Opinion ID: 6335851
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Open line 911 call

Text: Hall first argues that the trial court erred in admitting an open line 911 call in its entirety.2 The call came from 10 Sunflower Lane on the evening of March 20, 2008. Both parties agree with our description of the call in Hall I where we stated as follows: The audio recording in question is approximately 15 minutes in duration. Initially, other than the dispatcher’s voice, all that can be heard is children in the background screaming and crying. The crying can be heard for about two minutes. A dog can be heard barking for much of the remainder of the call. Berry Hall’s voice can also be heard a few times thereafter. About six minutes into the call, he says, “Don’t come in here Tony. Get the fuck outta here.” A couple minutes later he can be heard shooing away a dog, and several minutes after that, Berry can be heard asking where the ambulance is and stating, “They better hurry.” 468 S.W.3d at 831. To the trial court, Hall objected to the admission of the open line 911 call. He argued the recording was irrelevant, was more prejudicial than probative, could be confusing to the jury, could mislead the jury, and was cumulative. The trial court, however, found that the call was relevant and that its probative value far outweighed the prejudice it might cause. The trial court therefore admitted the recording. 2 A call is considered an “open line” call when no one responds to the dispatcher who answers the call. 6 To this Court, Hall makes multiple arguments regarding the admissibility of the open line 911 call. First, he argues that any relevance the open line call had resulting from Hall’s statements was cumulative, as Hall’s statements could already be heard in the 911 call made by Tony. Hall also argues that the open line call misled the jury as to the location of the children at the time of the actual shooting. He asserts that because the call does not contain the sound of shots being fired, the children who were crying in the background were doing so after the shooting rather than contemporaneously with it. Therefore, he argues, the call is not probative evidence of where the children were at the time of the shooting. Finally, Hall argues that the open line 911 call was overly prejudicial for two reasons. First, he asserts that the recording may have been used by the jury “for an improper purpose since it misled the jurors into thinking the children must have been close to their parents when they were shot.” Second, Hall argues that the “tape was highly emotional, and it is hard to imagine it not generating sympathy from and inflaming the passion of the jurors.” The Commonwealth asserts that the law of the case doctrine governs the outcome of this issue. Alternatively, the Commonwealth argues that the open line 911 call is relevant, is not misleading, and is not unduly prejudicial. We first address the Commonwealth’s argument regarding the law of the case doctrine. The law-of-the-case doctrine is a rule under which an appellate court, on a subsequent appeal, is bound by a prior decision on a former appeal in the same court and applies to the determination of questions of law and not questions of fact. “As the term ‘law of 7 the case’ is most commonly used, and as used in the present discussion unless otherwise indicated, it designates the principle that if an appellate court has passed on a legal question and remanded the cause to the court below for further proceedings, the legal questions thus determined by the appellate court will not be differently determined on a subsequent appeal in the same case.” Inman v. Inman, 648 S.W.2d 847, 849 (Ky. 1982) (quoting 5 Am.Jur.2d, Appeal and Error, Sec. 744). In Hall I, we acknowledged that “the open line 911 call does contain relevant evidence.” 468 S.W.3d at 832. We explained that [t]he statements made by Hall that can be heard on the recording are certainly credible evidence of his state of mind immediately following the shootings, which is no doubt relevant to the determination of his state of mind at the time of the shootings in regard to his claims of insanity and EED. Id. However, we did not hold that the entirety of the open line 911 call would be admissible in a subsequent retrial. We reserved that decision for the trial court. We stated that “the trial court retains its discretion to make an admissibility determination with respect to this audio recording if offered on retrial and may choose to admit certain relevant portions while redacting portions that are irrelevant or otherwise deemed inadmissible.” Id. Because we did not determine with finality the admissibility of the open line 911 call in Hall I, the law of the case doctrine is not determinative of the issue in this appeal. We now turn to the admissibility of the open line 911 call. Evidentiary rulings by the trial court are reviewed for an abuse of discretion. Little v. Commonwealth, 272 S.W.3d 180, 187 (Ky. 2008) (citations omitted). A trial court abuses its discretion only where its decision is “arbitrary, unreasonable, 8 unfair, or unsupported by sound legal principles.” Commonwealth v. English, 993 S.W.2d 941, 945 (Ky. 1999) (citations omitted). In general, all relevant evidence is admissible unless excluded by the Constitution, a statute, or some other rule. KRE 402. Evidence that is not relevant is not admissible. Id. “‘Relevant evidence’ means evidence having any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence.” KRE 401. As we explained in Hall I, “This is a low bar because it deems relevant . . . any evidence that tends to make a fact in consequence more or less probable, even if only minimally so.” 468 S.W.3d at 832. Even evidence that is relevant “may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of undue prejudice, confusion of the issues, or misleading the jury, or by considerations of undue delay, or needless presentation of cumulative evidence.” KRE 403. Evidence is unduly prejudicial if it “is harmful beyond its natural probative force,” meaning that “it appeals to the jury’s sympathies, arouses its sense of horror, provokes its instinct to punish, or otherwise may cause a jury to base its decision on something other than the established propositions in the case.” McLemore v. Commonwealth, 590 S.W.3d 229, 234 (Ky. 2019) (quoting ROBERT G. LAWSON, THE KENTUCKY EVIDENCE LAW HANDBOOK, § 2.10[4][b] (4th ed. 2003)) (internal quotation marks omitted). 9 “[I]n reviewing the trial judge’s balancing under KRE 403, the appellate court must view the evidence in the light most favorable to its proponent, giving the evidence its maximum reasonable probative force and its minimum reasonable prejudicial value.” Major v. Commonwealth, 177 S.W.3d 700, 707 (Ky. 2005) (citations omitted). Viewing the open line 911 call in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, we conclude that the recording was relevant to prove Hall’s demeanor and state of mind immediately after the shooting. The call also gives the jury an indication of how close the children were to their parents at the time of the shooting. Hall argues that the recording’s relevance for his demeanor and state of mind immediately after the shooting is substantially outweighed by the “needless presentation of cumulative evidence,” KRE 403, because Tony’s 911 call includes Hall’s same statements and proves the same facts. Although many of Hall’s statements can also be heard on Tony’s 911 call, the phone calls are not identical. Tony’s call was made approximately 2 minutes after the open line 911 call was made from a different location. Further, Hall’s demeanor and state of mind is not the only point on which the open line 911 call is probative. Thus, the cumulative nature of the open line 911 call does not “substantially outweigh[]” the probative value of the call. Hall argues that the open line 911 call was not probative of the location of the children at the time of the shooting and was instead misleading on this point. He bases this argument on the fact that no shots can be heard on the open line 911 call, and thus the call must have been recorded after the 10 shooting. Therefore, according to Hall, the call only proves the location of the children after the shooting, as opposed to at the time of the shooting. We disagree with Hall. His argument ignores the inferences that could be drawn from the evidence presented surrounding the open line 911 call. Evidence was presented that the open line 911 call came from 10 Sunflower Lane and that Tony’s call came from 13 Sunflower Lane, which was the Hall residence. The portions of Tony’s 911 call that can also be heard on the open line 911 call all occurred at the Tackett residence. Thus, it can be inferred that 10 Sunflower Lane, from which the open line 911 call was made, was the Tackett residence. The jury could further infer that the open line 911 call was placed by Alan. Commonwealth’s Exhibit 15 is a photograph of the lower half of Alan’s body. The photograph shows what may be a cordless telephone lying on the ground next to Alan’s leg. From this evidence, the jury could infer that Alan made the 911 call in the short span of time between when Lisa was shot and when Alan was shot moments later. The jury could further infer that the dispatcher did not answer the call until after Alan had been shot. If this is accurate, the open line 911 call recording started mere seconds after Alan was shot. Thus, the children’s location at the beginning of the 911 call recording is highly relevant to their probable location at the time Alan was shot. The evidence’s probative value must be weighed against the danger of undue prejudice. We cannot conclude that the children’s cries heard on the open line 911 call were “harmful beyond [their] natural probative force.” 11 McLemore, 590 S.W.3d at 234 (citation omitted). Nor can we conclude that the danger that this evidence “appeal[ed] to the jury’s sympathies, arouse[d] its sense of horror, provoke[d] its instinct to punish, or otherwise may [have] cause[d] [the] jury to base its decision on something other than the established propositions in the case” so “substantially outweighed” its probative value that the trial court abused its discretion in admitting the evidence. Id.; KRE 403. Accordingly, we find no error in the admission of the open line 911 call.