Opinion ID: 3211934
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 10

Heading: trial court’s improper admission

Text: OF JOURNAL EXCERPTS WAS HARMLESS ERROR In summary, I conclude that the court erred in admitting eight of the nine redacted excerpts from Oldson’s journal. In a jury trial of a criminal case, an erroneous evidentiary ruling results in prejudice to a defendant unless the error was - 855 - Nebraska A dvance Sheets 293 Nebraska R eports STATE v. OLDSON Cite as 293 Neb. 718 harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.60 Harmless error review looks to the basis on which the trier of fact actually rested its verdict; the inquiry is not whether in a trial that occurred without the error a guilty verdict would surely have been rendered, but, rather, whether the actual guilty verdict rendered was surely unattributable to the error.61 If the evidence is cumulative and there is other competent evidence to support the conviction, the improper admission or exclusion of evidence is harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.62 I believe that the court improperly admitted exhibit 266 to show Oldson’s motive for killing Beard: he sexually assaulted her when she rejected him and then killed her. It improperly admitted the remaining seven journal excerpts to show his consciousness of guilt. But one journal excerpt did show that Oldson had guilty knowledge of Beard’s murder. The court properly admitted exhibit 267 for that purpose. In exhibit 267, the court admitted this redacted statement: I really have no idea about what to do or where to go. My first priority is to get rid of something A.S.A.P.! That is, if I can still find them. The only . . . link left between me and . . . But after that, I imagine I’ll stay in the Midwest and try something. Maybe stick around here to work for Pop. He no doubt needs the help. And I could use the $ . . . . From the bench, the court stated that Oldson’s statement about the “only . . . link left” was more likely to be a reference to the Beard investigation than any other bad act Oldson had committed. The court ruled that exhibit 267 was admissible to show his consciousness of guilt, i.e., that he needed 60 State v. Grant, ante p. 163, 876 N.W.2d 639 (2016). 61 State v. Lavalleur, 289 Neb. 102, 116, 853 N.W.2d 203, 215 (2014), disapproved in part on other grounds 292 Neb. 424, 873 N.W.2d 155 (2016). 62 See Grant, supra note 60. - 856 - Nebraska A dvance Sheets 293 Nebraska R eports STATE v. OLDSON Cite as 293 Neb. 718 to destroy evidence, which the jury could infer related to his charge. I agree with the court that a fact finder could reasonably infer from exhibit 267 that Oldson was concerned about destroying evidence related to the Beard investigation. He wrote this when he was serving a sentence for committing an assault in Burwell, so he would not have been worried about evidence connected to that crime. Beard’s murder was the only active investigation against him, and he knew he was a suspect. Moreover, in Oldson’s other journal entries, he was not reticent about expounding on his moral failings, sexual fantasies, or sexual behaviors that he needed to control or abandon. So his attorney’s argument that in exhibit 267, he could have been writing about a character flaw or pornography that he needed to “get rid of” was not persuasive. The court correctly determined that the statement supported a reasonable inference of his guilty knowledge. Additionally, the State presented other, stronger evidence of his consciousness of guilt. In January 2012, after officers arrested Oldson, they recorded his conversations with his wife. These conversations showed that he was concerned that investigators might have found evidence linking him to Beard’s murder. In the 2012 conversations, Oldson was generally trying to explain why officers had arrested him for murder and speculating that new DNA testing techniques might have shown his DNA was mixed with Beard’s DNA on some item or on an area of his father’s pickup. To rationalize how investigators might find a mixed DNA sample in his father’s pickup, Oldson admitted that he had struggled with Beard and tried to pull her into the pickup with him: [Oldson:] Well, we don’t know that they found nothing, they probably found plenty and they just probably never told anybody what they found [be]cause they couldn’t attach . . . they couldn’t do anything with it at the time. - 857 - Nebraska A dvance Sheets 293 Nebraska R eports STATE v. OLDSON Cite as 293 Neb. 718 But see now with the techniques and they think ooh-ooh, no, we’ve got something. I don’t know. [Wife:] But how could they have found anything? If there was nothing to find Johnny? If you didn’t do it. [Oldson:] That’s the thing, see, . . . . All they have to do is find a spot, any one spot, anywhere, where your DNA and the victim’s DNA are in the same place. That’s all they’ve got to find. They don’t have to prove anything else anymore. [Wife:] Are you saying that’s true? [Oldson:] [inaudible] I tried, I wrestled around with Cathy Lee Beard, I tried to pull her into the pickup, saying, “Come on, let’s go do it.” “No, I don’t like you that way.” And she may have bumped the side of the pickup, she may have put her hand down on the seat, she may have, you know, may have whatever—may have fallen down on the floor. I don’t know. In another excerpt, Oldson speculated about where investigators might find a mixed DNA sample from Beard and himself: You know, what could it be? . . . I’m a brick layer, alright? What if they say with tests we found her DNA on your brick hammer? Or we found DNA on the bumper of your truck. You hit her with it—you killed her that way. Or you—we found DNA on a gas can—you torched her and set her on fire, you know. Or you know—who knows—I have no idea what, I have no idea what they are going to find. Because, and here’s the thing, it’s not gonna worry me—I’ve [sic] never was denying that we mingled. That our DNA would have mingled somewhere or another because I grabbed her by the arm and I tried to pull her into the truck and she struggled back—and so I had ahold of her and she was pushing against me—I think she put her hand down on the seat once to balance herself as she tried to pull away so her DNA was in the truck, her DNA was on me—sure. - 858 - Nebraska A dvance Sheets 293 Nebraska R eports STATE v. OLDSON Cite as 293 Neb. 718 But in 1989, Oldson gave a different version of his physical interactions with Beard. On June 2, Oldson told local officers only that he had tried to get Beard to come with him and that she had refused. He got into the pickup after she refused and, in the the rearview mirror, saw her leave with someone else. A retired investigator for the Nebraska State Patrol testified that on June 5, Oldson said that while he was standing outside of the open passenger door of his father’s pickup, he asked Beard again if she wanted to do something and she again declined. Oldson admitted that he grabbed her by the wrists and was going to pull her inside the pickup, but he said that she pulled away. The investigator’s testimony was consistent with his report. Oldson did not say that he was inside the pickup when he grabbed Beard’s wrists or that he had struggled with her inside the pickup. From these conversations, a juror could have reasonably inferred that Oldson changed his story because he was concerned that new DNA testing procedures would reveal incriminating evidence that Beard had been inside the pickup, contrary to what he had stated in 1989. And Beard’s DNA on his hammer or the pickup’s bumper would have been consistent with the blunt force injuries that Beard sustained. In sum, Oldson’s attempt to explain why investigators might find such evidence strongly supported an inference of his guilty knowledge that such evidence existed. And his concern in 2012 that a mixed DNA sample might be found on his hammer or other items sufficient to have caused Beard’s death is strikingly similar to the concern expressed in exhibit 267 that he had to get rid of the “only . . . link left between me and . . . .” This evidence was before the jurors. The State played the excerpts from the telephone conversations. And the prosecutor specifically argued in closing that Oldson had changed his story in his telephone conversations with his wife and said for the first time that he had wrestled with Beard and tried to pull her into the pickup with him. So there was strong cumulative evidence of Oldson’s consciousness of guilt to offset the - 859 - Nebraska A dvance Sheets 293 Nebraska R eports STATE v. OLDSON Cite as 293 Neb. 718 court’s erroneous admission of speculative evidence for that proof. Because the evidence reasonably supported a consciousness of guilt inference, the jurors could properly rely on it to find Oldson guilty of murder. And because he admitted to trying to pull Beard into the pickup with him when she rejected him, the jurors could have reasonably inferred from the 2012 conversations that he had a motive for murder: forcing sexual contact upon Beard or covering up that crime. To sum up, the speculative evidence that the court erroneously admitted was cumulative to evidence that the court properly admitted for the same purpose. Because I agree with the majority that other sufficient competent evidence supported Oldson’s conviction, I conclude he was not prejudiced by the erroneous admissions of his journal excerpts. Miller-Lerman, J., joins in this concurrence.