Opinion ID: 1348989
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Was Taylor denied effective assistance of counsel at trial and on direct appeal?

Text: The United States Supreme Court in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 80 L.Ed.2d 674, 104 S.Ct. 2052 (1984), set forth a two-pronged test for determining whether criminal defendants have been denied effective assistance of counsel. Kansas adopted the Strickland test in Chamberlain v. State, 236 Kan. 650, 657, 694 P.2d 468 (1985). The defendant must show counsel's representation fell below an objective standard of reasonableness and there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel's unprofessional errors, the outcome of the trial would have been different. 236 Kan. at 656-57. In meeting this burden, the defendant must overcome a presumption that counsel's assistance was reasonable. 236 Kan. at 654. Further, [m]uch deference and reliance must be placed upon the wisdom and determination of the trial judge who saw all of the proceedings first hand as they happened. 236 Kan. at 659-60. The standard to be applied when a petitioner is alleging ineffective assistance of appellate counsel is the same as for trial counsel. Baker v. State, 243 Kan. at 6-7 (following Smith v. Murray, 477 U.S. 527, 535-36, 91 L.Ed.2d 434, 106 S.Ct. 2661 [1986]). The district court and the Court of Appeals addressed all of Taylor's claims and found Taylor had been afforded adequate representation. We will briefly discuss each of Taylor's seven claims of ineffective counsel as well as the overall effect of the alleged errors by counsel. 1. Failure to file a pretrial motion for dismissal based on the release of the victim's car by the State. Discovery was available of the vehicle's contents which had not been shown to have any material effect on the outcome of the trial. We have previously determined that Taylor failed to show bad faith on the part of the police in releasing the car. Dismissal is rarely appropriate without a showing of prejudice to the petitioner. State v. Antwine & McHenry, 6 Kan. App.2d at 905. Prejudice did not exist in this case. The trial court properly found the failure to file a motion to dismiss was not ineffective assistance of counsel. 2. Failure to present evidence of petitioner's earnings and employment during the marriage. Taylor claims the State implied to the jury that his wife was the breadwinner in the family and, because she was contemplating divorce, he would be deprived of his source of support. Taylor asserts he would have called an accountant who would have testified as to his income through the years; however, his counsel feared such testimony would open several areas for cross-examination which would have been more damaging to his defense than full disclosure of income would have been helpful. The record reveals this was not the focus of the State's prosecution. During its closing arguments, the State never argued the victim's greater income was Taylor's motive for murder; rather, the State focused on the husband's jealousy and the wife's apparent involvement with other men. Under the circumstances, the decision not to call the accountant appears to be reasonable and logical trial strategy for defense counsel. Taylor has not demonstrated that he was prejudiced by trial counsel not calling the witness to refute the State's contention. The trial court's finding that this was not ineffective assistance of counsel is justified. 3. Failure of trial counsel to adequately cross-examine Dr. Eckert and/or to employ a pathologist for the defense. During trial, the exchange between Dr. Eckert and petitioner's counsel focused on the time between the day of the victim's death and the autopsy. The autopsy report and the pathologist's testimony did not indicate that the victim might have been killed later than alleged by the State. At the 60-1507 hearing Dr. Eckert maintained he never testified as to the date of death during the trial but had testified the victim had died two to four hours after eating. Dr. Eckert maintained if he had been asked he would have given the same response at trial in 1982 as to the date of death as he did at the hearing in 1990. The district judge noted Dr. Eckert's testimony at the preliminary hearing conflicted with his subsequent testimony at the 60-1507 hearing and specifically found Dr. Eckert not to be a credible witness. Prior to trial, Taylor's trial counsel consulted with the pathology department at the University of Kansas and had a pathologist review Dr. Eckert's findings. The head of the pathology department did not believe Dr. Eckert was incorrect as to any of his statements in the report. It would not have been apparent in 1982 that additional pathology evidence could have been developed. Under such circumstances, trial counsel's performance was not so deficient as to have denied Taylor a fair trial. 4. Trial counsel's failure to refute the State's ballistics evidence. Taylor contends the defense ballistics witness, Lee Roy Pilcher, had limited qualifications as an expert and was ineffectively handled. It appears that trial counsel got all available testimony admitted at the trial that Pilcher's qualifications allowed. Although Taylor's expert, Dr. Wayne Dunning, did not testify as a defense witness at trial, the testimony of the two ballistics experts during the 60-1507 hearing was contradictory. At the 60-1507 hearing, the district judge found the State's expert, Carl Carlson, to be extremely credible. Carlson testified for the State during the trial that the bullets that killed the victim were .22 caliber. At trial and at the 60-1507 hearing he testified that because the bullets had fragmented, the model of the pistol that fired the bullets could not be determined. The district judge found Dr. Dunning to be less credible. Dr. Dunning stated the bullets were not fired from a gun of the same model as owned by the defendant. On appeal, we will not reweigh the credibility of witnesses. It is possible that a more qualified ballistics expert could have testified at the trial; however, during the 1989 and 1990 hearings the attempt to elicit a more qualified expert's testimony was not considered credible by the district judge. The trial court saw the witnesses, heard the testimony, and did not abuse its discretion in finding this was not ineffective assistance of counsel. Therefore, Taylor has not met his burden to demonstrate ineffective assistance of counsel on this issue. 5. Trial counsel's failure to develop other suspects or impeach the testimony of potential suspects with information available but not used. Taylor claims his wife's lover and a friend of the lover killed her after a fight over her during a camping trip. The district court noted there was no substantial testimony introduced during the two 60-1507 hearings to prove this unsubstantiated claim. The district court found that Taylor had not met his burden on this issue. We agree. 6. Trial counsel's failure to raise Fourth Amendment seizure grounds in the petitioner's pretrial motions to suppress. This contention is without merit. In the original appeal, Taylor's trial counsel claimed that Taylor's Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights were denied and attempted to show that Taylor was held in custody when locked in a holding cell and at some point requested to be allowed to talk to an attorney. The issues were properly raised and considered both at the trial court level and on appeal. Taylor's claim that his trial counsel was ineffective as to the suppression of the evidence is without merit. 7. Trial counsel's failure to properly prepare Taylor to testify at trial. Trial counsel testified at the 60-1507 hearing that he did prepare Taylor to testify and discussed with Taylor whether he should testify and the effect of his testifying during the murder trial. Taylor's complaint is that the prosecutor discredited much of Taylor's testimony during cross-examination and presented rebuttal evidence that caused Taylor to change his claim as to the date he sold the .22 caliber pistol to an unknown Mexican male. There is no evidence that Taylor's trial counsel could have known the date Taylor first stated the pistol was sold would be rebutted by the State. Taylor has not met his burden of showing ineffective assistance of counsel on this issue, and the trial court's finding that he was properly prepared cannot be reversed. Finally, Taylor's counsel argues a new trial should be ordered because the cumulative effect of several trial errors or irregularities is such an appellate court cannot declare from the record as a whole that the substantial rights of an accused have not been prejudiced. State v. Stafford, 213 Kan. 152, Syl. ¶ 6, 515 P.2d 769 (1973). This wording was specifically withdrawn and deleted from the Stafford opinion by the Supreme Court at 213 Kan. 585, 518 P.2d 136 (1974). The cumulative effect rule is that trial errors, when considered collectively, may be so great as to require reversal of the defendant's conviction. The test is whether the totality of circumstances substantially prejudiced the defendant and denied him a fair trial. No prejudicial error may be found upon this cumulative effect rule, however, if the evidence is overwhelming against the defendant. State v. Williams, 235 Kan. 485, Syl. ¶ 10, 681 P.2d 660 (1984). We have considered the cumulative effect as well as the individual effect of all of the actions taken by Taylor's counsel both at trial and on appeal. All of these matters were also considered by the district judge at the 60-1507 hearing. The district judge found that Taylor was not denied effective assistance of counsel at trial. Our scope of review on appeal is whether that finding by the district judge was an abuse of discretion. After reviewing the record, we find all of Taylor's contentions, individual and cumulative, that he was denied effective assistance of counsel, are without merit. IV. Did the trial court err in determining a new trial was not warranted on the basis of the entomology evidence alleged to be newly discovered? Taylor contends that an examination by Dr. Robert Hall, an entomologist, and his testimony at the 60-1507 hearing indicates that maggot samples taken from the victim's body during the autopsy place the time of death no earlier than May 30, 1982, at which time he had an alibi. This evidence is claimed to be newly discovered. Hall is a professor of entomology retained by the defense. At the 60-1507 hearing, he testified he received the evidentiary maggot samples from the Salina police department in the spring of 1990. The two maggots could not be examined and identified when received by Hall. He had to rehydrate the two maggots, i.e., first determine they were not fragmented, and then add distilled water and wait several days until the maggots came back into their original state. One of the maggots was a third instar Lucilia illustris, a greenbottle fly that is particularly common around carrion. Lucilia illustris are known to arrive habitually at corpses within minutes of death. After a female deposits its eggs, the eggs hatch as larvae or maggots. The maggots go through four identifiable stages on their way to adulthood. The first instar is the youngest. The specimen Hall examined was a third instar but could not be identified as early or late third instar. There is a fourth instar that occurs inside the constricted exuvium of skin of the third instar which is called the puparium, but it is not readily apparent. There are two ways to determine whether a maggot is an early or a late third instar. One is by nothing behavior, and to do that, it is necessary to have living specimens. The second way would be to note the relative length of the crop or the area in the gastrointestinal tract of the maggot. To do that, it is necessary to have either living or properly preserved specimens. The specimen Hall examined was not a properly preserved specimens. The specimen could not be sectioned to observe its digestive tract. The rate of development or the growth rate of a maggot is highly dependent upon temperature. Development proceeds more rapidly the higher the temperature. Knowledge of ambient temperature is necessary in determining the developmental rate of insect larvae. Other factors affecting development are adequate food supply and the mass of larvae present. When there is a sufficient biological data base, if the species and stage of development are known, it is possible to retrospectively calculate how long it would have taken that particular maggot to arrive at its stage of development. Because the single maggot was not living when Hall obtained it, he had to use rearing studies to determine the particular rate of development of Lucilia illustris at different temperatures. If a rearing experiment has been conducted at a variety of constant temperatures, the study can be used to make inferences regarding the length of developmental time. Hall relied on two papers authored by Dr. Hanski, an entomologist from the University of Helsinki in Finland. One of the papers was published as early as 1976. Hall calculated average daily temperatures and an average temperature for the entire period of time based on the National Weather Service report for the City of Salina (the average daily temperature where the body was discovered was unknown), and then made two calculations based on the experimental data presented in the rearing study. One calculation was based on constant temperature rearing and the other on changing temperatures. He made a series of calculations from the developmental graphs that were presented in the paper on the basis of gross weight of the maggot. His calculations were based on the supposition that the maggot was an older third instar. He then found temperature curves that bracketed the average temperature during the period of time between May 28 and June 5 and concluded that under constant temperature, the average development probably would have been a maximum of six days from the immature to the third instar. He testified he tried to err on the conservative side. He concluded that the estimate of six days would be the maximum period of time but it probably would not be the most likely estimate because of the effect of changing temperatures. To estimate the day of death, the inference as to the number of days of larval development would be used by counting backwards from the date of extraction of the maggots at the autopsy, if maggot growth stopped when extracted at the autopsy. If the inference was six days, and if maggot growth stopped at the time of the autopsy and the autopsy was on June 5, estimated date of death would be May 30. Hall has been involved in interpreting data from maggots about 17 years, but his area of emphasis is not in post mortem interval as it relates to dead human bodies. He has dealt mostly with agricultural-related matters, e.g., flies that affect livestock production. Hall indicated the use of insects as forensic indicators to determine the time of death has been used since the mid-1200's in China, but it is only within the past decade or so that there has been a sufficient data base for the broad spectrum of species. The State's attorney noted the record on appeal does not indicate that the maggot was living at the time it was removed from the body by Dr. Eckert. If the maggot was not living when taken from the body, Shirley Taylor's death would be moved back by the amount of time expired since the death of the maggot. In addition, William C. Rodriquez, III, a forensic anthropologist with the Office of the Onondaga County Medical Examiner, Syracuse, New York, testified as an expert witness for the State. Rodriquez agreed that Hall was qualified and correctly determined the maggot specimen to be a late stage third stage Lucilia illustris larva. He also agreed that Hall's use of the Finnish rearing study was proper to determine the development of the specimen. Rodriquez disagreed with Hall's determination as to the number of days from death to the discovery of the body. Rodriquez determined a lengthier period of time had elapsed because Hall had used the Salina climate rather than the microclimate scene where the flies were actually feeding and laying their eggs on the body. Consequently, a slight change in the precise time of the maggot's death or in the temperature used to calculate the maggot's growth could place Shirley's death during the evening of May 28 or render questionable the reliability of the maggot evidence in estimating the time of death. K.S.A. 22-3501 allows a trial court to grant a new trial based on newly discovered evidence in the interest of justice. Kansas courts have developed a two-pronged test for determining when new trials are required under K.S.A. 22-3501: 1. The evidence must be new; the defendant must show the evidence could not with reasonable diligence have been produced at trial. State v. Neal, 243 Kan. 756, 760-61, 763 P.2d 621 (1988). 2. The evidence must be of such materiality it would likely produce a different result at a new trial. State v. Neal, 243 Kan. at 760. It is important to note the trial court did not rule as to the reliability of Hall's conclusion as to the date of death. The district court specifically found the identification of maggot growth on a body as an investigative tool in ascertaining the interval between death is not a recent or novel development. It held information necessary to perform the test was known in 1982 when appellant was tried for the murder of his wife. Hall's own testimony provides substantial competent evidence to support the trial court's finding the maggot test could have been performed in 1982. Was the maggot test discoverable with reasonable diligence? The burden is on defendant to prove that it was not. State v. Neal, 243 Kan. at 761. The district judge observed Taylor presented no direct evidence on this point and found Taylor had failed to pass the two-part test necessary to obtain a new trial based on newly discovered evidence. After reviewing the record, we agree the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying a new trial based on newly discovered evidence.