Opinion ID: 1466624
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: evidence of the victim's pregnancy.

Text: Appellant asserts that it was error for the trial judge to permit the Commonwealth to introduce evidence that Mrs. Rains was pregnant at the time of her death. Mr. Rains testified as follows: Q: And that evening around 7:30 or so tell the jury what you and your wife were doing. A: I had just gotten home from getting the dogs some food and she was on the phone talking to her mother and she wanted to go for a walk. She liked to walk and needed some exercise and we had come out of the house to go for a walk and we were discussing the baby and doing some remodeling to the house. Q: You say baby. You didn't have any kids then, did you? A: No. We'd been trying for eight years. Q: And you say baby. Was your wife pregnant? A: We'd just found out she was pregnant. In addition to this brief colloquy, a coroner's report introduced as a Commonwealth's exhibit contained a typewritten Yes in a box containing the question, [W]as there a pregnancy in the past 12 months? This evidence was not mentioned again during the trial and was not mentioned during either of the prosecutor's closing arguments. Appellant's only claim at trial was that the probative value of the evidence was substantially outweighed by the danger of its undue prejudice. KRE 403. On appeal, he asserts that the jury may have punished him for killing two persons instead of only one. The outcome of a KRE 403 balancing test is within the sound discretion of the trial judge, and that decision will only be overturned if there has been an abuse of discretion, i.e., if the trial judge's ruling was arbitrary, unreasonable, unfair, or unsupported by sound legal principles. Commonwealth v. English, Ky., 993 S.W.2d 941, 945 (1999) (citations omitted). We have held many times that it is not an abuse of discretion to admit evidence that humanizes, as opposed to glorifies, the victim. See McQueen v. Commonwealth, Ky., 669 S.W.2d 519, 523 (1984) (It would, of course, behoove the appellant to be tried for the murder of a statistic, but we find no error in bringing to the attention of the jury that the victim was a living person, more than just a nameless void left somewhere on the face of the community.). See also Foley v. Commonwealth, Ky., 953 S.W.2d 924, 937 (1997) (no error results when victim is presented as more than a statistic); Bowling v. Commonwealth, 942 S.W.2d at 302-03 (same). This brief reference to the victim's pregnancy did not unduly prejudice Appellant. The prosecutor did not excessively expound on it, nor was it mentioned in either the guilt phase or penalty phase arguments. Evidence that the victim was a parent, even when irrelevant, has been deemed harmless error. Nickell v. Commonwealth, Ky., 565 S.W.2d 145, 147 (1978) (number of children that victim had is irrelevant, but not prejudicial); Campbell v. Commonwealth, 289 Ky. 34, 157 S.W.2d 729, 731 (1941) (same). Testimony about each victim's life, occupation, marital status, and number of children, which consumed about five minutes for each victim, was held in Foley, supra , not to be reversible error. Id. at 937. More specifically, we and our predecessor court have held that evidence that a murder victim was pregnant was relevant to whom and what she was at the time of her death. Parrish v. Commonwealth, Ky., 121 S.W.3d 198, 203 (2003); Wheeler v. Commonwealth, Ky., 121 S.W.3d 173, 181 (2003); Burnett v. Commonwealth, 172 Ky. 397, 189 S.W. 460, 462 (1916) (The physical and mental conditions and all circumstances surrounding the parties at the time were necessarily competent on the trial of this case.). As for Appellant's double-murder theory, the instructions clearly informed the jury that Appellant could be convicted only of killing Mrs. Rains. We find no abuse of discretion in the limited admission of evidence that the victim was pregnant at the time of her death.