Opinion ID: 1760832
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Post-Penalty Evidence

Text: Lt. James testified at the Rule 29.15 hearing that he knew there was pornography on the computer within a few days of creating the report. Before Gill's trial, he looked at the transcript of the instant message conversation about the 17-year-old daughter. Yet Gill's counsel testified that they chose not to interview or depose Lt. James. Defense counsel testified that while Lt. James was the officer in charge, they chose not to interview or depose him because he did not conduct the investigation himself and would be of little use at trial because his testimony would be hearsay. Lt. James never told the prosecutor about the instant message conversation prior to Gill's trial because he did not think it was relevant to the case. In fact, the first time he told anyone about the computer's sexual contents was after Gill's trial when Brown's counsel asked about child pornography on the computer. Lt. James then told the prosecutor that the computer contained child pornography, bestiality content, and instant message conversations. Prior to Brown's trial, his counsel requested a copy of the contents of the victim's computer and had its hard drive, including the Internet history, reviewed by a computer analyst. [3] The analyst testified at Gill's Rule 29.15 hearing as to his findings. The analyst used software to decode instant messages sent from and received by the victim's computer. On each of the instant messaging files, the profile dogday_afternoon2002 was used. All six conversations were sexually explicit, and four of those conversations included references to sex with underage girls. In one particular conversation, dogday_afternoon2002 wrote about a 17-year-old daughter named Megan and described her as 5'7... 140 ... blonde hair ... blue eyes ... that tight teen girl ass ... 38c. The conversation goes on to describe Megan's anatomy in detail, and then dogday_afternoon2002 says that he and Megan only do touchy feely things, but I sure want more. In addition to decoding the instant messages, the analyst also investigated the Yahoo! profiles found on the computer, including the dogday_afternoon2002 profile. The basic information listed for the profile revealed the following information about the user: real nameRalph, age 45, marital statusdivorced, gender male, and occupationretired. The profile also revealed that the user's hobbies were boating, fishing, camping, socializing with friends, drinking beer on my boat, Oh, and sex, all kinds, except I don't do men. The user also wrote in his profile that he has a new boat and to come take a ride with me. Moreover, the user included a picture with his profile, which was an image of a white male from his navel to his feet with his penis exposed. The analyst also found child pornography images and bestiality content on the victim's computer. The analyst described several of the child pornography images he found on the victim's computer. The pictures were of nude females who appeared to be younger than 18 in sexual poses. Some of the females were sexually developed, while others were sexually undeveloped. Brown's defense counsel told the prosecutor about the sexual instant message conversations and the picture of a white male from his navel to his feet with his penis exposed. At this point, the prosecutor filed a motion in Brown's case to exclude the computer's sexual content. His reasoning was that the computer's sexual content was irrelevant and that the defense could not attack the victim's reputation in the penalty phase. The trial judge ruled that the computer's sexual content would be excluded as irrelevant unless the penalty phase witnesses portrayed the victim as someone who walks on water or as a saint. At the penalty phase of Brown's trial, the prosecution did not present good character evidence about the victim that opened the door to the computer evidence. Although the same four relatives of the victim testified during the penalty phase of Brown's trial, their testimony was more restrained. The prosecutor alerted the witnesses not to cast the victim as a saint. The sister did not speak about the victim's generosity with money. The brother-in-law did not talk about the character lessons he and the victim learned from the West. The brother discussed the victim's generosity with money but did not mention paying for the funeral of his friend's wife. The daughter's testimony was substantially the same in the penalty phase of both Gill's and Brown's trials. A jury found Brown guilty of first-degree murder and kidnapping. The State pursued the death penalty, but the jury assessed life imprisonment without parole. [4]