Opinion ID: 1560688
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Comments by Detective Stephens During Appellant's Taped Interview

Text: Appellant's first claim of error is that the trial court improperly allowed the Commonwealth to play an unedited version of his audiotaped interrogation. During the last three-fourths of the interrogation, Detective Stephens made repeated statements to Appellant about whether Appellant was telling him the truth. All told, the taped interrogation includes at least fifteen such statements by the detective, including that Appellant had better start telling the truth, that the only way out is to tell the truth, that Appellant was not telling the truth, that the jury would not believe Appellant, and that Appellant was lying. Between and in response to the detective's comments, Appellant's story of what happened on the night his wife died shifted repeatedly. For example, Appellant first stated that he only had three beers, but then stated that he had been drunk. He claimed that when he woke up, he knew his wife was dead; but in response to the detective's comments, he then claimed that he thought his wife was asleep. As the interview progressed, Appellant gave details about what allegedly happened that night, e.g., that his wife had received the many marks and bruises on her body from falling down and running into corners because she was so drunk, yet later he claimed that everything from the evening before was a blackout and that everything was fuzzy. Near the end of the interview, Appellant repeated his assertion made before the interview started by stating that he thought his wife had frozen to death. And at the end of the interview, Appellant simply stated: I really can't remember. When the taped statement was played to the jury, Detective Stephens's comments were left intact. The jury heard his repeated comments about Appellant's truthfulness during the interview along with Appellant's shifting, inconsistent story.
Before we can address the merits of Appellant's claim, we must determine if the error was properly preserved for appellate review. Before trial, Appellant's lawyer made an oral motion in limine to exclude Detective Stephens's extensive commentary. The trial court denied Appellant's motion, ruling that the comments were just part of typical police interrogation techniques and that they would have to be addressed in closing argument. Appellant did not object again when the prosecutor sought to play the tape at trial. The Commonwealth claims that Appellant did not preserve this issue because he did not object to the unedited tape during trial. Appellant cites to Tucker v. Commonwealth , [2] where we held: While this Court has approved the use of motion in limine as a means of obtaining pretrial rulings concerning the admission and exclusion of evidence, we have not repealed the contemporaneous objection rule. One claiming error may not rely on a broad ruling and thereafter fail to object specifically to the matter complained of. When trial counsel is aware of an issue and fails to request appropriate relief on a timely basis, the matter will not be considered plain error for reversal on appeal. [3] Despite the fact that KRE 103(d), which was in effect at the time Tucker was rendered, states that a motion in limine resolved by order of record is sufficient to preserve error for appellate review, our decisions have increasingly read Tucker , which did not cite the recently enacted KRE 103(d), in an expansive manner. [4] This expansive reading of Tucker has come under increasing criticism. [5] Such criticism is not a sufficient reason for us to overrule a nearly decade old case. However, Tucker also conflicts with some of our other cases that have held that a motion in limine overruled by an order of record is sufficient under KRE 103(d) to preserve an error. [6] These cases have all been rendered since the enactment of the rules of evidence, unlike the cases upon which Tucker is based. Also, as Tucker's critics have pointed out, and as a quick perusal of the rule reveals, Tucker and its progeny have exceeded the express language of KRE 103(d). As such, there is a clear conflict between some of our decisions and the express language of the rule and among our own cases since the introduction of the rule. This conflict has, no doubt, confused the bar and merits our reconsideration to remedy the inconsistency in our law. Though Tucker is correct in that we have not repealed the contemporaneous objection rule, it is clear from the language of KRE 103(d) that the rule has, in effect, been modified. Also, as observed in The Study Committee Notes to the Kentucky Rules of Evidence, also known as the Commentary, KRE 103(d) eliminates [the] doubt [as to whether an error has been preserved by a motion in limine] by providing that motions in limine resolved by order of record are sufficient to preserve errors for appellate review. [7] While the Commentary is not binding on this Court, it is useful in interpreting the rules. [8] More importantly, however, we cannot ignore the plain language of the rule. [9] Thus, we resolve the conflict in our case law in favor of the plain language, and to the extent that Tucker and its progeny may contradict the plain language of the rule, they are overruled. This is not to say, however, that a blanket motion in limine is sufficient to preserve an error for appellate review. As Tucker correctly observed: An objection made prior to trial will not be treated in the appellate court as raising any question for review which is not strictly within the scope of the objection as made, both as to the matter objected to and as to the grounds of the objection. It must appear that the question was fairly brought to the attention of the trial court. . . . One claiming error may not rely on a broad ruling and thereafter fail to object specifically to the matter complained of. [10] Our other cases have similarly limited KRE 103(d). For example, in Davis v. Commonwealth, [11] we noted that a motion in limine challenging the presentation of any evidence supporting the Commonwealth's theory of the case without specifying any other reason why a particular fact should be suppressed [12] was insufficient to preserve objection to the introduction of specific items of evidence because they were not addressed by the broad objection embodied by the motion in limine. We noted, in what amounts to an extension and clarification of the rule in Tucker , that: Usually, a motion in limine requests an advance ruling on a specific evidentiary fact, not a theory of the case requiring proof by multiple facts. Where a party specifies what evidence should be suppressed and why, the question has been fairly brought to the attention of the trial court and the trial court's ruling preserves the issue for appeal. In that scenario, the opponent of the evidence need not object when the same evidence is offered at trial. However, the same principle does not apply to broad, generic objections. [13] More recently, in Metcalf v. Commonwealth, [14] we held that a specific motion in limine properly preserves an issue for appeal and we explained the intersection of Davis and Tucker : As explained in Davis v. Commonwealth, 147 S.W.3d 709, 722-23 (Ky.2004), Tucker applies when the motion in limine is directed at a general area of inquiry, sometimes referred to as a class of evidence, Robert G. Lawson, The Kentucky Evidence Law Handbook, § 1.10[3][f], at 36 (4th ed. LexisNexis 2003), not a particular evidentiary fact. Appellant's motion in limine and the trial court's rulings thereon covered testimony regarding particular evidentiary facts and thus properly preserved all three of these issues for appellate review. [15] Some commentators have noted that such a limited reading of KRE 103(d) contradicts KRE 103(a)(1)'s allowance of general objections as sufficient to preserve an error for appeal. [16] Such a reading, however, is supported by the Commentary: It should be noted a motion in limine would not be sufficient to preserve errors for appellate review unless it provided the trial court with the type of information which would be required to preserve errors at trial (i.e., information sufficient to satisfy the requirements of subdivision (a)the specific ground for the objection being made and the substance of any evidence being offered). [17] This is because of the nature of a motion in limine: it is primarily a pretrial tool aimed, in essence, at heading off at the pass the introduction of evidence. KRE 103(a)(1) allows a general contemporaneous objection during trial to preserve an error for review because it is usually clear from the context what the grounds for the objection are (and if they are not, the rule provides that the trial judge can ask for grounds). But motions in limine cannot function in this manner because they are not contemporaneous with the introduction of the evidence that they are aimed at. If motions in limine are not required to be specific, then KRE 103(d) could be turned into a catch-all, allowing the preservation of all manner of errors through the artful use of vague, broad motions in limine. This is clearly not what was intended by the rule. Thus, we reaffirm the portion of Tucker , as extended by Davis and Metcalf , that requires a motion in limine to specify the evidence objected to in order to preserve an error for appeal. Under this rule, we hold that Appellant's lawyer's oral motion in limine was sufficiently detailed to preserve the issue for appeal. Appellant's lawyer specifically said: [O]n the defendant's taped statement that he gave to Detective Stephens at the time of the death. There [are] a couple of areas that I think should be kept out. One is that Stephens is saying to him that the jury ain't going to buy that. Another time he refers to a jury is not going to believe that. I think those parts should be omitted because here you have a detective kind of telling the jurors you shouldn't be believing this crap. Though the detective actually made more than just a few references to whether the jury would believe Appellant and, among other things, actually accused Appellant of not telling the truth, the lawyer's request clearly conveyed what evidence she sought to exclude. Furthermore, the trial court denied the motion on the record. This meets the requirements of KRE 103(d) [a] motion in limine resolved by order of recordand the requirements of our case law to preserve the alleged error for appeal.
Appellant claims that Detective Stephens's comments amount to an improper characterization of the testimony of another witness. We agree that it is generally improper for a witness to characterize the testimony of another witness as lying or otherwise. We have held: `A witness's opinion about the truth of the testimony of another witness is not permitted. . . . That determination is within the exclusive province of the jury.' [18] This is also supported by KRE 608(a), which limits character-based attacks on the credibility of a witness to evidence in the form of opinion and reputation that refers only to the witness's character for truthfulness or untruthfulness. [19] Whether this rule applies to non-testimonial statements made by a police officer during an interrogation of a criminal suspect as part of the overall interrogation technique, however, is a different and far more complex question. Because this is an issue of first impression in Kentucky, our only recourse, aside from declaiming a rule out of the ether, is to look to the decisions of other states for guidance. Fortunately, the appellate courts of several states and at least one federal court have had the opportunity to address this issue or at least a variant of it. In State v. O'Brien, [20] the Supreme Court of Missouri was faced with testimony by an officer about his interrogation of the defendant. The officer testified that during the interrogation, he interrupted the defendant and told him that was lying. The court noted that the issues were whether the testimony constitute[d] impermissible `opinion evidence' as to the ultimate question before the jury and [whether] its admission violated his right to a fair trial. [21] The court held that the testimony was not error because the officer was not telling the jury that, in his opinion, the defendant is a liar. Rather, the witness was describing the give-and-take of his interrogation of [the defendant]. [22] The court also noted that the officer's comments were the reason for or the cause of any additional statements by the defendant thus giving color as to why these additional statements or remarks [were] made. [23] In Commonwealth v. Kitchen, [24] Pennsylvania's intermediate appellate court addressed whether certain comments by police officers contained in a videotape of an interrogation must be redacted. The court delineated the comments into two categories: (1) those in which the officers accused the defendant of lying by saying, for example, you're lying or we know that you're lying; and (2) those in which the officers asked the defendant whether she had lied about certain facts, thus eliciting a response from the defendant. The court held that the first category of statements were inadmissible because they were akin to a prosecutor offering his or her opinion of the truth or falsity of the evidence presented by a criminal defendant . . . [or] a prosecutor's personal opinion, either in argument or via witnesses from the stand, as to the guilt or innocence of a criminal defendant. . . . [25] The court allowed the introduction of the second category of comments because they were in question form, did not involve an opinion as to the truth or falsity of [the defendant's] statements or an opinion as to the guilt of [the defendant], and [the defendant] offered responses to the inquiries. [26] In State v. Demery, [27] the Supreme Court of Washington also addressed the admissibility of portions of a videotaped interrogation where the officers suggested that the defendant was lying. For example, one of the officers in that case told the defendant: [R]ight now nobody's gonna believe your story. Now you need to start tellin' the truth. When the defendant said the officer was talkin' to me like I'm lying, the officer replied, Cause you are. [28] The defendant claimed that when these statements were played at trial, they amounted to improper opinion evidence. The court's vote was fractured, with four claiming no error, one claiming harmless error, and four claiming reversible error. Because a majority of the justices voted not to reverse, the opinion claiming no error became the plurality opinion of the court. The plurality opinion noted the officers' comments on the tape were not offered during live testimony at the trial [29] and were part of a commonly used police interview technique, designed to see whether a defendant will change her story during the course of an interrogation. [30] As such, the plurality held that the officers' statements were not prohibited opinion testimony. [31] The plurality also noted that the purpose of introducing the statementsi.e., to show the context of the defendant's responses, not to impeach her credibilitywas an important consideration and that police statements showing the context of a defendant's responses were admissible to provide context. [32] Ultimately, the court imposed a requirement that the introduction of such evidence be accompanied by a jury instruction explaining that only the defendant's responses, and not the third party's statements, should be considered as evidence, [33] but then noted that such a limiting instruction was unnecessary in that particular case because the jury clearly understood from the officer's testimony that the statements were offered solely to provide context to the defendant's relevant responses. [34] The dissent claimed that the officers' statements were impermissible opinion evidence introduced in violation of Washington's Rule of Evidence 608(a), which bars the use of opinion evidence to impeach another witness (as opposed to the Federal Rule and our current version of the rule, which allow both opinion and reputation evidence). The dissent also noted that Rule 608(a) referred to evidence, not testimony. Ultimately, the dissent concluded that the problem was that admission of the evidence allowed the jury to hear[ ] the officers' opinions concerning the veracity of a witness. [35] Such evidence, the dissent reasoned, was no different than if the officers had testified in court that the defendant was lying. The justice with the deciding vote agreed with the dissent that introduction of such statements was error, but he claimed that the error not prejudicial and therefore was harmless. [36] He noted that the officers' statements did not appear to be a significant part of the [prosecution's] case. [37] He also concluded: [W]hen the statement is considered in light of the officer's testimony at trial, it is apparent that the officer was not expressing a judgment about the defendant's veracity. Rather, he concedes that he was making the accusation merely in an effort to trick the defendant into changing his story. [38] In Dubria v. Smith, [39] the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals addressed this issue in the context of reviewing a denial of a petition for habeas corpus, specifically whether the admission of such evidence violates due process. The defendant in that case claimed that the comments and questions of the officer contained, among other things, statements of disbelief of [the defendant's story], [and] opinions concerning [the defendant's] guilt. . . . [40] Drawing on the findings of the California Supreme Court, which noted that the interview was generally unremarkable though [t]here is no doubt that the officers were accusatory and suggested in a variety of ways that they did not believe [the defendant], [41] the Ninth Circuit ruled that the interview was quite properly described as an `unremarkable interview' [42] and that [t]he questions and comments by [the officer] placed [the defendant's] answers in context, much like a prosecutor's questions at trial. [43] The court also noted that because the comments arose in the context of a pre-trial interview, [t]hey were not the type of statements that carry any special aura of reliability [with the jury]. [44] Finally, the court noted that even if it was error to admit the tapes of the officers' statements, the trial court's two cautionary instructions, which informed the jury that the officers' questions and statements were to be considered only as questions and not for their truth, were sufficient to alleviate any error. [45] As such, the court ruled that the defendant's due process rights had not been violated by introduction of the officers' taped statements. More recently, in State v. Cordova , [46] Idaho's intermediate appellate court addressed the same issue with an added twist. Like the other cases, the officers in Cordova told the defendant that he was lying, but one of the officers also told the defendant that he was an expert in deception detection and that he knew the victim was telling the truth. [47] The court ruled that the expert officer's comments appeared to be the comments of an expert, [48] and because the comments were not necessary to give context to the defendant's answers, they were improperly admitted. The other comments were properly admitted because they provided context for the defendant's answers. The court also noted that the admissible comments could not be admitted for the truth of the matter asserted, thus the trial court had erred in not giving a limiting instruction. Ultimately, however, the court ruled that the admission of the officers' comments, though erroneous, was harmless in light of the large amount of evidence of the defendant's guilt. The issue was addressed most recently by the Supreme Court of Kansas in State v. Elnicki. [49] The officer in that case made repeated comment to the defendant while questioning him, including: [Y]ou just told me a flat-out lie. When somebody lies, their eyes shift, did you realize that? You're sitting here bullshitting me. You're weaving a web of fucking lies, man. The court concluded that the comments violated Kansas's well-known rule that a witness may not express an opinion on the credibility of another witness. [50] The court refused to distinguish between statements made on the witness stand and those presented in a videotape. The court also noted that context for the defendant's answers could have been provided simply by having [the officer] testify and point out the progression of [the defendant's] various stories as the tape playedminus [the officer's] numerous negative comments on [the defendant's] credibility, [51] and that the lack of a limiting instruction compounded the already serious problem. [52] Nonetheless, because of various other errors in the case, including extensive commentary on the defendant's truthfulness by the prosecutor, the court ruled that it need not determine whether the improper allowance of [the officer's] statements itself constitutes reversible error or simply harmless error [53] and chose instead to reverse because of cumulative trial errors [that] prevented him from receiving a fair trial. . . . [54] Though various courts across the country have addressed this issue, it is quite difficult to synthesize a majority rule, especially given that the evidentiary rules in these various states differ significantly. [55] We first note that even the courts that have recognized introduction of this type of evidence as error have been hesitant to consider such introduction alone to be reversible error. Even the courts that have reversed when presented with this issue have done so because the error was multiplied by other errors. We also note that such statements are not the sort of impeachment character contemplated by KRE 608 (both the old and new versions). The word `character' used most narrowly and accurately, describes the personal disposition or personality of an individual. [56] Such comments are not an attempt to describe to the jury the defendant's personality; nor are they statements aimed at impeaching a witness, especially when it is unknown whether a criminal defendant will take the stand. By making such comments, the officer is not trying to convince anyonenot the defendant (who knows whether he or she is telling the truth), other officers, a prosecutor, or the jurythat the defendant was lying. Rather, such comments are part of an interrogation technique aimed at showing the defendant that the officer recognizes the holes and contradictions in the defendant's story, thus urging him or her to tell the truth. This last point is perhaps most important, at least for the purpose of developing a rule that will address future instances of similar evidence. Almost all of the courts that have considered the issue recognize that this form of questioning is a legitimate, effective interrogation tool. And because such comments are such an integral part of the interrogation, several courts have noted that they provide a necessary context for the defendant's responses. We agree that such recorded statements by the police during an interrogation are a legitimate, even ordinary, interrogation technique, especially when a suspect's story shifts and changes. We also agree that retaining such comments in the version of the interrogation recording played for the jury is necessary to provide a context for the answers given by the suspect. We also agree, however, that such comments are not admissible for the truth of the matter that they appear to assert, i.e., that the defendant is lying. We recognize that the introduction of such comments, no doubt, entails the possibility that the jury will misunderstand and accord to those comments an impermissible weight during deliberation. The solution to this problem suggested by the Kansas Supreme Court, i.e., to redact the comments from the recording and have the officer give live testimony as to how the suspect's story shifted in response to questioning, however, is unworkable. Requiring that the interrogating officer intersperse the recording with his or her explanation of the progression of the defendant's various stories could dilute the effectiveness of the playing of the recording because it would require a stop-and-go approach, thus breaking up the recording. Such a practice could also run the same risk of prejudice to the defendant in some cases. For the officer to point out the progression of [the defendant's] various stories as the tape played, as the Kansas Supreme Court described its approach, would require the officer to say, for example, Here the defendant changed his story. The clear implication of such a statement is that the defendant is lying with regard to at least one version of his or her story, thus such a statement is an indirect comment on whether the defendant is telling the truth. This has the same effect of leaving in the officer's statements (and further shows how necessary such commentary is to give context to the defendant's statement in response). We think the better remedy to any possible adverse inference by the jury is a limiting admonition given by the court before the playing of the recording. Our Rules of Evidence specifically provide for such an admonition. [57] Most of the other courts that have addressed this issue have endorsed limiting admonitions [58] either by approving the trial court's use of such an admonition [59] or by proposing the use of such an admonition. [60] The admonition should be phrased so as to inform the jury that the officer's comments or statements are offered solely to provide context to the defendant's relevant responses. [61] This means, however, that a trial court's failure to give such an admonition when requested by a defendant is error, though such an error is still subject to harmless error analysis. As such, the comments in Appellant's case, while admissible under our holding, would have been sufficient to require the giving of a limiting instruction or admonition to the jury. We need not address whether the lack of such an instruction in this case was harmless error, however, because Appellant failed to ask for such an admonition. We have previously held that where an admonishment is sufficient to cure an error and the defendant fails to ask for the admonishment, we will not review the error. [62] This may appear to contradict our interpretation of KRE 103(d) above, i.e., that a motion in limine is sufficient to preserve an error for appellate review, but it conforms to the limitations on the rule that we have expressed. By failing to ask for an admonition, even after the trial court returned a ruling that Appellant thought was in error, Appellant's objection was incomplete. As such, an admonition was not strictly within the scope of the objection as made . . . [and was not] fairly brought to the attention of the trial court. . . . [63] Basically, even our relaxed reading of KRE 103(d) and Tucker requires that a defendant still has to ask for a remedy in order to get the remedy. We further note that our holding in this case, and the rule that it establishes, is limited to the types of comments in this case, i.e., accusations by an officer that a defendant is not telling the truth. The rule does not address the types of comments that some of the other courts have dealt with and were not present in this case. For example, the officer in this case never told Appellant, directly or indirectly, that he was an expert in lie detection. Such comments raise additional concerns that we have not addressed in this opinion, and we decline to fashion a rule to cover such circumstances without the necessity to do so.