to have accepted the truth of one of the matters asserted by Cosby's questionthat there was a gun to be found. To the extent Cosby's question was supposed to prove the inadequacy of the police investigation, it was classic hearsay. Cosby's third argument that the question was offered to show his state of mind is somewhat more challenging to unravel. Ordinarily a statement offered merely to show the declarant's state of mind is admissible. This is true either because it is not offered to show the truth of the matter asserted and therefore does not qualify as hearsay in the first place, see Boldridge, 289 Kan. at 634, 215 P.3d 585; or, even if it qualifies as hearsay, it fits under a statutory exception for statements describing the then-existing state of mind of the declarant, see K.S.A. 60-460( l ). Here, one of the matters assertedthat Cosby subjectively believed Martin had a gun at the party, making Martin a lethal threat who needed killing before Johnson was harmed is Cosby's state of mind at the time of the crime, not merely circumstantial evidence of what Cosby's state of mind may have been. The State was correct at trial when it argued that Cosby clearly wanted his question to Hanson before the jury as direct evidence of Cosby's subjective belief in Martin's dangerousness. In short, as with the police-investigation rationale for admission, the state-of-mind rationale for admission would have been frustrated unless the jury accepted the truth of the matter asserted. Again, this means Cosby's out-of-court question qualified as classic hearsay. Once an out-of-court statement is identified as hearsay, it is inadmissible unless a constitutional concern or a statutory exception dictates otherwise. Stano, the case relied upon by the district judge, speaks to the constitutional concern. In that case, a nontestifying defendant argued that the district judge improperly excluded the defendant's out-of-court exculpatory statements to a detective while permitting three witnesses to testify about inculpatory out-of-court statements the defendant had made to them in other conversations. We began our discussion by observing that time-honored rules of evidence required exclusion of the defendant's statements to the detective. Stano, 284 Kan. at 132, 159 P.3d 931. We continued: A criminal defendant is present at trial and has an absolute right to testify in his or her own behalf. Therefore, the defendant in this case could have taken the stand and testified about what he told [the detective]. However, the defendant elected not to testify. In spite of this decision, the defendant now claims that the court erred by excluding the detective's testimony regarding the defendant's exculpatory hearsay statement. The inculpatory statements admitted by the trial court that form the basis of the defendant's claimstatements that he made to his acquaintances that he committed the murderwere clearly admissible as party admissions under traditional rules of evidence. See K.S.A. 2006 Supp. 60-460(g). The defendant was present and could have taken the stand to deny he made such statements or to attempt to show that the statements were not true for whatever reason. However, the defendant elected not to testify. The question must be asked: `What, according to the law, makes this situation constitutionally unfair?' Stano, 284 Kan. at 132, 159 P.3d 931. Because the district judge in Stano had admitted competing inculpatory hearsay, we were forced to look carefully for any constitutional compulsion that would trump the usual hearsay exclusion rule. See Stano, 284 Kan. at 131, 159 P.3d 931 (quoting State v. DuMars, 33 Kan.App.2d 735, 739, 108 P.3d 448, rev. denied 280 Kan. 986 [2005] [in some instances, admission of inculpatory hearsay statement, coupled with refusal to admit exculpatory hearsay from same declarant, so fundamentally unfair as to be abuse of discretion, denial of due process]). We acknowledged language that state hearsay rules `may not be applied mechanistically to defeat the ends of justice' and may be forced to yield when admission of hearsay is critical to the presentation of a defense. Stano, 284 Kan. at 134, 159 P.3d 931 (quoting Chambers v. Mississippi, 410 U.S. 284, 302, 93 S.Ct. 1038, 35 L.Ed.2d 297 [1973]). And we discussed our prior decision in State v. Hills, 264 Kan. 437, 443-48, 957 P.2d 496 (1998), in which we held that `[i]t is simply not permissible to admit an incriminating hearsay statement by the defendant while denying the admission of exculpatory portions of the same hearsay statement through the use of the hearsay rule. Where the State has introduced portions of the defendant's statement which are incriminating, the defendant is allowed to introduce exculpatory portions of his or her statement, even though the defendant does not intend to testify and such evidence is barred by the hearsay rule.' Stano, 284 Kan. at 135, 159 P.3d 931 (quoting Hills, 264 Kan. at 448, 957 P.2d 496). We noted, however, that we had clarified our Hills holding in State v. Humphery, 267 Kan. 45, 56, 978 P.2d 264 (1999), saying it did not lead inexorably to the conclusion that a court must admit any exculpatory statement, even if hearsay, so that a defendant may present his or her defense. Stano, 284 Kan. at 136, 159 P.3d 931. We ultimately concluded in Stano that there was no violation of the defendant's due process rights when the admitted inculpatory statements and the excluded exculpatory statements were made by the defendant in different contexts to different people at different times. Stano, 284 Kan. at 137, 159 P.3d 931. We stated: [T]he State did not attempt to offer any evidence relating to [the detective's] interrogation of the defendant. Rather, defense counsel attempted to elicit the only testimony regarding this interview during the detective's cross-examination. The evidence therefore was not presented to impeach any testimony by the detective relating to the conversation but, instead, was an attempt to offer the exculpatory hearsay statements by the defendant into evidence without allowing the State an opportunity to cross-examine the defendant with regard to those statements. Stano, 284 Kan. at 137, 159 P.3d 931. Here, we need not scramble over the constitutional stumbling block at issue in Stano. The State did not admit any incriminating out-of-court statements to police by Cosby. There is no reason to temper the general rule of inadmissibility for a nontestifying defendant's out-of-court exculpatory statements. We also see no applicable statutory exception under K.S.A. 60-460. K.S.A. 60-460( l ) recognizes an exception for statements of physical or mental condition, including the declarant's existing state of mind and statements of intent, plan, and motive, when such a mental condition is in issue or is relevant to prove or explain acts or conduct of the declarant. State v. McKinney, 272 Kan. 331, 343, 33 P.3d 234 (2001), overruled on other grounds by State v. Davis, 283 Kan. 569, 158 P.3d 317 (2006). But Cosby's question to Hanson does not meet the requirements for this exception. Cosby was not making an implicit statement about his existing state of mind; he was talking about his state of mind 2 days before. His question to Hanson also does not comport with one of the principal rationales for statutory hearsay exceptions in general or this exception in particular, that is, the existence of some indicia of reliability arising from the statute-specified circumstances surrounding the out-of-court statement. See State v. Bradford, 272 Kan. 523, 531-32, 34 P.3d 434 (2001) (citing Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56, 66, 100 S.Ct. 2531, 65 L.Ed.2d 597 [1980] [reliability can be inferred where hearsay falls into firmly rooted exception], overruled on other grounds by Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 L.Ed.2d 177 [2004]); McKinney, 272 Kan. at 343-44, 33 P.3d 234 (state of mind exception to hearsay firmly rooted hearsay exception). A statement contemporaneously describing a declarant's belief or intention is inherently more trustworthy than a statement made after the fact, when incentives to embellish or fabricate may have arisen. Cosby's question to Hanson was inadmissible hearsay, and there was no error in excluding it.