Opinion ID: 2552546
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Strength of the Prosecution's Case

Text: Regarding the first factor, Rayton asserts that as in McGinnes, the strength of the prosecution's case against him was evenly balanced by the strength of his defense. In McGinnes, the State's case was based on the credibility of the complaining witness, an 8-year-old girl who disclosed sexual abuse 9 months after the fact and after her mother questioned her at the insistence of a former friend of the defendant. During jury deliberations, the judge, who happened to be standing outside the jury room, overheard jurors questioning the absence of testimony by the police chief who had taken the girl's statement. The judge, in an unrecorded communication, told the jury it should not concern itself with the police chief's absence because the chief was attending the law enforcement academy and was unable to be present at trial. Following a readback of evidence requested by the jury during its deliberations, the judge, without consulting either counsel, instructed the jury sua sponte regarding its duty to consider only the evidence produced at trial and not to divert or speculate on things that have not been presented as evidence. On appeal, the McGinnes court noted that the judge's sua sponte instruction included the information provided to the jury in the previous ex parte communication and compounded the damage caused by the communication. The McGinnes court reviewed the record and found that the evidence was not overwhelming; in fact, it was balanced, and reversed the defendant's conviction because it was unable to declare beyond a reasonable doubt that an ex parte communication and an erroneous instruction had little, if any, likelihood of having changed the result of the trial. 266 Kan. at 138-39. Here, one of the State's primary witnesses, Katie Welch, the woman who drove Rayton to the Turner House Apartments on the evening of the shooting, had a significant credibility problem. Welch had told the police numerous conflicting stories and had admitted to lying to the police on several occasions regarding this matter. She had told the police at one time that she did not see the defendant with a weapon. She told the police at another point that she was not even present when the shooting occurred. Her testimony implicating the defendant in the shooting came after she made a plea agreement reducing a charge pending against her from first-degree murder to aiding a felon. She admitted that she testified to avoid a first-degree murder charge and that she would not have testified but for the plea agreement. Finally, Welch stated that she was so high and drunk on the night of the shooting that she really did not know what had happened. Balanced against Welch's suspect testimony was that of the sole defense witness, Jermaine Rayton. Jermaine's admission, after having been already acquitted of the crime, likely carried very little weight with the jury. In addition, the State's other witnesses who had no identified biases testified that a man with Rayton's physical description carrying a gun got into a car moments after the shooting. Jabary and Pleasant both positively identified Rayton, a former high school acquaintance, as the man they saw with a gun. The evidence was overwhelming in favor of the State.